Conclusions

During the discussions that have formed the central elements of this book, we have been endeavouring to discover whether the approach of Marxian political economy is still relevant to contemporary society, given the enormous changes that have occurred since Karl Marx put pen to paper in the second half of the nineteenth century. The answer lies on several spheres of economic, philosophical and political thought, in the understanding of Marx’s method and one’s perception of the validity of the framework within which the theory is set. However, the alternative explanations can be seen to be at best a partial analysis, and at worst a misrepresentation of the realities involved in a capitalist economy. Thus, as a critique of this system, we have seen that Marxian political economy represents a logically consistent and coherent examination of the whole, and the role of factors within that whole, in a realistic and practical manner. The neoclassicals employ a set of assumptions that do not conform to the observed facts, such as perfect competition, asymmetric knowledge and constant returns to scale. In addition, they employ measures of utility that cannot be applied to individuals let alone whole communities and ignore the factor of time and then base theory and policy on these improbable constructs. Others attempt to model an economy based on free markets, but tempered by state intervention to overcome the antisocial outcomes of an unfettered market system, without incorporating the contradictions that exist within the system itself. What they lack is a framework of analysis that takes into account the whole system, its contradictions and its interactive, dynamic nature.