BY  Wu Zhixing, SUSTC News Agency

On the afternoon of December 23, 2015, Prof. He Zuoxiu, the famous theoretical physicist and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was invited to the 53rd session of SUSTC Lectures to give a lecture on labor theory of value and theory of marginal utility.

In his early years, Academician He Zuoxiu engaged in the study of theories of particle, atomic bomb and hydrogen bomb. He is one of the founders of hydrogen-bomb theory and participants in the development of first atomic bomb and hydrogen bomb in China. At the same time, Academician He Zuoxiu has made many important results in the history of science, dialectics of nature, philosophy and political economics. Because he has reached his own conclusions by observing economic and social issues from unique perspective, Academician He is highly exposed on the media. Thanks to his achievements in natural science and social science, he is also known as the “Amphibious Academician”. ​

View development of economic theories from the perspective of Wave-particle Dualism

In the beginning of his lecture, Academician He Zuoxiu got to the point directly by pointing out that there are many disagreements between the two popular notions in economics, e.g., labor theory of value and theory of marginal utility. As a major in physics, Academician He didn’t focus on the disagreements between the two theories. Instead, he started with how the wave-particle dualism of light was discovered and told the students about the history and details of debates between the particle theory and wave theory of light. With a few famous stories in the history of science, Academician He, in a vivid way, revealed to the students about the debates in the past so that they had deep understanding of how the two theories evolved from debate to unity. In particular, Academician He pointed out the notion that light has wave-particle dualism was not widely accepted till the era of Einstein in terms of physics. Meanwhile, in terms of economics, the labor theory of value and theory of marginal utility, at present stage, have great disagreements. However, they will one day move into utility.

View change of production efficiency from the perspective of ancient Chinese economy

Academician He Zuoxiu told the students that studies found total wealth in ancient China reached peak in the period of Emperor Jiaqing reign in Qing Dynasty. However, even in that period, the annual grain yield was the same as it was 600 years ago. For this, Academician He reached conclusion that production efficiency didn’t change too much in the process of economic growth in ancient China. Taking this as an example, Academician He explained to the students the major ideas and characteristics of labor theory of value and theory of marginal utility, and interrelations between efficiency and productivity while pointing out that productivity improvement relies on science and education.

Outlook future economy from the perspective of robot applications

Academician He Zuoxiu believed China still has a long way to go in applying robots in research and production. The Academician predicted that the labor theory of value and theory of marginal utility will get into unity in the future. Even more, robots will take all the labor work and repeated brain work, thus producing values. Academician He also mentioned that the Internet plus represented by Ma Yun can stimulate market and considerably reduce the trading cost of unit goods, which represents wonderful orientation of development.