Marx's economic writings there is no mention of the "economic man" or of his supposed attributes, "psychological" or otherwise. Nor is any kind of an abstract man part of his discussion. Throughout his entire work he keeps strictly to his problem, and that is the doings of the real, live man in the real historic situation known as the capitalist system. In this connection it is more than a mere curiosity to compare the opening passage of Capital with the opening passages in the works of some of his illustrious predecessors and contemporaries.
Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations opens with the following passage: "The annual labor of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always either in the immediate produce of that labor, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations."
The opening passage of Ricardo's "Principles" reads as follows: "The produce of the earth,—all that is derived from its surface by the united application of labor, machinery and capital, is divided among three classes of the community, namely, the proprietor of the land, the owner of the stock or capital necessary for its cultivation, and the laborers by whose industry it is cultivated. But in different stages of society, the proportions of the whole produce of the earth which will be allotted to each of these classes, under the names of rent, profit, and wages, will be essentially different, depending mainly on the actual fertility of the soil, on the accumulation of capital and population, and on the skill, ingenuity and instruments employed in agriculture."
Jevons, the English head of the "Austrian" school, opens his book on the principles of political economy with the following words:—"The science of political economy rests upon a few notions of an apparently simple character. Utility, wealth, value, commodity, labor, land, capital, are the elements of the subject; and whoever has a thorough
