128 - Marx, Karl

Summary

Although Rawls doesn’t engage Marxism in his writings he does speak of Marx (1818–1883), and while Rawls certainly rejects much of what Marx (and later Marxists) claim, now that we have access to his Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy, published in 2007, we know that he had a high respect for Marx as a theorist and seems to have agreed with much of Marx’s general labor theory of value (or, more accurately, Marx’s theory of surplus labor or surplus social product), as well as with his theories of the nature of class societies, exploitation, and ideology. (However, this does not include Marx’s specific labor theory of value which claims that prices in equilibrium market conditions are determined by the socially necessary labor time presently required to produce them.) (See Cohen 1979, 23–29, 433–436; Peffer 1990.)

Rawls writes that Marx

turned to economics to clarify and to deepen his ideas only after he was about 28 years old. It is testimony to his marvelous gifts that he succeeded in becoming one of the great 19th-century figures of that subject, to be ranked along with Ricardo and [J. S.] Mill, Walras and Marshall. He was a self-taught, isolated scholar ...Given the circumstances of Marx’s life, his achievement as an economic theorist and political sociologist of capitalism is extraordinary and heroic. (LHPP 319)

It may be thought that with the recent collapse of the Soviet Union, Marx’s socialist philosophy and economics are of no significance today. I believe this would be a serious mistake for two reasons at least. The first reason is that while central command socialism, such as reigned in the Soviet Union, is discredited – indeed, it was never a plausible doctrine – the same is not true of liberal [market] socialism…The other reason for viewing Marx’s socialist thought as significant is that laissez-faire capitalism has grave drawbacks, and these should be noted and reformed in fundamental ways. Liberal socialism, as well as other views [e.g. justice as fairness and property-owning democracy], can help clear our minds as to how these changes are best done. (LHPP 323)