2 
of surplus rather than surplus value. This is motivated by 
my intention of dealing with the links and parallels which 
exist between Marx and some more recent writers, as well 
as with the relevance of his theories to economic problems 
of to-day. 
Atthe outset I should like to deal with some basic differences 
in the approach of Marx and Kalecki. Kalecki shared the 
political outlook of Marx and derived the inspiration 
for his early original work (which anticipated Keynes ) 
exclusively from Marx,Tugan-Baranovsky and Rosa Luxemburg, 
yet he had quite different views on distribution and made 
no use of value theory. One might well regard this as a 
reflection of the changes which had taken place in the 
economic institutions in between the life time of the one 
and the other. 
A general feature of Marx’s theoretical reasoning is the 
assumption of free competition in the markets of the products. 
This may have been motivated, inter alia, by the wish to 
meet the economists on their own ground. It was certainly 
necessary, for Marx as for Ricardo, to justify the 
equalisation of the profit rates. By contrast, Kalecki 
started from the assumption that monopoly elements 
(oligopoly, imperfect competion ) are ubiquitous in capitalism. 
The narket power of the capitalist enables him to add 
a profit to his cost. In Marx, in the contrary, the focus 
of the argument about exploitation tends to be shifted to 
the labour market, where the capitalist;'have no need 
to compete with each other for the labour which is 
more than abundant in view of the steady renewal of the 
industrial reserve army. It is true that Marx insists 
on exploitation taking place in production rather than in 
distri