Tag Archives: Karl Marx

Contra the relevance of Marx today based on assumptions of conventional economics.Grasping RealityWarning! Reading Marx's Capital Can Introduce Serious Bugs into Your Wetware!: Hoisted from 2006 Brad DeLong | Professor of Economics, UCAL Berkeley See also Another one dismissive of Marx. Conversable EconomistMarx on Economics: "Its True Ideal is the Ascetic but Rapacious Skinflint and the Ascetic but Productive Slave" Timothy Taylor | Managing editor of the Journal of Economic...

The two hundredth anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth is giving rise to many conferences dedicated to numerous (and God knows there were many) aspects of Marx’s work and life. (I am going to one such conference in Haifa.) Add to it an even greater number of reviews of his work and influence (Peter Singer just published one a couple of days ago), new books on his life, a movie on Young Marx and the list goes on.I will also look here at Marx’s intellectual influence—but from a very different...

The first thing that should be noted is that while Duncan is indubitably one of the leading living theorists of Marxist economics, he does not consider himself to be a "Marxist," but rather a student of Marx, if a deeply sympathetic one. This is a sensitive matter as he was turned down for tenure at Stanford largely because he was accused of being a "Marxist economist" when he started publishing papers and books on Marxist economics. He has always sais that his true ideology is his...

As the 200th anniversary of Marx’s birth gets closer, a host of conferences, articles and books on the legacy of Marx and his relevance today are emerging – including my own contribution. The most interesting was a speech last week by the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney in his homeland of Canada.... Michael Roberts BlogMarx 200: Carney, Bowles and VaroufakisMichael Roberts See also The Guardian — The Long ReadYanis Varoufakis: Marx predicted our present crisis – and points...

Self-identified "erratic Marxist" Yanis Varoufakis. He absolutely and totally understands Marx and Engels' fundamental assumption (freedom and happiness) and method (engagement). Most either miss this or obscure it intentionally.  Psychologist Erich Fromm got it in his Marx's Concept of Man (1961). He begins the work with a section entitled,  The Falsification of Marx's Concepts, which reveals the caricature of Marx that has been created as a straw man to attack. Like the...

Must-read in full. It's short and to the point.The meaning of "value" is one of the most pertinent questions in economics and political economy. Michael Hudson has been emphasizing this for some time, as have Marxists and Marxian. Consideration of value of other than as price revealed in competitive markets is ruled out in conventional economics by methodological assumptions. What we value and how we value it is one of the most contested, misunderstood and important ideas in economics....

Why do we think the world is about to see the resurrection of the “comrade culture club” over the next ten years?  Make no mistake; there will be a visceral political reaction to the coming acceleration of labor disrupting technology. We got a little taste of it in the 2016 election. Just wait until it hits the doctoring, lawyering, and accounting class.... Technology replaced the farmers. Now it is coming for the industrial workers and many types of service workers, too. Soldiers and...

Keeper John Elster quote. Lars P. Syll’s BlogMarx and Keynes on the contradictions of capitalismLars P. Syll | Professor, Malmo University

Robert Vienneau approaches thinking about Marx in relation to previous economists from the perspective of the different distinctions that Marx drew. This is entirely consistent with Marx's training in philosophy, since a cardinal principle of philosophical method is overcoming apparent difficulties in expression by drawing distinctions. This involves changing the grain of the model. A grainy model has the advantage of simplicity but risks the disadvantage of being too simplistic an...

Marx can be read as both a continuation and a critique of classical economics. A not-too-radical reading might emphasize his claim to find distinctions in economic theory glossed over by classical economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo. According to Marx, classical economists (as opposed to vulgar economists such as Frédéric Bastiat, Jean-Baptiste Say, and and Nassau William Senior) penetrated beneath surface phenomena to reveal the anatomy of capitalism. A more radical reading...