ABSTRACT

This chapter presents a brief overview of the syntheses of V. K. Dmitriev, Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz and E. E. Slutsky. It focuses on Nikolay Nikolaevich Shaposhnikov, the finest observer of the recent developments in mathematical political economy in Russia. Dmitriev examines several complications, such as the determination of profit, of wages and the phenomena of rent. The chapter shows that Bortkiewicz was interested in highly theoretical developments and in the application of mathematics to political economy. Slutsky starts with the determination of the total amount of labor embodied in a good, i.e. from a labor theory of value. The synthesis offered by Shaposhnikov is based on the idea that demand and supply are both necessary to provide a complete theory of value. The Russian synthesis can finally be characterized as the series of attempts at synthesis between marginalism, Walrasian mathematical tools in an Austrian terminology and a classical theory of value inherited from Ziber's reading of Ricardo and Marx.