Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Hayek on the Followers of Karl Marx

It deserves mention however that, as Joachim Reig has pointed out (in his Introduction to the Spanish translation of E. von Bohm-Bawerk's essay on Marx's theory of exploitation), it would seem that after learning of the works of Jevons and Menger, Karl Marx himself completely abandoned further work on capital. If so, his followers were evidently not so wise as he.

3 comments:

  1. It's unclear to me from this quote exactly what the reason was for Marx abandoning work on capital. The "it would seem" used in the quote indicates some uncertainty. Anybody want to attempt to fill in the blanks for me?

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    1. I was thinking the same thing. It would certainly be a dagger into the heart of Marxists if there was some thing people could point to specifically showing Marx to have done such a thing.

      That being said, it's certainly an irony that Marx was able to live off the wealth of a successful capitalist's son so that he could write his anti-capitalist rubbish.

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    2. IMO H is referring to Marx's reliance on the labour theory of value. This theory was displaced by the subjective theory of value proposed by Menger and Jevons, thus dealing a fatal blow to his views on capital.

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