Talk:Franz Oppenheimer
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this is a beginning, initiated with babelfish ;), possibly an enormous impulse for an extracurricular course
- I'm curious -- what extracurricular course? -- till we ☼☽ | Talk 21:29, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- Matthew 12
- 31 And so I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.
- 32 Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.
- Matthew 12
Hey, what about talking instead of preaching? -- till we ☼☽ | Talk 22:40, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Oppenheimer is a liberal in that he blames the defects of capitalism on land monopoly, and associates freedom and welfare with real competition in a monopoly-free set-up. He defines monopoly as a position of economic power which makes exchange differently urgent for the partners, thus violating the equivalence of exchange essential for a free society.
Prices in competitive equilibrium are determined by labor values because this makes labor incomes equal. This is the starting point of all value theory, from Petty on; it is only property incomes that can become unequal because, while the rates per unit of property are equalized, owners own different numbers of units. Oppenheimer's entire system rests on this foundation. There can be two ways of violating the standard of equality: by raising price at the expense of buyers; and by lowering it at the expense of sellers. A third kind of monopoly does not affect price; it is an advantage in production over the competitor, thus giving rise to a differential rent, as in many personal and impersonal qualifications and in the temporary profit of a pioneering entrepreneur. Competitive capitalism [p. 34] is an order in which commodities are sold at values, but labor sells under the class monopoly, which spreads from land monopoly to include all capital ownership. In a free society “every two employers would run after one worker,” because no one would be forced to look for employment on the property of some one else; in capitalism “every two workers run after one employer,” most conspicuously in an era of unemployment.
It is surprising to find Oppenheimer using labor value as a basis for a theory of monopoly; his is the only such attempt in history. Traditionally monopoly is one of the rocks on which labor value theory founders, since monopoly price violates labor value. Hence all classical writers put monopoly price outside their systems, and explicitly state that to determine it one has to refer to demand, while normal competitive price is determined by cost. Oppenheimer admits that monopoly price proper cannot be accurately derived from his objective value concept, but he maintains that the prices of competing and substitutable goods narrow the space available for monopoly price – and was the first theorist to do so. This, he says, suffices for a market theory.
For the analysis of monopsony on the labor market, however, he uses exclusively his objective concepts. The price of really free labor is the product, or its equivalent in exchange under a proper distribution of total labor among the industries – a distribution that makes incomes equal. The monopoly price of labor is the living minimum, which changes historically, as was pointed out by Malthus, Ricardo and Marx; the difference between this wage and the value of the product is the profit, the gain of a class monopoly, to which every member of the owning class is entitled in equilibrium. The wage of special skills of labor can also be expressed in objective terms, with the price of the product determined by marginal labor value. The price of an acquired qualification is expressed by the cost of training it; a personal advantage in efficiency or skill manifests itself in higher productivity, that is, in a higher number of products than are produced at the margin. The only goods and services not accessible to this analysis are the standard examples of [p. 35] classical theory, paintings by old masters, and the like, which are outside the normal course of the social economy.
This, with much brilliant refinement, is Oppenheimer's labor value theory, the rival of Marx's. According to Marx the wage is the full and legitimate equivalent of labor power; the worker receives his full due under the laws of the market. According to Oppenheimer the wage is artificially depressed below the normal and legitimate value. According to Marx profit is the result of a logical trick, which gives the workers the value of their labor power while part of the value of the product is still confiscated for the employer; the fact that the labor power bought by the capitalist produced more than its own value is “particularly good luck for the buyer, but no wrong at all done to the seller.” According to Oppenheimer profit is the fruit of plain monopoly. The superiority of his version is striking on all counts.
http://www.gsm.uci.edu/econsoc/Forstater.html – Economics and Sociology: The Contributions of Adolph Lowe
“Academic research in the social sciences and the practical application of their results are suffering to-day from a general defect for which even the greatest achievements within the special branches cannot compensate. An excessive division of labour, a lack of synthetic co-operation between the various sections of social research more and more restrict the truth of any partial knowledge, the efficiency of any concrete action.” (1935, p. 19)
“On the surface it looked a natural division of labour between the various social sciences, enforced by the widening range of research. But in fact one particular branch, economics, usurped a growing preponderance. This social superiority of economics was accompanied by a growing scientific autonomy. During the last half century the economists tried to eject just those substantial elements of their doctrines that before linked economic research with political science, law, psychology, and history--striving after pure economics as an independent body of knowledge.” (1935, p. 26)
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His mentor, Franz Oppenheimer, held the chair in Sociology at Frankfurt, then Germany's sole full professorship in the discipline (Simmonds, 1978, p. 5). Lowe would still claim as late as 1965 that Oppenheimer's was the most comprehensive system der soziologie ever written(Lowe, 1965, p. 133). At a time when the Historical school still dominated the discipline (and especially the academy), Lowe identified Oppenheimer as one of the few scholars in Germany with whom one could study [economic] theory in the classical and neo-classical meaning of the term (Lowe, 1959, p. 60). Oppenheimer and Lowe were later founding members of the editorial board of the American Journal of Economics and Sociology. The Journal continues to take Lowe's (1935) call for cooperation and constructive synthesis as its mission.
