Note 12 — THE SOCIALIST ECONOMICS OF KARL MARX AND HIS FOLLOWERS[1]

In the sense that the theory of value affords the point of departure and the fundamental concepts out of which the further theory of the workings of capitalism is constructed,—in this sense, and in this sense only, is the theory of value the central doctrine and the critical tenet of Marxism. It does not follow that the Marxist doctrine of an irresistible drift towards a socialistic consummation hangs on the defensibility of the labor-value theory, nor even that the general structure of the Marxist economics would collapse if translated into other terms than those of this doctrine of labor-value. Cf. Böhm-Bawerk, Karl Marx and the Close of his System; and, on the other hand, Franz Oppenheimer, Das Grundgesetz der Marx'schen Gesellschaftslehre; and Rudolf Goldscheid, Verelendungs- oder Meliorationstheorie.