The existence of a market for labor is one of the distinguishing features of a market economy: workers compete to sell their labor at the most favorable price—meaning, in practice, the highest possible wage. At the same time, however, it is clear that the market for labor is qualitatively different from the market for goods, because workers need to sell their labor to survive.
Joel Blau and Mimi Abramovitz, The Dynamics of Social Welfare Policy (Oxford University Press: 2010) p. 68
Joel Blau and Mimi Abramovitz, The Dynamics of Social Welfare Policy (Oxford University Press: 2010) p. 68
“The stock market is not the economy, and the economy is not the stock market.”
repeatedly on his radio program " Marketplace APM https://www.marketplace.org/2019/09/30/the-stock-market-is-not-the-economy/" (September 2019)
The Great Transformation (1944), Ch. 4 : Societies and Economic Systems
Financial Capitalism v. Industrial Capitalism http://michael-hudson.com/1998/09/financial-capitalism-v-industrial-capitalism/ (September 3, 1998)
Michael-Hudson.com, 1998-
The Socialist Party and the Working Class (1904)
After the Revolution? (1970; 1990), Ch. 3 : Democracy and Markets
Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire
Source: The Political Economy of International Relations (1987), Chapter One, Nature of Political Economy, p. 8
Planet JH Weekly interview (2005)
Context: I'm a free-marketeer. I believe in free markets, but... sometimes you have things that look like free markets but aren't because of artificial reasons. I'm not very happy with the current state of what calls itself free market economy in the world because you've got all these grotesque monopolies that are able to game the system in a way that's to their advantage by virtue of their power, and that's not a free market. A real free market has some kind of countervailing influence from the government to keep a monopoly in check, but this government... it's not about free marketing principles, it's about greed pure and simple. And this government wants to assure that the other people that they went to college with get just as rich as they do. This country is going to make Mexico look like Sweden inside of ten years in terms of wealth distribution, because there are no countervailing forces. They've eliminated tax basically for the ultra-rich, they've eliminated any control over monopolies, the greedy have free reign and its just going to be the super rich and the peasants.
Source: The Power Elite (1956), P. 242, describing the view commonly held in the eighteenth century.
