8 /10 1 Votes8
Country United States Pages 398 Originally published 1942 Page count 398 | 4/5 Goodreads Language English ISBN 978-0853450795 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Similar Works by Paul Sweezy, Capitalism books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Theory of Capitalist Development is a 1942 book by Paul Sweezy, in which Sweezy expounded and defended the labor theory of value. It has received praise as an important work, but Sweezy has also been criticized for misrepresenting Karl Marx's economic theories.
Contents
Summary
Sweezy expounded and defended the labor theory of value.
Scholarly reception
Eric Roll reviewed The Theory of Capitalist Development positively in The Yale Law Journal, calling it an important work. Roll wrote that its appearance alongside Joan Robinson's An Essay on Marxian Economics (1942) represented "a significant landmark in the development of economic thinking." Roll credited Sweezy with providing "the first modern comprehensive and systematic exposition of Marxian economic theory in the English language."
Political scientist David McLellan called Sweezy's work the best modern continuation of Marx's economic ideas. Marxist theorist Ernest Mandel accused Sweezy of several misunderstandings of Marx, including confusing prices of production and market prices, a mistake he saw as a result of Sweezy's employment of the work of Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz, a critic of Marx. Mandel compared Sweezy's misunderstandings of Marx to those later made by economist Ian Steedman in his Marx after Sraffa (1977).