Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-xm8r8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-28T17:40:09.906Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Productive and Unproductive Labor and the Rate of Profit in Malthus, Ricardo, and Marx

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2009

Robert Chernomas
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

A principal objective of Malthus, Ricardo, and Marx was to discover the laws that regulate and limit the growth of the wealth of nations and, in particular, the unprecedented growth of capitalism. The central theme of this paper is that their productive and unproductive labor concepts are critical to understanding their analyses of capitalist growth and the tendency for the rate of profit to fall which regulates and limits this growth. The way in which they identify productive and unproductive labor and how they apply this distinction is critical to understanding the common thread that runs through and marks the differences between them.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the History of Economic Thought , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , Spring 1990 , pp. 81 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Coontz, S.C. 1966. Productive Labour and Effective Demand, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Eltis, W. 1984. The Classical Theory of Economic Growth, New York, St. Martin's Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, M.K. 1983. The Truth About Supply-Side Economics, New York, Basic Books.Google Scholar
Friedman, M. 1982. Supply-Side Policies: Where Do We Go From Here? Supply-Side Economics in the 1980's, Conference Proceedings, Westport, Ct., Quorum Books.Google Scholar
Garegnani, P. 1978. “Notes on Consumption, Investment and Effective Demand: I,” Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2, 335–353.Google Scholar
Kaldor, N. 1960. Essay's on Value and Distribution, London, Gerald Duckworth & Co., Ltd.Google Scholar
Kenway, P. 1980. “Marx, Keynes and the Possibility of Crisis,” Cambridge Journal of Economics, 4, 23–36.Google Scholar
Malthus, T.R. 1970. An Essay on the Principle of Population and a Summary View of the Principles of Population, Baltimore, MD, Penguin.Google Scholar
Malthus, T.R.. 1968. Principles of Political Economy, New York, Augustus M. Kelley.Google Scholar
Malthus, T.R.. 1806. An Essay On The Principles of Population, 2 vols. London, T. Benslet.Google Scholar
Marx, K. 1971. Capital, 3 vols., Moscow, Progress Publishers.Google Scholar
Miller, R. 1984. “A Comment on Productive and Unproductive Labor,” Studies in Political Economy, 14, 141–153.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moseley, F. 1988. “The Rate of Surplus Value, the Organic Composition and the General Rate of Profit in the U.S. Economy, 1947–67: A Critique and Update of Wolff's Estimates,” American Economic Review, 78, 298–303.Google Scholar
Moseley, F.. 1985. “The Rate of Surplus Value in the Postwar U.S. Economy: A Critique of Weisskopf's Estimates,” Cambridge Journal of Economics, 9, 57–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ricardo, D. 1982. On the Principle of Political Economy and Taxation, edited by Piero, Sraffa, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ricardo, D.. 1951. Notes on Malthus, edited by Sraffa, P., Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Shaikh, A. 1978. “Political Economy and Capitalism: Notes on Dobb's Theory of Crisis,” Cambridge Journal of Economics, 2, 233–251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, A. 1976. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 1, Oxford, Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Waterman, A.M.C. 1987. “On the Malthusian Theory of Long Swings,” Canadian Journal of Economics, 20, 257–270.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed