Marx ’ s Theoretical Legacy : A Response to

Economist Anthony Brewer throws down the gauntlet to those who esteem the economic contributions of Karl Marx, arguing in a 1995 article in History of Political Economy that the mainstream’s evident neglect of these contributions is amply justified by the fact that there was nothing of lasting value in Marx’s political economic writing, or at least in the portion thereof that was widely available to economic scholars by the end of the last century. In addition, Brewer posits three criteria that an effective defense of Marx’s work must satisfy: 1) the novelty and usefulness of Marx’s contributions must be judged according to what he had to say about economics, rather than, say, history or sociology; 2) his economic theories must be judged by their capacity to explain observable phenomena; and 3), they must be evaluated according to the causal mechanisms advanced to explain such phenomena. The purpose of this paper is to answer Brewer’s challenge in a manner not fully addressed by the “minisymposium” of respondents featured along with Brewer’s article. The response I propose satisfies Brewer’s criteria with room to spare, first in that its grounds are drawn solely from the first and third volumes of Capital, and second in that the aspects of Marx’s argument that I target can be represented in terms of the concepts and methods of contemporary mainstream theory. Specifically, I argue that Marx advanced demonstrably new and arguably relevant theories for the basis of economic profit and the economic nature of firms.