Labour, An Equivocal Concept for Economic Analyses

Ever since the adoption of the symbiosis of mathematical analytical methods and marginalism in economics, there has been a tendency of negligence in the sense that it is seldom to ask the dual question: what are the fundamental assumptions on which the above approach is resting and are they worth while as measured by realia? In a rather informal form we try to address some aspects of these basic questions. A main result is that it is very doubtful to rely too naively on main stream results, relying on a one- dimensional concept of homogenous labour. Most of the standard results on this foundation - including those of unemployment - are ambiguous, at best.