Marxian Economics

by John Eatwell (Editor), Murray Milgate (Editor), Peter Newman (Editor)

Each volume in this series includes a collection of authoritative essays from The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics , selected by the Editors to illustrate the range and diversity of economics thought on a particular topic. Marxian analysis forges coherent links between economics, history, sociology and philosophy, the unique scale of the enterprise being its enduring strength. These essays provide fascinating insights into the lively debates on the foundation of the entire structure, Marxian Economics .

Genres: Economics

383 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1990

Reviews

[Lillian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although on the whole I found this to be worth reading I think it was a pretty mixed bag. There were several excellent articles intermixed with short biographical profiles of notable marxist/marxian economic thinkers, and as I'm re-reading Capital Vol. 1 at the moment it was a helpful find in the library. I didn't necessarily find myself in agreement with everything presented but I consider at least some of the articles I didn't agree with challenging and thoughtful critiques of some aspects of marxian theory.

However, there were some items which were not so engaging, especially an article by Ernest Gellner which didn't seem to have anything to do with economic thought at all and was much more concerned with portraying (or rather, caricaturing) marxist thought as a kind of neo-religion and trotting out some fairly standard lines about totalitarianism etcetera that belonged more in a newspaper opinion column than a serious book about economics.

I do have some other issues with the book, it seems to me that at least with the edition I read wasnt put together with a great deal of attention as the text is littered with typographical errors. However, I'd say overall this book is a fairly useful resource to people wishing to understand more about marxian economics, albeit one that should be read critically and carefully given the range of opinion and disagreements between many of the contributors.

[Kenghis Khan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting introduction. Some great leaders in the field conveying generally accessible entries, but other entries are poorly developed and suffer from a lack of clarity and some weak typesetting and editing which doesn't help - e.g. variables being inconsistent and unstated assumptions. Sadly the more qualitive chapters tended to be better than the quantitative ones but there were some amazing quantitative empirical chapters as well.

Overall though this is a great volume that underscores how economics is, at heart, a historical science much like geology and ethnography.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

some of the essays are useful. Structurally frustrating.