Marxian Economics: Notes from a Neo-classical Viewpoint

Abstract

Marxian economics has the twin features of attracting some of the best minds and at the same time being rejected by policymakers world over, even by those who had adopted them to begin with. These features are discussed in this article. It is argued that the first feature is because of the existence of inequality and its worsening and associated poverty, and the difficulty in the continued extraction of surplus is a possible explanation for the second. It is further argued that the labour theory of value is not really essential to the theory of exploitation of workers by capitalists, and we try to establish that Marx was way ahead of his time in setting up the worker–employer relation in modern terms. JEL: A20, B13, B14, B24, B51, D02, D86