One could call Karl Marx a close student of Ricardo. He bought in to Ricardo’s ideas whole heartedly but rather than making Ricardo’s mistake of assuming away continued growth, he used it as his starting point. But this initial closeness of ideas would not last. While they began close in their ideas by the end of it all one of the only discernable common grounds is that Ricardo thought production would cease because of the scarcity of natural resources and Marx believed it would flourish because of the increase in knowledge. Marx’s ideas while based in much truth and some things that describe today, including public schools, central banking, etc, there was a great deal more of absurdities in language and ideas. Marx’s son-in-law, Paul Lafargue described it very well I think in his use of a painter analogy describing Marx. It can be found here.
A for Elgin. I love the painter analogy for Marx (and it applies to a lot of academics as well).
ReplyDeleteSo, Ricardo is all worried about the distribution of wealth, because growth is going to cease and is unimportant. Marx, on the other hand, is worried about growth that he doesn't expect to stop because it will make the distribution continually worse. Until the political revolution, that is, which he seems to think will bring an end to the applicability of economic ideas.
Extra credit to the first person to bring me a handwritten explanation of what immiseration is, and how it relates to Marx and Ricardo.
It's also interesting that Marx was an anti-semitic Jew. Reacting to who he was is part of who he is. There are people like this in Utah: know any anti-LDS Mormons? I do.