“The essence of the neo-classical argument is that competition for productive factors — land, labour and capital — forces entrepreneurs to pay an amount equal to the value that the marginal (last employed) unit of each factor creates. Given a particular technological state and relative factor supplies (scarcities), then competition ensures that each factor 'gets what it creates', that 'exploitation of a factor cannot occur.' It is then a short step to infer that the distributive shares of rent, wages, interest, etc., are socially just fair shares. The political implication is that there is no point in, or call for, class struggle, and that government intervention should be confined largely to ensuring that perfect competition prevails. In the lexicons of many Marxist writers, this qualifies as 'vulgar political economy' with a vengeance.”