XV Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2023

Karl Marx is often associated with such ideas as socialism and communism. It is surprising that so few are familiar with his actual philosophies and theories. Marx’s best-known works are “Capital: A Critique of Political Economy,” more commonly referred to as “Das Kapital,” and “The Communist Manifesto,” co-authored with his lifelong friend Friedrich Engels. He was, without question, one of the most important and revolutionary thinkers of his time.

“Capital,” published in 1867, was by far the more academic work, laying forth Marx’s theories on commodities, labor markets, the division of labor and a basic understanding of the rate of return to owners of capital. Nearly everything Marx wrote was viewed through the lens of the common laborer. From Marx comes the idea that capitalist profits are possible because value is “stolen” from the working class and transferred to the employers.

Marxist ideas have very few direct adherents in contemporary times; indeed, very few Western thinkers embraced Marxism after 1898, when economist Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk’s “Karl Marx and the Close of His System” was first translated into English. In his damning rebuke, Böhm-Bawerk shows that Karl Marx fails to incorporate capital markets or subjective values in his analysis, nullifying most of Marx’s more pronounced conclusions. Still, there are some lessons that even modern economic thinkers can learn from Marx, including the following.

1.  Capitalism Is the Most Productive Economic System

Though he was its harshest critic, Marx understood the capitalist system was far more productive than previous economic systems. In “Capital,” he wrote of “capitalist production” that combined “together of various processes into a social whole,” which included developing new technologies. He believed all countries should become capitalist and develop that productive capacity, and then workers would naturally revolt into communism.

You do not have to believe in Marx’s final conclusions to understand he is exactly correct: capitalism is the most productive economic system in world history. According to a 2003 report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, per capita income and productivity around the world never grew faster than populations until the late 18th century, when Britain first adopted pro-free market policies.

2.  The Labor Theory of Value Cannot Explain Profits

Like all of the classical economists, Karl Marx believed in the labor theory of value to explain market prices. This theory stated that the value of a produced economic good can be measured objectively by the average number of labor hours required to produce it. In other words, if a table takes twice as long to make as a chair, then the table should be considered twice as valuable.

Marx understood the labor theory better than his predecessors and contemporaries, even Adam Smith, and presented a devastating intellectual challenge to laissez-faire economists in “Capital;” if goods and services tend to be sold at their true objective labor values as measured in labor hours, how do any capitalists enjoy profits? It must mean, Marx concluded, that capitalists were underpaying or overworking, and thereby exploiting, laborers to drive down the cost of production.

While Marx’s answer was eventually proven incorrect and later economists adopted the subjective theory of value, his simple assertion was enough to show the weakness of the labor theory’s logic and assumptions; Marx unintentionally helped fuel a revolution in economic thinking.

3.  Economic Change Leads to Social Transformation

Dr. James Bradford “Brad” DeLong, influential professor of economics at U.C. Berkeley, wrote in 2011 that Marx’s “primary contribution” to economic science actually came in a 10-paragraph stretch of “The Communist Manifesto.” Marx describes how economic growth causes shifts among social classes, often leading to a struggle for political power.

This underlies an often unappreciated aspect about economics: the emotions and political activity of the actors involved. A corollary of this argument was later made by French economist Thomas Piketty, who proposed that while nothing was wrong with income inequality in an economic sense, it could create blowback against capitalism among the people. Thus, there is a moral and anthropological consideration to any economic system.

List of Literature:

1. Internet resourse: http://www.delo-angl.ru/ekonomicheskij-anglijskij/ekonomicheskaya-statya-na-anglijskom-s-perevodom-4/