Bortkiewicz on Ricardo and Marx

The essay is actually as much about Ricardo as it is about Marx. In his essay Bortkiewicz referred to the work of the Russian mathematical economist Vladimir K. Dmitriev, who in a paper published in Russian in 1898 had formalized Ricardo’s approach to the theory of value and distribution. Dmitriev had shown that the rate of profits and relative prices can be determined, once “the technical conditions of production of commodities (includ­ing the commodity labour-power) are given” (Bortkiewicz 1906-07, pt 2: 39). Besides the system of production and the real wage rate (that is, the remuneration of the “commod­ity labour power”) no other data were needed.