Say’s Law,Marxian Crisis Theory and the Interconnectedness of the Capitalist Economy

ABSTRACT

Scholars have long debated exactly why Marx felt that general gluts were not just possible, but inevitable. This article argues that Theories of Surplus Value anchored that necessity in the complex interconnectedness that characterizes capitalist production. There, Marx’s criticism of Say’s Law builds on a version of crisis theory that begins with raw material shortages in a leading sector. The disturbance is then transmitted through the many inter-industry linkages in the capitalist economy. What starts as a supply-side shock in a leading sector is transformed into a broad crisis of aggregate demand as workers are laid off and businesses fall into insolvency. This article argues that Marx’s later discussion of other types of crises in Capital can be read as consistent with this approach. A severe profit squeeze in a leading sector (whether originating in intermediate good prices, market demand, rising wages or rising use of fixed capital) necessarily turns into a general glut. In this context, Say’s Law becomes an irrelevant theorem concerning an imaginary economy. What Marx sees as fundamentally new under capitalism is not the use of money and the separation of sale and purchase, but massive interconnectedness.     

Will the MEGA2 edition be a watershed in interpreting Marx?

Abstract

The MEGA² edition is a watershed in interpreting important aspects of Marx’s oeuvre, but not all of them. It provides hints as to why Marx failed to complete his magnum opus, Capital, and informs about his doubts regarding the “law of motion” of capitalism centred on the “law of the falling tendency of the rate of profit” he was keen to establish.     

Marx 200: The Abiding Relevance of the Labour Theory of Value

ABSTRACT

Marxist political economy is alive and well, and not just because of the habitual turn to Marx in response to any crisis of capitalism. Both through Capital and through the continuing evolution of Marxism, Marxist political economy offers valuable insights that can illuminate the modalities of social and economic reproduction and the relationships between (different aspects of) the economic and the non-economic. Marxism’s presence has been felt through its own internal debates and debates with other approaches to political economy, and even through its influence on those reacting against Marxism. The key to the continuing relevance and analytical strengths of Marxist political economy lies in its capacity to provide a framework of analysis for unifying disparate insights into and critiques of the contradictions of capitalism across the social sciences. The instrument for forging that unity is Marx’s theory of value, the potential of which is examined and illustrated with reference to the Sraffian critique and two key concepts in Marxian political economy: the value of labour power and financialisation. They are explored in the light of the processes of commodification, commodity form and commodity calculation.     

MARX@200

ABSTRACT

The article begins by outlining the philosophic anthropology that Marx derived from his reading of Hegel. We continue by arguing that this formed the basis of his materialist conception of history and his analysis of the political economy of the capitalist mode of production, with particular reference being made to Marx’s theory of value and his account of the economic contradictions of the capitalist system. We then discuss his views on the nature of post-capitalist society, concluding with a critical but broadly positive account of the relevance of his ideas to modern capitalism. Marx, we suggest, should not be regarded as a purely 19th-century thinker, as some recent biographers have maintained.     

The market and exploitation in Marx's economic theory: a reinterpretation

Adopting the view that Marx's notion of 'commodity' has a widerreach than is usually supposed, and that it is this notion,rather than a 'labour theory of value' that is the cornerstoneof his economic theory, this paper shows that Marx's accountof capitalist exploitation is one that accords equal priorityto the production and market domains. Central to this demonstrationis an unorthodox explanation as to why Marx posits two alternativerules of prices in Capital.     

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.     

Considerations on Inequality,Corporate Governance,and Financialization

Abstract

Disjunctures between corporate governance, increasingly dominated by financial considerations, and social inequality have been among the motor forces of current world-wide “populist” voter revolts. This article looks for clues for the relation between economic inequality, corporate governance, and financialization by re-examining the work of Karl Marx and of Adolphe Berle and Gardiner Means. Marx is widely considered, in Japan, to have pointed out that the division of profit into the wages of management and the profit of enterprise is considered as a path to the association. However, this general interpretation in Japan may not be sufficient for capturing capitalism’s contemporary reality. This presentation develops an alternative interpretation of this chapter by combining Marx’s explanation with the theory of the separation of ownership and management proposed by Berle and Means. We then explore causal relations among income inequality, corporate governance, and financialization.     

Species Being in the Twenty-First Century

ABSTRACT

In this article, I focus on what is implicitly the more humanist aspect of Marx’s work. That is, species being and alienation. I do so informed by a commitment to pluralism and based on a background in social ontology. I argue that species being and alienation continue to provide insight into the nature of the modern world. They are integral components to Marx’s exploration and constructive critique of capitalism and help to make sense of how potential is shaped for a social entity who can be harmed and who can flourish. However, the way in which one relates to Marx as still relevant regarding these matters can cover a range. I then set out how species being provides useful insight in the twenty-first century at a time of anticipated major social and economic change.     

The finance/innovation nexus in Schumpeterian analysis: theory and application to the case of U.S. trustified capitalism

Joseph Schumpeter built his theory of economic development around the interaction between the entrepreneur and the banker, representations of the underlying finance/innovation nexus. The neo-Schumpeterian revival has marginalized this theoretical element, in favor of an interpretation focused primarily on technological aspects of innovation. Recent attempts by innovation scholars to re-integrate the missing financial elements have been hindered by this theoretical gap. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the recovery of the finance/innovation nexus in the context of Schumpeter’s theory by proposing an original institutional interpretation of the relationship between finance and the entrepreneurial function. The new approach identifies the economic role of innovation as dependent on the contextual form taken by the related funding process. Application of these concepts to the U.S. trustified capitalism experience allows for an alternative interpretation linking corporate internalization of innovation and financial repression. A Schumpeterian trilemma involving monetary capitalism, financial autonomy of the corporate sector and financial stability is revealed. The proposed framework provides a flexible theoretical background for the development of our understanding of the current capitalist regime, open to further integration with other schools of economic thought.     

Searching for New Jerusalems: P.H. Wicksteed’s “Jevonian” critique of Marx’s Capital

Abstract

In 1884, P.H. Wicksteed published a critique of the first volume of Marx’s Capital, the first detailed analytical encounter in English between Marx’s value theory and the new discourse of “marginalism”. In revisiting that episode, this article has three principal objectives. The first is to show how Wicksteed developed his understanding of political economy, as he moved from initially following Henry George’s Progress and Poverty. The second is to examine why Wicksteed’s defence of George necessitated criticizing the Marxist Social Democratic Federation. The third is to show that Wicksteed’s criticisms of Marx were simply incorrect.     

Marx,Sraffa, and Surplus: Observations Prompted by Garegnani (2018)

ABSTRACT

In a posthumously published article, Pierangelo Garegnani (2018. ‘On the Labour Theory of Value in Marx and in the Marxist Tradition.’) depicts Marx’s project in Capital as that of ‘developing systematically the theory of Ricardo and [the] implications of social conflict’ implied by Ricardo’s ‘surplus approach to value and distribution’. This paper argues to the contrary that Marx’s theory of surplus value and exploitation differs from (neo-)Ricardian surplus theory in fundamental ways, and modifies Garegnani’s simple Sraffian model to illustrate the distinctive implications of Marx’s theory.     

Surplus Value Production and Realization in Marxian Theory – Applications to the U.S., 1990–2015

ABSTRACT

Marx's Capital shows that surplus value can be produced in one industry, yet realized as profit (and possibly revenue) by other industries over the course of circulation. This paper highlights the separation between surplus value production and realization in Marx's work, and develops a new method for estimating surplus value production at the industry level to trace out transfers of surplus value across industries. The framework is based on the ‘New Interpretation’ and links money value added to surplus value production at the industry level. Data on value added by industry for the U.S. are used to estimate surplus value production by industry. The analysis allows comparison of surplus value production and realization in each industry. The pattern of differentials between surplus value creation and realization across industries sheds light on the processes of capitalist competition and points to a source of instability for capitalist economies.     

Marx's analysis of the falling rate of profit in the first version of Volume III of capital

Abstract

This paper provides an analysis of the Hodgskin section of Theories of Surplus Value and the general law section of the first version of Volume III of Capital. It then considers Part III of Volume III, the evolution of Marx's thought and various interpretations of his theory in the light of this analysis. It is suggested that, as late as the 1870s, Marx had hoped to be able to provide a demonstration that the rate of profit must fall. The main conclusions are that (1) Marx's major attempt to show that the rate of profit must fall occurred in the general law section, (2) Part III does not contain a demonstration that the rate of profit must fall and (3) Marx was never able to demonstrate that the rate of profit must fall and he was aware of this.     

Marx's Legacy,Régulation Theory and Contemporary Capitalism

ABSTRACT

The 2008 financial crisis has challenged the merits of standard economic theories and sparked surprising references to Marxist analyses. A monetary economy is prone to crises, the interaction of competition with capital–labour relations launches relentless accumulation and over-accumulation crises exacerbate the built-in contradictions of the capitalist mode of production. Nevertheless, until now, these imbalances have not unfolded into its rapid and complete collapse. From the social and political struggles of labour and citizens, the 1929 crisis and finally the Second World War, new configurations emerge for the wage–labour nexus, the form of competition and the monetary and credit regime. These delineate an unprecedented accumulation regime, Fordism. In turn, Fordism enters a structural crisis and a dramatic change in institutionalized compromises favours a still different accumulation regime (finance-led) that evolved from one speculative boom to another till the 2008 American financial collapse. Thus the mobilization of Marx's foundational hypotheses by Régulation theory allows a better understanding than most alternative theories of major contemporary stylized facts: productivity slow-down and social polarization in mature economies, tensions between capitalism and democracy, new industrial capitalisms and limits to globalization.     

金融危机下的资本主义将何去何从

2008年全球金融危机爆发以来,世界主要资本主义国家出现了经济增长停滞、失业率畸高、贫富差距扩大等现象,经济与社会的困境引发了西方学术界对资本主义经济、社会,乃至政治发展模式的反思,企图通过反思找到引发危机的真正原因,并促进资本主义的自我调整和完善。一方面,我们应该看到,金融危机反映了资本主义制度致命的缺陷,其根源就在于资本主义基本矛盾,只要资本主义制度存在,危机的爆发将是不可避免的;另一方面,我们也应意识到,仅凭这一场危机就断言资本主义从此将退出历史舞台,恐怕还为时过早。     

German Finance Capitalism: The Paradigm Shift Underlying Financial Diversification

This article is concerned with the genesis of German financial liberalisation. A refined inventory of financial system change – including new meso-level data on finance pattern and the marketisation of banking – reveals a varied pattern of change across German finance. It is argued that this financial diversification can only be understood with careful reference to the underlying ideational factors. An analytical narrative traces how technocratic ideas of financial modernisation during the 1980s began to open up space for the political program of finance capitalism to absorb liberal and leftist discontents with insider control and bank dominance. Upon reaching a tipping point of discursive dominance, the program was distinctly adopted across the political economy as the result of compartmentally different political, ideational and structural factors; creating a non-hegemonic financial paradigm that became identifiable in the face of recent crises. By developing analytical steps that link incremental and dynamic theories of institutional change in a conceptual framework of belief shifts, the paper contributes to efforts of adapting existing models of change to complex domains and accounting for the dynamic nature of the paradigm-generating process. The findings inform the larger debate about internal capitalist diversity and the coherence of national economic models.     

What matters in the finance–growth nexus of advanced economies? Evidence from OECD countries

Over the last decades, a large strand of finance and growth literature has provided ample evidence on the importance of financial deepening for economic development. Yet, recently, the focus of public debate has shifted towards the role of the financial system structure, an area in which empirical research remains relatively sparse and exploratory in nature. With this article, we aim to contribute to that debate by analysing the role the financial system structure plays in economic growth and risk. Focusing on stock markets and studying OECD economies over 1994–2013, we find that, ceteris paribus, financial systems with relatively larger stock markets facilitate economic growth and dampen economic risk. Our findings remain robust under application of instrumental variable and system generalized method of moments estimators, as well as when we use an alternative definition of stock market development, estimate median regressions, examine relatively high-frequency annual data, control for systemic banking crises or apply quadratic specifications. We find no such effect for private bond markets or private credit volume. Overall, our results suggest that financial system structure matters for the economic development of advanced economies and highlight the importance of a debate about the optimal structure of an economy’s financial system.