# do modern academic economists take marxism serious

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-modern-academic-economists-take-marxism-serious/718783>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [April 29, 2015, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-modern-academic-economists-take-marxism-serious/718783 "2015-04-29T05:56:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![thanatic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/97f17d/32.png) [@thanatic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thanatic)\
**Post date:** [April 29, 2015, 5:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-modern-academic-economists-take-marxism-serious/718783/1 "2015-04-29T05:56:14Z")

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there are still marxists but i see that its often not among economists? why is that

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**Author:** ![GreenElf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/9de053/32.png) [@GreenElf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenElf)\
**Post date:** [April 29, 2015, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-modern-academic-economists-take-marxism-serious/718783/2 "2015-04-29T06:01:38Z")

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> [@thanatic](#):
>
> ? why is that

Supply and demand?

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**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\
**Post date:** [April 29, 2015, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-modern-academic-economists-take-marxism-serious/718783/3 "2015-04-29T06:25:21Z")

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> [@thanatic](#):
>
> there are still marxists but i see that its often not among economists? why is that

Marx had several ideas, including ideas about a solution to social problems: those ideas are called “communism”

A “Marxist” is a subset of “communist”, someone who agrees with Marx’s solution to social problems. There aren’t many of them anymore. Also, overall there aren’t really a lot of economists. There are actually economists who are communists, but a small number of a small number is very small number.

Marx also had some ideas about economics. People who agree with Marx’s ideas about economics aren’t called anything special unless they reject everything that has been written about economics since Marx. Most people who study economics don’t stop at Marx, and they are called economists.

People who study economics only up to Marx, and then stop, aren’t called economists.

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**Author:** ![GreasyJack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/df705f/32.png) [@GreasyJack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreasyJack)\
**Post date:** [April 29, 2015, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-modern-academic-economists-take-marxism-serious/718783/4 "2015-04-29T08:03:00Z")

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This is sort of nitpicky, but I assume what you’re thinking of is actually “[Marxian](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxian_economics)” economics. The term Marxian generally refers to people who are interested in Marx’s economic theories of labor and critiques of capitalism, but unlike actual Marxists reject (or at least don’t talk about) his ideas about communism.