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This article discusses a number of issues related to the empirical methodology for testing Marx's main arguments. It argues that a recent article in Capital & Class is plagued by methodological and empirical errors and that empirical examination of the validity of Marxian theory has to be based on a more unified and consistent methodological framework similar to that developed by Shaikh and Tonak (1994).

This article investigates empirically the net fiscal position of the working class in nine European countries for the 1995–2015 period. This is done through the estimation of the net social wage for wage and salary earners in those countries, characterized by different types of welfare states. The negative net social wage ratio in eight out of nine countries indicates that in advanced capitalism, the state budget redistributes income in such a way that the post-fiscal or true rate of exploitation is higher than the pre-fiscal or apparent one. Adverse economic conditions and ageing of the population have made the net social wage ratio less negative recently, while the accumulation of public debt and the increased obligations for interest payments on this public debt have acted in the opposite direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses productivity growth in the context of the Greek economy. Productivity of labor in the Marxian sense is estimated using the distinction between productive and unproductive labor, and it is compared and contrasted with its mainstream counterpart. Marxian productivity is generally higher in level and exhibits a higher average rate of growth than mainstream productivity. We also estimate econometrically the determinants of productivity growth. Variables stressed in the classical-Marxian approach expressing capital accumulation appear to account for most of the variation in productivity growth. This is in contrast to certain radical approaches and especially the Social Structures of Accumulation school which stress the importance of ‘social’ variables for the explanation of productivity growth. In particular, the negative correlation found here between productivity growth and unemployment rate for Greece contradicts earlier findings in the Social Structures of Accumulation literature which postulate a positive correlation between those variables for countries like Greece and the United States.JEL classification: E11, E24, J21 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the empirical literature on the net transfer between labor and the state. It also provides international comparisons of the net social wage in the United States and other advanced capitalist economies on a consistent basis. The results indicate that the welfare state in the United States differs significantly in its impact on the income of labor from other advanced capitalist countries. This claim is based on the fact that the net social wage ratio in the United States is much smaller than that of other countries when all are estimated by the same empirical method. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]