Three essays in Marxian economics: A study of Marxian theory of competition and dynamics (Karl Marx, Roman Rosdolsky)

This dissertation is a collection of three independent essays. Even though each essay addresses a different question, there is a common theme throughout the essays. In each essay, I examine the Marxian theory of ‘competition and dynamics’ of the capitalist economy.; Marx's theory of competition plays a very important role in modern debates of Marxian political economy. However, there seems to be less effort to systematically approach Marx's theory of competition as such. This apparent discrepancy may be originated from the influence of Rosdolsky's reading on Marx's mature writings. The first essay examines Rosdolsky's understanding of Marx's concept of competition and argues that Marx's concept includes more wide and wealthy material than Rosdolsky's approach implies.; Marx's logic of the reserve army of labor draws a lot of attentions because of its political and economic implications. Goodwin builds an elegant growth and cycle model, in an effort to embody Marx's logic of the reserve army of labor. Most of the post-Goodwin models attempt to extend and advance the original Goodwin model by taking interest in its mathematical properties. The second essay develops a Marxian growth model which not only represents Marx's idea of the capital accumulation behind the logic of the reserve army more precisely, but also addresses diverse Marxian issues concerning the accumulation of capital.; Dumenil-Levy and Foley (DLF) attempt to show that the organic-composition-of-capital (OCC)-increasing falling rate of profit can be induced by applying Okishio's criterion of technical choice to DLF's framework on the evolution of potential technical change. The third essay examines what would happen if Shaikh's criterion of technical choice is applied to DLF's framework on the evolution of potential technical change. The following result is derived: while both criteria of technical choice induce the OCC-increasing falling rate of profit at a sufficiently high level of fixed wage share, only Shaikh's criterion induces the OCC-increasing falling rate of profit under a fixed real wage (or a low level of fixed wage share).