Three Views on Profit  My semester is over and I’ve just turned
in my grades. One of the courses I taught this term was “History
of Economic Ideas,” and one of my final examination questions
asked students to compare the views of Karl Marx and Joseph
Schumpeter with the Marshallian-neoclassical view on profit.
These views are very relevant to the way people assess the
workings of a market economy today.  Marx, building on a labor
theory of value, believed that the value of goods is equal to
the value of the labor used to produce them. Therefore, if all
of the revenue from the sale of goods does not go to the
laborers, they are not paid their full value. Profit was
obtained only by exploiting labor, which capitalists were able
to do because they controlled the jobs. They paid labor less
than it was worth, and kept the difference as profit.  Marx was
a supporter of unions, because unions could give workers some
collective power to limit their exploitation. Legislation like
the proposed “card check” to extend un