Robert Vienneau: Thoughts Economics

Is historical materialism a deterministic theory? Must all societies (in particular, Russia) go through the same stages, including feudalism, capitalism, and, eventually, socialism? Perhaps Marx says otherwise in the following letter. London, 8 March 1881 41 Maitland Park Road, N.W. Dear Citizen, A nervous complaint which has assailed me periodically over the last ten years has prevented me from replying any sooner to your letter of 16 February. I am sorry that...

Here Marx sets out the transformation problem in a letter to Engels. The first volume of Capital was published in 1967. So this is another instance of Marx distinguishing labor values and prices of production before publication of Capital. This post is the second in a series I am working on in which he sets out critical parts of the (critique of) political economy in Capital in letters to Engels. As I understand it, the concept of absolute rent was original with Marx. Marx criticizes...

Selected Biographies AuthorYearTitleGustav Gross1885Karl Marx: Eine StudieWilliam Liebknecht1896Karl Marx, Biographical MemoirsPaul Lafargue1905My Recollections of Karl MarxVarious1908Karl Marx: In memoriamJonathan Spargo1910Karl Marx: his life and workClara Zetkin1913Karl Marx und Sein LebenswerkFranz Mehring1918Karl Marx: The story of his lifeOtto Ruhle1926Karl Marx: Leben und WerkDavid Riazanov1927Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: an introduction to their lives and worksInstitute of...

When one achieves at least partial enlightenment, one will realize that one's income does not necessarily reward productivity, effort, or any other virtue. "For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no...

In this letter, Marx outlines the three volumes of Capital. I know about this letter from Fred Moseley's Money and Totality (2016). Is this where scholars learned about Marx's mother (-in-law?) saying, "If only Karl had accumulated capital instead of writing about it"? The context is a discussion, in a couple of previous letters, of the effects of inflation on the rate of profits. This letter is more evidence that Marx was quite conscious of the transformation problem. (Theories of Surplus...

[embedded content]Cordelia Belton at Red MayMatthew Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell's Know Your Enemy podcast. Benedict and Kevin's Not Your Grandmother's Book Club podcast. Brendan Cooney and Andrew Kliman's Radio Free Humanity podcast. Doug Henwood on McCarthyism. Peter Boetkke and Rosolino Candela On the feasibility of technosocialism. An old essay of mine on a Sraffian interpretation of Marx.

1.0 Introduction Stefano Perri has a working paper, "Sraffa's response to Eaton's review: a note on the standard commodity and Marx's general profit rate". In this post, I present the analysis rewritten in matrix notation. The claim is, more or less, that the rate of profits in the system of prices of production is the weighted average of the rates of profits, by industry, in the system of labor values. Each weight is the product of the labor value of capital advanced in that industry and...

1.0 Introduction I have previously quoted authorities disparaging Böhm-Bawerk's pamphlet examining the supposed contradiction between volumes 3 and 1 of Marx's Capital. I refer to Karl Marx and the Close of His System, first published in German, in 1896. Engels brought out volume 3 of Marx's Capital in 1894. Böhm-Bawerk's treatment, although it ultimately misses the point, is important from a historical angle: "...the historical importance of Böhm-Bawerk's criticism of Marx ... should...

1.0 Introduction In his book, Human Action, Ludwig von Mises defines 'praxeology' as the science of human action. He says that it is a subject of formal reasoning. Human action is conscious action in which the actor attempts to decrease felt uneasiness. 'Catallactics' is a subset of praxeology treating market exchanges. But von Mises is quite confused. 2.0 Does Formal Reasoning Enlarge Our Knowledge? Von Mises does not know. At one point, he says formal reasoning does enlarge our...

Karl Marx was born on 5 May 1818. Over half a century ago, economists, building on the work of Piero Sraffa, extended Marx's critique. They showed that his approach to political economy was basically correct. The marginal revolution was a mistake. Here are the titles of some of the books on my bookshelf: Syed Ahmad. 1991. Capital in Economic Theory: Neo-classical, Cambridge and Chaos. Edward Elgar. C. E. Ayres. 1946. The Divine Right of Capital. Houghton Mifflin. Eugen von...