Kalecki on money and finance

It is argued that Kalecki had a greater appreciation of the role of the monetary sector than has been generally recognized, and that Kalecki presented ideas which can be seen as now embedded in the structuralist post Keynesian analysis of endogenous money and in the circuitist approach. Six key features of Kalecki's monetary analysis are identified. The paper outlines Kalecki's dismissal of the ‘Pigou effect’ and the ‘Keynes effect’, and then discussion the relationship between the ‘principle of increasing risk’ and the nature of the supply of credit. It discusses interest determination in Kalecki's writings and the manner in which he distinguished different types of money.     

Review article. Kalecki on imperfect competition, inflation and money

This paper reviews the final two volumes of Kalecki's CollectedWorks. It first discusses, based on the papers in Vol. VI, hiscontributions on cartels, on Nazi Germany, the development ofindices of business fluctuations and of national income accounts,and the movement of prices and costs over the business cycle.Drawing on the papers reproduced in Vol. VII, this paper continuesby discussing Kalecki's writings on rationing, inflation, imperfectcompetition and unemployment, money and finance, the nationaldebt and the welfare state, international economic arrangements,the post-war American economy and econometrics and methodology.     

Keynes against Kalecki on economic method

In the past twenty years, there has been considerable debate on the “coherence” of post Keynesian economics, in view of post Keynesian economists’ ambitions to develop a paradigmatic alternative to neoclassical economics. Given the growing importance of methodological aspects in this discussion, this article addresses the differences of approach to economic theory between the fathers of the two most important strands in post Keynesian economics. We thus focus on Keynes’s criticism of Kalecki’s theory of the business cycle and the tensions between Keynes’s logical approach and Kaleki’s formal modeling. We show that in criticizing Kalecki’s theory, Keynes made use of the same methodological criticism (based on detecting logical fallacies in reasoning) he had employed to attack both the classical theory and contemporary “pseudo-mathematical” models. After illustrating these fundamental differences between Keynes and Kalecki about the proper way of doing economics, we draw some conclusions on the possible future evolution of post Keynesian economics.     

马克思与卡莱茨基有效需求理论的比较研究

马克思有效需求理论的内容主要蕴含在他的社会资本再生产公式中。卡莱茨基受马克思经济学的影响,提出了自己独特的有效需求理论。两人都从收入分配角度探析了有效需求问题,指出有效需求不足是资本主义经济周期波动的原因,但马克思强调消费需求的不足,特别突出对抗性分配关系对有效需求与经济危机的作用,而卡莱茨基强调投资需求不足是决定总需求和总产出的主要因素。     

Marx and Menger on value: as many similarities as differences

This paper argues that, as far as theories of value and moneyare concerned, Marx and Menger have more in common than hasbeen traditionally maintained. Each of them had his own abstractconcept of value, distinct from labour or utility and priorto prices. Moreover, both proposed theories of value form andprovided explanations of the origin of money. These conceptsand theories can hardly be found in the works of Smith and Ricardo,nor in those of Jevons and Walras, because they were primarilyconcerned with the determination of exchange ratios. Furthermore,Marx and Menger become more sharply divided owing to their similarities.They shared many questions to which they offered opposite answers.     

Marx,Finance and Political Economy

ABSTRACT

Shortly after the publication of Volume I of Capital, the financial requirements of capitalist enterprise forced the financial innovation of bond and stock finance for joint stock companies. Marx intended to re-write Capital in order to incorporate this change. He did not achieve this. The economic analysis of capitalism with long-term finance was undertaken by Hilferding in his Finance Capital. Thereafter, a strand of economic analysis of production and distribution emerged in the work of the Austro-Marxists, Veblen, Keynes, Kalecki, Steindl and Sweezy, and the Italian Kaleckians, Joseph Halevi and Riccardo Bellofiore, which incorporated the change made to the structure and dynamics of capitalism by long-term finance. However, this shift in capitalist financing has largely been ignored in economic theory, while much of the heterodox analysis that seeks to challenge the role of finance in contemporary capitalism has not integrated finance consistently. The change from the classic capitalism to finance capital raises important questions about the meaning and relevance of Marx’s work today.     

Marx, Marxism and the cooperative movement

This paper has a dual aim: first, to draw attention to a numberof passages in which Marx explicitly extolled the cooperativemovement and thereby confute the wrong but widely held assumptionthat Marx was inimical to the market and rejected cooperationas a production mode even for the transition period; second,to argue that the continuing neglect of Marxists both of thecooperative movement and of the passages from Marx (and Engels)that present a system of producer cooperatives as a new productionmode can be traced back in part to the late emergence of aneconomic theory of producer cooperatives.     

Toward the crisis: a Kaleckian-Keynesian interpretation of the instability of growth and capital accumulation in Brazil

This article examines theoretically and empirically the instability of Brazilian investment and growth for the past couple of decades, highlighting the evolution that led to the current crisis. A theoretical discussion highlights the importance of Kaleckian and Keynesian approaches in understanding the semi-stagnation of the Brazilian economy since the 1990s. Empirical evidence shows that investment has increased until 2013, but not to the point of getting the economy back on the track of high growth rates and higher investment-GDP ratios. The econometric findings are compatible with the theoretical underpinnings of investment activity based on Keynes and Kalecki and suggest the existence of room for activist policies in Brazil in order to stimulate economic activity.     

Sectoral Structure and Change: Insights from Marx

ABSTRACT

At the time of Marx’s birth two centuries ago, the Industrial Revolution was well underway, and the economic and social changes which it wrought formed the backdrop to Marx’s own ideas. The advanced economies of the world were then industrialising, yet today most countries are deindustrialising. What light can a Marxist analysis shed on sectoral structure, sectoral specificity and sectoral change in the early 21st century? A Marxist approach is distinctive and valuable in how it approaches these sectoral issues, and the following interrelated aspects are discussed here: classifying activities in the first instance according to position in the circuit of capital rather than by sectors; a non-phenomenological approach to classifying activities; a non-physicalist conception of commodities; underscoring the extent of intra-sectoral heterogeneity; recognising the importance of manufacturing and of industrialisation; and implications for analysing changes in sectoral structure.     

Marx and Sraffa: A Comment on Gehrke and Kurz

This comment focuses on the assertion by Gehrke and Kurz (2018) that the origin of the equations which formed the backbone of Sraffa’s Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities is not related in any way to Marx, and particularly Marx’s reproduction schemes, as argued by the late Giorgio Gilibert and myself. This comment argues that the 2018 article by Gehrke and Kurz makes significant—but unacknowledged—retreats from positions previously presented by the authors, and that the relevance of Marx and his reproduction schemes for the origin of Sraffa’s (1960) work for Production of Commodities is beyond reasonable doubt.     

马克思恩格斯历史唯物主义人权观简论

立足于生产方式制约社会政治生活和精神生活这一唯物史观的基本观点,一方面,马克思恩格斯阐述了人权的历史性、发展性、具体性及阶级性特征;另一方面,马克思恩格斯揭示了人权产生与发展的内在动力机制,即生产力与生产关系的内在矛盾运动。     

Marx,primitive accumulation,and the impact of Sismondi

Abstract

This article re-examines Marx’s well-known concept of “primitive accumulation” in relation to Marx’s successive attempts to give a historical explanation for the birth of “capitalism”. Marx formulated this concept for the first time in Value, Price, and Profit (1865), and extrapolated upon it further in the first edition of the first volume of Capital (1867). It signified an appreciable alteration to Marx’s original historical theory. Indeed, in his writings, preceding the publication of volume 1 of Capital, such as The Communist Manifesto or The German Ideology, Marx had presented a more straightforwardly linear conception of the evolution of human society, consisting of various stages, “capitalism” being the penultimate stage, and “communism”, the last. Within this framework, the most advanced nations, such as Great Britain and Germany, were assumed to be those closest to being on the pre-revolutionary cusp of realising socialism. However, from the publication of volume 1 of Capital onwards, Marx embraced a less deterministic conception of progress, focussing more than previously on economically backwards countries or societies “at the margins” (Anderson 2010 Anderson, Kevin D. 2010. Marx at the Margins. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) and envisaging for them possibilities for historical development that did not inevitably entail the sort of industrialisation that Great Britain had experienced. This was particularly true regarding Russia, where volume 1 of Capital was welcomed and discussed precisely in light of these questions, as has been underscored by many scholars, notably Shanin, Wada, White, and Stedman Jones.     

马克思与斯密:关于投机行为的不同看法

本文强调马克思与斯密对投机的认识存在分歧,主张把这种分歧追溯到他们秉持的不同的个人观念。斯密在对个人进行抽象时只强调了自利性和理性,马克思则把相互依赖、相互制约也看作个人的行为特征。因为强调人们彼此间的依赖和制约,马克思没有忽视彼此依赖和制约着的任意一方行为主体,他正视选择投机的资本家的存在,承认投机还会对资产价格进而对日常生活和生产经营活动造成冲击,在他笔下,选择投机的资本家、选择投资的资本家和雇佣工人总是结成一定的关系借以制约彼此的行为选择。因为没有把个人理解为彼此依赖和制约着的。斯密轻易忽视了选择投机的资本家的存在,他否认投机及其对资产价格进而对日常生活和生产经营活动造成的冲击,无法正确理解选择投机的资本家与他人结成的关系。     

Marx on division of labour,mechanization and technical progress

The paper reconstructs Marx's analysis of the development of the forces of production in terms of the interaction among division of labour in particular processes of production, social division of labour and technical progress. It also brings out Marx's conception of technical progress and establishes his view of the essential interdependence among the development of the forces of production, the process of capital accumulation and the expansion of markets; it further brings out the role of competition as a fundamental driving force in the interrelated processes of accumulation and of development of the social productivity of labour.     

马克思关于农村劳动力转移就业思想研究

马克思在深刻论证资本主义社会经济发展规律的基础上,运用社会化大生产的运动规律,深刻地揭示了农村劳动力向城市和非农产业流动的必然性,科学预言了农村劳动力流动必将带来的巨大社会变革。在我国,数量庞大的农民工已经成为推动我国工业化、城市化和国民经济增长的重要力量。但同时,农民工流动就业没有纳入我国经济社会发展规划,盲目流动给我国经济社会发展带来大量问题。马克思的农村劳动力转移就业理论对于指导我们解决农民工流动中存在的问题、破解城乡二元经济困局具有指导性。     

论马克思、恩格斯分配公平观的主要内容

马克思、恩格斯认为,公平是一个受现实生产力条件制约的历史性、相对性范畴,没有永恒和绝对的公平。生产决定分配,资产阶级的公平观是虚伪的公平观。生产力的现实发展水平决定了在未来社会的不同发展阶段分配方式也会不同,分配方式将从形式上公平的按劳分配走向事实上公平的按需分配。     

Interest and profit

This paper argues that it is important to distinguish between the real rate of interest on money and the profitability of business enterprise. The former is a purely financial or monetary phenomenon （as claimed by Keynes） and the latter is in the nature of a surplus over and above the costs of production, including financing costs. There is an inverse relationship between the real rate of interest on money and the average mark-up or profit share. A synthetic theory of profit illustrates these points.     

Marx on Ricardo: an explanation of some important misunderstandings

Ricardo's theory of value and distribution is reconstructed by proceeding along the lines of Marx's critique of Ricardo. It is thus an anti-critique of Marx's reading of Ricardo. The chapter ‘On Value’ in Ricardo's Principles is shown to be a consistent and rigorous treatment of the determinants of prices of production. According to Ricardo labor-values merely serve to approximate more elaborate standards of value. Marx's criticism is shown to rest crucially on his own misinterpretation of Ricardo's definitions and presupposes his own – faulty – theory of surplus value. Therefore Ricardo's theory can – contrary to Marx's theory of surplus value – still be regarded as a fruitful complement to Sraffa's model.     

The Theory of the State: The Position of Marx and Engels

Marx and Engels developed their position on the state in the context of their attempt to understand and analyze society in general, in particular, capitalist society. Over the course of five decades of examination, their argument was refined, partly due to their historic investigations, partly due to the work of others, specifically by Lewis Henry Morgan, and partly due to political developments, in particular the Paris Commune of 1871. Essentially, their concluding statement on the substance of the state was that this socially determined arrangement was constituted by the instruments of coercion, both physical and ideological, with which the dominant economic class coerced other social classes. In developing their ideas, Marx and Engels distinguished between the state and government, though they clearly saw a symbiotic relationship between these structures in class societies. In the course of their investigations, they differentiated their position from those of liberal, anarchist, and other socialist commentators.

Money as a Generic Particular: Marx and Simmel on the Structure of Monetary Denominations

ABSTRACT

This article is concerned with the structure of monetary denominations of economic value. Marx and Simmel analyze this structure by means of references to objects of mere catallactic validity. These objects are ontologically atypical insofar as they are particulars of the genus commodity. Understanding money through generic particulars elucidates the conceptual link between money as a unit of account and money as a means of payment. This initially perplexing idea captures a fundamental characteristic of money without committing to either a commodity theory or a claim theory of money. A modification of the notion ‘commodity’ allows for a conception of money as a generic particular that is consistent with contemporary accounts of money as abstract purchasing power residing in different forms of liabilities and claims denominated in a common quantitative scale.