Karl Marx and the Close of His System

Karl Marx and the Close of His System
	Cover of the 1949 edition
Author	Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk
Original title	Zum Abschluss des Marxschen Systems
Country	Germany
Language	German
Subject	Karl Marx
Published	1896 (in German); 1898 (in English);
Media type	Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages	224 (Orion reprint edition)
ISBN	978-1466347687

Karl Marx and the Close of His System (German: Zum Abschluss des Marxschen Systems) is an 1896 book about the philosopher Karl Marx by the Austrian economist Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, in which the author critiques Marx's economic theories.

Background

Böhm-Bawerk's work first appeared in 1896, in Staatswissenschaftliche Arbeitern: Festgaben für Karl Knies, a collection of essays in honor of the German economist Karl Knies. It was published as a separate work later in 1896, and appeared in Russian translation in 1897 and in English translation in 1898.[1]

Summary

Böhm-Bawerk examines Marx's analysis of value, claiming the basic error in Marx's system to have resulted from a self-contradiction of Marx's law of value, namely how the rate of profit and the prices of production of the third volume of Marx's Capital contradict Marx's theory of value in the first volume. He also attacks Marx for downplaying the influence of supply and demand in determining permanent price, and for deliberate ambiguity with such concepts.

Reception

Karl Marx and the Close of His System has been seen as one of the most important discussions of Marx's economic theories, along with Rudolf Hilferding's Böhm-Bawerk's Criticism of Marx, a defense of Marx against Böhm-Bawerk.[2] The work is considered the "classical" critique of Capital.[3] Most subsequent critiques of Marxist economics have repeated Böhm-Bawerk's arguments.[4]

The economist Peter Boettke credited Böhm-Bawerk with demonstrating internal contradictions between Marx's theory of value and his distribution theory.[5]

Marxist economist Ernest Mandel identifies Karl Marx and the Close of His System as part of a literature, beginning with German social democrat Eduard Bernstein, that criticizes the dialectical method Marx borrowed from Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel as "useless", "metaphysical", or "mystifying." He faults Böhm-Bawerk and the other critics for what he regards as their "positivist narrowness".[6]

The Marxist economist Paul Sweezy rejects Böhm-Bawerk's view that the theory of value must be abandoned. However, he considers Karl Marx and the Close of His System to be the best statement of the argument that the fact that the law of value is not directly controlling in capitalist production requires the rejection of the theory of value.[4]

References

Sweezy 1949, p. vi.
Sweezy 1949, p. v.
McLellan 1995, p. 439.
Sweezy 1968, p. 70.
Boettke 2002, p. 343.
Mandel 1990, p. 22.

Bibliography

Editions

von Böhm-Bawerk, Eugen (1896). "Zum Abschluss des Marxschen Systems". In Otto v. Boenigk (ed.). Staatswissenschaftliche Arbeiten — Festgaben für Karl Knies zur fünfundsiebzigsten Wiederkehr seines Geburtstages [Political science: Festschrift for Karl Knies on his seventy-fifth birthday] (in German). Berlin: O. Haering. pp. 87—205 [= pp. 51—111 in the PDF file].
von Böhm-Bawerk, Eugen (1898). Karl Marx and the Close of His System: A Criticism. London: T. Fisher Unwin.
Sweezy, Paul M., ed. (1949). Karl Marx and the Close of His System & Böhm-Bawerk's Criticism of Marx. New York: Augustus M. Kelley.

Books

Mandel, Ernest (1990). "Introduction". In Marx, Karl (ed.). Capital. Volume I. London: Penguin. pp. 11–86. ASIN B002XHNMN0. ISBN 9780140445688. OCLC 1101353938.
McLellan, David (1995). Karl Marx: A Biography. London: Papermac. ISBN 0-333-63947-2.
Sweezy, Paul M. (1968). The Theory of Capitalist Development. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Articles

Boettke, P. J. (2002). "Information, Knowledge and the Close of Friedrich Hayek's System: A Comment" (PDF). Eastern Economic Journal. 28 (3): 343–349. JSTOR 40326112.