Papers > By author > Junior Fernando

In contemporary times the so-called economic science operates at a high pseudoscientific level. There is an immense fragmentation of the process of knowledge, in which the necessary connections between the appearance and the essence of social phenomena are erased. Thus, economics becomes a tabula rasa, where the effective process of understanding social reality is based on empirical knowledge, that is, a mere description based on quantitative phenomena, whose graphs, tables and regressions would be sufficient for the diagnosis and understanding of society's problems. This new economic theory was historically criticized by Marx in his mature work, especially in the books that compose The Capital: Critique of Political Economy. For the German thinker, the Political Economy loses its scientific status, becoming a mere apologia, called vulgar economy. According to Marx, this moment marks the beginning of the ideological decadence of the bourgeoisie. For the Economy as a social science displaces its object of study. From then on, the object of study and intervention of economics, science of scarcity, focuses on the sphere of circulation and maximization of the allocation of so-called factors of production (land, capital and labor). Thus, Economic Science, by shifting its analytical axis, tries to cover up, theoretically and politically, the theory of labor value and, therefore, the mechanism that makes explicit the exploitation of the labor force and extraction of value and value. In this sense, so that Political Economy as a social science in the era of neoliberal and financially capitalism can really be an important instrument for an understanding of the contemporary world, as well as a tool of struggle for the working class, if necessary a ransom on the object of study of Political Economy, that is, the understanding of bourgeois society in its totality (production, distribution and consumption). In this theoretical perspective, the locus of production is central, since it is there that wealth and economic surplus are created. In such a way that: the theory of labor value, the perspective of class and the method of totality are indispensable. In short, in order for Political Economy to regain its critical strength, these are the vectors that may allow for a deeper interpretation of the actual working gears of the capitalist mode of production in today's society.