Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Equilibrium and reproducibility: the linear model
- 2 Reproducibility and exploitation: a general model
- 3 The equalization of profit rates in Marxian general equilibrium
- 4 Viable and progressive technical change and the rising rate of profit
- 5 Continuing controversy on the falling rate of profit: fixed capital and other issues
- 6 Changes in the real wage and the rate of profit
- 7 The law of value and the transformation problem
- 8 The transformation correspondence
- 9 Simple reproduction, extended reproduction, and crisis
- 10 Summing up and new directions
- Notes
- References
- Index
10 - Summing up and new directions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Equilibrium and reproducibility: the linear model
- 2 Reproducibility and exploitation: a general model
- 3 The equalization of profit rates in Marxian general equilibrium
- 4 Viable and progressive technical change and the rising rate of profit
- 5 Continuing controversy on the falling rate of profit: fixed capital and other issues
- 6 Changes in the real wage and the rate of profit
- 7 The law of value and the transformation problem
- 8 The transformation correspondence
- 9 Simple reproduction, extended reproduction, and crisis
- 10 Summing up and new directions
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
Because issues discussed in the introductory chapter were primarily methodological, it is appropriate for these final words to summarize some main points of content of the book. In addition, because the line that defines where a book of this type stops must be drawn somewhat arbitrarily, the reader's indulgence is asked if some mention is made of current work not reported upon in previous chapters, but that bears upon the issues.
The task of Chapters 1 through 3 is to place the Marxian notions of economic reproduction and exploitation into a general equilibrium context. In most mathematical treatments of Marxian economics, only the production side of the economy is studied, and it is simply asserted that a certain price vector (the vector that equalizes profit rates across sectors) is the “equilibrium” vector. This formulation is inadequate, because no specific behavior of capitalists and workers is stipulated, with respect to which equilibrium has been defined. An equilibrium of an economy is a situation where the optimizing behavior of all individuals aggregates to social behavior that is consistent; clearly, then, the definition of equilibrium requires a prior specification of what the behavior of individuals is. This may seem a small point; it is not, as can be seen from common disagreements or confusions that have emerged between Marxists and neoclassicists concerning Marxian equilibrium. For instance, a neoclassicist asks how there can be an “equilibrium” with a positive rate of profit in an economy with constant returns to scale.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Analytical Foundations of Marxian Economic Theory , pp. 199 - 210Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1981