Rethinking Capitalist Development: Essays on the Economics of Josef Steindl
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What If There Were No Ecological Limits to Growth?
What if There Were No Ecological Limits to Growth? © Stephen A Marglin I see us free, therefore, to return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue—that avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misdemeanour, and the love of money is detestable, that those walk most truly in the paths of virtue and sane wisdom who take least thought for the morrow. We shall once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful. We shall honour those who can teach us how to pluck the hour and the day virtuously and well, the delightful people who are capable of taking direct enjoyment in things, the lilies of the field who toil not, neither do they spin. (John Maynard Keynes, 1931 [1930], 371–372) It is only in the backward countries of the world that increased production is still an important object; in those most advanced, what is economically needed is a better distribution. (John Stuart Mill, 1909 [1848], p 749) This paper abstracts from the most important question of our age—is growth sustainable?—in order to focus on another important question—is growth desirable? What if ecological constraints do not decide the matter? For the poor, there is nothing to debate. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the Mahatma, said that if God wanted a warm welcome in India, He should appear in the form of a loaf of bread (Gandhi, 1931). But the case is not so clear for the rich. What if consumption could go on, world without end? Would that be a good thing In 1930, about the same time as Gandhi was advising God about the choice of avatars, John Maynard Keynes wrote “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren” to make the point that in two or three generations it would become easy if not effortless to provide enough to satisfy people’s needs; consequently, there would no longer be the need to organize our lives around the economy, and we would be able to devote ourselves the finer things of life—as sketched in the epigraph above. -
Streeten's Major Writings Paul Marlor SWEEZY
.... 642 Paul Marlor SWEEZY Paul Marlor SWEEZY 643 I out agreeing with the late David McCord Wright, who once said, 'When It was under these circumstances that acquired a mission in life, not all at once and self-consciously, but gradually and through a practice that had a logic of its people tell me I am fuzzy, I reply, "life is fuzzy'", the heterodox dis�enters own. That mission was to do what I could to make Marxism an integral and prefer, I think, to be accused of fuzziness. They prefer to be vaguely nght to respected part of the intellectual life of the country, or, put in other terms, to take being precisely wrong. It is a matter of taste. The orthodox may say, part in establishing a serious and authentic North American brand of Marxism. 'Reductionism is not the occupational disease of economists, it is their occu pation.' But if in the process they throw out the baby instead of the bathwater, In pursuing these interests at Harvard, Sweezy received encouragement the reduction surely loses its point. from the great conservative economist Joseph Schumpeter, whose analysis of the origins, development and impending decline of capitalism revealed a Streeten's Major Writings complex and critical appreciation of Marxist analysis. 17 (1949), 'The Theory of Profit', The Manchester School, (3), September. Obtaining his Ph.D. in 1937, Sweezy took a job as an instructor at Harvard (1950a), 'Mangel des Preismechanismus', Vo//beschdftigung, Cologne: Bundverlag. (l 950b), 'The Inappropriateness of Simple "Elasticity" Concepts m the Analysis of Interna until 1939 when he rose to the rank of assistant professor. -
Planned and Command Economies
Pambazuka - Zambia: Less Than $1 Means Family of 6 Can Eat http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/6112 English DEVELOPMENT Français Português Zambia: Less Than $1 Means Family of 6 Can Eat Home 2002-02-28, Issue 55 Current Issue http://pambazuka.org/en/category/development/6112 Author List Tag Cloud Printer friendly version Feedback She is sitting on a warped stool in a roofless market with the ferocious midday sun Back Issues bearing down on her. A sinewy woman with deep-set eyes and sharp features that About jut sphinxlike from under her black head scarf, Rose Shanzi awoke with a start this SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE! Advertising morning, and the primordial question that jarred her from sleep is stalking her again: Will she and her children eat today? Newsfeeds email: Broadcasts Less Than $1 Means Family of 6 Can Eat Publications Awards By Jon Jeter Washington Post Foreign Service DONATE TO PAMBAZUKA NEWS! Subscribe Tuesday, February 19, 2002; Page A01 Friends of Pambazuka MARAMBA, Zambia -- She is sitting on a warped stool in a roofless market Action alerts with the ferocious midday sun bearing down on her. A sinewy woman with GET INVOLVED Editors’ corner deep-set eyes Features and sharp features that jut sphinxlike from under her black head scarf, Rose Shanzi awoke with a start this morning, and the primordial question Announcements that jarred her from Dakar World Social Forum 2011 sleep is stalking her again: Comment & analysis Will she and her children eat today? PAMBAZUKA NEWS Tributes to Tajudeen Latest tweets Advocacy & campaigns It is always a compound question. -
The Poverty of Philosophy and Its Contemporary Relevance
Crisis, Revolution, and the Meaning of Progress: The Poverty of Philosophy and its Contemporary Relevance Michael Joseph Roberto Proudhon and Marx ABSTRACT: In 1847, Marx wrote The Poverty of Philosophy, his polemical response to Pierre Joseph Proudhon’s System of Economical Contradictions Or, The Philosophy of Poverty, published a year earlier. Marx and Proudhon were the principal antagonists in the struggle for influence and control of the emerging European workers movement then fueled by the first great crisis of modern capitalism. While Marx propagated communist revolution as a solution to the crisis, Proudhon sought to preserve “good capitalism” by attempting to formulate a new political economy that would reconcile contradictions of capitalist exchange by means of reciprocal agreements and transactions; in a word, mutualism. In The Poverty of Philosophy, Marx took Proudhon to task for creating a massive “dialectical phantasmagoria” in the System of Economical Contradictions. Usually regarded as his first detailed treatment of political economy, Marx’s book also contains an implicit conception of social and historical progress based on the principles of contradiction, paradox, and Copyright © 2009 by Michael Joseph Roberto and Cultural Logic, ISSN 1097-3087 Michael Joseph Roberto 2 practice. Today, as the U.S. experiences an irreversible and possibly terminal capitalist crisis, Marx’s polemic against Proudhon remains instructive as an historical, theoretical, and practical-political guide. Key features of the Marx- Proudhon divide in the 1840s are now being recast in contemporary guises and forms. The Left must distinguish between revolutionary Marxist solutions and variations of the New Proudhonism. While Marxism holds the potential for revolutionary, socialist transformation and renewed social progress, the New Proudhonism seeks to save “good capitalism” – ironically and tragically, carrying with it the plausibility of a more coercive and barbarous system. -
It Was Ideas and Ideologies, Not Interests Or Institutions, Which Changed in Northwestern Europe, 1600-1848
Forthcoming Journal of Evolutionary Economics, spring 2015 It was Ideas and Ideologies, not Interests or Institutions, which Changed in Northwestern Europe, 1600-1848 Deirdre Nansen McCloskey1 The Schumpeter of 1912 was optimistic, as most people were at the time, about the future of what he later called a “business-respecting civilization.” But he did not then or later attempt to unify his economics of entrepreneurship with a sociology that could lead to the then-novel liberty and dignity for ordinary, bourgeois people. Later attempts at unifying the economics and the sociology fall into a political left, middle, or right. The left sees ideology as a reflex of the relations of production. The middle—and the rest, for that matter, though in their theories the history is not as generative—take seriously a German Romantic history of “capitalism rising” in the sixteenth century, and then proceed to build non-Communist manifestos on the savings-generated take- off into self-sustained growth that is supposed to have followed some centuries later. The right, echoing the left in another key, sees ideology as being reducible to interest. The history on which left, right, and center build their sociology is mistaken, as has been shown repeatedly during the past century of historical scholarship. Unhappily, the economic or political students looking casually into economic history, such as the middle-of-the-roaders Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, rely expressly and even a little proudly on a startlingly out-of-date account of the Industrial Revolution and its astonishing follow on, the Great Enrichment, which drove incomes up from $3 or $6 a day to $80 or $130 a day. -
Marxism and the Solidarity Economy: Toward a New Theory of Revolution
Class, Race and Corporate Power Volume 9 Issue 1 Article 2 2021 Marxism and the Solidarity Economy: Toward a New Theory of Revolution Chris Wright [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/classracecorporatepower Part of the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Wright, Chris (2021) "Marxism and the Solidarity Economy: Toward a New Theory of Revolution," Class, Race and Corporate Power: Vol. 9 : Iss. 1 , Article 2. DOI: 10.25148/CRCP.9.1.009647 Available at: https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/classracecorporatepower/vol9/iss1/2 This work is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts, Sciences & Education at FIU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Class, Race and Corporate Power by an authorized administrator of FIU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Marxism and the Solidarity Economy: Toward a New Theory of Revolution Abstract In the twenty-first century, it is time that Marxists updated the conception of socialist revolution they have inherited from Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Slogans about the “dictatorship of the proletariat” “smashing the capitalist state” and carrying out a social revolution from the commanding heights of a reconstituted state are completely obsolete. In this article I propose a reconceptualization that accomplishes several purposes: first, it explains the logical and empirical problems with Marx’s classical theory of revolution; second, it revises the classical theory to make it, for the first time, logically consistent with the premises of historical materialism; third, it provides a (Marxist) theoretical grounding for activism in the solidarity economy, and thus partially reconciles Marxism with anarchism; fourth, it accounts for the long-term failure of all attempts at socialist revolution so far. -
John Jay College City University of New York Econ 213: Political Economy Spring2020
John Jay College City University of New York Econ 213: Political Economy Spring2020 Instructor: Ian J. Seda-Irizarry, Ph.D. Email: [email protected] Office: 9.63.10 NB Office Telephone: 212-393-6425 Office Hours: Tu-Th: 2:00-3:00 pm or by appointment A) Overview: This course exposes students to one of the most sophisticated, yet misunderstood and marginalized, theories of social science. Focus will be on the contributions of the thinker who, perhaps better than anybody else, appropriated and critiqued a whole tradition of socio-economic analysis, which included thinkers such as William Petty, Francois Quesnay, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, and John Stuart Mill. We are referring to Karl Marx. Marx is one of those figures from the history of thought whose contributions had been considered by many as redundant, inconsistent, simply outdated, and even dangerous. Still, his thought has ferociously knocked at the door once again in the face of capitalisms’ problems. The purpose of this course is to directly read Marx’s mature theorizations about how capital works to hopefully get a grasp of an understanding of capitalism as a system which suffers from recurrent crises, instabilities, business cycles and uneven development — all of them characteristics that mainstream economic theory tends to consider as secondary compared to the harmonious arrangement that is said to prevail in a market economy that is supposed to deliver the goods while providing the basis for a democratic political system. In this class we will mainly focus on Marx’s magnum opus, Volume 1 of Capital, and we will also read some excerpts from Volumes 2 and 3. -
Galb2001.Pdf
the essential Galbraith k John Kenneth Galbraith selected and edited by Andrea D. Williams A Mariner Original houghton mifflin company boston • new york 2001 books by john kenneth galbraith [a partial listing] American Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power The Great Crash, 1929 The Affluent Society The Scotch The New Industrial State The Triumph Ambassador’s Journal Economics, Peace and Laughter Economics and the Public Purpose Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went The Age of Uncertainty Annals of an Abiding Liberal A Life in Our Times The Anatomy of Power A View from the Stands Economics in Perspective: A Critical History A Tenured Professor The Culture of Contentment A Journey Through Economic Time: A Firsthand View A Short History of Financial Euphoria The Good Society: The Humane Agenda Name-Dropping: From F.D.R. On The Essential Galbraith contents Preface vii Introduction ix Countervailing Power 1 from American Capitalism The Concept of the Conventional Wisdom 18 from The Affluent Society The Myth of Consumer Sovereignty 31 from The Affluent Society The Case for Social Balance 40 from The Affluent Society The Imperatives of Technology 55 from The New Industrial State The Technostructure 66 from The New Industrial State The General Theory of Motivation 79 from The New Industrial State Economics and the Quality of Life 90 from Economics, Peace and Laughter vi C0ntents The Proper Purpose of Economic Development 109 from Economics, Peace and Laughter The Valid Image of the Modern Economy 118 from Annals of an Abiding Liberal Power -
Marxian Theory Winter 2006 Professor Micha
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO Department of History History HITO 111/HIGR 211: Marxian Theory Winter 2006 Professor Michael A. Bernstein 3410 Literature [Warren Campus] 534-6270/534-1070 <[email protected]> historyweb.ucsd.edu/bernstein/ A survey and examination of some of the most important writings of Marx concerning economic and social theory and historical analysis. Emphasis on the theory of value, production, technical change, reproduction, and accumulation. Some consideration will also be made of certain neo-Marxist contributions and critiques. Required and Recommended Texts: +Karl Marx, Capital (3 volumes). +Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology. +Karl Marx, The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. +Karl Marx, Grundrisse. +Karl Marx, Pre-capitalist Economic Formations. +Paul Sweezy, The Theory of Capitalist Development. E. von Böhm-Bawerk, Karl Marx and the Close of His Sytem. N. Bukharin, The Economic Theory of the Leisure Class. M. Dobb, Political Economy and Capitalism. I. Rubin, Essays on Marx's Theory of Value. J. Robinson, An Essay on Marxian Economics. R. Meek, Studies in the Labor Theory of Value. D. Horowitz, Marx and Modern Economics. M. Dobb, Studies in the Development of Capitalism. M. Blaug, Economic Theory in Retrospect. W. Williams, The Great Evasion: An Essay on the Contemporary Relevance of Karl Marx and on the Wisdom of Admitting the Heretic into the Dialogue About America’s Future + -- Ordered at the University Bookstore in the Price Center. Course Requirements: There will be one class meeting per week. Student participation in class discussion is encouraged and expected. Those readings starred (*) on the reading list are especially important. -
THE POLITICAL THOUGHT of the THIRD WORLD LEFT in POST-WAR AMERICA a Dissertation Submitted
LIBERATION FROM THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY: THE POLITICAL THOUGHT OF THE THIRD WORLD LEFT IN POST-WAR AMERICA A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History By Benjamin Feldman, M.A. Washington, DC August 6, 2020 Copyright 2020 by Benjamin Feldman All Rights Reserved ii LIBERATION FROM THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY: THE POLITICAL THOUGHT OF THE THIRD WORLD LEFT IN POST-WAR AMERICA Benjamin Feldman, M.A. Thesis Advisor: Michael Kazin, Ph.D. ABSTRACT This dissertation traces the full intellectual history of the Third World Turn: when theorists and activists in the United States began to look to liberation movements within the colonized and formerly colonized nations of the ‘Third World’ in search of models for political, social, and cultural transformation. I argue that, understood as a critique of the limits of New Deal liberalism rather than just as an offshoot of New Left radicalism, Third Worldism must be placed at the center of the history of the post-war American Left. Rooting the Third World Turn in the work of theorists active in the 1940s, including the economists Paul Sweezy and Paul Baran, the writer Harold Cruse, and the Detroit organizers James and Grace Lee Boggs, my work moves beyond simple binaries of violence vs. non-violence, revolution vs. reform, and utopianism vs. realism, while throwing the political development of groups like the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, and the Third World Women’s Alliance into sharper relief. -
James Kenneth Galbraith [email protected] Curriculum Vitae
James Kenneth Galbraith [email protected] Curriculum Vitae Current Position: Lloyd M. Bentsen, Jr. Chair in Government/ Business Relations, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, and Professor of Government, The University of Texas at Austin. Experience: Chair, LBJ School Budget Council, 2002-2004. Director, Ph.D. program in Public Policy, 1995-1997; Professor, LBJ School of Public Affairs, 1990-2002, Associate Professor, 1986 - 1990; Visiting Associate 1985-86. Visiting Scholar, The Brookings Institution, 1985. Executive Director, Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, 1981 - 1982; Deputy Director, 1983 - 1984. Economist, Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs, United States House of Representatives, 1975-76 and 1977-80. Lecturer, Department of Economics, University of Maryland, 1979-1980. Teaching Subjects: Inequality and Development; International Economics; Technical Change and Financial Crisis; Economics for Policy; History of Economic Thought. Research Fields: Inequality; Economic policy. Degrees: Почетного доктора наук, Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, 2017 Docteur Honoris Causa, Université Pierre Mendes-France, October 2010 Ph.D., Yale University, May 1981 M. Phil., Yale University, May 1978 M.A., Yale University, December 1977 A.B., Magna Cum Laude, Harvard University, June 1974. Academy: Socio Straniero dell’Accademia dei Lincei - Classe di Scienze Morali, Storiche e Filologiche (Categoria VII - Scienze Sociali e Politiche). Elected 2010. Awards: GPAC Faculty Awards: Best Taught Class, 2020. GPAC Faculty Awards: Best Course to Challenge Your Assumptions, 2020. GPAC Faculty Awards: Best Transition Online, 2020. Veblen-Commons Award, Association for Evolutionary Economics, 2020. Почетного профессора, Urals State University of Economics, 2018. Trustee, Economists for Peace and Security, Elected 2017. -
Capitalist Revolutionary: John Maynard Keynes
capitalist revolutionary CAPITALIST REVOLUTIONARY JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES Roger E. Back house Bradley W. Bateman HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 2011 Copyright © 2011 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Back house, Roger, 1951– Capitalist revolutionary : John Maynard Keynes / Roger E. Backhouse, Bradley W. Bateman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978- 0- 674- 05775- 3 (alk. paper) 1. Keynes, John Maynard, 1883–1946. 2. Keynesian economics. I. Bateman, Bradley W., 1956– II. Title. HB103.K47B25 2011 330.15'6092—dc22 2011010437 To our families, past, present, and future CONTENTS 1. Keynes Returns, but Which Keynes? 1 2. The Rise and Fall of Keynesian Economics 21 3. Keynes the Moral Phi los o pher: Confronting the Challenges to Capitalism 47 4. Keynes the Physician: Developing a Theory of a Capitalist Economy 77 5. Keynes’s Ambiguous Revolution 113 6. Perpetual Revolution 139 Documenting the Keynesian Revolution: A Bibliographic Essay 161 Notes 175 References 179 Ac know ledg ments 187 Index 189 capitalist revolutionary 1 KEYNES RETURNS, BUT WHICH KEYNES? Following the fi nancial crisis of September 2008 when the Ameri- can investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed, threatening to engulf the entire banking system, the British economist John Maynard Keynes returned to center stage. In the pop u lar press and in the writings of many economists, Keynes featured promi- nently as governments around the world urgently sought ways to avoid economic collapse. In the United States, the New York Times contained articles titled “What would Keynes have done?” (October 28, 2008), “The old economist, relevant amid the rub- ble” (September 18, 2009), and “An old master back in fashion” (November 1, 2009).