Krugman on Marx

Brad De Long delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU
Thu Aug 13 16:51:47 PDT 1998



>Brad De Long wrote:
>
>> Haven't these efforts at refutation (and those aimed at absolute
>> immiserization of the working class) been successful?
>>
>
>It depends what you mean by successful. If you ascribe a crude theory to
>Marx,
>then it is easy to refute it. Did Marx actually insist that absolute
>immiseration or the falling rate of profit would inevitably occur?
>
>--
>Michael Perelman

Well, from the next-to-last page of _Wage Labour and Capital_, we have:

"Let us some up: The more productive capital grows, the more

the division of labor and the application of machinery expands.

The more the division of labour and the application of machinery

expands, the more competition among the workers expands and

the more their wages contract.

"In addition, the working class gains recruits from the higher

strata of society also; a mass of petty industrialists and small

rentiers are hurled down into its ranks and have nothing better

to do than urgently stretch out their arms alongside those of the

workers. Thus the forest of uplifted arms demanding work becomes

ever thicker, while the arms themselves become ever thinner."

But maybe _Wage Labour and Capital_ doesn't count as Marx. Maybe the referent of "Marx" is restricted to, for example, the text "Notes on Wagner," as the only text positively and completely exempt from Hegelian influence


:-)

Brad DeLong



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