The Objectivity of Value versus the Idea of Habitual Action

Martha Campbell

Chapter 3 in The Constitution of Capital, 2004, pp 63-87 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Capitalist Production; Neoclassical Theory; Labour Theory; Symbol Idea; Social Wealth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-4039-3864-0_3

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DOI: 10.1057/9781403938640_3

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