Abstract
Marx warns in the Preface to Capital that he will deal with individuals ‘only in so far as they are … the bearers of particular class relations and interests’.1 Veblen challenges Marx precisely on this score, maintaining that class interest does not provide ‘a competent’ explanation of economic institutions and their transformation over time.2 In reviving this challenge more recently, Hodgson explains that the defect Veblen found in Marx’s analysis is that ‘it failed to connect the actor with the specific structures and institutions, and failed to explain thereby human motivation and action’.3 Hodgson, like Veblen, proposes that this crucial link is established when economic activity is conceived in terms of habit. This chapter contrasts these two ways of explaining economic activity, with the aim of discovering how Marx would answer Veblen.
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Campbell, M. (2004). The Objectivity of Value versus the Idea of Habitual Action. In: Bellofiore, R., Taylor, N. (eds) The Constitution of Capital. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403938640_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403938640_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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