Money, interest and capital accumulationin Karl Marx's economics: a monetary interpretation and some similaritiesto post-Keynesian approaches*

Abstract

Starting from Schumpeter's important distinction between ‘real analysis’ and ‘monetary analysis’, in this paper it is shown that major elements of Marx's economic theory fall in the camp of ‘monetary analysis’. This is true for Marx's theory of value, his rejection of Ricardo's interpretation of Say's Law, his treatment of the realization problem in the schemes of reproduction and his theories of credit and the rate of interest. The implications of this monetary interpretation for Marx's theory of distribution and growth display broad similarities to a monetary extension of a Kaleckian version of the post-Keynesian model, in which the equilibrium growth path is determined by the interaction between monetary and real variables.