by Barry Loberfeld by Barry Loberfeld
Mark Skousen writes on page 150 (in the chapter “Marx Plunges Economics into a New Dark Age”) of The Making of Modern Economics:
Critics [of Marx’s theory of surplus value] countered that capital is productive and deserves a reasonable return, but Marx offered the rebuttal that capital was nothing more than “frozen” labor and that consequently, wages should absorb the entire proceeds from production. The classical economists had no answer to Marx, at least initially. And thus Marx won the day…. It was not until the work of Philip Wicksteed, the British clergyman, and Eugen von Bhm-Bawerk, the influential Austrian economist, that Marx was answered effectively, with a focus on the risk-taking and the entrepreneurial benefits the capitalists provide.
