Lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living

Marx vs mathematical economics

Hugo Gellert represents the commodity as embodying labor and as sliced up into coins. It’s unfortunate Marx was so bad at maths. Well, bad isn’t quite the right word, as he often expends a great deal of effort and creativity establishing the various mathematical conclusions he needs to establish, even when the conclusions are obvious. It’s rather wearing slogging through a whole chapter to finally get to the conclusion and realize what Marx has been trying to point out is the difference between the mean and the median. I do wonder what mathematical education was like in 19th century Prussia; Marx was an educated man, but seems to know less maths than you’ld expect from an 11 year old today.

Except, this mathematical inability turns out to reveal something important about Marx’s method. Read moreā†“