Gender Injustice:Marxist Perspectives With a Difference

Political economy is defined as the science of the laws governing the production and exchange of the material means of subsistence in human society. The word 'laws' here denotes conditions and forms that govern production and exchange. But this definition is 'restricted to the evolution and development of the capitalist mode of production' (p. 167). Hence, the need to redefine it was tlrst felt by the working-class theoreticians in search of a more desirable option. After a critical analysis of capitalism as well as formulation of an alternate collective mode of production, they added to the initial economic categories like value, price and profit. some more such as social production and distribution. Social production refers to centralizing all means of production in the hands of the state, with the proletariat as the rulers of the state. Distribution, as distinguished from exchange, 'determines the proportion (the quantity) in which products are allocated to individuals, the latter (i.e., exchange) determines the particular products in the form of which the individual demands the share allocated to him in the distribution; the former represents a social, the latter an individual decision' [Carr, 1952,1978, Vol. 2, p. 6].