The way a word is defined by communists and the way it is defined by the rest of the world are seldom the same.
American popular usage defers from traditional economic role-based class analysis to be instead do income-based “class” terminology which instead of defining the middle class as the petit bourgeois who apply their own labor to their own capital in production (or otherwise have a relation to the economy which depends on both applying labor and ownership of the non-financial means of production) defines middle class as the segment around the median income, almost entirely within the traditional working class.
This is a product of a deliberate effort to redefine terminology to impair working class solidarity, not some kind of accident.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional%E2%80%93manageria...
I agree. Let's hope it will have much less impact on the 21th century.
Core economic concepts are things like elasticity of demand, market equilibrium, externality, market failure, network effect, opportunity cost and comparative advantage, and AFAIK Marx and his follower had essentially no role in explaining or introducing any of those.
Elasticity of Demand – Marx does not explicitly discuss elasticity, but he analyzes demand fluctuations in terms of "the social need" (gesellschaftliche Bedürfnis) and "effective demand" under capitalism (Capital, Vol. III). He notes how capitalist production responds to demand shifts, though not in the formalized neoclassical sense.
Market Equilibrium – Marx critiques the idea of equilibrium (a key concept in classical and neoclassical economics), instead emphasizing "anarchy of production" and "tendential laws" (e.g., the tendency of the rate of profit to fall). He sees markets as inherently unstable due to contradictions in capitalism (Capital, Vol. I & III).
Externality – While Marx doesn’t use this term, he discusses "social costs of production" (e.g., environmental degradation, worker exploitation) as inherent to capitalism’s drive for profit (Capital, Vol. I). His concept of "metabolic rift" (in Capital, Vol. III and his ecological writings) touches on unintended consequences akin to negative externalities.
Market Failure – Marx’s entire critique of capitalism can be seen as an analysis of systemic "failures," such as "crises of overproduction", "underconsumption", and "disproportionality" between sectors (Capital, Vol. II & III). He attributes these to contradictions in the capitalist mode of production rather than isolated market inefficiencies.
Network Effect – Marx does not discuss this directly, but his analysis of "general social labor" (the socially necessary labor time underpinning exchange) and the role of "commodity fetishism" (Capital, Vol. I) implies that value is socially determined in a way that could loosely parallel network effects (e.g., the more a commodity is exchanged, the more its value appears natural).
Opportunity Cost – Marx does not use this term (rooted in marginalist economics), but his labor theory of value centers on "socially necessary labor time", implying that the cost of producing one good is the labor diverted from other uses (Capital, Vol. I). His concept of "alternative employments of capital" in Capital, Vol. III also touches on trade-offs.
Comparative Advantage – Marx critiques David Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage (e.g., in Theories of Surplus Value), arguing that international trade under capitalism exploits unequal exchange and reinforces imperialism. He focuses on "uneven development" and "super-exploitation" rather than mutual gains from trade.If this seems like an absurd comparison, I would suggest reading both Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica and Das Kapital.