The profit system: how (and why) to deflect the radical critique

Gregory Robson ()
Additional contact information
Gregory Robson: Iowa State University

Constitutional Political Economy, 2024, vol. 35, issue 1, No 5, 109-122

Abstract: Abstract What we may call the Normative Representativeness Requirement (NRR) is a necessary condition on any successful objection to a political-economic system that is decentralized and profit-oriented. This article applies the NRR to what I call “The Radical Critique” of the profit system. I argue that this critique, which is not only historically important (as reported by Marx (Capital: a critique of political economy, C.H. Kerr and Company, Chicago, 1867)) but also continues to circulate (e.g., as reported by Cohen (Why not socialism?, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2009), as reported by Piketty (Capital in the twenty-first century, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2014)), does not meet the NRR. The Radical Critique of diverse forms of the profit system (e.g., laissez-faire or a welfare-state) suffers from a fatal flaw that renders its logical force at best undiscernible.

Keywords: Profitable business; G. A. Cohen; Karl Marx; Worker domination; Capitalism; Exploitation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A1 B0 P0 P1 P2 P3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10602-023-09401-4 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:copoec:v:35:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1007_s10602-023-09401-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/10602/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10602-023-09401-4

Access Statistics for this article

Constitutional Political Economy is currently edited by Roger Congleton and Stefan Voigt

More articles in Constitutional Political Economy from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().