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Archive : Ernest Mandel - Selected Works
Karl Marx
"Marx is distinct from most important economists of the 19th and 20th centuries - for Marx, there are no economic laws separate and apart from specific relations between human beings."
Karl Marx was born on 5 May 1818, the son of the lawyer Heinrich Marx and Henriette Pressburg.
Marx’s main contribution to the social sciences has been his theory of historical materialism.
Marx is distinct from most important economists of the 19th and 20th centuries in that he does not consider himself at all an ’economist’ pure and simple.
As an economist, Marx is generally situated in the continuity of the great classical school of Adam Smith and Ricardo.
In the same way as his theory of rent, Marx’s theory of money is a straightforward application of the labour theory of value.
Marx himself considered his theory of surplus-value his most important contribution to the progress of economic analysis.
Marx’s discovery of the basic long-term ‘laws of motion’ of the capitalist mode of production constitutes undoubtedly his most impressive scientific achievement.
Marx did not write a systematic treatise on capitalist crises. His major comments on the subject are spread around his major economic writings.
Socialism is an economic system based upon conscious planning of production by associated producers (nowhere does Marx say: by the state), made possible by the abolition of private property of the means of production.
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