The Profit Theory And Its Comparison Of Western Economics And Marxist Economics

Profit is an important economic concept,and profit theory is an important part of economic theory.Both Western economics and Marxist political economics elaborated on profit theory.At present,there are many literatures on the analysis and research of the two theories,and there are few literatures comparing them.This article introduces and analyzes the profit theory of Western economics and Marx's profit theory,and systematically compares the two theories.This article is divided into three chapters.First,it introduces the profit theory of western economics.In different historical periods,different western economic profit theories have emerged.Smith is the founder of classical political economics.He put forward his own profit theory based on the theory of labor value.Like his labor theory of value,his theory of profit is also dualistic.On the one hand,Smith believes that profit is the deduction of wages and rent from value,and sees the confrontation between wages and profits;on the other hand,he believes that profit is a legitimate source of capitalist living materials,and such opposition no longer exists.Ricardo was the completer of classical political economics.He insisted on the scientific component of Smith's profit theory,that is,that value was created by labor consumed by production rather than labor that could be purchased,insisted on labor value theory,and promoted labor value theory development of.However,because he did not understand the difference between labor and labor,he often confused the two categories of profit and surplus value,so he could not put forward a scientific theory of surplus value.Say is the founder of the vulgar political economy of the French bourgeoisie.He systematically transformed the vulgar part of Smith's theory into a theory.He abandoned the theory of labor value and put forward the "trinity formula",thinking that the three elements of labor,capital,and land jointly create the utility of goods,so workers,capitalists,and landlords should be paid accordingly.Say's profit theory is to prove the rationality of the distribution relationship under the capitalist system,thus covering up the contradictions of the capitalist production relationship,and is vulgar.Marshall is the representative of neoclassical economics.He expanded Say's “Trinity Formula” into “Quad Trinity Formula”.He believed that entrepreneurs can play an important role in production,so national income should be determined by labor,capital,land and enterprises.The four elements of the organization are co-created and distributed according to the four parts of wages,interest,rent and profits.He introduced mathematical analysis into the study of profit theory,put a scientific shell on his profit theory,but actually ignored the study of the nature of profit and the exploitation relationship behind profit.Keynes is the most famous economist in the contemporary West.Due to the particularity of his time background,his profit theory mainly focuses on how to solve the economic crisis.He believes that the economic crisis is due to insufficient effective demand,that is,insufficient consumption due to low consumption propensity,insufficient investment due to low capital marginal efficiency,and insufficient consumption and investment due to low flexible preferences.Flexible preferences determine the demand for money and thus the interest rate.When the expected profit rate is higher than the interest rate,the investment desire is stronger,otherwise the investment demand is insufficient.Keynes did not form a complete profit theory,because his fundamental purpose was to solve the economic crisis of capitalism,so it was impossible to reveal the secrets hidden by capitalist internal production relations.Samuelson is a representative of the neoclassical comprehensive school.He not only inherited Marshall's micro foundation and Keynes' macro foundation,but also insisted on Say's Trinity theory.He believes that profit is the same as factors such as labor,capital,and land,and is the compensation of factors.Like Say,Samuelson's view also masks the source and essence of profits.The second chapter focuses on Marx's profit theory.On the basis of critically absorbing the research achievements of British classical political economy such as Smith and Ricardo,Marx put forward the scientific theory of surplus value,making it the core of Marxist political economy.Based on the theory of labor value,Marx distinguished surplus labor from necessary labor in detail,and believed that necessary labor could reproduce the value of labor,and that surplus labor produced surplus value,and then the surplus value was converted into profit.He also distinguished the two categories of labor and labor,focusing on the question of whether labor is a commodity or labor is a commodity,thus deeply revealing the source and essence of profit.In addition,Marx also studied the average and downward trend of profit rate,and further revealed the division of surplus value among industrial capitalists,commercial capitalists,bank capitalists,land owners,etc.and the proletariat and assets in capitalist society Economic reasons for class formation.The third chapter is a comparative analysis of the two profit theories.After systematically introducing the two profit theories,this article analyzes the two types of profit from the perspective of theoretical basis,research methods,profit meaning,profit quantity,profit attribution,etc.The difference in theory also saw some similarities on the surface of the two profit theories.Through comparative research,we can see that the two profit theories are essentially different.Western profit theories based on utility value theory use individualistic analysis methods,but only carry out quantitative research on profit on the surface of profit.Therefore,Western profit The ability of the theory to explain objective economic facts can only stay on the surface,and it can never seek the essence of profit;Marx 's theory of profit based on labor value theory adopts the scientific methods of historical materialism and dialectical materialism,focusing on the combination of weight and quality It can explore the essence of profit through economic phenomena,thus scientifically and profoundly revealing the true source,distribution and function of profit.