Productive and Unproductive Labor and the Rate of Profit in Malthus, Ricardo, and Marx

Robert Chernomas

Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 1990, vol. 12, issue 1, 81-95

Abstract: A principal objective of Malthus, Ricardo, and Marx was to discover the laws that regulate and limit the growth of the wealth of nations and, in particular, the unprecedented growth of capitalism. The central theme of this paper is that their productive and unproductive labor concepts are critical to understanding their analyses of capitalist growth and the tendency for the rate of profit to fall which regulates and limits this growth. The way in which they identify productive and unproductive labor and how they apply this distinction is critical to understanding the common thread that runs through and marks the differences between them.

Date: 1990
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