ABSTRACT
The fact that what passes for modern ‘mainstream’ economics, notwithstanding all its mathematical sophistication, is based on the concept of the ‘individual’ as the economic agent, typically invokes ‘symmetry’ between the different economic agents, and does not distinguish between the spheres of production and circulation, treating both of them in an undifferentiated manner as ‘activities’, is well-known. And there have been many critiques of ‘mainstream’ economics along these lines, emanating from neoRicardian and Marxist perspectives. In fact, labour under capitalism has never been a ‘rent good’. Many of course would agree with this proposition that labour is never a ‘rent good’ under capitalism, and that there is always a ‘reserve army of labour’; but even they might claim that the growth rate of the system is still tethered to the growth rate of its population, since the ‘reserve army’ of labour tends to maintain in the long run a constant proportionality with the ‘active army’ of labour.
