Book launch of “Marx’s Theory of Value at the Frontiers”

by Güney Işıkara and Patrick Mokre

Join us on Wednesday 12th November 2025 (5:00-6:30pm) at Goldsmiths, University of London, for the launch of “Marx’s Theory of Value at the Frontiers: Classical Political Economics, Imperialism and Ecological Breakdown”, the new book by Güney Işıkara and Patrick Mokre.

Summary:
The book examines the unequal exchange of labour in the global economy. Drawing on the works of Marx, Sraffa, Pasinetti, and Shaikh, the authors develop a novel empirical approach to measuring unequal exchange on a global scale. The book makes a major contribution to debates on dependency theory, uneven development, and core-periphery relations.

It demonstrates that the classical political economists’ approach to value and prices, which finds its most advanced formulation in Marx, sheds light on the source of profits, exploitation, whether equivalents are exchanged in trade, dynamics of asymmetric and uneven accumulation, and the relationship of production to non-human natures at large. Understanding these phenomena is key to understanding the economic regularities underlying the key issues facing the world in the twenty-first century: imperialism and ecological breakdown. It argues powerfully that deviations between market prices, production prices, and labor values are central to understanding international value transfers due to differential capital compositions and rates of exploitation, as well as the central role of rent and accumulation in capitalism-induced ecological crisis.

The book is structured to provide an understandable introduction to the classical approach to value and prices, and its modern expression in empirical applications making it of great interest to readers in Economics, Political Economy, Politics and Sociology.

You can purchase the book via this link.

Speaker bio:

Patrick Mokre works at the Austrian Federal Chamber of Labour in Vienna. He received his PhD in Economics from the New School for Social Research in 2022. Patrick’s research gravitates around the political economy of labor, inequality, and capitalism. Within the AHE, Patrick is one of the coordinators of the Quantitative Political Economy stream.

Event schedule (90 minutes):
[1] Welcome and opening remarks – Ragu Venkatachalam (5 mins)
[2] Introducing the speakers – Tomas Rotta (5 mins)
[3] Book presentation – Patrick Mokre (40 mins)
[4] Comments – Ingrid Kvangraven, King’s College London (15 mins)
[5] Q&A (25 mins)
[6] Drinks at a local pub from 6:30pm

The speakers will aim to make it engaging for both economists and non-economists.

Date and time:

12th November 2025 at 5:00-6:30pm (Wednesday)

Goldsmiths, University of London, Deptford Town Hall, room G-16 (ground floor). Click here to see the venue on Google Maps.

No need to register, you can just walk in when you arrive. The event will not be recorded or streamed online. This will be an in-person event only.

Click here to view the event webpage.

Sponsors:
The event is sponsored by the Structural Economic Analysis Research Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London, and the Association for Heterodox Economics.

Structuralist and Behavioral Macroeconomics: Seminar with Professor Peter Skott

Professor Peter Skott will deliver a seminar on his new book Structuralist and Behavioral Macroeconomics

Date: 5th March 2024 (Tuesday)

Time: 4.00-5.30pm, London time, followed by drinks and dinner at The Rose (at own expense)

Seminar location: Goldsmiths College, University of London. Room DTH-G16 (Deptford Town Hall building, ground floor, entrance from New Cross Road). Click here for map.

Book summary:

Mainstream macroeconomics is founded on the idea of perfectly rational representative agents. Yet there is a growing realisation that economic theories based on such agents are inadequate guides to real-world decision making. The behavioural evidence has had significant impacts on microeconomics but the same cannot be said of macroeconomics. This book is part of the movement to do for macroeconomics what behavioural thinking has done for microeconomics. Using behavioural evidence and insights from Keynesian and institutionalist traditions, it presents an empirically grounded alternative to the paradigm that currently dominates macroeconomic theory. It highlights how dynamic interactions across markets can generate instability, endogenous cycles and secular stagnation. It fully engages with macroeconomic theory, provides a multi-faceted view that explains how and why it is time to rethink its foundations and offers a path forward.

Peter Skott is Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Professor of Economics at Aalborg University. Before moving to UMass in 2003, he held positions at Copenhagen University (1981-1987) and Aarhus University (1987-2003). His research interests fall primarily within macroeconomics, with contributions on a range of topics, including economic growth and development, business cycles, inflation, and the distribution of income. His general approach draws on the (post-) Keynesian, (neo-) Marxian and institutional traditions as well as behavioral economics; a recent book on Structuralist and Behavioral Macroeconomics (Cambridge University Press, 2023) synthesizes some of his work on core macroeconomic issues.

The seminar will be held in person at Goldsmiths. Click here for more information about the event.

No need to register. When you arrive at the reception desk, tell the concierge that you are attending the seminar in room DTH-G16, which is just behind the reception desk on the ground floor.

This seminar is organised by the:

Structural Economic Analysis research unit at Goldsmiths

Association for Heterodox Economics (AHE)