商品抑或资本:对西方主流人力资本理论的批判

Commodity or Capital:A Critique of Western Mainstream Human Capital Theory

资本主义条件下,工人的劳动力是其所有的商品还是资本?马克思主义经济学和西方人力资本理论给出了不同的答案。通过将劳动力视为资本,人力资本理论将西方主流经济学对物的分析框架扩展到了对人的分析上,从而对困扰西方主流经济学的一系列"经济之谜"作出了貌似合理的解答。然而,从马克思主义经济学的角度看,这些"经济之谜"都根源于新古典经济学本身逻辑和方法上的重大缺陷。人力资本理论按照新古典经济学的范式去对本身并不存在的问题求解,注定是经不起实践检验的。

Is a worker's labor force his/her commodity or capital under capitalism? Marx noticed that economics and Western human capital theory gave different answers. By regarding labor force as capital, the human capital theory expanded the Western mainstream economics' analysis of things to analysis of people, thus offered a seemingly reasonable answer to a series of "economic mysteries"plaguing Western mainstream economics.However, from the perspective of Marxist economics, these "economic mysteries"were all rooted in the major flaws in the logic and methods of neo-classical economics. The human capital theory tried to seek an answer to a problem that did not exist according to the paradigm of neo-classical economics, so it was doomed to fail the practical test.