ABSTRACT
There is no doubt that Marx chronologically followed Ricardo. This is perhaps the only point with which all economists agree. The relative merits of Ricardian and Marxian theory and the relationship of the latter to the former have always been hotly contested. In 1896 BohmBowerk declared that "the Marxian system has no abiding future." Marshall dismissed him [Marx] as a "tendentious thinker who had mischievously misunderstood Ricardo." 1 Samuelson in more recent times called Marx a "minor post-Ricardian."' But Schumpeter came closest to accurately describing the Ricardo-Marx connection:
It is true that Ricardo tilled the soil in which Marx's theory grew. It was after all Ricardo's labor theory of value which presented itself to Marx. But the development of Marx's own theory of value occurred as a result of criticism of Ricardo, as Schumpeter observes in the quotation above. The formulation of Marx's theory was in the final analysis a rejection of Ricardo's.
