Karl Marx
According to Marx (Das Kapital, 1867), the social surplus gets exploited by the capitalist class. The wage rates are kept low by the existence of a reserve army (the stock of unemployed labourers) which capitalists intend to maintain by continuously adopting labour-saving technical progress. In order to improve the living conditions of common people, the capitalist system should be abolished. In Marx’s view, the revolution by the labouring class is necessary in order to improve the standard of living. He did not see any possibility of improving the conditions of labourers within a capitalist economy.
More on the topic Karl Marx:
- Day R.B., Gaido D.F. (eds). Responses to Marx’s Capital. Leiden: Brill,2017. — 856 p, 2017
- DOCUMENT 11 Karl Marx's Formulation of the Problem of Theoretical Economics (1905)
- Introduction
- Contents
- The theory of value and prices
- The Response to the First Volume of Capital (1867)
- Friedrich List has been characterized as one of the most renowned German economists, along with Karl Marx (Hauser 1989: 30).
- Bibliography
- By most Eurocentric accounts, the nineteenth was the most capitalist of centuries. The expansion of trade and technological change in the now affluent countries of Britain, France, and the U.S. gained visible momentum.
- From Theories of the Entrepreneur to the Marginalist Theory of the Firm