Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editorial preface
- List of contributors
- Introduction: Cracks in the neoclassical mirror: on the break-up of a vision
- Part I Class relations in circulation and production
- Part II The Cambridge criticisms
- Part III Microeconomics
- Part IV Macroeconomics
- Part V International trade
- Part VI Property and welfare
- Part VII Marxism and modern economics
- 16 Marx, Keynes, and social change: is post-Keynesian theory neo-Marxist?
- 17 Cambridge economics as commodity fetishism
- Epilogue: The hieroglyph of production
17 - Cambridge economics as commodity fetishism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editorial preface
- List of contributors
- Introduction: Cracks in the neoclassical mirror: on the break-up of a vision
- Part I Class relations in circulation and production
- Part II The Cambridge criticisms
- Part III Microeconomics
- Part IV Macroeconomics
- Part V International trade
- Part VI Property and welfare
- Part VII Marxism and modern economics
- 16 Marx, Keynes, and social change: is post-Keynesian theory neo-Marxist?
- 17 Cambridge economics as commodity fetishism
- Epilogue: The hieroglyph of production
Summary
They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerrilla war against the effects of the system instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class, that is to say, [for] the ultimate abolition of the wages system.
[Karl Marx, Wages, Price and Profit].Introduction
The purpose here is to help students of radical political economics understand two of the main approaches available to them. On the one side, I present the basic concepts of Karl Marx and, on the other, I examine the recent work of the Cambridge school – a group of economists associated with the University of Cambridge, England (hereafter referred to as the Cantabrigians). As the reader will see, my own preference is for the Marxian approach. Indeed, in the last section of the essay I argue that the approach of the Cantabrigians can be criticized in much the same way that Marx criticized the economics of his own time.
The task undertaken here is important for two reasons. Since the Cambridge school originally gained its fame by attacking some of the central concepts of neoclassical economics (Harcourt, 1969; Rowthorn, 1974), it has attracted the attention of many radicals.
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- Growth, Profits and PropertyEssays in the Revival of Political Economy, pp. 276 - 302Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1980
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