ABSTRACT
Both Marxist and non-Marxist economic theories seem to share a concern with the determination and distribution of incomes in capitalist societies. However, the terms used to articulate such concerns-for example, “income, wages and profits”—have very different meanings within different theories. We believe that Marx laid the basis for unique concepts of these terms which connected specifically to his class analysis of the capitalist system. We also think that these class-linked notions of income and income distribution are radically different from and incompatible with the major non-Marxist theorizations. Thus, when Marxists miss or ignore the specific differences of Marxist concepts of income and its distribution, they thereby risk breaking the connection between their work and the rest of Marx’s class analysis. This occurs precisely when they rely on non-Marxist notions of income and its distribution.
