Marxian economics  

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Marxian economics, or the Marxian school of economics, is a heterodox school of political economic thought. Its foundations can be traced back to Karl Marx's critique of political economy. However, unlike critics of political economy, Marxian economists tend to accept the concept of the economy prima facie. Marxian economics comprises several different theories and includes multiple schools of thought, which are sometimes opposed to each other; in many cases Marxian analysis is used to complement, or to supplement, other economic approaches. Because one does not necessarily have to be politically Marxist to be economically Marxian, the two adjectives coexist in usage, rather than being synonymous: They share a semantic field, while also allowing both connotative and denotative differences.

Marxian economics concerns itself variously with the analysis of crisis in capitalism, the role and distribution of the surplus product and surplus value in various types of economic systems, the nature and origin of economic value, the impact of class and class struggle on economic and political processes, and the process of economic evolution.

Marxian economics -- particularly in academia -- is distinguished from Marxism as a political ideology, as well as from the normative aspects of Marxist thought: this reflects the view that Marx's original approach to understanding economics and economic development is intellectually independent from his own advocacy of revolutionary socialism.

Although the Marxian school is considered heterodox, ideas that have come out of Marxian economics have contributed to mainstream understanding of the global economy. Certain concepts developed in Marxian economics, especially those related to capital accumulation and the business cycle, have been fitted for use in capitalist systems; one such example is Joseph Schumpeter's notion of creative destruction.

Marx's magnum opus on critique of political economy was Das Kapital (Capital: A Critique of Political Economy) in three volumes, of which only the first volume was published in his lifetime (1867); the others were published by Friedrich Engels from Marx's notes. One of Marx's early works, Critique of Political Economy, was mostly incorporated into Das Kapital, especially the beginning of volume 1. Marx's notes made in preparation for writing Das Kapital were published in 1939 under the title Grundrisse.

Marx's criticism of classical economics

Marx's critique of political economy took as its starting point the work of the best-known economists of his day, the British moral philosopher turned economist Adam Smith as well as David Ricardo.

In The Wealth of Nations (1776), Smith argued that the most important characteristic of a market economy was that it permitted a rapid growth in productive abilities. Smith claimed that a growing market stimulated a greater "division of labor" (i.e. specialization of businesses and/or workers) and in turn this led to greater productivity. Although Smith generally said little about laborers, he did note that an increased division of labor could at some point cause harm to those whose jobs became narrower and narrower as the division of labor expanded. Smith maintained that a laissez-faire economy would naturally correct itself over time.

Marx followed Smith by claiming that the most important beneficial economic consequence of capitalism was a rapid growth in productivity abilities. Marx also expanded greatly on the notion that laborers could come to harm as capitalism became more productive. Additionally, Marx noted in Theories of Surplus Value: "We see the great advance made by Adam Smith beyond the Physiocrats in the analysis of surplus-value and hence of capital. In their view, it is only one definite kind of concrete labour—agricultural labour—that creates surplus-value... But to Adam Smith, it is general social labour — no matter in what use-values it manifests itself — the mere quantity of necessary labour, which creates value. Surplus-value, whether it takes the form of profit, rent, or the secondary form of interest, is nothing but a part of this labour, appropriated by the owners of the material conditions of labour in the exchange with living labour".

Malthus' claim in An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) that population growth was the primary cause of subsistence level wages for laborers provoked Marx to develop an alternative theory of wage determination. Whereas Malthus presented a historical theory of population growth, Marx offered a theory of how a relative surplus population in capitalism tended to push wages to subsistence levels. Marx saw this relative surplus population as coming from economic causes and not from biological causes (as in Malthus). This economic-based theory of surplus population is often labeled as Marx's theory of the reserve army of labour.

Ricardo developed a theory of distribution within capitalism—that is, a theory of how the output of society is distributed to classes within society. The most mature version of this theory, presented in On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817), was based on a labour theory of value in which the value of any produced object is equal to the labor embodied in the object and Smith too presented a labor theory of value, but it was only incompletely realized. Also notable in Ricardo's economic theory was that profit was a deduction from society's output and that wages and profit were inversely related: an increase in profit came at the expense of a reduction in wages. Marx built much of the formal economic analysis found in Capital on Ricardo's theory of the economy.

Marx also criticized two features of "bourgeois economy" he perceived as main factors preventing full realization of society's production power: ownership of the means of production, and allegedly irrational operation of the economy, which leads to "disturbances" and surplus.

"When society, by taking possession of all means of production and using them on a planned basis, has freed itself and all its members from the bondage in which they are now held by these means of production which they themselves have produced but which confront them as an irresistible alien force."--Friedrich Engels|, Anti-Dühring

See also

• List of Marxian economists
• Capitalist mode of production
• Capital accumulation
• Evolutionary economics
• Surplus labour
• Labour power
• Law of value
• Unequal exchange
• Value product
• Productive and unproductive labour
• Regulation school
• Socialist economics
• The Accumulation of Capital
• Material product
• Critique of political economy