How splendid to read a book on Marx that takes him seriously as an economist and pays proper respect to the logical structure of his economic theory. There are literally hundreds of books on Marx that do neither—instead giving ample space to his philosophy of history, his theory of revolution, and his concept of alienation without so much as mentioning that he was first and foremost an economist, steeped in the writings of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and John Stuart Mill. (See, for example Popper (Reference Popper1945) and Kolakowski (Reference Kolakowski1978), both of whom are erudite and knowledgeable in social theory but barely acknowledge Marx's views on economics.)

Hollander begins his book quite rightly with a thorough explanation of the so-called Transformation Problem (chap. 1), without which almost nothing in Marx's labor theory of surplus value makes much sense. It was this theory that was truly revolutionary in Marx and even today requires the reader to ask him or herself whether it is true and how one would go about answering that question. The question is indeed answered in the last pages of Hollander's book (pp. 463–88) and these pages are worth reading and rereading.

Chapters 2–5 are preoccupied with Marx's growth theory, with the falling rate of profit and the downward trend of real wages, as well as with the cyclical dimension of Marx's macroeconomics that intertwines in his work with a steady focus on secular trends. In some sense, the work comes to an end with chapter 5 but at this point we are less than half way through the book.

Chapters 6–12 are too preoccupied for my liking with the development of Marx's own system from the first draft of Capital in the 1840s to the Grundrisse in the 1850s to the Economic Manuscripts of the 1860s, which finally saw the mature statement of his theory of profit as unpaid labor, but undoubtedly some readers will find these pages absolutely riveting.

This is a long book of 500 pages, which seems even longer by its tenacious and even exhausting tone of sorting out every wrinkle in Marx's argument. Nevertheless, there are wonderful set pieces on particular difficulties in the Marxist schema, such as the mechanism by which aggregate surplus value for the economy as a whole is redistributed between sectors to yield an uniform rate of profit (pp. 254–56), the role of absolute rent in the profit-rate equalization process (pp. 297–325), the role of overpopulation in the downward trend of real wages (pp. 375–81), the role of entrepreneurship and even Knightian uncertainty in the investment process (408–43, 466–70)—an insight I myself denied previously—, the downward trend paths of both the wage and profit rates (477–83), and Marx's increased appreciation of the potential for welfare reform under capitalism (pp. 444–62).

Now and then Marx is not simply expounded but exposed, as weaknesses in his own defense of his theories are ruthlessly pulled apart (pp. 463–71). This book, unlike the author's earlier books on Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, and Mill, finally abandons Hollander's habitual tendency to defend every statement ever made by the canonical classical economists.

This is not an easy book to read. The argument is dense and exceedingly subtle. Sometimes I found myself having to read some pages two or even three times before I grasped the elusive thesis and even then I was not entirely sure that I understood the points he was making. Of course, this may only show how dim I am but this is a conclusion I must resist.

So, my advice is to read this book and to study it carefully because it is full of insights gathered over a lifetime of study of the classical economists.