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Marxian Economics
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[S]tarting with the ninth edition, references to the ideas and followers of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels expanded dramatically, including a biography of Marx and a nine-page appendix on Marxian economics. In the preface to that edition, Samuelson wrote: "It is a scandal that, until recently, even majors in economics were taught nothing of Karl Marx except he was an unsound fellow" (9:ix). Samuelson added in the tenth edition that "at least a tenth of U. S. economists" fell into the "radical" category (10:849). However, this expanded coverage did not mute his criticism of Marxist beliefs. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the discussion of Marx shrank from 12 pages in the fourteenth edition to three pages in the fifteenth (1995) edition, including a two-paragraph biography of Marx, and no appendix on Marxian economics." Typical of the tone: "Marx was wrong about many things--notably the superiority of socialism as an economic system--but that does not diminish his stature as an important economist" (15:7)
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In Marxian economics , the aim of labor economics is to provide insight and guidance for the optimal allocation of co-operative human labour. However, this optimality is not simply viewed as a "technical variable" as in micro-economics , because workers are not simply a "factor of production", but human beings who organise themselves and each other. Forms of labour co-operation can be oppressive, irrational and exploitative, or they can be beneficial, rational, or effective. That is to say, labor economics has a political dimension insofar as different workers and employers have different interests. There is a workers' point of view and an employer's point of view.
Richard Wolff and Stephen Resnick provide a unique and balanced explication of the differing assumptions and arguments of neoclassical and Marxian economics. Their treatment of Marxian theory assumes no familiarity with the subject proceeding from first principles through analysis and social implications and integrating the important developments of the past twenty-five years. The discussion of neoclassical theory includes a coherent overvew often obscured in standard introductions to economics. Throughout, math is used simply and sparingly.
In two important respects... Marxian doctrine is inappropriate for the analysis of the current problems of the underdeveloped world. From the outset Marxian analytical categories were shaped to deal with the circumstances of industrial societies. Marx himself had little comprehension of the problems of agriculture, and particularly of traditional agrarian societies; as one critic has observed, Marx treated peasants as a 'bag of potatoes'. Yet the central fact about the underdeveloped world is the dominance of an agrarian structure. It is one of the ironies of history that Marxist doctrine has enjoyed its greatest political success in predominantly agrarian societies, even though the Marxian mode of analysis is not well suited to such environments.
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marxian-economics-eatwell-john-newman-peter-book-Covert-Art Marxian analysis forges coherent links between economics, history, sociology, and philosophy, the unique scale of the enterprise being its enduring strength. These essays provide fascinating insights into the lively debates on the foundation of the entire structure.
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The Austrian School was the first group of liberal economists to systematically challenge Marxian economics. This was partly a reaction to the Methodenstreit, an attack on the Hegelian doctrines of the Historical School. Some Marxist authors have attempted to portray the Austrian school as a "bourgeois reaction" to Marx
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