71, 2006, 585) as a cardinal measure of male competitive ability in a group of Barbary macaques living under semi-free ranging conditions. To derive competitive ability scores, we used a semi-experimental protocol where two males had to compete over access to a prized food resource (i.e. a nut) within the natural group setting. This protocol was used because it allowed the exclusion of three factors other than competitive ability (i.e. respect of ownership, social tolerance and motivation) which may influence the outcome of dyadic encounters in group-living primates. We expected that a measure of competitive ability excluding the three above-mentioned influences would correlate with some intrinsic features of males. Male competitive ability scores were calculated based on 357 nut tests. As expected, male competitive ability shows a curvilinear relationship with age (used as a proxy for male general physical condition), with young, 'athletic' males having the highest scores. However, we also found that male competitive ability scores were highly correlated with the dominance scores derived from naturally occurring agonistic interactions, which suggest that observations of spontaneous interactions may suffice to estimate the competitive abilities of individuals. We conclude that despite its limitation, the normalized David score is often preferred to ordinal ranking as an estimate of resource holding potential as originally defined (Parker G.

Uno Kōzō (1897Kōzō ( -1977) was Japan's foremost Marxian economist. His critique of Marx's method in Capital, especially regarding the 'premature' introduction of value-form analysis in Volume I, motivated him to rewrite all three volumes of Capital in his book The Principles of Political Economy .Notwithstanding Uno's increasing popularity in international Marx research, I will present a critical paper that looks at a fundamental misunderstanding in Uno's reading of the value form. In what is one of the most significant discussions of the value form in postwar Japan, Uno argues that 'value' and money as its 'bearer' cannot be understood in abstraction from personal interaction and human wants in commodity exchange. By drawing on the Japanese documents and supporting the view of Uno's rival Kuruma Samezō (1893Samezō ( -1982, I want to show that it can, and how Marx understood the 'law of value' as a non-personal law of social domination.

The plausibility of “gendered exploitation” as a sine qua non of capitalism, as articulated by both classic Marxist–feminism since the 1970s and more recently by authors of social reproduction theory, stands or falls with the evaluation of Marx's theory of value. From the standpoint of both Marx's monetary theory of value and the problem of quantification, the use of “women's oppression” in capitalist social reproduction appears to be questionable. This also necessitates a deeper analysis of the use of “gender” in the wider field of pertinent Marxist–feminist literature. Arguments for “gendered exploitation” often hinge on unsound premises that introduce a naturalizing view of social relations. Analogous to Barbara and Karen Fields' intervention against “Racecraft,” the term “Gendercraft” may represent this argumentative move. The notion of gender as the site of specifically capitalist exploitation is thus challenged and countered with a new emphasis on struggles against the wage relation as the site of anticapitalist resistance.

Even after the demise of the influential Uno School in the 1980s, Japanese economists have been continuously engaged in the categorial reconstruction of Marx’s Critique of Political Economy, especially the theory of value and money. Writing in the 1980s–2000s, authors of the ‘post-Uno School’, such as Ebitsuka Akira, Mukai Kimitoshi, Kataoka Kōji etc., broadened the value-theoretical views of Uno School orthodoxy to include, among others, the Neue Marx-Lektüre (predominantly H.-G. Backhaus and M. Heinrich) and the French economists C. Benetti and J. Cartelier. This paper will confront the ‘post-Uno School’s’ reading of Marx’s theory of value, which poses the theories of value and money as unreconcilable, leading them to discard the theory of value in favour of a ‘monetary approach’. We show that the dismissal of value theory leads to an introduction of Baileyan and neoclassical elements into Marx’s theory, which we believe to be both theoretically and practically precarious.

s and Ōtani Teinosuke's support, advice and good spirits are painfully missed.Thanks to the discussants of the Value-Form Group for being 'ruthless critics of all that exists' .Many thanks to Jan Steiner for his invaluable, and spontaneous, help.Special thanks to my patient parents, Horst and Donka. Extra special thanks to the love of my life, F.A part of the research conducted for this book has been financially supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (snsf).