SOURCE: Ronald L. Meek, “Economics and Ideology and Other Essays: Studies in the Development of Economic Thought”. P.93-94, 1967.

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         KARL MARX'S ECONOMIC METHOD




Most of the great “heroic” economic models of a dynamic character which have been put forward in the course of the history of economic thought - those of Quesnay, Smith, Ricardo and Marx, for example possess certain important characteristics in common. The model-builder usually begins, on the basis of a preliminary examination of the facts, by adopting what Schumpeter has called a "vision" of the economic process. In other words, he begins by orienting himself towards some key factor or factors which he regards as being of vital causal significance so far as the structure and development of the economic system as a whole are concerned. Wi th this vision uppermost in his mind, he then proceeds to a more thorough examination of the economic facts both of the present situation and of the past situations which have led up to it, and arranges these facts in order on what might be called a scale of relevance. Their position on this scale will depend upon such factors as the particular vision which the model-builder has adopted, his political and social sympathies, and the extent to which the facts display uniformities and regularities which promise to be capable of causal analysis in terms of the postulation of "laws" and "tendencies".


Taking the facts which he has placed at the top of the scale as his foundation, the model-builder proceeds to develop certain concepts, categories and methods of classification which he believes will help him to provide a generalized explanation of the structure and development of the economy. In this part of his work he has necessarily to rely to some extent on concept-material inherited from the past, but he also tries to work out new analytical devices of his own. The particular analytical devices which he employs - his tools and techniques, as it were - are thus by no means arbitrarily chosen. To quite a large extent they are dependent upon the nature of his vision, the nature of the primary facts which they are to be used to explain, and the nature of the general method of analysis which he decides to adopt. The degree of their dependence upon these factors, however, varies from one device to another. Whereas some of the devices may be useless or even harmful when the facts to be analyzed and the orientation, aim and general method of analysis of the model-builder are radically different, others may have a greater degree of general applicability. Some may well prove useful when applied to other forms of market economy, and some may even be "universal" in the sense in which, say, statistical techniques are "universal".


With the aid of these devices, then, the model-builder proceeds to the theoretical analysis of the particular economic facts which he ha s place at the top of his scale of relevance,. He endeavors explanation of the uniformities and regularities which he has observed in these facts; he affords these explanations the status of "laws" or "tendencies"; and he gathers together these laws , and tendencies into his first theoretical approximation. He then takes into account the facts next in order on the scale of relevance, from which he has hitherto abstracted, enquires into the extent to which their introduction into the picture requires a modification of the laws and tendencies of the first approximation, and thus arrives at his second approximation. He may well then proceed to a third, fourth, etc., approximation, progressively taking into account facts which he has placed lower and lower on the scale of relevance; but obviously there must come a time when it is not worth while to proceed any further down the scale. At the point where the basic laws and tendencies begin to be submerged beneath the exceptions and qualifications, he usually stops. The facts further down in the scale of relevance are simply abstracted from.


The final task is to use the model f6r the purpose of making concrete predictions - a task which is carried out largely by, extrapolating the laws and tendencies into the future, on the express or implied assumption that the economic facts will continue to maintain their assumed position on the scale of relevance. The model which finally emerges is therefore compounded of elements not only of the past and present but also of the future.


This description of the model-building process is necessarily somewhat schematic, and I certainly do not mean to imply that all the great model-builders consciously adopted this intricate methodological approach. In essence, however, this was the method which most of them did in actual fact adopt, whether or not they were fully aware of what they were doing. It does help, I think, to have this general scheme in mind when we are analyzing the economic work of a thinker like Marx - particularly if we are analyzing it with a view to discovering whether and in what sense it is still relevant today.







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I Parts of this essay are based on an article entitled "Karl Marx's Economics", which was originally published in The New Reasoner, Autumn 1959.