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Free to Lose: An Introduction to Marxist Economic Philosophy By John E. Roemer

Students who wish to learn Marxist economics must, for the most part, master a language that is a century old and not visibly compatible with what they read in contemporary social science. My aim in this book is to present the lasting ideas of Marxist economics in a way that makes them accessible to readers today. But it would be dishonest to say that only the language is new. Many classic Marxist arguments do not appear here, or have been drastically revised, because I believe they are wrong. The theory of the falling rate of profit is a case in point. And the labor theory of value, so important in the classic Marxist account, is unimportant here, for it contributes nothing to our understanding and, even when most charitably interpreted, is at best misleading. It is, indeed, a secondary purpose of this book to show that the conclusions of Marxist analysis do not depend at all on the labor theory of value. The revised Marxism I present is shaped by the insights that the tools of contemporary economics-that is, neoclassical economics-can bring to bear.

In the century since Marx wrote, his ideas have been important in large part because they provide an argument for the immorality of the capitalist system; and my theme is, similarly, to trace the connections between the economic concepts of Marxism and the ethical ideas to which they are related. Whereas contemporary neoclassical economics advertises its moral neutrality, the task of Marxist economics is to challenge the defensibility, from a moral viewpoint, of an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production. The method of economic theory can provide only one kind of argument in this debate, but one that I hope reveals its usefulness, especially in connection with historical, sociological, and philosophical approaches.

The material I present can form the syllabus of an upper division or graduate course in Marxist economic philosophy. I hope the book will be useful to social science and philosophy students and to the social scientist or philosopher who wants an elementary and quite brief presentation of the links between political philosophy and the ideas of exploitation, class, and historical materialism.

I wish to thank my students, whose enthusiasm encouraged me to write this book, and my friends in the September Group ("Marxismus sine stercore tauri"), who have met annually in London for the better part of a decade to argue about what Marxism has to offer to the social science of our day. This book reflects what I have taken from those discussions. I am especially grateful for the comradeship of G. A. Cohen and David Donaldson, who read the manuscript and commented on it in a degree of detail far beyond what duty required.

Finally, I am indebted to Jodi Simpson of Harvard University Press for her incisive editorial work.

John E. Roemer

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