ABSTRACT
Labour, time and capital In his 1975 book, Bliss starts his analysis of capital from the following statement: ‘[c]apital theory is concerned with the implications for a market economy, for the theory of prices, for the theory of production and for the theory of distribution, of the existence of produced means of production’ (Bliss 1975: 3). Although the author himself affirms his intention not to make a fetish of precision, his definition of capital sounds rather too loose. In fact, before being concerned with the implications of the existence of instrumental goods, capital theory must account for their very existence. Bliss considers capital goods as given instead of explaining where they come from. The answer is not self-evident. Of course, like any other commodity, capital goods are the result of production. Yet, as we have seen, production is not merely a physical process of transformation. Likewise, capital cannot be reduced to a collection of instrumental goods.
