Abstract

The purpose of the paper is to trace the essential connections between the work of Marx and the foundations of capitalist economic dynamics. The main point is that Marx’s “laws of motion” of the capitalist economy have been thought to be effective at the level of capital in general, whereas a theory of capitalist economic dynamics as such must lead to more con-crete determinations, which cannot arise unless the level of competition, or the “plurality of capitals”, is fully taken into account. After a short introduction, the 2nd section discusses four different notions of compe-tition that can be found in The Capital, underlining the one concerning the economic laws of motion, whereby every capital seeks to get surplus profits by means of new methods of production and new products, leading to relative surplus value production. But competition still emerges here in its general features, which do not suffice to establish a dynamic theory. The 3rd section concludes this paper raising some basic elements needed to develop such a theory. After a preliminary discussion of the reasons to dismiss the equilibrium paradigm in a dynamic economy and of the role of time — both historical and theoretical —, it doses with a reference to the theoretical forms of dynamics: instability, crisis, trend and business cycle, where emphasis is put in the last two.