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Jack Schwartz Meets Karl Marx

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Abstract

Participating in a group study of Karl Marx’s classic Capital led Jack Schwartz in unexpected directions. He was surprised to find, not only that Marx’s celebrated labor theory of value is in blatant contradiction to empirical reality, but also that Marx was quite aware of this. To get around this roadblock, Marx had returned to the Hegelian dialectic that he and Friedrich Engels had previously abandoned and even ridiculed.

I am grateful to Judith Dunford who read a draft of this article and made a number of very helpful suggestions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    [9], p. 335.

  2. 2.

    [13, 14].

  3. 3.

    See the obituary http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/07/us/07bookchin.html.

  4. 4.

    Of course this brief summary does not give an adequate account of Weber’s ideas. See also: http://www.bopsecrets.org/images/weber.pdf and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Movement_For_a_Democracy_of_Content.

  5. 5.

    I found this text on the Internet. For the original German, see [13, 14], pp. 43–44.

  6. 6.

    Joe’s article [15] was in #31 of CI dated October-November 1957, along with a brief article by my wife Virginia based on one of her KPFA broadcasts and an article by Jack on the dangers of nuclear experimentation.

  7. 7.

    [5], p. 43. The same comparison appears, but less pointedly, in Capital, [16], p. 591.

  8. 8.

    [8], p. 837.

  9. 9.

    See [9], pp. 298–301.

  10. 10.

    I’m grateful to Diana Schwartz who provided me with a copy of this letter.

  11. 11.

    [6], pp. 68–72.

  12. 12.

    [3], p. 25.

  13. 13.

    [12], p. 180.

  14. 14.

    [9], p. 106.

  15. 15.

    Engels’s unflagging support for Marx and his family continued for many years as the projected publication dates of the successive volumes of Capital receded into the future. See [7].

  16. 16.

    [12], p. 102.

  17. 17.

    [6], pp. 43–45.

  18. 18.

    [11], p. 335.

  19. 19.

    To emphasize the point, note that although 1×0=2×0, if it were permissible to divide both sides of this equality by 0, we would reach the absurd conclusion 1=2.

  20. 20.

    [9], p. 57.

  21. 21.

    [9], p. 165. Again the reference is to the German original; the translation is from the Internet.

  22. 22.

    For a coherent account of the gradual development of a proper foundation for the calculus, see [2], pp. 260–273.

  23. 23.

    See [5], pp. 298–301 for a description of the poor state of the papers from which Engels had to work in preparing Volume II and especially, Volume III.

  24. 24.

    [1], p. 28.

  25. 25.

    [10], p. 132.

  26. 26.

    [4], p. 134.

  27. 27.

    As I write, we are experiencing economic conditions arising in considerable part from reliance on the monetary theories of Milton Friedman, theories that were roundly criticized in Jack’s book [4].

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  1. Courant Institute of Mathem. Science, New York University, Mercer Street 251, New York, 10012, NY, USA

    Martin Davis

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  1. Courant Institute of Mathem. Science, New York University, Mercer Street 251, New York, 10012, New York, USA

    Martin Davis

  2. Courant Institute of Mathem. Science, New York University, Mercer Street 251, New York, 10012, New York, USA

    Edmond Schonberg

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Davis, M. (2013). Jack Schwartz Meets Karl Marx. In: Davis, M., Schonberg, E. (eds) From Linear Operators to Computational Biology. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-4282-9_3

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