The fact that the Friede-Gard Prize is awarded in Trier, the town where Karl Marx was born, is entirely coincidental: it just so happens that the creators of the Prize (which began in 2021) live near Trier.
Nonetheless, it’s a fitting coincidence for me to receive the prize here, since my academic career began with my Masters thesis on why Marx’s labor-theory-of-value was false—not on the basis of the usual criticisms of Marx (known as the Transformation Problem), but because it contradicted Marx’s own philosophy.
I’ve never published the thesis itself—entitled Use, Value and Exchange: The Misinterpretation of Marx—but I did publish two papers based on it in 1993:
- Keen, S. (1993). “Use-Value, Exchange Value, and the Demise of Marx’s Labor Theory of Value” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 15(1): 107-121; and
- Keen, S. (1993). “The Misinterpretation of Marx’s Theory of Value” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 15(2): 282-300.
I also have one unpublished manuscript detailing how Marx’s philosophy can be used as the basis for a theory of value for Post-Keynesian economics:
- A Marx for Post Keynesians
I’ll attach these papers, and the thesis itself, to a subsequent post later today. In the meantime, here are some photos from his birth home—now a museum—and town.
Figure 1: Did anyone yell “bourgeoisie!”? The house was extended after Marx’s family moved out, but nonetheless it’s a very comfortable, bourgeois establishment, and would have been so in Marx’s youth
Figure 2: This clever artwork superimposes Marx’s face on the map of Trier
Figure 3: Myself and my Friede-Gard host Gerd Schuster, with a spectre looming over my shoulder
Figure 4: Who says you can’t make fun of Marx? He was a wild boy in his youth, and would surely approve of this
Figure 5: The town itself is achingly beautiful, with numerous gorgeous pedestrian squares
Figure 6: And here’s Marx’s doppelganger, getting that tanned look in the autumn sunshine
