Course listings and enrollment data for the course, “Karl Marx”, that was offered three times in the 1930’s at the Harvard economics department have been posted earlier along with Wassily Leontief’s own draft outline. Before posting below the only set of final examination questions for this course that I have been able to locate, I think it is most interesting to read what Leontief thought about Marx as expressed in his 1938 paper. I have highlighted a terrific obiter dictum in Leontief’s conclusion in which he characterizes much of present-day theorizing as “purely derivative”. Still, Marx hardly comes away unbloodied: “these theories in general do not hold water”.
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Leontief’s conclusion to his 1938 article on Marxian economics
“Neither his analytical accomplishments nor the purported methodological superiority can explain the Marxian record of correct prognostications. His strength lies in realistic, empirical knowledge of the capitalist system.
Repeated experiments have shown that in their attempts to prognosticate individual behavior, professional psychologists systematically fall behind experienced laymen with a knack for “character reading.” Marx was the great character reader of the capitalist system. As many individuals of this type, Marx had also his rational theories, but these theories in general do not hold water. Their inherent weakness shows up as soon as other economists not endowed with the exceptionally realistic sense of the master try to proceed on the basis of his blueprints.
The significance of Marx for modern economic theory is that of an inexhaustible source of direct observation. Much of the present-day theorizing is purely derivative, secondhand theorizing. We often theorize not about business enterprises, wages, or business cycles but about other people’s theories of profits, other people’s theories of wages, and other people’s theories of business cycles. If before attempting any explanation one wants to learn what profits and wages and capitalist enterprises actually are, he can obtain in the three volumes of Capital more realistic and relevant first- hand information than he could possibly hope to find in ten successive issues of the United States Census, a dozen textbooks on contemporary economic institutions, and even, may I dare to say, the collected essays of Thorstein Veblen.”
Source: Wassily Leontief. “The Significance of Marxian Economics for Present-Day Economic Theory.” The American Economic Review 28, no. 1 (1938): 1-9.
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1936-37
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
ECONOMICS 1171
Answer THREE or FOUR questions
- “The totality of productive relations determines the economic structure of the society; it constitutes the real basis of its juridical and political superstructure which determines also the corresponding forms of social consciousness.” K. Marx, “Introduction to the Critic [sic] of Political Economy.” Interpret.
- Marx does not attempt a general definition of a class. If he had given one what elements would he have emphasized?
- “Revolution is the inspired frenzy of history.” Is this comment by Trotsky strictly Marxian or must we consider it another of his “deviations”?
- Does the doctrine of the “withering away of the state” make the Marxian view of the ultimate form of socialism indistinguishable from anarchism?
- Does Marx’s economic system stand and fall with his labor theory of value?
- Is the Marxian explanation of the “surplus army of unemployed” essentially identical with the modern theory of technological unemployment?
- Discuss the Marxian explanation of business cycles.
Final. 1937.
Source: Harvard University Archives. Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Papers Printed for Final Examinations, History, History of Religions, … ,Economics, … , Military Science, Naval Science. Jan—June, 1937. (HUC 7000.28, item 79 of 284)