Markets as an Impediment to Economic Progress

Abstract

In Chapter 1, we saw that, in environments such as Babbage’s horse-slaughtering plant, where the land and fixed capital requirements are minimal, markets can perform efficiently. For this reason, much of Marx’s critique of capitalism concentrated on the deformation of social relations that result from the concentration of ownership of the means of production in the hands of the few. This concentration was associated with the rise of capital intensive technologies.