Vulgar Economy

Abstract

Karl Marx used the epithet `vulgar economy' to describe certain analytical positions which, beginning in classical economy in the works of Malthus, Say, some of the post-Ricardians including John Stuart Mill, developed eventually into an `analytical system' (as in Say) and took an `academic form' (as in the writings of Roscher, among others) (see Theories of Surplus Value, Vol. III, pp. 500--502). The epithet was not simply a derogatory label but had thus a specific analytical content and significance. Marx contrasted sharply the `vulgar' from the classical political economy, the latter comprising of `all the economists who since the time of W. Petty have investigated the real internal framework of bourgeois relations of production' (Capital, Vol. I, pp. 174--5). Vulgar economy, while drawing upon the materials provided by scientific political economy --- and therefore lacking in originality --- ruminated instead over the `appearances'. Marx saw, in capitalist production, `more than in any other', a `reality', `the inner physiology of the system' --- which was captured in scientific political economy, in its analysis locating the generation of surplus in production, in its theory explaining the manner in which surplus is appropriated by the owners of the means of production and distributed as the tripartite revenues of rents, profits and wages, and which brought to light the inevitable and endemic conflicts of class interests and thence the contradictions incipient in the processes of generation, distribution and accumulation of surplus. Marx was himself to build his theory on the rudiments provided by political economy. However, this `reality'