Textbooks For Marxian Political Economy

Suppose you find Marx's Capital intimidating. You could start with textbooks. I confine myself to a selection in English.

I start with Soviet textbooks. I suppose the Dictionary is not really a textbook. But Apparently, it was a standard reference work. Here are some Soviet textbooks:

• N. Buharin & E. Preobrazhensky. 1922. The ABC of Communism. The Communist Party of Great Britain.
• I. Lapidus & K. Ostrovityanov. 1929. An Outline of Political Economy: Political Economy and Soviet Economics. Martin Lawrence.
• Institute of Economics of the Academy of sciences of the USSR. 1954, 1957. Political Economy. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
• I. Frolov (ed.) 1967, 1984. Dictionary of Philosophy. Moscow: Progress Publishers.

Here are some textbooks:

• Paul M. Sweezy. 1942. The Theory of Capitalist Development: Principles of Marxian Political Economy. Dennis Dobson Ltd.
• Meghnad Desai. 1979. Marxian Economics. Toronto: Rowman & Littlefield.
• Robert Paul Wolff. 1984. Understanding Marx: A Reconstruction and Critique of Capital. Princeton University Press.
• Duncan K. Foley. 1986. Understanding Capital: Marx's Economic Theory. Harvard Univ ersity Press.
• Bob Milward. 2000. Marxian Political Economy: Theory, History, and Contemporary Relevance. Palgrave.
• David F. Ruccio. 2022. Marxian Economics: An Introduction. Polity.
• Deepankar Basu. 2023. The Logic of Capital: An Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory. Cambridge University Press.

I suppose I could expand the above list with reading guides, from David Harvey or Michael Heinrich, for example. The boundary between a textbook and an interpretation is unclear, where by the latter I mean books intendeded to argue with the literature. And I could also have introductory books that are definitely not textbooks, like Eagleton's Why Marx was Right. Even so, I expect this to only be a starting list.

Different authors have different takes. If you want to start with an introduction, I suggest you only pick one.

Some Literature On The Compatibility Of Exhaustible Resources With Classical Political Economy

I have been writing about natural resources that emerge unchanged from the production processes. In contrast, Bidard & Erreygers (2001, 2020) developed the corn-guano model to examine the compatibility of classical political economy with exhaustible natural resources. They argue that a royalty for an exhaustible natural resource will vary over time, in accordance with the Hotelling rule. Parrinello (2004) and Kurz & Salvadori (2011, 2015) argue that when the resource will be exhausted is not well-enough known for the Hotelling rule to apply. The price system, under their assumptions, has enough equations to determine the royalty, without prices varying over time. For Ravagnani (2008), the royalty for an exhaustible resource provides another degree of freedom and is set as a percentage of production by conventions and social norms, much like the natural wage in Ricardo and Marx. Hahnel (2017) emphasizes throughput efficiency, which is related to the rates at which the natural environment’s stock of natural resources and environmental sinks are used by human economic activity. These applications of classical political economy to environmental concerns are outside the scope of of my treatment of absolute, extensive, and intensive rent.

References

• Bidard, Christian, and Guido Erreygers. 2001. The corn-guano model. Metroeconomica, 52(3): 243-253.
• Bidard, C. and G. Erreygers. 2020. Exhaustible resources and classical theory. Oeconomia: History, Methodology, Philosophy, 10 (3): 419-446.
• Hahnel, Robin. 2017. Radical Political Economy: Sraffa versus Marx. New York: Routledge.
• Kurz, Heinz D. and Neri Salvadori. 2011. Exhaustible resources: Rents, profits, royalties and prices. In Volker Caspari (ed.), The Evolution of Economic Theory: Essays in Honour of Bertram Schefold. London: Routledge, 39-52.
• Kurz, Heinz D., and Neri Salvadori. 2015. The ‘Classical’ approach to exhaustible resources: Parrinello and the others. In Heinz D. Kurz and Neri Salvadori, Revisiting Classical Economics. Studies in Long Period Analysis, 304-316. London: Routledge.
• Parrinello, Sergio. 2004. The notion of effectual supply and the theory of normal prices with exhaustible resources. Economic Systems Research, 16(3): 311-322.
• Ravagnani, Fabio. 2008. Classical theory and exhaustible natural resources: notes on the current debate. Review of Political Economy, 20(1).

Sam Tanenhaus Wrong On Buckley On Yale Economics

I have not even yet got to the founding of National Review in this no-doubt authoritative biography. But:

"With the assistance of [Lucille Cardin] Crain and her academic consultants Bill drew up his own list of dangerous books, most of them recently published. First on the list was Paul Samuelson's Economics: An Introductory Analysis. Published in 1948, it laid out the basics of Keynesian and neoclassical theories and in the next years became the most widely used textbook in the field. Its arguments contradicted the laissez-faire ideas to which many Yale donors and alumni subscribed. And, Buckley strongly suspected, those donors and alumni might not be aware that 'the net influence of Yale economics [is] thoroughly collectivistic.'" -- Sam Tanenhaus, 2025. Buckley: The Life and Revolution that Changed America. New York: Random House (204).

I suppose this could be a matter of judgement. I say that, as far as economics goes, Lorie Tarshis' textbook was first on the list. William F. Buckley was participating in an extra-academic intervention so successful that most economists are probably not even aware that Tarshis' textbook existed.

A Paradox For Those Who Know Mathematics

Bri the Math Guy on What to Know for Real Analysis

If you know mathematics, you will be quite willing to deny that.

Some who know me think that I am good with mathematics. Apparently, I used to say quite frequently, when trying to explain something, "It is just math."

I suspect that a lot of those exposed to some advanced mathematics will disclaim knowledge of mathematics. We all have had the experience of taking a couple of hours of reading one or two pages of math and still not being sure of our understanding. Perhaps we read with paper and pen in hand - I am quite willing to cross things out, instead of erase - and work out each step. And still, after going through an entire proof, not being sure of the point.

Even after you have learned or been exposed to quite a bit, you may find that parts of mathematics whose very existence is surprising. For me, these parts still include model theory and alegbraic geometry.

Some cannot read a book if a single equation appears in it. I know that that is so, but I find hard to grasp. Some math books will say that the only prerequisite is mathematical maturity. And I do recall one teacher suggesting that, for our first go-through, we should read a chapter of our textbook like a novel. One thing I have not come across literature on is how authors of math books decide on the scope.

Anyways, to have a hope at learning some math, you must be willing to put time in, while feeling lost. But maybe I am generalizing too much from my own experience.

As I am writing up my example with absolute, extensive, and intensive rent, I want to NOT present a general model. I'd like to say just see Kurz & Salvadori (1995). But they do not have a general model combining intensive and extensive rent, as I understand it. Nor they have a general model with markup pricing.

So instead of doing math, I am writing about math.

Reference

• Lara Alcock. 2013. How to Study as a Mathematics Major. Oxford University Press

Why Can't We All Get Along?

Little Stephen and the Disciples of Soul

I guess this is current events.

I never was of the right temperament for this idea. But many decades ago, I could be intellectually convinced by those saying that we all want the same things. We just disagree on the means. We can discuss and argue about those means, with some approach to rational arguments.

I was wrong.

In the United States today, many do not want general prosperity for all. They want hierarchy, with themselves on top. They do not want to succeed, unless some others fail. They deny the right to exist for many.

In what kind of society can we live freely with such reactionaries? Many would say the answer is liberal society. We want a minimum set of rules, and a lack of restrictions, such that everybody is free to pursue their own idea of a good life. Many of these rules are like conventions on which side of the road to drive. No ethical question arise here. But if we all agree to drive on the right, each of us can make our own plans to get from one place to another with some confidence that they will succeed.

Questions obviously exist about the content and extent of these rules. I think an extreme degree of inequality, with those towards the bottom having only the prospect of a precarious life, is incompatible with a liberal society.

But what happens when those who do not accept the existence of those who differ too much from them take advantage of the liberal norms? Karl Popper reads Plato's Republic as putting forth the paradox of tolerance:

"Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. - In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal." -- Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies: Volume 1, footnote 4 to chapter 7.

I'd rather not live in a time where this paradox was directly applicable.

Absolute Rent, Extensive Rent, And Intensive Rent

Figure 1: Rent Curves With and Without Competitive Markets

This post is a continuation of the example in this and this post. It is the first example, in the tradition building on Sraffa, of a numerical example combines absolute, intensive, and extensive rent.

The analysis in those posts can be extended to apply to non-competitive markets. Assume that the rate of profits is s₁ r in the price equation for the process producing iron and s₂ r in any process for producing corn. I now call r the scale factor for the rate of profits. As a normalization, let the sum of s₁ and s₂ be unity. These coefficients are given parameters. They express the existence of persistent barriers to entry between industry and agriculture. For concreteness, I take s₁ ≈ 0.0208506. This parameter expresses a case of the reswitching of the order of rentability, with agriculture obtaining a higher rate of profits than industry.

Capitalists in agriculture have market power in this post. The changes in rent, including increases, is not the result of market power by landlords. The increased market power of farmers changes wage and rent curves. The specific parameters for markups considered here eliminate the reswitching of techniques and capital-reversing, at any level of net output. Otherwise, the capital-intensity of industries is not analyzed in this post. For Marx, absolute rent is created from more surplus value being generated in agriculture, given its low organic composition of capital. This additional surplus value is not shared in a common pool because of the market power of the class of landlords. This article neither investigates nor justifies Marx's specific mechanism. Nevertheless, I identify the differences in rent brought about relative market power among capitalists in different economic sectors with absolute rent.

The price systems for each technique are altered by the differences in relative markups between industry and agriculture. The variation of the feasibility of techniques with net output is independent of prices. Table 3, in this post, applies to this numerical example of a model of non-competitive markets. Omicron, Rho, Tau, and Omega remain feasible at the highest level of net output. Figure 2 presents the wage curves for this example of non-competitive markets, and Figure 3 is a detail.

Figure 2: Wage Curves With Non-Competitive Markets

Figure 3: Wage Curves With Non-Competitive Markets (Detail)

With these specific values for relative markups, Omicron and Rho are each cost-minimizing for a range of the scale factor for the rate of profits when net output is towards its maximum (Table 5). Type 1 land is not scarce and pays no rent when Omicron is cost-minimizing. Type 2 land is not scarce under Rho. At the highest level of net output, only extensive rent is obtained. No intensive rent is paid, whatever value the scale factor for the rate of profits takes on. The orders of efficiency and rentability match and do not vary with the scale factor for the rate of profits when Omicron is cost-minimizing. The order of efficiency varies, when Rho is cost-minimizing. Rho exhibits the reswitching of the order of rentability.

Table 1: Cost-Minimizing Technique

Range	Technique	Order of Efficiency	Order of Rentability
0≤r≤9.5%	Omicron	3,2,1	3,2,1
9.5≤r≤41.7%	Rho	3,1,2	3,1,2
41.7≤r≤87.8%		1,3,2
87.8≤r≤114.9%			1,3,2
114.9≤r≤122.0%			3,1,2

Figure 1, at the top of this post, graphs the rent curves for the example. Both the wage and rent per acre are functions of the (scale factor for the) rate of profits. The analysis of the choice of technique would be different if the wage were taken as given exogenously. In the case in this post, rent per acre is less under Omicron when the capitalists in agriculture have more market power. The variation in rent per acre with increased market power for farmers otherwise reflects the change in the cost-minimizing technique. Landlords who own Type 1 land obtain greater rent from the increased market power for agriculture in the example. The same is true for landlords who own Type 3 land, expect for low rates of profits. Landlords who own Type 2 land, on the other hand, are better off with competitive markets.

This level of increased market power for the capitalists in agriculture alters the analysis the choice of technique at every level of net output (Figure 4). Consider the range of the scale factor for the rate of profits at which Delta is cost-minimizing. As output expands, at the bottom of this range, capitalists choose to operate processes IV and V on Type 3 land to expand output. When output can no longer be expanded by extending cultivation with process IV, they bring Type 2 land under cultivation, and then, with the adoption of Omicron, Type 1 land enters into the mix. At a slightly higher scale factor, the capitalists cultivate Type 1 land after Type 3 land is completely farmed with process IV. Ultimately, under Rho, they also cultivate Type 2 land. Consider a still higher scale factor, but still within the range where Delta is initially cost-minimizing. The capitalists first expand output, when Type 3 land is fully cultivated, by starting to farm Type 1 land. They operate processes IV and V side-by-side on Type 3 land only after Type 1 land has become scarce.

Figure 4: Cost-Minimizing Techniques With Non-Competitive Markets

In all of these cases, and for even a higher scale factor, process IV is ultimately operated on Type 3 land alone, and only extensive rent is obtained. Yet, with intensive rent being obtained somewhere along the expansion of output, process V enters into the determination of the order of efficiency. The switch points between the wage curves for Alpha and Gamma and between Alpha and Phi are irrelevant to the determination of the order of efficiency when Rho is cost-minimizing. The order of efficiency varies, though, around the switch point between Alpha and Delta. As with competitive markets, the existence of intensive rent as output expands affects the order of efficiency under extensive rent at the highest level of output.

Ben Shapiro Being Stupid About Marx

Shapiro Explaining Critical Race Theory Correctly Before Criticizing It

I have not actually read Shapiro's Lions and Scavengers" The True Story of America (and Her Critics). I rely on a screenshot in a tweet from Matt McManus.

The above video shows that Shapiro recognizes that you should accurately set out a position before criticizing it. He also gets to boast about his law degree. (Those wanting to laugh at Shapiro probably prefer this interview with Andrew Neil on the BBC.) Anyways, here is a Shapiro take on Karl Marx:

"Marx heavily relied on the labor theory of value. He posited that if you could calculate the value of anything objectively, then anything beyond that value had to be a surplus - an unnecessary bit of profiteering added by the person selling a good, product, or service. So, if the labor value of a potato was, say, $2 - the labor put into growing the potato, harvesting it, and selling it to the grocer - and the grocer sold it for $3 to an end customer, the grocer was adding on an unfair surcharge of $1, thus increasing the price falsely so as to extract profit. Marx said the world could be made fairer and better by preventing the grocer from extracting profit, thus lowering prices and making potatoes more affordable. The grocer was actually exploiting his customers when he 'earned' a profit.

The answer, said Marx, was to set prices from the top down. Simply set the price of potatoes at $2, remove the grocer’s evil profit, and make everything more plentiful and cheaper." – Ben Shapiro. Lions & Scavengers: The Tue Story of America.

The above is so far from anything Marx wrote that I do not think any comment is needed. Nevertheless, I will go on.

Marx does not explain profits as the result of a seller tacking a surcharge on the price of a commodity, where that price is the labor value of the commodity. In fact, he specifically rejects that idea.

For purposes of exposition, Marx assumes, in volume 1 of Cqpital, that prices tend towards labor values, under the capitalist mode of production. He wants to explain the origin of profit under the assumption that prices are 'fair' that many pro-capitalists and his predecessors put forth shortly before.

Surplus value, the source of profits, are obtained by capitalists not paying out the full value added by labor as wages to workers. The distinction between labor-power and labor is central to Marx's explanation. Labor-power is the ability to work under the direction of the agents of capital.

The suggestion that Marx thinks profit is only obtained by the merchant selling a commodity to the consumer is another absurdity. For Marx, surplus value is obtained at every step of production. The farmers hiring workers to plant, grow, and harvest potatoes exploits their workers. Shapiro can only be joking when he suggests that Marx thinks merchants exploit customers.

The final bit of silliness I want to highlight is that Marx argues a post-capitalist economy should set prices top-down to labor values. Marx is descriptive in Capital. He does not provide a blueprint for post-capitalist societies. He mocks the idea in the afterword to the second German edition of volume 1. In The Poverty of Philosophy, he specifically attacks Prodhon's idea of setting prices to labor values. Anarchists might argue that Marx is inconsistent and draws on Proudhon's ideas in his letter, Critique of the Gotha Programme. But any use of labor values in socialism differs from Marx's theory in Capital. Furthermore, many would argue that Marx's concept of value does not apply to communism, for example.

Apparently, Shapiro has been spouting nonsense about Karl Marx for years. Ben Burgis once noticed.

Update: Ben Burgis has a substack article about the above. And a YouTube video discussion with Stefan Bertram Lee.

Matt McManus and Nathan J. Robinson give the book a negative review.

Shapiro's book has a lot more wrong with it.

Variation Of Cost-Minimizing Technique With Increased Net Output And Extensive And Intensive Rent

Figure 1: Cost-Minimizing Techniques

1.0 Introduction

This post is an extension of one of my examples with extensive and intensive rent. I do not expect this to make sense unless you have read that post. I struggle to easily visualize details of that example.

David Ricardo distinguishes between extensive and intensive rent. He seems to put more emphasis on extensive rent. Even so, he considers the combination of extensive and intensive rent:

"It often, and, indeed, commonly happens, that before No. 2, 3, 4, or 5, or the inferior lands are cultivated, capital can be employed more productively on those lands which are already in cultivation. It may perhaps be found, that by doubling the original capital employed on No. 1, though the produce will not be doubled, will not be increased by 100 quarters, it may be increased by eighty-five quarters, and that this quantity exceeds what could be obtained by employing the same capital, on land No. 3." - David Ricardo, Principles

Ricardo does not recognize that the order of efficiency, also known as the order of fertility, differs from the order of rentability. Nor does he recognize that these orders depend on the distribution between workers and capitalists. Nevertheless, analysis of rent by Ricardo and his contemporaries is the starting point for many interesting analyses.

2.0 Some Repetition

Assume that net output in the example consists of a numerically identical number of tons iron and bushels corn. After different levels of net output, a different set of techniques are feasible. Table 2 here defines the techniques, and Table 3 specifies which techniques are feasible as net output expands.

I think I want to repeat at least the wage curves for the example. Accordingly, Figure 2 plots the wage curves for the cost-minimizing techniques, when net output is almost as large as it can be. Figure 3 is an enlargement. The figures also show the wage curve for Delta.

Figure 2: Wage Curves for Feasible Techniques

Figure 3: Wage Curves for Feasible Techniques (Detail)

3.0 Cost-Minimizing Techniques

Figure 1, at the top of the post, depicts which techniques are cost-minimizing at which rate of profits, as net output expands. The dashed lines are points at which the order of efficiency changes, while the cost-minimizing technique does not change. They are intersections of wage curves above the wage curves for the cost-minimizing technique. The dotted lines are points at which the order of rentability changes. They are intersections of rent curves for the cost minimizing technique. Figure 4 is an enlargement.

Figure 4: Cost-Minimizing Techniques (Detail)

3.1 Extensive Rent Alone

The range of the rate of profits for which Tau is cost-minimizing, when net output is near its maximum, illustrates the analysis of extensive rent. The order of efficiency can be calculated by working downwards from the wage curves in this range. Type 3 land is partially farmed under Tau, using the same process on type 3 land as in the Gamma process. The wage curves for Alpha and Beta intersect at approximately 48 percent. This switch point corresponds to a change in the order of efficiency. When Alpha is cost-minimizing, at the lowest output region for net output, the order of efficiency for Tau is Type 1, 2, and 3 lands. When Beta is cost-minimizing, the order of efficiency is type 2, 1, and 3 lands.

The order of rentability does not vary in the range in which Tau is cost-minimizing. The rent curves for Tau do not intersect. Consequenty the orders of efficiency and rentability differ in part of the range for which Tau is cost-minimizing. Type 1 land can obtain greater rent per acre, even though type 2 land is more fertile at the given range of the rate of profits. These results echo the analysis of extensive rent in Alberto Quadrio Curzio (1980).

When net output is small enough such that Alpha and Beta are feasible, the switch point at which the order of efficiency changes for Tau exhibits capital-reversing. A higher wage is associated with firms hiring more workers, given net output. But this intersection of the Alpha and Beta wage curves is not associated with any real Wicksell effects for Tau. Quantity flows do not vary around the switch point when Tau is cost-minimizing. Both above and below the switch point, Type 1 and 2 lands are fully farmed, with the same processes be operated on each land.

Consider regions of net output for which Epsilon and Theta are feasible. Theta requires a greater input of labor for a given net output. So here too, this switch point exhibits capital-reversing, while arising in an example with extensive rent.

3.2 Extensive and Intensive Rent

The range of the rate of profits for which Omicron or Omega are cost-minimizing illustrates effects of a combination of extensive and intensive rent. Process V is operated on type 3 land for the Phi, Kappa, Chi, Pi, Xi, and Upsilon techniques. On the other hand, process IV is operated on type 3 lands for Type 3 land for the Iota and Omicron techniques. Even though process V is not operated, when net output is towards its maximum, in the range of the rate of profits where Omicron is cost-minimizing, process V contributes towards determining the order of efficiency. The switch point between Beta and Gamma has no effect on the order of efficiency. A combination of intensive and extensive rent is needed to see the possibility of non-operated processes impacting the order of efficiency.

When the Omega technique is cost-minimizing, both processes are operated on Type 3 land. Nevertheless, the switch point between Alpha and Gamma has no effect on the order of efficiency in this range.

The order of efficiency happens to match the order of rentability when Omicron is cost-minimizing. The rent curves for Omega intersect three times in the range of the rate of profits is cost-minimizing. And the order of efficiency also changes. Sometimes these orders diverge when Omega is cost-minimizing. In examples with both intensive and extensive rents, lands that are less fertile at a given rate of profits can obtain greater rents per acre.

Marginalism is a generalization of Ricardo's theory of extensive rent and its application to all factors of production. Perhaps this mismatch of the orders of efficiency and rentability is another indication of how the generalization is unwarranted.

4.0 Conclusion

Alberto Quadrio Curzio put a lot of work into investigating the theory of rent in Sraffa's approach to political economy. This post can be said to be a clarification of this comment:

"Even when the intensive rent disappears, the effects of intensive cultivation persist in the different productive processes applied to the different lands, which affect the extensive differential rents." - Alberto Quadrio Curzio & Fausta Pellizzari (2010: 46)

The process on type 3 land that goes into the system of equations for Omicron differs from the process on type 3 land used in calculating the order of efficiency. This contrast reflects the phenomenon of intensive rent, even though no intensive rent is obtained when Omicron is cost-minimizing.

The example emphasizes the need to consider technical change. Net output cannot be increased after a hard limit, imposed by land-like natural resources. Increased production is only possible with the introduction of new processes and techniques or decreases in some coeficients of production for existing processes.

The most surprising finding, for me, is that types of lands cannot generally be ordered by efficiency (also known as fertility), from most fertile to least, by observing the processes operated on the lands at a given rate of profits. This result is in tension with Sraffa's methodology. Sraffa had an aversion to counterfactuals (Sen 2003). He wanted to not not use data - for example, on processes available in the technology but not currently operated - that cannot be obtained by the 'man from the moon' (Kurz & Salvadori 2004) or in a snapshot of an ongoing economy (Roncaglia 1975).