ABSTRACT
This chapter sketches the core of Marx’s economic theory and how its propositions are challenged by the theories of Kalecki, Steindl, Baran, and Sweezy. These authors are explicitly referring to Marx’s economics that they find to be in need of revision. Their theories share characteristics such as (1) finding the labour theory of value either redundant or false, (2) shifting attention from Marx’s theory of exploitation to what determines the profits–wages ratio at the macro-economic level and to the “realisation mechanism” of profits, (3) rejecting Marx’s “value of labour power” and replacing it with wages as determined by class struggle and therefore as variable, and (4) neglecting or refuting Marx’s tendentially falling rate of profits.
