Marx on Technological Change: The Ricardian Heritage

Abstract

Marx’s view on the long-term development of the capitalist economy hinges crucially on his opinion on which form of technological change can be expected to dominate in capitalist economic conditions. He was of the opinion that the prevalent form of technological change will be characterised by a rising ‘organic composition of capital’ and argued that this form is the one that is ‘congenial’ to the very mode of production under consideration. With a rise in the organic composition, he continued, the trend of the general rate of profit is bound to be downwards. The fall in the rate of profit is in turn considered as an expression of the transient nature of the capitalist mode of production. Hence, given the importance of technological change in Marx’s intellectual project — the analysis of ‘bourgeois society’ — there is hardly a need to justify a concern with his views on the bias of that change.

Paper presented at the conference on ‘Marxian Economics:A Centenary Appraisal. International Conference on Karl Marx’s Third Volume of Capital: 1894–1994’, University of Bergamo, 15–17 December, 1994. I am grateful to the participants of the conference, who provided useful suggestions, and to an anonymous referee for his comments.