Quote Originally Posted by FDG View Post
However, perhaps you were speaking about Marxism as a system which is useful to represent the workings of the industrial economy of the 19th century. I would still disagree with it conceptually, though. Profit is a result of supply and demand; in the 19th century an high supply of workers coupled with an high demand for industrial products produced the situation that Marx analyzed. I do think that a neoclassical system is able to explain the situation more efficiently and elegantly.
Well, I do read Marx's explanation of capitalism, and his development of the communist model as two different projects. I think his critique of capitalism is an important one, and he does identify some of the major causes of crisis that capitalism has suffered (eg. crisis of underconsumption and the Great Depression). I agree that his work is very much a product of its time - it does rely upon the industrial proletariat being a major component of the population, which is something that isn't really the case any longer. The simple two-class model is one that has been subject to much development with in the Marxian tradition, though.

The neoclassical model is certainly more elegant, but I guess it depends on whether you think the model should be elegant, or whether it should reflect reality. (And I'm not arguing that the Marxian model does that.)

Yet I am against an historicist perspective on economics: I believe that systems should work indipendently from their historical and social context. I understand that if you favor the opposite point of view Marx's analysis can be considered as fitting, in that particular historical context, in that particular place.
I see value in Marx's historical perspective, as I don't think capitalism was the mode of production in any of the pre-capitalist systems (anything prior and including mercantilism). But I don't think that's necessarily what you're referring to there. I would argue that neoclassical economics is just as historically contingent as Marxism, it fits with the liberal/democratic form of government, and the social assumptions of its creation. Both schools have had to be changed and developed in order to better account for our present socio-economic situation. My issue with the atemporal nature of neoclassical economics is that it doesn't account for the concept of time (and it assumes a knowable future), but I would argue that the school which best accounts for that is Keynesianism (the non-synthesis ones, though).