The Significance of Marxian Political Economy in the Present-day World

Abstract

John Maynard Keynes, with his characteristic air of superiority, looked down upon Marx as an economist by placing him ‘in the underworlds’ in company with Silvio Gesell and Major Douglas.¹ But there are a number of distinguished modern economists who rated highly the contributions which Marx made in the field of political economy, notably Wassily Leontief, Joan Robinson and Joseph Schumpeter. Leontief (1938, p. 78) once wrote of an ‘an unsurpassed series of prognostications fulfilled, against which modem economic theory with all its refinements has little to show’, and referred to Marx’s ‘brilliant analysis of the long-run tendencies of the capitalist system’ such as ‘increasing concentration of wealth, rapid elimination of small and medium sized enterprise, progressive limitation of competition, incessant technological progress accompanied by the ever growing importance of fixed capital, and, last but not least, the undiminishing amplitude of recurrent business cycles’.