| Sumario: | The article comments on an article "Wages and Interest: A Modern Dissection of Marxian Economic Models," by Paul A. Samuelson, that was published in the journal "The American Economic Review." Samuelson's article is open to the criticism on the ground that it does not closely enough represent Karl Marx's, a German economist, formulation of the issues created. Samuelson in his article stated that, a technical improvement must be an improvement or it will not be introduced into a perfect-competition market economy. By improvement he meant a change resulting in either an increase in real wages or in the rate of profit. Marx's market economy, however, differs from Samuelson's. Marx assumes the presence of temporary monopoloid market structures. These structures are a prerequisite to innovation, the means through which greater profits may be earned. It is this possibility of realizing surplus profits that induces capitalists to innovate. These surplus profits, however, do not persist. Competition, in the Marxian model, compels capitalists to adopt available innovations, hence supplies increase and their price falls to a lower equilibrium level.
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