Karl Marx

AppendixOne Hundred Years Later:KARLMARXAs an Accountantby Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.There are three aspects of the manuscript which de- presenting a husband with everything but the last piecemand supplementary observations in light of devel- of evidence, that his wife is spending her afternoonsopments within economics during the past hundred working as a prostitute.years.The first and principal criticism to be made in that Marx as an Accountantlight, is that there exists today no competent practiceof national-income accounting which does not appear For all serious economists, the simple accounting workto owe a debt to Karl Marx's Capital. The most notable of political economy assembles and correlates threeexample is the work of Soviet-trained Harvard Uni- sets of statistics. The first counts the amount of goodsversity economist, Professor Wassily Leontief, in de- produced per capita, both by employed labor and asvelopment of the present National Income Accounting the average quantity made available for the populationsystem of the United States. Although the author's as a whole. The second is the amount of such laborfailure to forewarn his readers of such a possible effect required to produce the goods required by the popudoesnot weaken his argument on any of the points of lation as a whole. The third is the prices, in total andcriticism he addresses to Marx's Capital, the omission in detail, assigned to those produced goods and theshould not be overlooked in the publication of that labor employed in their production.manuscript today. The individual material goods produced by theThe second criticism which we treat here, turns society for its own consumption are most broadlyour attention to the author's references to Marx's assorted into two general classifications. The first,incompetence in mathematical physics. He indicates usually described as consumer goods, represents thosethat Marx's resort to the "cell form" of analysis in final products ,of the production of tangible goodsCapital is evidence of such a fault. That argument is which are consumed by households of the population.accurate, and is unquestionably a relevant point to be The second, usually described as capital goods, areidentified in connection with Marx's hostility to Leib- tangible goods, or other physical improvements, conniz,Carnot, et al. We tend to believe that the author sumed by production and transportation.understood his own point correctly, but the typical From this initial point of accounting practice, thereader of today might not be certain that this is so. economist must correlate, first, all of the data exceptFinally, we should not ignore the fact, that the money prices, by portraying the total production andauthor marches right up to the brink of stating that consumption of such physical goods as forming aKarl Marx was "brainwashed" at Berlin by agents of closed cycle. The correct form of representation of thisthe Scottish Rite there. The facts cited to this effect are cycle is that elaborated by this writer.1 We begin withaccurate, and the argument, as far as the author the total population of the society, defining this as adevelops it, is soundly composed. The effect is like census of housrholds, of which individual persons are30 Special Supplement / CAMPAIGNER