Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part One CAPITAL: PRINCIPLE FEATURES OF THE MARXIAN “CANON”
- Part Two ORIGINS: MARX IN THE 1840s
- Part Three A “SECOND DRAFT” OF CAPITAL: THE GRUNDRISSE 1857–1858
- Part Four A “THIRD DRAFT” OF CAPITAL: THE ECONOMIC MANUSCRIPTS 1861–1863
- Part Five TOPICS IN APPLICATION
- Conclusion: A Recapitulation and Overview
- Appendices
- Bibliography
- Index
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 June 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part One CAPITAL: PRINCIPLE FEATURES OF THE MARXIAN “CANON”
- Part Two ORIGINS: MARX IN THE 1840s
- Part Three A “SECOND DRAFT” OF CAPITAL: THE GRUNDRISSE 1857–1858
- Part Four A “THIRD DRAFT” OF CAPITAL: THE ECONOMIC MANUSCRIPTS 1861–1863
- Part Five TOPICS IN APPLICATION
- Conclusion: A Recapitulation and Overview
- Appendices
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
A decade ago the History of Political Economy published a Minisymposium entitled “Locating Marx after the Fall,” organized around the question: “with Marxian economics in disarray as a touchstone for actual economies (in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, etc.), is it now time for historians of economics to reclaim their interest in Karl Marx?” (Weintraub 1995: 109). The concern, as set out in a letter to contributors defining the terms of reference, was to address “the need, if any, for historians of economics to readdress Marx, to reclaim Marx as it were now that the hold of Marxist economics or views of Marx is more confused, more of a problem.” I would say, rather, less of a problem. Marx's economics had never been a true touchstone for Soviet-style systems – Marx was too appreciative of the pricing mechanism and the need for extreme caution before dispensing with it for that to have been the case. (We devote Chapter 13 to this issue.) And the Russian reversion to market capitalism, far from constituting an empirical refutation of Marxist predictions, is precisely the outcome that might have been expected. For the original establishment of the Soviet command system could only have been a premature exercise bound to fail, Marx being “much too strongly involved with a sense of the inherent logic of things social to believe that revolution can replace any part of the work of evolution. The revolution comes in nevertheless.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Economics of Karl MarxAnalysis and Application, pp. 1 - 8Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008