ABSTRACT
As a critique of political economy, Karl Marx’s economics and Marxian economics should not be conceptualized as a homogeneous, monolithic, and completed discourse. on the contrary, this rich and vital tradition harbors multiple voices and a multiplicity of theories. Clearly, in this brief chapter, it is virtually impossible to do justice to the richness and the complexity of the different traditions of Marxian economics.2 In an attempt to make sense of this multiplicity, this chapter will distinguish between two distinct Marxist projects: those that take the process of capital accumulation as their center of gravity, and those that take class exploitation as their entry point.3 Whereas the former project is committed to the analysis of capitalism as a crises-ridden process of wealth accumulation, the latter can be described as the institutionally specific analyses of different class structures (capitalist, feudal, slave, independent, or communal) and their articulation. This distinction also informs the structure of the chapter. In the first section, we will briefly introduce some basic concepts of Marxian economics in order to undertake an intelligible survey of the literature. The second section will survey the accumulation theories of capitalism and the fourth section will discuss certain analyses of capitalist and non-capitalist forms of appropriation of surplus in contemporary social formations. The third section is on the Marxist theories of colonialism and imperialism, and as such it will serve as an interlude. Concluding remarks will touch upon some of the implications of different theories of capitalism for imagining and enacting non-capitalist futures.
