Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part One CAPITAL: PRINCIPLE FEATURES OF THE MARXIAN “CANON”
- Part Two ORIGINS: MARX IN THE 1840s
- Part Three A “SECOND DRAFT” OF CAPITAL: THE GRUNDRISSE 1857–1858
- Part Four A “THIRD DRAFT” OF CAPITAL: THE ECONOMIC MANUSCRIPTS 1861–1863
- Part Five TOPICS IN APPLICATION
- 13 Economic Organization and the Equality Issue
- 14 Is There a Marxian “Entrepreneur”? On the Functions of the Industrial Capitalist
- 15 Principles of Social Reform
- Conclusion: A Recapitulation and Overview
- Appendices
- Bibliography
- Index
14 - Is There a Marxian “Entrepreneur”? On the Functions of the Industrial Capitalist
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 June 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part One CAPITAL: PRINCIPLE FEATURES OF THE MARXIAN “CANON”
- Part Two ORIGINS: MARX IN THE 1840s
- Part Three A “SECOND DRAFT” OF CAPITAL: THE GRUNDRISSE 1857–1858
- Part Four A “THIRD DRAFT” OF CAPITAL: THE ECONOMIC MANUSCRIPTS 1861–1863
- Part Five TOPICS IN APPLICATION
- 13 Economic Organization and the Equality Issue
- 14 Is There a Marxian “Entrepreneur”? On the Functions of the Industrial Capitalist
- 15 Principles of Social Reform
- Conclusion: A Recapitulation and Overview
- Appendices
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Introduction
Frank Knight described the German socialist approach to profit – including Rodbertus and Lassalle as well as Marx and Engels – as entailing “a simple classification of income in which all that is not wages is a profit which represents exploitation of the working classes. Capital is equivalent to property…. It is analogous to a robber baron's crag, a toll-gate on a natural highway, or a political franchise to exploit” (Knight 1964 [1921]: 27–8; also Sowell 1967: 71, Baumol 1975: 64). There is no place here for “profit” as a return to one or more productive activities, and certainly none for Knightian “uncertainty”-bearing – uncertainty not susceptible to actuarial measurement – the presence of which “by preventing the theoretically perfect outworking of the tendencies of competition gives the characteristic form of ‘enterprise’ to economic organization as a whole and accounts for the peculiar income of the entrepreneur” (Knight: 232).
J. A. Schumpeter in his The Theory of Economic Development expounds his famous notion of development as “the carrying out of new combinations [of productive means]” viewed as “a special process and the object of a special kind of ‘function’,” one undertaken by the entrepreneur (Schumpeter 1959 [1926]: 66, 79).
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- Information
- The Economics of Karl MarxAnalysis and Application, pp. 409 - 443Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008