Criticism of Marxism
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Criticism of Marxism (also known as Anti-Marxism) has come from various political ideologies and academic disciplines. This includes general criticism about a lack of internal consistency, criticism related to historical materialism, arguments that Marxism is a type of historical determinism or that it necessitates a suppression of individual rights, issues with the implementation of communism and economic issues such as the distortion or absence of price signals and reduced incentives. In addition, empirical and epistemological problems are frequently identified.[1][2][3][4]
General criticism[edit]
Some democratic socialists and social democrats reject the idea that societies can achieve socialism only through class conflict and a proletarian revolution. Many anarchists reject the need for a transitory state phase. Some thinkers have rejected the fundamentals of Marxist theory such as historical materialism and the labour theory of value and have gone on to criticise capitalism and advocate socialism using other arguments.
Some contemporary supporters of Marxism see many aspects of Marxist thought as viable, but they contend that the corpus is incomplete or somewhat outdated in regard to certain aspects of economic, political or social theory. They may therefore combine some Marxist concepts with the ideas of other theorists such as Max Weber—the Frankfurt School provides one example of this approach.
Conservative historian Paul Johnson wrote: "...It must be said that he developed traits characteristic of a certain type of scholar, especially Talmudic ones: a tendency to accumulate immense masses of half-assimilated materials and to plan encyclopedic works which were never completed; a withering contempt for all non-scholars; and extreme assertiveness and irascibility in dealing with other scholars. Virtually all his work, indeed, has the hallmark of Talmudic study: it is essentially a commentary on, a critique of the work of others in his field."
He continues: "The truth is, even the most superficial inquiry into Marx's use of evidence forces one to treat with skepticism everything he wrote which relies on factual data". For example, Johnson stated: "The whole of the key Chapter Eight of Capital is a deliberate and systematic falsification to prove a thesis which an objective examination of the facts showed was untenable".[5][page needed]
Historical materialism[edit]
Historical materialism remains one of the intellectual bases of Marxism.[6][7] It proposes that technological advances in modes of production inevitably lead to changes in the social relations of production.[8] This economic "base" of society supports, is reflected by and influences the ideological "superstructure" which encompasses culture, religion, politics, and all other aspects of humanity's social consciousness.[9] It thus looks for the causes of developments and changes in human history in economic, technological and, more broadly, material factors as well as the clashes of material interests among tribes, social classes, and nations. Law, politics, the arts, literature, morality and religion are understood by Marx to make up the superstructure as reflections of the economic base of society. Many critics have argued that this is an oversimplification of the nature of society and claim that the influence of ideas, culture and other aspects of what Marx called the superstructure are just as important as the economic base to the course of society, if not more so. However, Marxism does not claim that the economic base of society is the only determining element in society as demonstrated by the following letter written by Friedrich Engels, Marx's long-time contributor:
According to critics, this also creates another problem for Marxism. If the superstructure also influences the base then there is no need for Marx's constant assertions that the history of society is one of economic class conflict. This then becomes a classic chicken or the egg argument as to whether the base or the superstructure comes first. Peter Singer proposes that the way to solve this problem is to understand that Marx saw the economic base as ultimately real. Marx believed that humanity's defining characteristic was its means of production and thus the only way for man to free himself from oppression was for him to take control of the means of production. According to Marx, this is the goal of history and the elements of the superstructure act as tools of history.[11]
Marx held that the relationship between material base and ideological superstructure was a determination relation and not a causal relation.[12] However, some critics of Marx have insisted that Marx claimed the superstructure was an effect caused by the base. For instance, Anarcho-capitalist Murray Rothbard criticized historical materialism by arguing that Marx claimed the "base" of society (its technology and social relations) determined its "consciousness" in the superstructure.[13][non-primary source needed]
Historical determinism[edit]
Marx's theory of history has been considered a variant of historical determinism[14] linked to his reliance on dialectical materialism as an endogenous mechanism for social change.[15] Marx wrote:
The concept of the dialectic emerged from the dialogues of the ancient Greek philosophers, but it was brought out by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in the early 19th century as a conceptual framework for the often opposing forces of historical evolution. Historical determinism has also been associated with scholars like Arnold Toynbee and Oswald Spengler, but in recent times this conceptual approach has fallen into disuse.[17]
Terry Eagleton writes that Marx's writings "should not be taken to mean that everything that has ever happened is a matter of class struggle. It means, rather, that class struggle is most fundamental to human history".[18]
Academic Peter Stillman believes Marx's status as a determinist is a "myth".[19] Friedrich Engels himself warned about conceiving of Marx's ideas as deterministic, saying: "According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Other than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase."[20] On another occasion, Engels remarked that "younger people sometimes lay more stress on the economic side than is due to it".[21] While historical materialism has been referred to as a materialist theory of history, Marx does not claim to have produced a master-key to history and that the materialist conception of history is not "an historico-philosophic theory of the marche generale, imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself". In a letter to editor of the Russian newspaper Otetchestvennye Zapiskym (1877), he explains that his ideas are based upon a concrete study of the actual conditions in Europe.[22]
In an effort to reassert this approach to an understanding of the forces of history, Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar criticised what he considers narrow conceptual basis of Marx's ideas on historical evolution.[23] In the 1978 book The Downfall of Capitalism and Communism, Ravi Batra pointed out crucial differences in the historical determinist approaches of Sarkar and Marx:
Suppression of individual rights[edit]
This section possibly contains original research. (August 2021) |
Various thinkers have argued that a communist state would by its very nature erode the rights of its citizens due to the postulated violent revolution and dictatorship of proletariat, its collectivist nature, reliance on "the masses" rather than individuals, historical materialism and centrally planned economy.[citation needed] These points have also been debated by various thinkers, who argue that we currently exist in a Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie[25] that Marxism is not deterministic.[26]
The American neoclassical economist Milton Friedman argued that under socialism the absence of a free market economy would inevitably lead to an authoritarian political regime. Friedman's view was also shared by Friedrich Hayek, who also believed that capitalism is a precondition for freedom to flourish in a nation state.[27][28] Daniel De Leon countered this by stating: "Capitalism is a fraud within a fraud. Proclaiming itself individualistic, it organizes collectively in order to promote the aims of a few. Socialism, on the other hand, [...] would secure to labor the products of its toil, now confiscated by the few, and, in this way, preserve to the workers, the majority of the population, a greater individuality than that which they now attain".[29] David Harvey has responded to such claims by suggesting that socialism enables individual freedom, stating that "the achievement of individual liberties and freedoms is, I argued, a central aim of such emancipatory projects. But that achievement requires collectively building a society where each one of us has adequate life chances and life possibilities to realize each one of our own potentialities."[30]
Anarchists have also argued that centralized communism will inevitably lead to coercion and state domination. Mikhail Bakunin believed Marxist regimes would lead to the "despotic control of the populace by a new and not at all numerous aristocracy".[31] Even if this new aristocracy were to have originated from among the ranks of the proletariat, Bakunin argued that their new-found power would fundamentally change their view of society and thus lead them to "look down at the plain working masses".[31]
Economic[edit]
Marxian economics have been criticized for a number of reasons. Some critics point to the Marxian analysis of capitalism while others argue that the economic system proposed by Marxism is unworkable.[32][33][34][35]
There are also doubts that the rate of profit in capitalism would tend to fall as Marx predicted. In 1961, Marxian economist Nobuo Okishio devised a theorem (Okishio's theorem) showing that if capitalists pursue cost-cutting techniques and if the real wage does not rise, the rate of profit must rise.[36]
Labor theory of value[edit]
The labor theory of value is one of the most commonly criticized core tenets of Marxism.[37][38][39][40][41]
The Austrian School argues that this fundamental theory of classical economics is false and prefers the subsequent and modern subjective theory of value put forward by Carl Menger in his book Principles of Economics. The Austrian School was not alone in criticizing the Marxian and classical belief in the labor theory of value. British economist Alfred Marshall attacked Marx, saying: "It is not true that the spinning of yarn in a factory [...] is the product of the labour of the operatives. It is the product of their labour, together with that of the employer and subordinate managers, and of the capital employed".[42] Marshall points to the capitalist as sacrificing the money he could be using now for investment in business, which ultimately produces work.[42] By this logic, the capitalist contributes to the work and productivity of the factory because he delays his gratification through investment.[42] Through the law of supply and demand, Marshall attacked Marxian theory of value. According to Marshall, price or value is determined not just by supply, but by the demand of the consumer.[42] Labor does contribute to cost, but so do the wants and needs of consumers. The shift from labor being the source of all value to subjective individual evaluations creating all value undermines Marx's economic conclusions and some of his social theories.[43]
Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan argue that most studies purporting to show empirical evidence of the labor theory of value often make methodological errors by comparing the total labor value to total price of multiple economic sectors, which results in a strong overall correlation but this is a statistical exaggeration; the authors argue that the correlations between labor value and price in each sector are often very small if not insignificant. Bichler and Nitzan also argue that because it is difficult to quantify a way to measure abstract labor, researchers are forced to make assumptions.[44][45] However, Bichler and Nitzan argue these assumptions involve circular reasoning:
Distorted or absent price signals[edit]
The economic calculation problem is a criticism of socialist economics or, more precisely, of centralized socialist planned economies. It was first proposed by Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises in 1920 and later expounded by Friedrich Hayek.[47][48] The problem referred to is that of how to distribute resources rationally in an economy. The free market solution is the price mechanism, wherein people individually have the ability to decide how a good should be distributed based on their willingness to give money for it. The price conveys embedded information about the abundance of resources as well as their desirability which in turn allows on the basis of individual consensual decisions corrections that prevent shortages and surpluses. Mises and Hayek argued that this is the only possible solution and, without the information provided by market prices, socialism lacks a method to rationally allocate resources. The debate raged in the 1920s and 1930s and that specific period of the debate has come to be known by economic historians as the socialist calculation debate.[49] In practice, socialist states like the Soviet Union used mathematical techniques to determine and set prices with mixed results.[50]
Reduced incentives[edit]
Some critics of socialism argue that income sharing reduces individual incentives to work and therefore incomes should be individualised as much as possible.[51] Critics of socialism have argued that in any society where everyone holds equal wealth there can be no material incentive to work because one does not receive rewards for work well done. They further argue that incentives increase productivity for all people and that the loss of those effects would lead to stagnation. In Principles of Political Economy (1848), John Stuart Mill said:
However, he later altered his views and became more sympathetic to socialism, particularly Fourierism, adding chapters to his Principles of Political Economy in defence of a socialist outlook and defending some socialist causes.[53] Within this revised work, he also made the radical proposal that the whole wage system be abolished in favour of a co-operative wage system. Nonetheless, some of his views on the idea of flat taxation remained, albeit in a slightly toned-down form.[54]
The economist John Kenneth Galbraith has criticised communal forms of socialism that promote egalitarianism in terms of wages or compensation as unrealistic in its assumptions about human motivation:
Edgar Hardcastle responds to this by saying: "They want to work and need no more inducement than is given by the knowledge that work must be done to keep society going, and that they are playing their part in it along with their fellow men and women." He continues by criticising what he sees are the double standards of anti-socialists: "Notice how they object to the unemployed receiving a miserly dole without having to work, but never object to the millionaires (most of them in that position through inheritance) being able to live in luxurious idleness."[56] Authors like Arnold Petersen argue that arguments such as these are inaccurate as hunter-gatherers practiced primitive communism without problems such as these.[57]
Inconsistency[edit]
Vladimir Karpovich Dmitriev writing in 1898,[58] Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz writing in 1906–1907[59] and subsequent critics have alleged that Karl Marx's value theory and law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall are internally inconsistent. In other words, the critics allege that Marx drew conclusions that actually do not follow from his theoretical premises. Once those errors are corrected, Marx's conclusion that aggregate price and profit are determined by—and equal to—aggregate value and surplus value no longer holds true. This result calls into question his theory that the exploitation of workers is the sole source of profit.[60]
The inconsistency allegations have been a prominent feature of Marxian economics and the debate surrounding it since the 1970s.[1] Andrew Kliman argues that since internally inconsistent theories cannot possibly be right, this undermines Marx's critique of political economy and current-day research based upon it as well as the correction of Marx's alleged inconsistencies.[61]
Critics who have alleged that Marx has been proved internally inconsistent include former and current Marxian and/or Sraffian economists, such as Paul Sweezy,[62] Nobuo Okishio,[63] Ian Steedman,[64] John Roemer,[65] Gary Mongiovi[66] and David Laibman,[67] who propose that the field be grounded in their correct versions of Marxian economics instead of in Marx's critique of political economy in the original form in which he presented and developed it in Capital.[68]
Proponents of the temporal single system interpretation (TSSI) of Marx's value theory, like Kliman, claim that the supposed inconsistencies are actually the result of misinterpretation and argue that when Marx's theory is understood as "temporal" and "single-system", the alleged internal inconsistencies disappear. In a recent survey of the debate, Kliman concludes that "the proofs of inconsistency are no longer defended; the entire case against Marx has been reduced to the interpretive issue".[69]
Relevance[edit]
Marxism has been criticized as irrelevant, with many economists rejecting its core tenets and assumptions.[70][71][72] John Maynard Keynes referred to Capital as "an obsolete textbook which I know to be not only scientifically erroneous but without interest or application for the modern world".[3] According to George Stigler, "Economists working in the Marxian-Sraffian tradition represent a small minority of modern economists, and that their writings have virtually no impact upon the professional work of most economists in major English-language universities".[73] In a review of the first edition of The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, Robert Solow criticized it for overemphasizing the importance of Marxism in modern economics:
A 2006 nationally representative survey of American professors found 3% of them identify as Marxists. The share rises to 5% in the humanities and is about 18% among social scientists.[75]
Social[edit]
Social criticism is based on the assertion that the Marxian conception of society is fundamentally flawed.[76][77] The Marxist stages of history, class analysis and theory of social evolution have been criticised. Jean-Paul Sartre concluded that "class" was not a homogenous entity and could never mount a revolution, but continued to advocate Marxist beliefs.[78] Marx himself admitted that his theory could not explain the internal development of the Asiatic social system, where much of the world's population lived for thousands of years.[79]
Epistemological[edit]
Arguments against Marxism are often based on epistemological reasoning.[80] Specifically, various critics have contended that Marx or his adherents have a flawed approach to epistemology.
According to Leszek Kołakowski, the laws of dialectics at the very base of Marxism are fundamentally flawed: some are "truisms with no specific Marxist content", others "philosophical dogmas that cannot be proved by scientific means", yet others just "nonsense". Some Marxist "laws" are vague and can be interpreted differently, but these interpretations generally fall into one of the aforementioned categories of flaws as well.[81] However, Ralph Miliband countered that Kolakowski had a flawed understanding of Marxism and its relation to Leninism and Stalinism.[82]
Economist Thomas Sowell wrote in 1985:
Many notable academics such as Karl Popper, David Prychitko, Robert C. Allen, and Francis Fukuyama argue that many of Marx's predictions have failed.[84][85][86] Marx predicted that wages would tend to depreciate and that capitalist economies would suffer worsening economic crises leading to the ultimate overthrow of the capitalist system. The socialist revolution would occur first in the most advanced capitalist nations and once collective ownership had been established then all sources of class conflict would disappear. Instead of Marx's predictions, communist revolutions took place in undeveloped regions in Latin America and Asia instead of industrialized countries like the United States or the United Kingdom.
Popper has argued that both the concept of Marx's historical method as well as its application are unfalsifiable and thus it is a pseudoscience[87] that cannot be proven true or false:
Popper believed that Marxism had been initially scientific, in that Marx had postulated a theory which was genuinely predictive. When Marx's predictions were not in fact borne out, Popper argues that the theory was saved from falsification by the addition of ad hoc hypotheses which attempted to make it compatible with the facts. By this means, a theory which was initially genuinely scientific degenerated into pseudoscientific dogma.[84] Popper agreed on the general non-falsifiability of the social sciences, but instead used it as an argument against central planning and all-encompassing historiographical ideologies.[84] Popper devoted much attention to dissecting the practice of using the dialectic in defence of Marxist thought, which was the very strategy employed by V.A. Lektorsky in his defence of Marxism against Popper's criticisms. Among Popper's conclusions was that Marxists used dialectic as a method of side-stepping and evading criticisms, rather than actually answering or addressing them:[88]
Bertrand Russell has criticized as unscientific Marx's belief in progress as a universal law. Russell stated: "Marx professed himself an atheist, but retained a cosmic optimism which only theism could justify".[89] Marxists like Thomas Riggins have claimed that Russell misrepresented Marx's ideas.[90]
See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^ ab See M. C. Howard and J.E. King, 1992, A History of Marxian Economics: Volume II, 1929–1990. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
- ^ ab Popper, Karl (2002). Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. Routledge. p. 49. ISBN 978-0415285940.
- ^ ab John Maynard Keynes. Essays in Persuasion. W.W. Norton & Company. 1991. p. 300 ISBN 978-0393001907.
- ^ Domhoff, G. William (April 2005). "Who Rules America: A Critique of Marxism". WhoRulesAmerica.net. Retrieved 30 November 2018.
- ^ Johnson, Paul (2007) [1988]. Intellectuals From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky by Paul Johnson(revised ed.). Perennial. ISBN 978-0061253171.
- ^ "Historical materialism". Dictionary.com. Retrieved 8 May 2018.
- ^ Erich Fromm (1961). "Marx's Concept of Man". Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved 8 May 2018.
- ^ Marx, Karl. "The Poverty of Philosophy". Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved 23 May 2008.
The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist.
- ^ Marx, Karl (2001). Preface to a Critique of Political Economy. London: The Electric Book Company. pp. 7–8.
- ^ Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. Selected Correspondence. p. 498
- ^ Singer, Peter (1980). Marx: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 50. ISBN 978-0192854056.
- ^ Marx, Karl (1977). A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Moscow: Progress Publishers: Notes by R. Rojas.
- ^ Murray Rothabrd (1995), An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, Volume 2, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd, Chapter 12, pp.372-374, ISBN 0-945466-48-X
- ^ J.I. (Hans) Bakker (2007). Ritzer, George (ed.). Economic Determinism. Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. doi:10.1002/9781405165518. ISBN 9781405124331. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
- ^ Sean Sayers. "Marxism and the Dialectical Method – A critique of G.A. Cohen" (PDF). Radical Philosophy 36 (Spring, 1984), pp. 4–13. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 July 2013. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
- ^ Karl Marx. "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy". Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
- ^ Gary R. Habermas (1996). The historical Jesus: ancient evidence for the life of Christ. Thomas Nelson Inc.ISBN 978-0899007328. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
- ^ Why Marx is Right? page 34
- ^ Marx:Myths and Legends
- ^ Engels, Friedrich (1972). Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1890. Engels to J. Bloch. In Königsberg. Marx, Engels, Lenin On Historical Materialism. Moscow: Progressive Publishers – via Marxists Internet Archive.
- ^ Aboulafia, Mitchell (1 December 2019). "Eight Marxist Claims That May Surprise You". Jacobin. Retrieved 19 August 2020.
- ^ Marx, Karl; Engels, Friedrich (1968) [1877]. "Letter from Marx to Editor of the Otecestvenniye Zapisky". Marx and Engels Correspondence. New York: International Publishers. Retrieved 11 July 2020 – via Marxists Internet Archive.
- ^ Sohail Inayatullah (19 February 2002). "Rethinking Science and Culture: P.R. Sarkar's Reconstruction of Science and Society". KurzweilAI. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
- ^ Ravi Batra (2011-09-15). "Sarkar, Toynbee and Marx". PROUT Globe. p. 267. Retrieved 28 December 2011.
- ^ Duncan, Graeme (March 1989). Democracy and the Capitalist state. Cambridge University Press. p. 85. ISBN 9780521280624.
- ^ Woods, Alan (2016). "What Is Historical Materialism?". In Defence of Marxism. International Marxist Tendency. Retrieved 28 November 2017.
- ^ Friedrich Hayek (1944). The Road to Serfdom. University Of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226320618.
- ^ Bellamy, Richard (2003). The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Political Thought. Cambridge University Press. p. 60. ISBN 978-0521563543.
- ^ "1903: Sailing Under False Colors".
- ^ "David Harvey: Socialists Must Be the Champions of Freedom". jacobinmag.com. Retrieved 2020-11-14.
- ^ ab Bakunin, Mikhail. "Statism and Anarchy". Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved 6 August 2008.
- ^ Shleifer, Andrei, and Robert Vishny. Pervasive shortages under socialism. No. w3791. National Bureau of Economic Research, 1991.
- ^ Stringham, Edward Peter. "Kaldor-Hicks efficiency and the problem of central planning." (2001).
- ^ "Millennials open to socialism are not living in the real world". Washington Examiner. 2017-12-11. Retrieved 2018-05-08.
- ^ Acemoglu, Daron; Robinson, James A. (December 2014). "The Rise and Decline of General Laws of Capitalism" (PDF). NBER Working Paper Series. Retrieved 6 September 2018 – via NBER.
- ^ M.C. Howard and J.E. King. (1992) A History of Marxian Economics: Volume II, 1929–1990, chapter 7, sects. II–IV. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
- ^ "What is the biggest flaw in the labor theory of value? – Marginal Revolution". Marginal REVOLUTION. 2010-03-30. Retrieved 2018-05-08.
- ^ Becker, Gary S. (1965). "A Theory of the Allocation of Time". The Economic Journal. 75 (299): 493–517. doi:10.2307/2228949. ISSN 1468-0297. JSTOR 2228949.
- ^ Staff, Investopedia (2010-06-24). "Labor Theory Of Value". Investopedia. Retrieved 2018-05-08.
- ^ Wolff, Jonathan (2017). "Karl Marx". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. Retrieved 28 July 2018.
- ^ DeLong, Brad (2005). "Lire le Capital: Mail Call". Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality. Retrieved 2019-12-02.
- ^ ab c d Bucholz, Todd. New Ideas from Dead Economists. New York: A Plume Book. 1998. pp. 166–67.
- ^ Ludwig Von Mises. "Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis" 2nd Ed. Trans. J. Kahane. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951. pp. 111–222.
- ^ Cockshott, Paul, Shimshon Bichler, and Jonathan Nitzan. "Testing the labour theory of value: An exchange."(2010): 1-15.
- ^ Nitzan, Jonathan, and Shimshon Bichler. Capital as power: A study of order and creorder. Routledge, 2009, pp.93-97, 138-144
- ^ Nitzan, Jonathan, and Shimshon Bichler. Capital as power: A study of order and creorder. Routledge, 2009, pp.96
- ^ Von Mises, Ludwig (1990). Economic calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth (PDF). Ludwig von Mises Institute. Retrieved 8 September 2008.
- ^ F.A. Hayek, (1935), "The Nature and History of the Problem" and "The Present State of the Debate," om in F.A. Hayek, ed. Collectivist Economic Planning, pp. 1–40, 201–43.
- ^ Fonseca, Gonçalo L. (2000s). "The socialist calculation debate". HET. Archived from the original on 18 February 2009. Retrieved 3 April 2007.
The information here has not been reviewed independently for accuracy, relevance and/or balance and thus deserves a considerable amount of caution. As a result, I would prefer not to be cited as reliable authorities on anything. However, I do not mind being listed as a general internet resource. ([1])
- ^ Nove, A., & Nuti, D.M. (1972). eds., Socialist Economics. Selected Readings.
- ^ Zoltan J. Acs & Bernard Young. Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in the Global Economy. University of Michigan Press, p. 47, 1999.
- ^ Mill, John Stuart. The Principles of Political Economy, Book IV, Chapter 7.
- ^ Mill, John Stuart and Bentham, Jeremy edited by Ryan, Alan. (2004). Utilitarianism and Other Essays. London: Penguin Books. p. 11. ISBN 978-0140432725.
- ^ Wilson, Fred (2007). "John Stuart Mill: Political Economy". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford University. Retrieved 4 May 2009.
- ^ John Kenneth Galbraith, The Good Society: The Humane Agenda (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1996), pp. 59–60.
- ^ "Incentive Under Socialism".
- ^ Petersen, Arnold (November 2005). "Socialism and Human Nature". Socialist Labor Party of America. Retrieved 19 August 2020.
- ^ V.K. Dmitriev, 1974 (1898), Economic Essays on Value, Competition and Utility. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press
- ^ Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz, 1952 (1906–1907), "Value and Price in the Marxian System", International Economic Papers 2, 5–60; Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz, 1984 (1907), "On the Correction of Marx’s Fundamental Theoretical Construction in the Third Volume of Capital". In Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk 1984 (1896), Karl Marx and the Close of his System, Philadelphia: Orion Editions.
- ^ M.C. Howard and J.E. King. (1992) A History of Marxian Economics: Volume II, 1929–1990, chapter 12, sect. III. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
- ^ Kliman states that "Marx’s value theory would be necessarily wrong if it were internally inconsistent. Internally inconsistent theories may be appealing, intuitively plausible and even obvious, and consistent with all available empirical evidence – but they cannot be right. It is necessary to reject them or correct them. Thus the alleged proofs of inconsistency trump all other considerations, disqualifying Marx’s theory at the starting gate. By doing so, they provide the principal justification for the suppression of this theory as well as the suppression of, and the denial of resources needed to carry out, present-day research based upon it. This greatly inhibits its further development. So does the very charge of inconsistency. What person of intellectual integrity would want to join a research program founded on (what he believes to be) a theory that is internally inconsistent and therefore false?" (Andrew Kliman, Reclaiming Marx's "Capital": A Refutation of the Myth of Inconsistency, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007, p. 3, emphasis in original). The connection between the inconsistency allegations and the lack of study of Marx’s theories was argued further by John Cassidy ("The Return of Karl Marx," The New Yorker, 20–27 October 1997, p. 252): "His mathematical model of the economy, which depended on the idea that labor is the source of all value, was riven with internal inconsistencies and is rarely studied these days."
- ^ "Only one conclusion is possible, namely, that the Marxian method of transformation [of commodity values into prices of production] is logically unsatisfactory." Paul M. Sweezy, 1970 (1942), The Theory of Capitalist Development, p. 15. New York: Modern Reader Paperbacks.
- ^ Nobuo Okishio, 1961, "Technical Changes and the Rate of Profit," Kobe University Economic Review 7, pp. 85–99.
- ^ "[P]hysical quantities ... suffice to determine the rate of profit (and the associated prices of production) .... [I]t follows that value magnitudes are, at best, redundant in the determination of the rate of profit (and prices of production)." "Marx’s value reasoning – hardly a peripheral aspect of his work – must therefore be abandoned, in the interest of developing a coherent materialist theory of capitalism." Ian Steedman, 1977, Marx after Sraffa, pp. 202, 207. London: New Left Books
- ^ "[The falling-rate-of-profit] position is rebutted in Chapter 5 by a theorem which states that ... competitive innovations result in a rising rate of profit. There seems to be no hope for a theory of the falling rate of profit within the strict confines of the environment that Marx suggested as relevant." John Roemer, Analytical Foundations of Marxian Economic Theory, p. 12. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1981.
- ^ Vulgar Economy in Marxian Garb: A Critique of Temporal Single System Marxism, Gary Mongiovi, 2002, Review of Radical Political Economics 34:4, p. 393. "Marx did make a number of errors in elaborating his theory of value and the profit rate .... [H]is would-be Temporal Single System defenders ... camouflage Marx’s errors." "Marx’s value analysis does indeed contain errors." (abstract)
- ^ "An Error II is an inconsistency, whose removal through development of the theory leaves the foundations of the theory intact. Now I believe that Marx left us with a few Errors II." David Laibman, "Rhetoric and Substance in Value Theory" in Alan Freeman, Andrew Kliman and Julian Wells (eds.), The New Value Controversy and the Foundations of Economics, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2004, p. 17
- ^ See Andrew Kliman, Reclaiming Marx's "Capital": A Refutation of the Myth of Inconsistency, esp. pp. 210–11.
- ^ Andrew Kliman, Reclaiming Marx's "Capital", Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, p. 208, emphases in original.
- ^ Sowell, Thomas (1985). Marxism: Philosophy and Economics. William Morrow. p. 220. ISBN 978-0688029630.
Despite the massive intellectual feat that Marx’s Capital represents, the Marxian contribution to economics can be readily summarized as virtually zero. Professional economics as it exists today reflects no indication that Karl Marx ever existed. This neither denies nor denigrates Capital as an intellectual achievement, and perhaps in its way the culmination of classical economics. But the development of modern economics had simply ignored Marx. Even economists who are Marxists typically utilize a set of analytical tools to which Marx contributed nothing, and have recourse to Marx only for ideological, political, or historical purposes. In professional economics, Capital was a detour into a blind alley, however historic it may be as the centerpiece of a worldwide political movement. What is said and done in its name is said and done largely by people who have never read through it, much less followed its labyrinthine reasoning from its arbitrary postulates to its empirically false conclusions. Instead, the massive volumes of Capital have become a quasi-magic touchstone—a source of assurance that somewhere and somehow a genius “proved” capitalism to be wrong and doomed, even if the specifics of this proof are unknown to those who take their certitude from it.
- ^ Leiter, B. (2002). Marxism and the continuing irrelevance of Normative Theory.
- ^ Judis, John B. (6 May 2014). "Thomas Piketty Is Pulling Your Leg". The New Republic. Retrieved 2018-05-06.
Marx, Piketty writes, “devoted little thought to the question of how a society in which private capital had been totally abolished would be organized politically and economically—a complex issue if ever there was one, as shown by the tragic totalitarian experiments undertaken in states where private capital was abolished.” On a deeper level, Piketty’s approach to economic history more closely resembles that of Adam Smith or David Ricardo than Marx.
- ^ Stigler, George J. (December 1988). "Palgrave's Dictionary of Economics". Journal of Economic Literature. 26(4): 1729–36. JSTOR 2726859.
- ^ Solow, Robert M. (1988). "The Wide, Wide World of Wealth". The New York Times. Retrieved 2018-05-06.
- ^ Gross, Neil, and Solon Simmons. "The social and political views of American professors." Working Paper presented at a Harvard University Symposium on Professors and Their Politics. 2007.
- ^ "Dead end". The Economist. 2 July 2009. Retrieved 2018-05-08.
- ^ Mirowsky, John. "Wage slavery or creative work?." Society and mental health 1.2 (2011): 73–88.
- ^ "Essays in Self-Criticism". www.faculty.umb.edu. Retrieved 2018-05-08.
- ^ Conquest, Robert (2000) Reflections on a Ravaged Century. W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0393048187 pp. 47–51.
- ^ "Marx after communism". The Economist. 2002-12-19. Retrieved 2018-05-08.
- ^ Kołakowski, Leszek (2005). Main Currents of Marxism. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. p. 909. ISBN 978-0393329438.
- ^ "Marx, Keynes, Hayek and the Crisis of Capitalism". "The Critics Criticised". Miliband, Ralph (2016). "Kolakowski's Anti-Marx". Political Studies. 29: 115–22. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9248.1981.tb01280.x. S2CID 145789723. In Defence of Marx's Labour Theory of Value
- ^ Sowell, Thomas Marxism Philosophy and Economics (William Morrow 1985) p. 218.
- ^ ab c Thornton, Stephen (2006). "Karl Popper". In Zolta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford: Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.
- ^ "The End of History?" Francis Fukuyama.
- ^ Allen, R.C. (2017). The industrial revolution: a very short introduction (Vol. 509). Oxford University Press p. 80.
- ^ "Science as Falsification". stephenjaygould.org. Retrieved 22 November 2015.
- ^ ab Popper, Karl (2002). Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. Routledge. p. 449. ISBN 978-0415285940.
- ^ Russell, Bertrand History of Western Philosophy Simon and Schuster pp. 788–89.
- ^ Riggins, Thomas (28 May 2014). "V.J. McGill on Russell's Critique of Marxism". Political Affairs. Retrieved 29 April 2015.
External links[edit]
- Marx and totalitarianism
- Main Currents of Marxism. Volume I: The Founders, Volume II: The Golden Age, Volume III: The Breakdown critique by Leszek Kołakowski
- The Open Society and Its Enemies. Volume II: The High Tide of Prophecy (Hegel, Marx and the Aftermath) critique by Karl Popper
- Science and Pseudoscience (transcript) includes a critique by Imre Lakatos
- Marxism As Pseudo-science by Ernest Van Den Haag
- Upholding Spirituality against the theory of Materialism propounded by Marx
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