Peter Cooper — MARX & MMT, PART 3 — Finer Points of Marx’s Conception of Labor and His Aggregate Equalities

So far, the intention has been to give a sense of the relevance and accessibility of Marx’s macroeconomic ideas. Rather than jump straight into his theory, with what might appear to be strangely named variables and foreign concepts, it seemed desirable to spell out simple connections between Marx’s category’s and those of non-Marxist economics. Doing so meant glossing over some of the finer points of Marx’s definitions and categories. The first task of this post is to address a few of these. Attention then turns to distinguishing value from price and introducing Marx’s three aggregate equalities. The implications of Marx’s equalities are powerful, but their validity depends on how his theory is interpreted. The final section of the post will highlight the major points of contention. This will provide context for two upcoming posts, which consider the temporal-single system interpretation (TSSI) and a possible rationale for its adoption in this series.

As the preceding paragraph implies, there will be very little, if any, MMT in this and the next few posts. Given the diversity of approaches to Marx, it seems necessary to provide some background on the perspective presented in this series. The first attempt to integrate MMT explicitly into Marx’s theory is currently scheduled for part 7. Alternatively, I might break off the next few posts as standalone material — to be taken as read in later parts of this series — and then resume with the initial attempt at integrating MMT into Marx’s value framework as part 4.…

heteconomist
MARX & MMT, PART 3 — Finer Points of Marx’s Conception of Labor and His Aggregate Equalities
Peter Cooper