Jørgen Sandemose

Marx's reflections on Christianity depend on Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind, and this was the context in which he conceived the idea of treating the critique of religion as a starting-point for the critique of bourgeois society in general. There are three different political-economic connections in which Marx employs the concept of religion to shed light on capitalist society in general: the relation between bourgeois and citizen in capitalist society; the phenomena of commodity circulation; and, finally, the production process. The close relation between Christianity and the alienating nature of capitalist production may well explain why Marx did not follow up his critique of religion in the form of a specific work — a question recently brought forward by Alexander Saxton. Analysis of some general features of the relation between capital and religion leads to the conclusion that Protestantism prevails as the true religious form in capitalist society. The capitalismreligion connection sheds light on the Marxian concept of workers' subsumption under capital at the global level

This book presents the capitalist system as a function of the interaction of the three basic classes in the capitalist social formation. Through this, it shows how the corresponding conflicts and clashes of interests between those classes ¿ industrial capitalists, wage labourers and landed proprietors ¿ are unavoidable for understanding contemporary economic structures. Analysing these economic structures in relation to the forms of property ownership, as well as the typical processes of production connected with them, the author points out how Karl Marx¿s theory of the capitalist social formation is closely connected with the emergence and existence of a national money market. At the same time, the book places a special emphasis on Marx¿s theory of ground rent and modern landed property, an aspect often misinterpreted by many authors; and through an evaluation of the most important Marxian categories regarding the analysis of the world market and its development, further emphasis is placed on the concept of differences in labour intensity between nations. This evaluation illustrates how the main categories of capital, wage labour and landed property acquire a completely different internal relation in poor countries compared to Western capitalist societies. Class and Property in Marx's Economic Thought aims at exposing a method for analysing contemporary capitalism through focusing on the basic relations of population groups in the capitalist social formation. It will be of interest to students and researchers within the field of economics, as well as other social sciences.