Critique of political economy or simply the first critique of economy is a form of

social critique Social criticism is a form of academic or journalistic criticism focusing on social issues in contemporary society, in respect to perceived injustices and Power (social and political), power relations in general. Social criticism of the Enlighte ...

that rejects the conventional ways of distributing resources. The critique also rejects what its advocates believe are unrealistic

axiom An axiom, postulate, or assumption is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments. The word comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning 'that which is thought worthy or ...

s, flawed historical assumptions, and taking conventional economic mechanisms as a given or as

transhistorical Transhistoricity is the quality of holding throughout human history, not merely within the frame of reference of a particular form of society at a particular stage of historical development. An entity or concept that has transhistoricity is said to ...

(true for all human societies for all time). The critique asserts the conventional economy is merely one of many types of historically specific ways to distribute resources, which emerged along with

modernity Modernity, a topic in the humanities and social sciences, is both a historical period (the modern era) and the ensemble of particular Society, socio-Culture, cultural Norm (social), norms, attitudes and practices that arose in the wake of the ...

(post-Renaissance Western society). Critics of political economy do not necessarily aim to create their own theories regarding how to administer economies. Critics of economy commonly view "the economy" as a bundle of concepts and societal and normative practices, rather than being the result of any self-evident economic laws. Hence, they also tend to consider the views which are commonplace within the field of economics as faulty, or simply as

pseudoscience Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that claim to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method. Pseudoscience is often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable cl ...

. There are multiple critiques of

political economy Political or comparative economy is a branch of political science and economics studying economic systems (e.g. Marketplace, markets and national economies) and their governance by political systems (e.g. law, institutions, and government). Wi ...

today, but what they have in common is critique of what critics of political economy tend to view as

dogma Dogma, in its broadest sense, is any belief held definitively and without the possibility of reform. It may be in the form of an official system of principles or doctrines of a religion, such as Judaism, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, or Islam ...

, i.e. claims of the economy as a necessary and transhistorical societal category.

John Ruskin

In the 1860s,

John Ruskin John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English polymath a writer, lecturer, art historian, art critic, draughtsman and philanthropist of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as art, architecture, Critique of politic ...

published his essay ''

Unto This Last ''Unto This Last'' is an essay critical of economics by John Ruskin, who published the first chapter between August and December 1860 in the monthly journal ''Cornhill Magazine'' in four articles. Its stated aim is to define wealth and show that th ...

'' which he came to view as his central work. The essay was originally written as a series of publications in a magazine, which ended up having to suspend the publications, due to the severe controversy the articles caused. While Ruskin is generally known as an important art critic, his study of the history of art was a component that gave him some insight into the pre-modern societies of the Middle Ages, and their social organisation which he was able to contrast to his contemporary condition. Ruskin attempted to mobilize a methodological/scientific critique of new political economy, as it was envisaged by the

classical economists Classical economics, also known as the classical school of economics, or classical political economy, is a school of thought in political economy that flourished, primarily in Britain, in the late 18th and early-to-mid 19th century. It includes ...

. Ruskin viewed the concept of "the economy" as a kind of "collective mental lapse or collective

concussion A concussion, also known as a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), is a head injury that temporarily affects brain functioning. Symptoms may include headache, dizziness, difficulty with thinking and concentration, sleep disturbances, a brief ...

", and he viewed the emphasis on precision in industry as a kind of

slavery Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavemen ...

. Due to the fact that Ruskin regarded the political economy of his time as "mad", he said that it interested him as much as "a science of gymnastics which had as its axiom that human beings in fact didn't have skeletons." Ruskin declared that economics rests on positions that are exactly the same. According to Ruskin, these axioms resemble thinking, not that human beings do not have skeletons but rather that they consist entirely of skeletons. Ruskin wrote that he did not oppose the truth value of this theory, he merely wrote that he denied that it could be successfully implemented in the world in the state it was in. He took issue with the ideas of "natural laws", " economic man", and the prevailing notion of value and aimed to point out the inconsistencies in the thinking of the economists. He critiqued

John Stuart Mill John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, politician and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of liberalism and social liberalism, he contributed widely to s ...

for thinking that "the opinions of the public" was reflected adequately by market prices. Ruskin coined ''

illth Illth, coined by John Ruskin in the 1860s, is the reverse of wealth in the sense of ''ill'' being the opposite of ''well''. In Ruskin's view: :Wealth, therefore, is "The possession of the valuable by the valiant"; and in considering it as a powe ...

'' to refer to unproductive wealth. Ruskin is not well known as a political thinker today but when in 1906 a journalist asked the first generation of Labour Party members of Parliament in the United Kingdom which book had most inspired them, ''Unto This Last'' emerged as an undisputed chart-topper.

Criticism

Karl Marx Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels) ...

and

Friedrich Engels Friedrich Engels ( ;"Engels"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''.Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

made them reject him as a "feudal utopian".

Karl Marx

Marx is probably the most famous critic of political economy, with his three-volume ''magnum opus'', (''Capital: A Critique of Political Economy''), as one of his most famous books (''Capital'' volume 1 appeared in 1867; the later volumes were published posthumously, by

Friedrich Engels Friedrich Engels ( ;"Engels"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. Marx's companion Engels engaged in critique of political economy in his 1844 ''

Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy 'Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy' is an article by Friedrich Engels, written in 1843, and first published in German, under the title 'Umrisse zu einer Kritik der Nationalökonomie' in 1844 in the '' Deutsch–Französische Jahrbücher. ...

'', which helped lay down some of the foundation for what Marx was to take further. Marx's critique of political economy encompasses the study and exposition of the mode of production and ideology of bourgeois society, and its critique of (real abstraction), that is, the fundamental economic, i.e. social categories present within what for Marx is the capitalist mode of production, for example

abstract labour Abstract labour and concrete labour refer to a distinction made by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy. It refers to the difference between human labour in general as economically valuable worktime versus human labour as a particular a ...

. In contrast to the classics of political economy, Marx was concerned with lifting the ideological veil of surface phenomena and exposing the norms, axioms, social relations, institutions, and so on, that reproduced capital. The central works in Marx's critique of political economy are , ''

A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy ''A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy'' () is a book by Karl Marx, first published in 1859. The book is mainly a critique of political economy achieved by critiquing the writings of the leading theoretical exponents of capitalism ...

'' and . Marx's works are often explicitly named for example: ''A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy'', or ''Capital: A Critique of Political Economy''. Marx cited Engels' article ''

'' several times in .

Trotskyists Trotskyism (, ) is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as a ...

and other

Leninists Leninism (, ) is a political ideology developed by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that proposes the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat led by a revolutionary vanguard party as the political prelude to the estab ...

tend to implicitly or explicitly argue that these works constitute and or contain "economical theories", which can be studied independently. This was also the common understanding of Marx's work on economy that was put forward by Soviet orthodoxy. Since this is the case, it remains a matter of controversy whether Marx's critique of political economy is to be understood as a critique of the political economy or, according to the orthodox interpretation, another theory of economics. The critique of political economy is considered the most important and most central project within Marxism, which has led (and continues to lead) to numerous approaches advanced within and outside academic circles.

Foundational concepts

* Labour and capital are historically specific forms of social relations, and labour is not the source of all wealth. * Labour is the other side of the same coin as capital, labour presupposes capital, and capital presupposes labour. * Money is not in any way something transhistorical or natural, which goes for the whole economy as well as the other categories specific to the

mode of production In the Marxist theory of historical materialism, a mode of production (German: ''Produktionsweise'', "the way of producing") is a specific combination of the: * Productive forces: these include human labour power and means of production (tools, ...

, and its gains in value are constituted due to social relations rather than any inherent qualities.

Marx's critique of the methodology of economics

Marx described the view of contemporaneous economists and theologians on social phenomena as similarly unscientific. Marx continued to emphasize the ahistorical thought of the modern economists in the , where he among other endeavors, critiqued the liberal economist Mill. Marx also viewed the viewpoints which implicitly regarded the institutions of modernity as transhistorical as fundamentally deprived of historical understanding. According to the French philosopher

Jacques Rancière Jacques Rancière (; ; born 10 June 1940) is a French philosopher, Professor of Philosophy at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Paris VIII: Vincennes—Saint-Denis. After co-authoring ...

, what Marx understood, and what the economists failed to recognise was that the

value-form The value-form or form of value (''"Wertform"'' in German) is an important concept in Karl Marx's critique of political economy, discussed in the first chapter of ''Capital, Volume 1''. It refers to the ''social form'' of tradeable things as un ...

is not something essential, but merely a part of the capitalist mode of production.

On scientifically adequate research

Marx offered a critique regarding the idea of people being able to conduct scientific research in this domain. He wrote:

On vulgar economists

Marx criticized what he regarded as the false critique of political economy of his contemporaries, sometimes even more forcefully than when he critiqued the classical economists he described as vulgar economists. In Marx's view, the errors of some socialist authors led the workers' movement astray. He rejected

Ferdinand Lassalle Ferdinand Johann Gottlieb Lassalle (born Lassal; 11 April 1825 – 31 August 1864) was a German jurist, philosopher, socialist, and political activist. Remembered as an initiator of the German labour movement, he developed the theory of state s ...

iron law of wages The iron law of wages is a proposed law of economics that asserts that real wages always tend, in the long run, toward the minimum wage necessary to sustain the life of the worker. The theory was first named by Ferdinand Lassalle in the mid-n ...

, which he regarded as mere phraseology. He also rejected

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (, ; ; 1809 – 19 January 1865) was a French anarchist, socialist, philosopher, and economist who founded mutualist philosophy and is considered by many to be the "father of anarchism". He was the first person to ca ...

's attempts to do what Hegel did for religion, law, and so on for political economy, as well as regarding what is social as subjective, and what was societal as merely subjective abstractions.

Interpretations of Marx's critique of political economy

Some scholars view Marx's critique as being a critique of

commodity fetishism In Marxist philosophy, commodity fetishism is the perception of the economic relationships of production and exchange as relationships among things (money and merchandise) rather than among people. As a form of Reification (Marxism), reificati ...

and the manner in which this concept expresses a criticism of modernity and its modes of

socialisation In sociology, socialization (also socialisation – see spelling differences) is the process of internalizing the norms and ideologies of society. Socialization encompasses both learning and teaching and is thus "the means by which social and ...

. Other scholars who engage with Marx's critique of political economy affirm the critique might assume a more

Kantian Kantianism () is the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher born in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia). The term ''Kantianism'' or ''Kantian'' is sometimes also used to describe contemporary positions in philosophy of mi ...

sense, which transforms "Marx's work into a foray concerning the imminent

antinomies In philosophy, an antinomy (Ancient Greek: 'against' + 'law') is a real or apparent contradiction between two conclusions, both of which seem justified. It is a term used in logic and epistemology, particularly in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. ...

that lie at the heart of capitalism, where politics and economy intertwine in impossible ways."

Contemporary Marxian

Regarding contemporary Marxian critiques of political economy, these are generally accompanied by a rejection of the more naturalistically influenced readings of Marx, as well as other readings later deemed (worldview Marxism), that was popularised as late as toward the end of the 20th century. According to some scholars in this field, contemporary critiques of political economy and contemporary German have been at least partly neglected in the anglophone world.

Differences between critics of economy and critics of economical issues

One may differentiate between those who engage in critique of political economy, which takes on a more

ontological Ontology is the philosophical study of being. It is traditionally understood as the subdiscipline of metaphysics focused on the most general features of reality. As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of reality and every ...

character, where authors criticise the fundamental concepts and social categories which reproduce the economy as an entity. While other authors, which the critics of political economy would consider only to deal with the surface phenomena of the economy, have a naturalized understanding of these social processes. Hence the epistemological differences between critics of economy and economists can also at times be very large. In the eyes of the critics of political economy, the critics of economic issues merely critique certain practices in attempts to implicitly or explicitly rescue the political economy; these authors might for example propose

universal basic income Universal basic income (UBI) is a social welfare proposal in which all citizens of a given population regularly receive a minimum income in the form of an unconditional transfer payment, i.e., without a means test or need to perform Work (hu ...

or to implement a

planned economy A planned economy is a type of economic system where investment, production and the allocation of capital goods takes place according to economy-wide economic plans and production plans. A planned economy may use centralized, decentralized, ...

Others

Contemporary

Economists

* Richard D. Wolff *

Steve Keen Steve Keen (born 28 March 1953) is an Australian economist and author. He considers himself a post-Keynesian, criticising neoclassical economics as inconsistent, unscientific, and empirically unsupported. Keen was formerly an associate profe ...

John Komlos John Komlos (born 28 December 1944) is an American economic historian of Hungarian descent and former holder of the chair of economic history at the University of Munich. Personal life Komlos was born in 1944 in Budapest in Hungary during the ...

* Edward S. HermanHerman, Edward S. and Noam Chomsky. ''Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.'' New York, Pantheon Books, 2002. *

Yanis Varoufakis Ioannis Georgiou "Yanis" Varoufakis (; born 24 March 1961) is a Greek economist and politician. Since 2018, he has been Secretary-General of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25), a left-wing pan-European political party he co-founde ...

Sociologists

Orlando Patterson Horace Orlando Patterson (born 5 June 1940) is a Jamaican-American historian and sociologist known for his work on the history of race and slavery in the United States and Jamaica, as well as the sociology of development. He is currently the Jo ...

, John Cowles professor of sociology at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

, argues that economics is a pseudoscience.

Philosophers

Slavoj Žižek Slavoj Žižek ( ; ; born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian Marxist philosopher, cultural theorist and public intellectual. He is the international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, Global Distin ...

Linguists

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American professor and public intellectual known for his work in linguistics, political activism, and social criticism. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is also a ...

Historians

Moishe Postone Moishe Postone (17 April 1942 – 19 March 2018) was a Canadian historian, sociologist, political philosopher and social theorist. He was a professor of history at the University of Chicago, where he was part of the Committee on Jewish Studi ...

Historical

Historians

Thomas Carlyle Thomas Carlyle (4 December 17955 February 1881) was a Scottish essayist, historian, and philosopher. Known as the "Sage writing, sage of Chelsea, London, Chelsea", his writings strongly influenced the intellectual and artistic culture of the V ...

Roman Rosdolsky Roman Osipovich Rosdolsky (, ''Roman Osypovyč Rozdol's'kyj''; July 19, 1898 – October 20, 1967) was a prominent Ukrainian Marxian scholar, historian and political theorist. Rodolsky's book of 1968 entitled ''Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Mar ...

Poets

Carl Jonas Love Almqvist Carl Jonas Love Ludvig Almqvist (28 November 1793 – 26 September 1866) was a Swedish author, romantic poet, romantic critic of political economy, realist, composer and social critic. Biography Carl Jonas Love Almqvist was born in Stockhol ...

August Strindberg Johan August Strindberg (; ; 22 January 184914 May 1912) was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist, and painter.Lane (1998), 1040. A prolific writer who often drew directly on his personal experience, Strindberg wrote more than 60 pla ...

Miscellaneous

Paul Lafargue Paul Lafargue (; ; 15 January 1842 – 25 November 1911) was a Cuban-born French political writer, economist, journalist, literary critic, and activist; he was Karl Marx's son-in-law, having married his second daughter, Laura. His best known ...

References

Bibliography

* * Johnsdotter S, Carlbom A, editors. ''Goda sanningar: debattklimatet och den kritiska forskningens villkor''. Lund: Nordic Academic Press; 2010. *

Braudel Fernand Paul Achille Braudel (; 24 August 1902 – 27 November 1985) was a French historian. His scholarship focused on three main projects: ''The Mediterranean'' (1923–49, then 1949–66), ''Civilization and Capitalism'' (1955–79), and the un ...

F. ''Kapitalismens dynamik''. (''

La Dynamique du Capitalisme LA most frequently refers to Los Angeles, the second most populous city in the United States of America. La, LA, or L.A. may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * La (musical note), or A, the sixth note *"L.A.", a song by Elliott Smi ...

)'' y utg.

Gothenburg Gothenburg ( ; ) is the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, second-largest city in Sweden, after the capital Stockholm, and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated by the Kattegat on the west coast of Sweden, it is the gub ...

: Daidalos; 2001. * Ankarloo D, editor. ''Marx ekonomikritik''. Stockholm: Tidskriftsföreningen Fronesis; 2008. * Eklund K. ''Vår ekonomi: en introduktion till världsekonomin.'' Upplaga 15. Lund: Studentlitteratur; 2020. * Tidskriftsföreningen Fronesis. ''Arbete''. Stockholm: Tidskriftsfören. Fronesis; 2002. * Baudrillard J. ''

The Mirror of Production ''The Mirror of Production'' () is a 1973 book by French sociologist and philosopher Jean Baudrillard. It is a systematic critique of Marxism. Baudrillard's thesis is that Karl Marx's theory of historical materialism is too rooted in assumptio ...

''. Telos Press; 1975. * Marx K. ''Till kritiken av den politiska ekonomin''. y utg. Göteborg: Proletärkultur; 1981.

External links

1995–2004 Conference Papers – Critique Of Political Economy / International Working Group on Value Theory (COPE-IWGVT)

* ttp://crisiscritique.org/political11/CC3_Complete-1.pdf Critique of Political Economy – a 2016 edition of the philosophy journal: crisis and critique * A lecture regarding Marx's critique of political economy.
Texts translated to english from a contemporary German group critical of political economy
{{Political philosophy Criticisms Critique of political economy Philosophy of economics Social philosophy

John Ruskin

Criticism

Karl Marx

Foundational concepts

Marx's critique of the methodology of economics

On scientifically adequate research

On vulgar economists

Interpretations of Marx's critique of political economy

Contemporary Marxian

Differences between critics of economy and critics of economical issues

Others

Contemporary

Economists

Sociologists

Philosophers

Linguists

Historians

Historical

Historians

Poets

Miscellaneous

See also

References

Bibliography

Further reading

Articles

Scholarly articles

Romantic critique of political economy articles

Books

Critique of political economy

On Marx critique of political economy

= Neue Marx-Lektüre

= History

= Classic works

Essays

External links