From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Thu Mar 08 2007 - 15:21:29 EST
Jerry, Just to tie up a few loose ends: in The Economic Theory of the Leisure Class (completed 1914) Bukharin writes as follows: "Werner Sombart... designates Marx's system as an outgrowth of "extreme objectivism"; while the Austrian school, in his opinion, was "the most consistent development in the opposite direction". We consider this characterisation complete accurate. (...) Marx's theory is accordingly an objective theory of labour value..." (p. 36, 37). Bukharin cites Werner Sombart,"Zur Kritik des oekonomischen Systems von Karl Marx", in Archiv fur soziale Gesetzgebung und Statistik, vol. VII, 1894, pp. 591, 592. http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1927/leisure-economics/index.htm Bukharin also discourses at length about Dr von Bohm-Bawerk http://hussonet.free.fr/bohm.pdf http://www.marxists.org/subject/economy/authors/bohm/index.htm, whose classes he attended at the University of Vienna. The manuscript of Bukharin's book seems to have been written in exile in Vienna, Lausanne, Stockholm, and Oslo. By his own testimony he left the manuscript in Oslo, and it found its way to Russia in February 1919, where he edited and updated it some more, to include some Anglo-Saxon ideas among other things (he had spent some time in New York as well, after Oslo). The interpretation of Marx's theory of value as an "objective theory of value" would thus appear to be of German/Austrian origin, originating specifically with Sombart circa 1894, i.e. precisely at the time that Marx's Capital Vol. 3 was first published, and a year before Engels's death from throat cancer. Rudolf Hilferding's reply to Bohm-Bawerk was written circa 1904 http://www.marxists.org/subject/economy/authors/hilfer/index.htm . As regards Joseph Schumpeter, I was wrong in what I said previously, because Schumpeter does acknowledge the historical origins of marginal utility theory long before Menger/Walras/Jevons: "But let us bear in mind that it was the 'subjective' or 'utility' theory of price that had the wind until the influence of the Wealth of Nations [by Adam Smith] - and especially Ricardo's Principles [of Political Economy and Taxation] - asserted itself. Even after 1776, that theory prevailed on the Continent, and there is an unbroken line of development between Galiani and J.B. Say. Quesnay, Beccaria, Turgot, Verri, Condillac, and many minor lights contributed to establishing it more and more firmly. " (History of Economic Analysis, p. 302). You might quibble about the details, but the thought is there. Jurriaan
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