Foundations for a critique of so-called Marxian economics (Karl Marx, Ronald L. Meek, Duncan K. Foley, Fred Moseley)

The thesis of this dissertation is that Marx's methodology distinguishes his economics from all of his predecessors and successors in political economy. Some Marxians do not devote enough attention to his methodology, particularly in the area of solutions to the transformation problem.; Marx investigates capitalism with the fundamental tools of historical materialism: forces and social relations of production. Social relations of production have profound effects through bestowing social forms on people and things. This coupled with a dialectical presentation in Capital makes Marx's political economy a singular achievement in the history of the science. Both of these facets of Marx's methodology are integral to a thorough understanding of his concepts of value, money, price and capital.; This dissertation includes a scrutiny of the adherence to Marx's methodology by Ronald L. Meek, Duncan K. Foley and Fred Moseley in two chapters and an appendix respectively. The purpose of this critical evaluation is determining the extent to which they are faithful to and utilize Marx's methodology and the implications this has for their versions of Marx's economics, and in the latter two cases, their proposed solutions to the transformation problem.; Therefore, in the second, third and fourth chapters using historical materialism's fundamental investigative tools, I conduct an exegesis of the crucial elements of Marx's methodology relating to his value and money analyses.; Chapter V is a critical evaluation of Meek's Studies in the Labor Theory of Value as a bona fide attempt at explicating Marx's methodology in Capital and his concept of value. Meek's version of Marx's methodology and the labor theory of value are incomplete and inaccurate on a number of counts because of his ambiguity in specifying the fundamental social relation of capitalist commodity producing society and his focus on the quantitative aspect of value.; Chapter VI critiques many aspects of Foley's analyses as incompatible with one utilizing social relations of production. I use this foundation for demonstrating the incompatibility of his new interpretation with fundamental aspects of Marx's methodology. Similarly, Moseley's contribution is criticized in the appendix.