I’m working on a paper on Marx’s labor theory of value. I was reading Paul Sweezy’s excellent introduction to Böhm-Bawerk’s Karl Marx and the Close of his System when I came across this little ditty:
It has been necessary to stress the historical importance of Böhm-Bawerk’s criticism of Marx, but this should not lead us into the error of falsely evaluating the work itself. The truth is that in its essentials Karl Marx and the Close of His System is not a particularly remarkable performance. It is obviously the work of a skilled debater, but its intellectual content is largely confined to applications of the elementary principles of the marginal utility theory. Böhm-Bawerk’s line of reasoning was thoroughly familiar in academic economic circles, and any number of his contemporaries could have produced a critique of Marx which would have differed from Böhm-Bawerk’s only in matters of emphasis and detail. The examples of Wicksteed in England and Pareto in the Latin countries prove this, if indeed proof is required. We do not need to assume, therefore, that things would have been much different if Karl Marx and the Close of His System had never been written. Some other economist would have come forward to do the job which Böhm-Bawerk did; or perhaps Pareto’s critique, since it bore the authoritative stamp of the Lausanne school, might have assumed the pre-eminent position that Böhm-Bawerk’s actually occupied. Marx had to be refuted, and history, in casting her eyes over the possible candidates, selected Böhm-Bawerk as best fitted for the assignment. But if he had refused or fallen down on the job, some one else would have been ready to take his place. Here is a case, I think, where we can clearly accept Engels’ dictum: “That such and such a man and precisely that man arises at that particular time in that given country is of course pure accident. But cut him out and there will be a demand for a substitute, and this substitute will be found, good or bad, but in the long run he will be found.”
That paragraph was just soooo Marxist that I had to post it. I enjoy these things. Is that sick or what?
- Josh McCabe
2 responses so far ↓
Jake Roundtree // November 30, 2009 at 10:27 pm |
I’ll admit that I have never read anything by Bahm-Bawerk, nor am I aware of whether anyone else wrote an equally powerful critique of Marx’s labor theory of value around that era , but Sweezy’s argument seems stretched. Consider Hayek’s failure to criticize Keynes’ General Theory, which Mises and many others certainly could have refuted. Plus the fact that the arguments Bahm-Bawerk levied against Marx’s economics were widely accepted or known seems to say more about the weakness of Marx’s economics then it does about the brilliance of Bahm-Bawerk’s critique itself.
joshmccabe // December 4, 2009 at 10:21 am |
Jake, that was an insightful comment but if you had not made it, then someone else would have in the long run.