ABSTRACT
Marx's critique of Adam Smith and Ricardo, to which I have devoted most of my attention so far in this study, occupied much of the first eight notebooks of the ‘Theories of Surplus Value’ manuscript, viz. those numbered VI to XIII. In the last of these notebooks, Marx included an investigation of Ricardo's theory of capital accumulation. This piece of the critique and the general theme of the ‘law of motion’ of capitalism in antecedent political economy is considered in Part IV. Meanwhile, in the present Part, my focus is on the last two main notebooks of the ‘Theories’ manuscript, those numbered XIV and XV (TSV, III). Here Marx turned his critical attention to a variety of political economists who wrote about exchange value and distribution in the period of the waning dominance of Ricardo's intellectual heritage. In the space of about 450 printed pages, he considered the work of some eighteen writers to varying extents ranging from one page on Wakefield to 55 pages on Malthus.
