Economics By Paul Sweeny Marxian

Economics  By  Paul Sweeny Marxian

1. Paul Sweeny statement

According to Paul Sweeny Marxian economics is economics of capitalism and capitalist economics is the economics of socialism, this statement by Sweeny depict the work of Karl Marx and what the whole concept of Marx was all about, Marx was a radical economist whose purpose was to criticise the existence of capitalism, therefore his economics dealt with capitalism and its negative effects on society, economics of capitalism as Sweeny stated is the economics of socialism, from Karl Marx work this is relevant in that Marx criticises capitalism and in its place advocates for a socialist form of society, he rejects and gives the negative sides of capitalism and states that socialism will emerge from the ruins of socialism.

According to this statement therefore Paul Sweeny aimed and explaining the economics of Marx, Marx economics discusses the effect of capitalism form of society, he criticises this form and advocates for socialism form of society, his socialism form of society is a society in which we have no individual owner of means of production, they are owned by the society, despite Marx argument no country has developed using the socialism society a good example is Russia which rejected the form of society.

2. The diamond water paradox:

The diamond water paradox states that water has very significant to human beings but it is given very little or no value in the market, to diamonds man has given too much value to it and yet diamonds have very little significance to human beings in terms of survival. This is what is termed as the diamond water paradox that shows how we give much value to diamond and yet the diamonds are not that significant to human beings survival, on the hand we give zero or very little value to water which is very significant to the survival of a human being.

The concept of marginal utility can however explain this paradox, utility is a measure of satisfaction derived from consuming a good, marginal utility on the other hand is the additional satisfaction of a good that is derived from consuming one extra unit of a good as the

Economics By Paul Sweeny Marxian

consumption of that good increases indefinitely, as the units of a good increase in consumption then the utility level derived decreases, this is termed as diminishing marginal utility.

The diamond water paradox can be explained by the marginal utility concept, it is clear that every good experiences diminishing marginal utility, water is not as a scarce as diamond and as we consume more water we experience diminishing marginal utility, we experience this until a point where we derive negative utility from the water.

For diamond it is clear that we will still experience diminishing marginal utility but this diminishing utility will not be as great as that for water, the reason being that diamonds are scarce and therefore the rate of diminishing marginal utility will not be as much as that of water which will be higher because water is much more scarce than diamond.

References:

Paul Sweezy (1946) the theory of capitalist development, Dobson press, London,

Paul Sweezy (1949) Socialism, McGraw Hill, New York

Ray C (1999) Principles of Economic, Prentice Hall, New York