Karl Marx and Mathematical Economics

Author(s): Leon Smolinski

Source: Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 81, No. 5 (Sep. - Oct., 1973), pp. 1189-1204
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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Karl Marx and Mathematical Economics

Leon Smolinski
BostonCollege

This article, based partly on Marx's and his collaborators' unpublished

manuscripts, examines and rejects the claim that the use of advanced
mathematical methods in economic research and planning is incompat-
ible with Marx's economics. Marx was neither ignorant of such methods
nor opposed their use on methodological grounds, nor was he primarily
interested in nonquantifiable "qualitative" problems. Soviet planners'
past "mathematicophobia" originated in the fear that modelbuilders
might interfere with their monopoly on goal setting rather than in
Marxist ideology.

What was Karl Marx's position with respect to the applicability of

advanced mathematical methods in economics? How familiar was he
with these methods in the first place? Answers to these questions are of
more than historical interest. According to a widely held view, it was
Marx's influence that has delayed by decades the development of math-
ematical economics in the economic systems of the Soviet type, which, in
turn, is said to adversely affect the efficiency with which they operate.
Indeed, from 1930 until the late 1950s, the use of advanced math-
ematical methods in economic research and planning was banned in
Soviet-type economies as being anti-Marxist. The mathematical sophisti-
cation of the tools actually employed was limited to those that had been
The final draft of this paper greatly benefited from valuable comments by Professor
George J. Stigler, which are gratefully acknowledged. I am grateful to the International
Institute of Social History in Amsterdam for permission to use unpublished manuscripts
by Karl Marx and by Samuel Moore. Special thanks are due to Goetz Langkau of the
institute's research staff for having made available Moore's unpublished notebooks
dealing with Marx's mathematical economics. An earlier draft of this paper was presented
at the London School of Economics, where Peter Wiles and Alfred Zauberman made
helpful comments. The use of the facilities of the Russian Research Center, Harvard
University, is gratefully acknowledged.

I i89

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I I90 JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

used in Das Kapital: the four arithmetical operations, percentages, and

arithmetic (but not geometric) mean.1 The planners' "mathematicopho-
bia," to use L. V. Kantorovich's apt expression, led to a substantial
misallocation of resources through nonoptimal decisions. According to
his much-quoted claim, the introduction of more sophisticated methods,
especially programming, into Soviet planning would raise aggregate
output by as much as 50 percent (Kantorovich 1959, p. 17).
The intellectual cost of the taboo in question was also high: reduced
to a status of a "qualitative," dequantified science, economics stagnated.
Deprived of statistical information and of analytical methods, economists
found themselves, as Oskar Lange put it, in the position of "a chemist
who is denied access to his laboratory or an astronomer prevented from
observing the sky" (Lange 1961, p. 393). He points out that Soviet
economics degenerated into a sterile dogma, the purpose of which became
"to plead the ruling bureaucracy's special interests and to distort and
falsify economic reality." These processes led to "a withering away of
Marxism.... Marxist [economic] science was replaced by a dogmatic
apologetics" (Lange 1958b, p. 7).
These indictments do not lack substance, but they should be formulated
in even broader terms than is done by either Kantorovich or Lange.
The main criticism that could be raised against the planners' and
economists' approach to resource allocation is less that it lacked math-
ematical sophistication as that it lacked adequate economic theory.
It is possible to have rational nonmathematical theories of resource
allocation. But Soviet planners too often engaged in what might be called
planning without theory or with faulty theory. Assumptions underlying
crucial decisions were not explicitly stated, a practitioner's fiat took the
place of a theorist's syllogism, the underlying principles were often not
clearly recognized, let alone spelled out.2 Where planners' choices were
based on explicit theoretical principles (e.g., some aspects of price
formation and some types of investment decisions), they often reflected
the mistaken labor theory of value, thus leading to a misallocation of
capital and land.
Interestingly enough, Kantorovich's own proposals for a substitution
of programming for the traditional Soviet planning methods based on
rules of thumb cum intuition represented a two-pronged attack. On the
one hand, their introduction would have amounted to a methodological
breakthrough making possible the use of advanced mathematical methods.
' See, e.g., Academician Novozhilov (1961, p. 103): "When drawing the plan for the
national economy. . only the four arithmetical operations are utilized."
2 This does not mean that they were in fact any simpler than formal theoretical models
would be. "The attempt to avoid complex reasoning often results only in the concealment
of it. The views of 'practical men' are usually derived from assumptions and arguments
no less complex than those on which theory is based, they are more and not less liable to
error because they are less openly expressed" (Campbell 1920, p. 121).

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MARX S MATHEMATICAL ECONOMICS 1191

On the other hand, in the system of scarcity shadow prices which

Kantorovich derived as a dual of his programming problem, all factors of
production were treated alike and the labor theory of value was shunted
aside in fact, if not expressesverbis.
Once again, mathematical economics has played here the role of
Edgeworth's "pruning hook," of a cutting edge which enables economic
theory to do away with obsolete hypotheses, or, at best, to let them survive
in the hothouse of the official "political economy" while economic science
proper is increasingly allowed to turn away from Lange's "sterile apolo-
getics" and toward issues of optimization under constraints.
Why did the taboo on the use of advanced mathematical methods in
socialist economics arise, and why was it then allowed to persist for over a
quarter of a century? Did Soviet planners sacrifice efficiency for the sake
of ideology, of a desire to adhere to Marx's antimathematical dogma?
But was there a dogma in the first place? As one examines Soviet and
Western writings concerning Karl Marx's attitude toward the use of
mathematical methods in economics and his alleged negative influence
on the development of socialist mathematical economics, one finds that
they are largely based on obiter dicta. Diametrically opposed opinions
are expressed. As we shall see presently, some hold Marx to be a math-
ematical illiterate, others claim that he made creative contributions to
pure mathematics. According to some, while being an accomplished
mathematician himself, Marx opposed the use of mathematical methods
in social sciences on methodological grounds; according to others, he
was one of the pioneers in their use. The persistence of these conflicting
views may be related to the fact that the main primary sources for the
appraisal of Marx's position either have remained unpublished and
unexplored (here belongs, above all, the mathematical version of vol. 3,
chap. 3, of Das Kapital) or had remained in the Soviet publisher's drawer
for over four decades. Here belong the so-called "mathematical manu-
scripts" of Marx which had been announced as ready to be published as
early as 1927 but did not actually appear in print until 1968.3 I shall
examine a possible reason for this neglect presently.

II
In the literature on the subject, one may distinguish three views about the
possible ways in which Marx's influence could prevent the development
of Marxist mathematical economics.
Some prominent Western economists adhered to what might be labeled
"the ignorance thesis": Marx did not apply advanced mathematical

3 In what follows, Marx's and Moore's manuscripts in the archives of the International
Institute of Social History in Amsterdam are referred to as IISH, followed by the catalog
number of the folder, e.g., IISH, A-77.

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I I92 JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

methods in his work because he was not acquainted with them. His
followers made, then, virtue out of necessity, elevated ignorance to the
rank of a dogma, and included in their toolbox only those tools which
had been employed by the master. The alternative possibility, which
might be called "the inapplicability thesis," was advanced by a number
of orthodox Marxist economists who claimed that, although he was an
accomplished, creative mathematician, Marx held mathematical tools
to be inapplicable to the study of economic phenomena on methodological
grounds. Economic relationships, the argument runs, are too complex
to be studied by quantitative methods which barely scratch their surface
and cannot penetrate their essence. Finally, according to the third thesis,
an ideology may affect the direction in which a science develops not
necessarily by imposing strict methodological taboos but, more subtly,
by proposing a certain selection of problems for study, which, in turn,
determines the choice of methods. Some scholars argue accordingly that
regardless of whether there is an explicit injunction against the use of
mathematical methods in Marxist economics, the important fact is that
its focus of interest has shifted from quantifiable problems of resource
allocation to what Joseph Schumpeter called economic sociology, and
what Marxists describe as a qualitative analysis: the study of "the essence"
of socioeconomic relationships which allegedly lends itself better to
verbal discussion than to quantitative analysis. Let us examine the
plausibility of these three theses.
The belief that Marx was a mathematical ignoramus is well entrenched
in Western literature and has the support of such authorities as Ladislas
von Bortkiewicz,4 F. Y. Edgeworth (1925, 3:273), and Vilfredo Pareto
(1903, 2:349). On the other hand, a well-known Soviet mathematician,
V. I. Glivenko (1934), praised Marx's creative contributions to pure
mathematics and credited him with a pioneering interpretation of the
differential as an operator. Further claims to the effect that Marx was a
creative mathematician were made, inter alia, by S. Janovskaia, who
spent many years studying Marx's mathematical manuscripts (Janovskaia
1933, pp. 74 ff.; see also her preface to Marx [1968, pp. 1-22]). The
confusion was compounded by the unexplainable lag in publishing Marx's
writings on mathematics. Although the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute in
Moscow had announced the forthcoming publication of Marx's complete
mathematical manuscripts as volume 16 of his collected works as early
as 1927 (cf. Gumbel 1927, pp. 56-60), the volume in question did not
appear until 1968, 41 years later.5 And the even more interesting math-

4 Cf. examples of arithmetical errors compiled by Bortkiewicz and his conclusion:

"Wie man sieht, steht Marx mit der elementaren Mathematik auf gespanntem Fuss"
(Bortkiewicz 1907, p. 480).
' Marx (1968, p. 639). Russian translations of a few excerpts from the manuscripts
had been published earlier; notably, "Three Essays on Calculus" were published in 1933
(Pod znamenemMarksisma, 1933, no. 1, pp. 15-73) and an essay on "The Concept of a
Function" in 1958 (Voprosyfilosofii,1958, no. 11, pp. 90 ff.).

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MARX S MATHEMATICAL ECONOMICS 1193

ematical portions of the early drafts of Das Kapital remain as yet

unpublished.
The so-called mathematical manuscripts contain about 1,000 hand-
written pages, cover a wide range of topics, and extend over a period of a
quarter of a century, from 1858 to Marx's death in 1883. More than half
of these materials, including most of Marx's original work in this field,
deal with differential calculus. The remainder are chiefly notes on and
excerpts from Marx's readings, which indicate that, starting with elemen-
tary algebra, trigonometry, analytical geometry, and theory of permuta-
tions and combinations, he worked his way through infinite series,
Newton's binomial theory of equations, and other branches of higher
algebra. He was familiar not only with a half-dozen of the standard
university texts on calculus but also with the classical treatises by Isaac
Newton, Leonard Euler, C. McLaurin, and J. L. Lagrange, and appears
to have also read mathematical works of Leibnitz, Taylor, and Poisson.6
He appraised critically these various authors, compared at length various
methods of differentiation, and, not content with them, devised his own
method of "algebraic differentiation."
The focus of interest of Marx's mathematical pursuits shifted con-
siderably over time. He embarked upon the study of algebra in 1858
with the explicit purpose of applying it in his work on Das Kapital, after
having been "driven to despair" by his earlier attempts to work out his
economic theorems in terms of mere arithmetic calculations. "I've
never been on intimate terms with arithmetics," Marx remarked at that
time, "but I find my way fast now over the algebraic detour" (Bebel
and Bernstein 1921, 2:233). In 1863, while reworking Quesnay's Tableau
economique,he was studying differential and integral calculus, which he
found to be much easier than higher algebra. He invited Friedrich
Engels to join him in this study, where "no prerequisites are required
besides the knowledge of the ordinary algebraic and trigonometric stuff
and the general acquaintance with conic sections" (Bebel and Bernstein
1921, 3:139). Marx resumed systematic work on calculus in the mid-
1870s "in order to form an informed opinion about the ... mathematical
school in political economy ... then headed by Jevons" (Kovalevskii
1909, p. 15).
And yet, despite his emphatically stated original intent, one finds
surprisingly few actual applications of mathematical methods to economic
or, for that matter, to any practical problems in Marx's mathematical
manuscripts. Whatever may have been his original motivation, he
apparently soon became interested in mathematics primarily for its own

6
His selection of authors was probably influenced less by Hegel (as claimed in Gumbel
1927, p. 59) than by the contemporary usage in German universities. George Stigler
found that when Henry L. Moore embarked upon the study of mathematical economics
when studying in Germany several decades later, in 1901, he read several of the same
authors (see Stigler 1962).

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I194 JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

sake. His approach to it (although, as we shall presently see, not his

technical skill) is one of a pure mathematician rather than of a social
scientist.7 In particular, during the period of his most intense pre-
occupation with differential calculus, in 1878-83, his main objectives
became reformulating its theoretical and philosophical foundations by
showing its development from elementary algebra, to represent the
operation of differentiation as a particular case of his dialectical law of
"the negation of a negation" (IISH, A-104, 4:498), and even to devise
his own methods of "algebraic differentiation," based on a virtual
rejection of the concept of a limit.
Although he undoubtedly had some interesting intuitive insights,
Marx's mathematical manuscripts do not support the claim that he was
successful in these ambitious attempts. Appraised of Marx's new method
of differentiation, Samuel Moore promptly found it to be the traditional
method in disguise.8 It is true: V. I. Glivenko (1934), a distinguished
Soviet mathematician, claimed that Marx was the first to interpret the
differential as an operator long before the famous French mathematician
Hadamard. Glivenko arrives at his claim, however, not by stating what
Marx actually said but by reinterpreting the implicit assumptions of
Marx's argument. He appears to be too generous in his attribution, and
the formulation in question may owe more to Glivenko himself than to
Marx.9 But, in the final analysis, whether Marx contributed to pure
mathematics is beside the point for our purposes: few mathematical
economists have. Of more importance is the question, What expression did
Marx's long preoccupation with mathematics find in his work as an
economist? Admittedly, one finds no trace of "higher mathematics"
beyond the simple equations of the first degree in the published version of
Das Kapital. The well-known Soviet mathematical economist Boiarskii
(1957, p. 12) believes nevertheless that the author of Das Kapital may have
first formulated various theorems of that treatise in terms of partial
differential equations "which Marx then translates into the terms of a
verbal discussion, apparently for the sake of popular exposition" since he
could not expect his readers to be familiar with calculus.

7 In some 500 pages of manuscript notes on calculus, we find only one mention of an
application to physics (a calculation of velocity in IISH, A-104, 3:480) and one diagram
(ibid., p. 592). Economic applications are found chiefly in A-101 and relate to interest
formulas copied from a textbook of financial mathematics.
8 Engels to Marx dated November 21, 1882 (Bebel and Bernstein 1921, 4:487).
Samuel Moore, a Manchester barrister, was Engels's friend since 1857 and a member of
the First International. He translated into English the first volume of Das Kapital, in
1887. Engels called him "the only Englishman who is able to explain correctly the contents
of Das Kapital" (letter to J. M. Knowles dated April 17, 1883 [Marx and Engels, 1955
and later, 36:8]). Both Marx and Engels consulted him on mathematical problems
arising in their research and took his (usually skeptical) appraisal of their ideas as the
final word on the subject.
9 At least a French student of that problem gives credit to Glivenko himself rather than
to Marx in this connection (Frechet 1937, p. 243).

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MARX S MATHEMATICAL ECONOMICS I I95

And, in his preface to the third volume of that treatise, Engels makes a
tantalizing reference to Marx's original, unpublished drafts of the third
chapter:

There were quite a number of incomplete mathematical

elaborations of Chapter III, and in addition thereto an entire
and almost complete manuscript, written in the seventies and
dealing with the relation of the rate of surplus-value to the rate
of profit, in the form of equations. My friend Samuel Moore ...
undertook to edit this manuscript for me, a work for which he
was certainly better fitted than I, since he graduated from
Cambridge in mathematics. By the help of his summary, and
with an occasional use of the main manuscript, I completed
Chapter III. [Engels 1909-25, 3:12-13]

The manuscript in question (IISH, A-77), entitled "The Mathematical

Treatment of the Rate of Surplus Value and the Rate of Profit"
[Mehrwertsrate und Profitrate matematisch behandelt], remains un-
published. It is particularly well suited for our purpose, showing us the
author of Das Kapital at work at one of the key problems of the whole
treatise. Although a rough draft, it follows a number of earlier drafts
in which the author attempted to solve that problem and represents
therefore its most mature and most complete treatment on his part. It
has the additional advantage of marginal notes by Samuel Moore, a
competent and sympathetic critic, to whom Engels sent the manuscript
for editing. I also utilized Moore's unpublished notebooks, on the basis
of which the summary mentioned by Engels was prepared, as well as his
correspondence with Engels.

III

Marx wrote "The Mathematical Treatment" in 1875, after a prolonged

exposure to higher algebra and calculus. And yet, one finds no trace of
partial differential equations or other methods of "higher mathematics"
hypothesized by Boiarskii. In fact, the tools used by Marx are still
essentially the same as those he had employed in the late 1850s. For a
man engaged in reforming the theoretical foundations of calculus, he
shows a surprising lack of skill in manipulating even the simple equations
of the first degree to which the algebra in A-77 is limited.
Marx seeks to find out what determines the relation of the rate of
profit, p', to the rate of surplus value, m'. The end product of volume 3,
chapter 3, of Das Kapital is, accordingly, a statement of conditions under
which "the rates of profits of two different capitals, or of one and the same
capital in two different successive conditions, are equal" (Marx 1909-25,
3:84).

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I i96 JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

Marx's modus operandi in trying to ascertain these conditions is as

follows (IISH, A-77). He starts by defining the two variables, definitions
being taken from volume 1:

a,+=c + v (1)

m' = - , (2)
V

where p' is the rate of profit, m' is the rate of surplus value, m is the total
amount of surplus value, c is constant capital, and v is variable capital.
An equation is then set up, such as

PI__
V
_ _ _ _ _ -- (3)
m' - p' c

But then, as the next step, numerical values are assigned to each of these
variables, and, in a long series of numerical examples, Marx explores
what will be the effect on the rate of profit, p', if the value of one of these
variables increases or decreases by a definite amount while others remain
constant a rather imperfect substitute for partial differentiation. The
next series of steps is to investigate the effect of changes occurring in all
variables simultaneously as their values change at different rates and/or
in different directions. The effects of such changes on p', p'/m', and
p - are explored separately. This method of reasoning by numerical
examples is crude and needlessly labor consuming. It takes Marx on
unnecessary detours, and, since the results occasionally depend on the
numerical values assigned to the variables, they sometimes lack generality
or are outright misleading. One finds instances of circular reasoning.
Thus, on one occasion, after a long series of transformations of the original
equation he comes back to the point of departure without realizing it:
"Having on p. 1 deduced

P = , from m' =-, m (4)

m' ' pp' c V C + V

he now goes backward [on p. 11] and deduces the latter relations from
the former! With what object?" 0
"One cause of the great length of this MS is his [Marx's] habit of
proving his results by concrete examples, and occupying page upon page
in discussing mere figures, when by taking general formulas ... applicable
to this particular case, his results could be obtained in half a dozen lines"

10 IISH, Samuel Moore's Notebook no. 1, unnumbered folder, p. 7.

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MARX S MATHEMATICAL ECONOMICS 1197

(IISH, L-5045). To give one example, starting with the formula

Mv
/~~~~~~~~~5
v + c

Marx transforms it step by step with his arithmetical experiments,

changing one by one the numerical values of the variables and finally,
several pages later, arrives at the following new "law": "When the size
and the composition of two capital stocks as well as the rates of surplus
values earned by the two capitalists differ, the respective rates of profits
are proportional to the rates of surplus value divided by the sum of the
respective exponents of the fraction v/c" (IISH, A-77, p. 41).
Moore shows that "the law.. is deducible in a very siluple manner
from the fundamental formula" by dividing the numerator and the
denominator of the fraction in equation (5) by v. Then

mt
P ~~~~~~~~~~~
1 + (c/v)

which is what Marx is trying to express in his verbal "law" (JISH,

L-5045). As Moore points out repeatedly, Marx occasionally uses this
laborious procedure simply because he does not see at a glance the
implications of his original formula: "And there is a greal deal which he
appears to have written with a view to alighting upon some result that
might be of importance" (IISH, L-5045).
And then there are errors due to sheer absentmindedness. It takes a
long and patient effort on the part of the reader to find out that - on
page 97 is the same thing as I/ on page 102, that e' on page 102 becomes
P' on page 105, whereas c' masquerades as E. "It is very confusing to be
constantly changing symbols in this way.""l
Considering that Marx mastered calculus better than he did algebra
and algebra better than arithmetic, with which, by his own admission,
lie was "never on intimate terms," his predilection for arithmetical
exatnples in preference to a direct manipulation of algebraic formulas
becormes particularly difficult to comprehend.
He occasionally abandons what might develop into a promising line
of enquiry because of a numerical error committed in the multiplication
of such fractions as 209-2-{ or 1722 , a difficulty which would not arise if
he were using the original algebraic symbols without assigning numerical
values to them (IISH, A-77, pp. 121-22).
And yet, although the techniques used in A-77 are exceedingly simple
and many a slip accompanies their use by Marx, they serve in their
laborious way the same purpose as the more sophisticated tools employed

I IISH, A-77, p. 110; marginal notes by Moore on Marx's MS.

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I i98 JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

by a mathematical economist. Marx uses them to elicit the hidden

implications of the algebraically stated premises of his argument and to
arrive at novel (for him) economic implications of the original formulas.
There are a number of examples of this in A-77. Let us limit ourselves
to two, which depart from the commonly accepted image of Marx the
economist. Part of that image is Samuelson's description of Marx as "a
Ricardo without diminishing returns." And yet, his calculations in A-77
suggest that he did not exclude the possibility of diminishing returns to
scale. As he studied the effects of changes in c, v, and m on labor pro-
ductivity [(c + v + m)/v], he included the following case:12
c v m c + v +m (c + v + m) /v
I .80 20 20 120 6
II .70 15 15 100 623

In the same manuscript, Marx makes a hesitant step toward marginal

analysis, using an incremental capital-labor ratio, denoted by him as
Ac/Av, a notation that was not commonly used in economics at that time
(ISH, A-77, p. 75).
In 1868, in discussing the claim to novelty of Das Kapital, Marx points
out that in arriving at what he considers to be one of the three major
contributions of that treatise, his theory of wages, he "was assisted by the
fact that such formulas are often encountered in higher mathematics"
(Bebel and Bernstein 1921, 4:6).
Such examples could be multiplied. In the embryonic state in which
they occur in the manuscripts, they clearly do not amount to real con-
tributions to the mainstream of the economic analysis of the 1870s.
Rather, they suggest that in a number of instances Marx was hesitantly
approaching that mainstream. For all his lack of skill and the crudeness
of his methods, Marx uses mathematical reasoning not only as a shorthand
notation 'a la Alfred Marshall, but as a means of making explicit the
implications of his initial assumptions and of deriving new propositions
pertaining to economics.

IV
The question remains of why Marx did not use more advanced math-
ematical methods than simple algebra in his economic work even though,
as we saw, he was acquainted with them. The arithmetical errors he
commits in using even simpler tools are not too relevant: there is no reason
to doubt his testimony that he found calculus easier than algebra and
algebra easier than arithmetic. A more likely explanation might be that
he learned the wrong methods at the wrong time.

12 Ibid., p. 92. Another such case is found in ibid., p. 67, and a case of constant returns

is considered in ibid., p. 66a.

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MARX S MATHEMATICAL ECONOMICS I 199

To start with the latter, just as Marx's Communist creed had already
crystallized by the time he began building his economic system, that
system was already virtually completed by the time when, at the age of
40, he began studying mathematics (Engels 1909-25, 2:14). It would be a
difficult task for Marx and, at the early stage of development of math-
ematical economics at the time, a pioneering venture to reformulate his
economic system as a mathematical model using the tools most appropriate
for that purpose, such as linear algebra, matrix algebra, and methods of
finite mathematics.
Furthermore, one might argue that the mathematical methods with
which Marx was conversant were not always necessarily those best
suited for his economic universe of discourse. His main interest in math-
ematics was calculus. But, to use T. C. Koopmans's felicitous term,
calculus is "a myopic device... [which] permits comparisons only with
neighboring positions" (Koopmans 1957, p. 175) and assumes a con-
tinuum and postulates that natura non tacit saltum. But in Marx's highly
polarized system, economic progress takes place through violent, dis-
continuous change. For him, nature does engage in revolutionary leaps
which are of crucial importance. The functions involved do not have
derivatives at these stages on which Marx focuses his attention. Calculus
is applicable to the phenomena of the type "a little more" or "a little
less" studied by marginalist economists but not to the "either/or"
phenomena which form the cornerstone of the Marxian economic
system. For him the key fact is that a commodity has value or does not have
it, labor is productive or is not, a participant in the economic process
is a capitalist or a proletarian, society is capitalist or socialist. For this
polarized universe a binary calculus might be a more suitable tool than
differential calculus, and it was probably no accident that toward the
end of his life Marx seems to have become interested in finite mathematics.
Moore recommended Boolean algebra, but there is no evidence that Marx
actually got hold of Boole's Calculus of Finite Differences which Moore
recommended (IISH, L-5041).
Some of the mathematical tools most suitable for Marx's approach
to economics were not yet generally known. For example, Marx's long
preoccupation with Quesnay's Tableau economique led him to a pioneering
if crude analysis of interindustry flows. But at the time he was grappling
with the Tableau, in 1868, he was studying calculus. Matrix algebra
would have been more relevant, but Arthur Cayley's discovery of that
tool, in 1858, was not yet known except to a narrow circle of experts.
All this does not mean that most questions in Marxist theory are in-
herently incapable of elementary mathematical treatment including
calculus. For example, Marx's model of economic growth has since been
repeatedly reformulated in terms of systems of differential equations
(e.g., see Boiarskii 1962, pp. 38-57; Lange 1958a, pp. 31 if.). But it took

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I 200 JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

the development of economic growth models by non-Marxist economists

to open the way to such reformulations.
In some cases, Marx overlooked the economic implications of a tool
with which he was familiar. For example, his long preoccupation with
geometric progressions and infinite series might suggest applications to
his theory of economic growth. But, as he attempts to calculate the
successive terms of a geometric progression, x = apn-I, where a = 12
and p = 100, he soon lands with log p = 29.079181 (as n = 15), which,
as he notes with awe, corresponds to the number 12 x 1028. "Zeigt
was Zinsenszins will tun" ("This goes to show what compound interest
will do") (IISH, A-101, pp. 69-70), comments Marx, and the tool in
question does not reappear in his notes.
In at least one case Marx had an interesting intuition. In 1873, he
writes to Engels: "You know the diagrams in which changes over time
occurring in prices, discount rates, etc., are represented as rising and
falling zig-zag lines. When analyzing crises, I have tried, on various
occasions, to compute these ups and downs by fitting irregular curves and
I believe that the main laws of the crises could be mathematically
determined from such curves. I still believe this to be feasible given
sufficient data" (Bebel and Bernstein 1921, 4: 346).
Marx was working on this project for a long time but was ultimately
discouraged by Moore, who held that the problem was too complex to
be handled with the available statistical data and mathematical methods
(Bebel and Bernstein 1921, 4:346).
Many economists since Marx have shared his intuition, but, even though
both data and analytical methods of the study of the business cycle have
greatly improved since 1873, Moore's skepticism with respect to the
applicability of Marx's proposal appears to be well taken even from the
vantage point of the 1970s. One can extend to attempts made thus far in
this direction Robert Solow's statement that "the literature so far has
produced little beyond chitchat" (Solow 1970, p. vii).
In summary, for an economist of his generation, Marx was exceptionally
interested and well-read in mathematical literature, especially calculus,
even though the claim that he was a creative mathematician lacks sub-
stance. His failure to apply advanced mathematical methods in his
economic writings may be attributed to a variety of reasons, but certainly
not to the belief that such methods are inapplicable to the study of
economic phenomena. It is true that this belief had a wide currency at
Marx's time but, paradoxically enough, among economists who opposed
socialism. To quote a typical statement: "What an economist is after is
not only relationships among quantities (Groessenverhaeltnisse) but the
essence (das Wesen) of economic phenomena.... How can we, by using
mathematical methods, attain to a knowledge of this essence, for example
the essence of value, of entrepreneurs' profits, of land rent?" The author

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MARX S MATHEMATICAL ECONOMICS 1201

of this statement, made in 1884, is, however, not Karl Marx but Carl
Menger. I Similar beliefs were held, inter al/a, by such conservative
economists as J. E. Cairnes (1873, p. 23) in England and P. Leroy-
Beaulieu in France (1896, 3:62), not to mention the German historical
school.
But not a single injunction against mathematical economics can be
found in Marx's published or unpublished writings. On the contrary,
as we saw, hle first embarked upon the study of higher algebra and calculus
with the purpose of applying them in economic analysis; one of his most
important contributions, his wage theory, originated in his study of higher
mathematics; he made a pioneering proposal for the mathematical
analysis of the business cycle; and, as a general methodological rule, he
held with Kant, and against Hegel, that "a science becomes developed
only when it has reached the point where it can make use of mathematics"
(as reported by Lafargue 1891, p. 13).
To come now to the final argument that, even if Marx issued no
methodological injunction, he shifted the focus of economic research
to those areas in which "qualitative" rather than quantitative analysis
is more useful that claim is based on an obsolete definition of math-
ematics. 4 In fact, those mathematical methods which deal with structures
rather than quantities are applicable to the study of the so-called qual-
itative economic problems, that is, problems which may have no numerical
solutions. Furthermore, the argument ignores Marx's great interest in
macrodynamics, growth models, and equilibrium and stability conditions
all quantifiable phenomena in the study of which mathematical
economists have since excelled.
On balance, Marx's influence was apt to lead toward rather than
away from mathematical economics. This is evidenced, inter alia, by the
valuable pioneering work done by the early Soviet model builders
during the 1920s. The golden age of Soviet mathematical economics
was the time when Marxist economics flourished in the Soviet Union.' 5

These pioneering attempts came to an abrupt halt in 1930 with the

official crackdown on the so-called mathematical deviation in planning.
Mathematical economists were accused of concealing anti-Marxist

13 C. Menger in a letter to Leon Walras, written in 1884 (as quoted in Jaffe 1935,
p. 208).
1 Soviet textbooks still adhere to Engels's delightfully Victorian definition of math-
ematics as "the study of quantitative relations and spatial form of the real world" (see,
e.g., Boiarskii 1957, p. 7).
15 A more detailed analysis of the contributions made by Soviet mathematical
economists during that period can be found in Smolinski (1971).

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1202 JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY

concepts "behind ... the impenetrable logarithmic wall," and math-

ematical economics was proclaimed to be "the most reactionary brand
of bourgeois economics" (Kol'man 1930). It was at that time that the
myth was adopted of the inapplicability of mathematical methods in
Marxist economics and of Marx's alleged opposition to their use (see,
e.g., Khotsimskii et al. 1930).
As we saw, one finds no support for this view in Marx's writings. Nor
does one find any evidence in Soviet mathematical economists' writings
which would support the accusation that they were in any sense anti-
Marxist. On the contrary, a good deal of their work either had been
directly inspired by Marx or amounted to a mere translation of Marx's
''verbal algebra" into explicit systems of simultaneous linear equations
(e.g., Starovskii 1928). Other mathematical models were neither pro-
Marxist nor anti-Marxist, and their authors could repeat with Feldman
(1928, p. 174): "The problem which confronts us is entirely different
from that which Marx faced."
The anti-Marxist label was apparently attached to their work, and
the method they applied was condemned as an ex post rationalization
of policies adopted on other grounds. Soviet mathematical economists,
almost without exception, tended to be critical of the Stalinist high-speed
industrialization policies then being formulated, and their models often
yielded policy implications which went contrary to the political leaders'
preferences. It was largely for that reason that they came to be accused
of wanting to interfere with the leaders' monopoly at goal setting, of
believing that "decisions on ends and goals to be implemented in national
economic plans can be directly derived, with an iron necessity from [the
economists'] desk calculators and from logarithmic slide rules. . . . In
a word, there is no god but the Desk Calculator, and Groman is his
prophet" (Vaisberg 1930, p. 28).
It was that accusation that spelled the end of mathematical economics
in the USSR and the beginning of the legend that it is incompatible
with Marxism. Some of the most prominent leaders of that school were
physically liquidated (Groman, Kondratief), others received long terms
of imprisonment (Feldman, Vainshtein), and still others abandoned
economics altogether (E. Slutsky) or gave up publishing their findings
(Konius). Mathematical formulas disappeared from the pages of economic
literature. The offerings of mathematics and statistics in Soviet faculties
of economics and planning were drastically curtailed in the spring of
1930 and for almost three decades to follow, over students' bitter protests
that "the knowledge of arithmetic and first-year algebra may be sufficient
for a small shopkeeper but not for the task of planning the national
economy." 16

16 An appeal
by the students of the Institute of Economics and Planning, in Krasnyi
Student,June 23, 1930, as quoted in Kol'man (1930).

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MARX S MATHEMATICAL ECONOMICS I203

Whole generations of newly graduating mathematically illiterate

economists acquired a vested interest in the perpetuation of the taboos
in question. It would perhaps be wrong to characterize the period of a
quarter of a century that followed as one of "dogmatic slumber": it was
also the period of slumbering dogma, since, apparently, the mathematical
sophistication of Soviet economists declined to a point where they would
find it difficult even to read Marx's very simple algebra (Konius 1963,
pp. 499-501). The once-dreaded competition on the part of "the prophets
of the desk calculators" was thus effectively disposed of, and the science
they practiced was emasculated, but so was Marxist economic theory,
which, to repeat Oskar Lange's indictment, degenerated into a dogmatic
apologetics.
The results of this ruthless experiment are more conclusive than could
be the most eloquent statement by Marx. As Georg Cantor once said,
"The essence of mathematics is freedom." But so is the essence of
economics. In order to survive and to develop their science, economists
must retain, at the very least, free choice of analytical methods, free
access to data, and an ability to freely publish and critically appraise
their findings. Deprived of these vital freedoms, be it in the name of a
misinterpreted ideology or of power politics, economics declines and
withers away.

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