GERRIT GORTER
The present study of economics did not, of course, come out of thin air. Although thinkers in classical Greece already reflected on what we now call economics, it was largely in the eighteenth century that systematic thought on the subject began.
Two conceptual tools—the economic cycle and the idea of the invisible hand—date from that century and are still in use today, both in academic research and in education.
This site contains twenty-five portraits of important economists. Each offers a biographical sketch together with an indication of his (and, in one case, her) significance for the development of economic thought. They claim no more than to provide a first introduction to the lives and works of these pioneers.
These articles originally appeared in Dutch in the Tijdschrift voor het Economisch Onderwijs and were published on the website of Gerrit Gorter. The English translations are by Folkert Gorter.
Index
François Quesnay
Adam Smith
Thomas Robert Malthus
Jean-Baptiste Say
David Ricardo
Antoine Augustin Cournot
John Stuart Mill
Karl Marx
Walras
Carl Menger
Alfred Marshall
Vilfredo Pareto Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk
Knut Wicksell
Max Weber
Irving Fisher
Sam de Wolff
John Maynard Keynes
Joseph Alois Schumpeter
Joan Robinson
Jan Tinbergen
John Hicks
John Kenneth Galbraith
Milton Friedman
Paul Samuelson
Karl Marx
Prussia 1818–1883
Karl Marx’s life was no bed of roses. It was a long sequence of resistance, expulsions, and above all, financial hardship. He was born in 1818 in the German town of Trier. His father was a well-off Jewish lawyer. Karl studied philosophy at the universities of Bonn and Berlin. In the latter city, he joined a group of left-leaning academics, which made him rather suspect in the eyes of conservative Prussia.
He began writing for the Rheinische Zeitung, a liberal newspaper published in Cologne. When the paper was banned from publication, Marx moved to Paris, accompanied by his wife, Jenny von Westphalen. There he met (for the second time, incidentally) Friedrich Engels, with whom he formed a lifelong friendship.
In Paris, Marx’s pen did not rest, and it wasn’t long before he was no longer welcome in France either. He ended up in Brussels, where in 1848, together with Engels, he brought the famed Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei into the world. The Belgian government was not particularly pleased, and promptly expelled Marx. He began a period of wandering that took him back to Paris and then to Germany, where he published the Neue Rheinische Zeitung for nearly a year. Expelled once again, he returned to Paris, and eventually, at the age of thirty-one, traveled on to London as an exile — the city where he would remain for the rest of his life.
The influence of the wealthy industrialist Engels on Marx was far-reaching. It was likely Engels who first drew Marx’s attention to economic problems. And without Engels’ financial support, Marx would never have made it in London. Many of Marx’s writings came about in collaboration with Engels, although the latter always credited Marx with having provided most of the ideas.
In London, Marx worked in the reading room of the British Museum on a major three-volume work, which would later be titled Das Kapital. Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie. Of these, Marx lived to see only the first volume published, in 1867. Engels edited and published the remaining two volumes, in 1885 and 1894 respectively.
Marx’s work can be characterized as an analysis of capitalism. A central concept in his theory is exploitation, which can be defined — roughly — as the appropriation of surplus value by the owners of capital. Surplus value is the difference between the revenues and the cost of labor as a factor of production. Marx sought to show that the formation of surplus value would ultimately lead to a falling rate of profit (in line with Ricardo’s theory), and eventually to the complete collapse of the capitalist system.
So far, few of Marx’s predictions have come to pass. Capitalism is very much alive, the working class has not been impoverished but is wealthier than ever, and is more interested in a football match than in a revolution. Still, there has probably never been an economist who exerted greater influence on the course of history. The former Soviet Union, in particular, spent seventy years in the grip of what was ultimately a failed experiment with a planned economy. Incidentally, Marx never explained what a planned economy should actually look like. He merely predicted the collapse of capitalism and was convinced that a communist society would rise from its ruins. But how that was supposed to happen — Marx was happy to leave that to others.
It’s worth noting the role Marx played in the First International Workingmen’s Association. This “International” was made up of delegates from workers’ and communist movements from various countries, with the goal of coordinating their activities. The first International began in 1864 and collapsed in 1876 due to internal conflicts.
From 1873 onward, Marx’s health began to deteriorate. The death of his wife in 1881 affected him deeply. He did not outlive her by much: he died in 1883. You can visit his grave at London’s Highgate Cemetery.