ABSTRACT
The transition from the pre-theoretical to the theoretical level took place thanks to classical authors, who paid increasing attention to wages, profit, and capital. The industrial revolution was the phenomenon that drew the attention of economists to the study of profits and capital accumulation. In the Capital, real profit forms during the productive process, whereas its monetary realization must somehow take place through the circulation of goods. The wage-fund, the capital used to pay out wages, is recovered by the capitalists once wage-income is spent by workers in the purchase of wage-goods. Moreover, traditional neoclassical models assume there is a regime of perfect competition for labor and goods, in which companies are price-takers. The observation that large interest groups in the real world are instead price-makers has led neoclassical theoreticians to a new formulation of the basic model, thus assuming imperfect competition.
