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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
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