SHOE Archives

Societies for the History of Economics

SHOE@YORKU.CA

Options: Use Forum View

Use Monospaced Font
Show Text Part by Default
Show All Mail Headers

Message: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Topic: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]
Author: [<< First] [< Prev] [Next >] [Last >>]

Print Reply
Subject:
From:
[log in to unmask] (Romain Kroes)
Date:
Fri Mar 31 17:18:34 2006
Content-Type:
text/plain
Parts/Attachments:
text/plain (52 lines)
----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- 
 
Regarding Brad De Long's most recent comments about Marx: 
 
Marx invented the "period of production" and the "capital rotation",  
as explanatory variables (Das Kapital, volumes 2 and 3) and  
credited them of a significant tendency (volume 2) which is daily  
experienced and researched by industrial management, but still  
ignored by the most of economists. He invented, too, the "organic  
composition of capital", its direct relationship to productivity  
(volume 3), and its differential distribution along the economic chain  
(volume 3) which can be used nowadays, with respect to the  
"general rate of profit" (volume 3), to explain "inflation by costs".  
However, he did not pay interest to "inflation". But who did it,  
among the economist of his time ?    
 
Marx can be considered as the first scientific economist. His  
attempt was not successful, but he is not responsible of his  
successors' disability, even of the "marxist" ones.   
 
After Marx, I suggest Clement Juglar who described, one after the  
other all the cyclical crises of the 19th century, through the  
balance sheets of the central Banks of England and of France, and  
exhaustively explained the mechanisms of an overproduction crisis  
("Des Crises commerciales et de leur retour periodique en France,  
en Angleterre et aux Etats-Unis", 2ed., Paris : Guillaumin, 1889).  
Again a teaching which is still unknown by the most of  
economists. Even Keynes seems to have never heard of him (can  
somebody confirm or refute that ?).    
 
And third, I propose Keynes who got rid of the dogma of saving precedence 
regarding to investment (G. T., Macmillan, p.p. 81-85). 
 
Brad also said: 
> I would ask Romain Kroes to take a look at the UN _Human Development 
> Report_ or the World Bank's _World Development Report_. 
 
I concede that UN Human Development Report and World Bank's  
World Development Report don't know whether the trend of  
impoverishment is positive or stationary, through the last ten years.  
But as for the relative parts of salaries and profits in the product, it  
is an established fact, except for USA where salaries/GDP is  
constant (is it necessary to recall why USA don't follow the world  
trends ?).   
 
Regards 
Romain Kroes 
 
------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ 
For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask] 
 

ATOM RSS1 RSS2