- 著者
-
岡田 元浩
- 出版者
- The Japanease Society for the History of Economic Thought
- 雑誌
- 経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.52, no.2, pp.46-62, 2011 (Released:2019-08-20)
- 被引用文献数
-
2
2
Abstract:
This paper compares Léon Walras’s and Marx’s thoughts on labour exchange, thereby
illuminating the latter’s perspective that can lead to a forceful counterargument to the
neoclassical principle of labour exchange, for which the former affords a foundation.
Both Walras and Marx distinguish between labour ability as a factor of production
and labour as its service, but exhibit a striking contrast in their explanations of the
distinction.
Walras’s distinction between ‘personal faculties’ and labour never attempts to reveal
the peculiarities of the relationship they share. Walras essentially equates the relationship
between the two with that between non-human factors and their respective
services by stripping the former of human elements. This not only allows labour exchange
to be incorporated into Walras’s general equilibrium system but also provides
the groundwork for its neoclassical principle, which, on the basis of marginal theory,
assumes work conditions to be determinable through the stylised market adjustment
of the demand and supply of labour on each entrepreneur’s and worker’s maximisation
behaviour.
In contrast, especially in his pre-Capital writings, Marx underlines the worker’s
subjectivity in deciding her labour performance. This implies that the type and intensity
of time-unit labour varies depending on the worker’s will and the constraints
upon it. Accentuating the particular characteristics of the relationship between labour
power and labour in this way, Marx’s arguments lead to the invalidation of the neoclassical
principle of labour exchange and rationalise the intervention of socio-political
factors represented by the labour-capital class struggle in the determination of
work conditions. Thus, this study focuses on the potential of Marx’s labour power-labour
distinction independent of his exploitation theory-the basis of a weighty refutation
of the neoclassical system.
JEL classification numbers: B 13, B 14.