The paper scrutinizes Marx's proposal to measure the “degree of exploitation” in terms of the “rate of surplus value”. This amounts to defining an equivalent to the device of the thermometer in ...measuring temperature. The condition to be met is that a concept must be suggested that allows one to express the degree of exploitation in an independent manner and to show that the two move in parallel with one another. It is then shown that the rate of surplus value does not satisfy the sought criterion, because it may move in opposite direction of the degree of exploitation. This is demonstrated in terms of a simple numerical example with a choice of technique concerning the lengthening of the working day.
In the preface, Sergio Cremaschi calls his book “a contextual reconstruction of an economist’s intellectual biography”; its purpose is “to look where others did not, due to such factors as inapt ...modernization, proneness to accept received views, constraints created by boundaries between disciplines and historiographic mythology” (xi). Since Piero Sraffa’s edition of Ricardo’s works and correspondence is “still the starting point”, one of the tasks of the book is to “try to cover blanks in Sra...
According to Adam Smith, markets and trade are, in principle, good things—provided there is competition and a regulatory framework that prevents ruthless selfishness, greed and rapacity from leading ...to socially harmful outcomes. But competition and market regulations are always in danger of being undermined and circumnavigated, giving way to monopolies that are very comfortable and highly profitable to monopolists and may spell great trouble for many people. In Smith's view, political economy—as an important, and perhaps even the most important, part of a kind of master political science, encompassing the science of the legislator—has the task to fight superstition and false beliefs in matters of economic policy, to debunk opinions that present individual interests as promoting the general good and to propose changing regulatory frameworks for markets and institutions that help to ward off threats to the security of society as a whole and provide incentives such that selfseeking behaviour has also socially beneficial effects. The paper shows that the ideas of Adam Smith still may resonate and illuminate the problems of today and the theories that try to tackle them.
The paper re-assesses (the non-monetary part of) Carl Menger's Grundsätze (1871). It begins by pointing out that representatives of the so-called "German Use Value School" elaborated the theory of ...marginal utility prior to Menger. The paper then turns to Menger's criticism of the theories of value and distribution of the classical economists and draws the attention to some important misunderstandings by him. After a summary account of Menger's alternative construction, the paper informs about the criticisms put forward against it especially by his two main students, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk and Friedrich von Wieser. It is then argued that contrary to Menger's view, relative prices reflect inter alia the substances that "transmigrate" into commodities in the course of production. Despite the numerous objections levelled at it, the Grundsätze are nevertheless a "great" work, because it invites to correct what is problematic in it and develop what is sound.
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The paper identifies as the root of the recent controversy in the theory of capital David Ricardo's finding that competitive prices and costs of production depend not only on the methods of ...production employed, but also on the wage rate (or rate of profits) and change with it. A consequence of this result, whose systematic elaboration we owe to Piero Sraffa, is that systems of production cannot generally be ordered monotonically with the rate of profits. Reswitching, capital reversing, price and quantity Wicksell effects, etc., are all rooted in this fact. It is argued that the rate of profits is not determined by the marginal productivity of capital and that the equality between the two in equilibrium must not be misinterpreted as implying a causal relationship leading from the latter to the former. Attempts to assess the empirical probability of reswitching, etc., in terms of input-output tables ought to be received with many reservations for both theoretical and data-related reasons. It is further argued that problems for marginalist theory already arise in a zero-profit framework, in which compound interest effects are ruled out. Hence the seemingly unobtrusive 'laws' of input demand and output supply are a much less reliable basis to stand on than is conventionally thought. The paper concludes with some remarks on the implications of the findings in the controversy for Keynes's theory of investment.
The paper has a fresh look at the work of Weber. The emphasis is on his “Protestant Ethic and the ‘Spirit’ of Capitalism”, which is frequently misrepresented. It is argued that Weber’s focus of ...attention is the historical importance of Protestant ideas to the extent to which they shape human action; the treatise does not seek to explain capitalism since its beginnings, but concentrates exclusively on “modern capitalism”; it deals with economic growth and development in the antechamber of the Industrial Revolution; it concerns essentially what Marx had called the production of “absolute” as opposed to relative surplus value. Weber’s argument is rephrased with the help of economic theory and its limitations are pointed out.
El artículo presenta un punto de vista nuevo sobre la obra de Max Weber. El énfasis está puesto en su “Ética Protestante y el ‘Espíritu’ del Capitalismo”, obra con frecuencia interpretada mal. La atención de Weber está en la importancia histórica de las ideas protestantes en cuanto perfilan la acción humana; no pretende explicar el capitalismo desde su origen, sino que se concentra sólo en el “capitalismo moderno”; trata del crecimiento y el desarrollo económico en la antesala de la Revolución Industrial; esencialmente de lo que Marx llamó producción de plusvalía “absoluta” por oposición a la relativa. Su argumento es reformulado aquí con la ayuda de la teoría económica y se hacen notar sus limitaciones.
In diesem Aufsatz würdigt Heinz Kurz den Beitrag Max Webers zu den Sozial- und insbesondere Wirtschaftswissenschaften aus Anlass seines 100. Todestages. Nach einem Überblick über Leben, Werk und ...Wirken geht er kurz auf Webers methodologische Betrachtungen und seine Rolle im „Werturteilsstreit“ im Verein für Socialpolitik ein. Es folgt eine Auseinandersetzung mit Webers Aussagen zur Werttheorie und Grenznutzenlehre. Der Hauptteil der Arbeit gilt Webers Beiträgen zur Religionsökonomik. Nach einer Zusammenfassung des Werks „Die protestantische Ethik und der ‚Geist‘ des Kapitalismus“ und der darin exemplarisch behandelten historischen Macht von Ideen beleuchtet der Autor einige Aussagen Webers vor dem Hintergrund der neueren Theorie und macht auf Grenzen des Arguments aufmerksam. Es folgt ein Überblick über die Aufnahme des Werks damals und heute und die große Bedeutung der „Weber-These“ in der modernen Religions- und Kulturökonomik. Nach einer kurzen Erörterung des Verhältnisses von Weber zu Marx wirft Kurz ein Streiflicht auf Webers Beitrag zum Verständnis von Macht und Herrschaft. Webers Werk erweist sich als gewaltige Schatzkammer von Ideen, von denen mehrere noch darauf warten, aufgegriffen zu werden.
Schumpeter chastised Ricardo for his alleged “vice” - the so-called “Ricardian Vice” - of drawing far reaching policy conclusions from utterly simplistic models, which, moreover, were ...underdetermined. The paper first argues that Schumpeter saw Ricardo’s approach to the theory of value and distribution through a marginalist lens and therefore arrived at a distorted picture of the latter. Several of the criticisms he levelled at Ricardo cannot be sustained. The paper then has a closer look at Schumpeter’s pronouncements on economic policy issues and shows that in a number of respects his views did not differ that much from Ricardo’s and in some respects were remarkably similar. This concerns especially the problem of paying off the public debt, with regard to which both Ricardo after the Napoleonic Wars and Schumpeter after World War I advocated a once for all capital levy.
Economic thought Kurz, Heinz D; Riemer, Jeremiah; Kurz, Heinz D
2016, 2016., 2016-05-17
eBook
In this concise yet comprehensive history, Heinz D. Kurz traces the long arc of economic thought from its emergence in ancient Greece to its systematic presentation among the classical thinkers of ...the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to the influential work of scholars such as Paul Samuelson and Kenneth J. Arrow. With a keen eye for how economic insights are acquired, lost, and reborn, Kurz focuses on the dynamic individuals who give old ideas new life and the historical events that provoke different approaches and theories. Over the course of this journey, Kurz explains what Adam Smith meant by the "invisible hand"; how Karl Marx's "law of motion" works in capitalist economies; the roots of the Austrian economists' emphasis on the problems of information, incomplete knowledge, and uncertainty; John Maynard Keynes's principle of effective demand and economic stabilization; and the insights and challenges offered by growth theory, welfare economics, game theory, and more. He concludes with a deft summation of world economists' major concerns today and their critical relation to world events.
Zusammenfassung
In diesem Aufsatz würdigt Heinz Kurz den Beitrag Max Webers zu den Sozial- und insbesondere Wirtschaftswissenschaften aus Anlass seines 100. Todestages. Nach einem Überblick über ...Leben, Werk und Wirken geht er kurz auf Webers methodologische Betrachtungen und seine Rolle im „Werturteilsstreit“ im Verein für Socialpolitik ein. Es folgt eine Auseinandersetzung mit Webers Aussagen zur Werttheorie und Grenznutzenlehre. Der Hauptteil der Arbeit gilt Webers Beiträgen zur Religionsökonomik. Nach einer Zusammenfassung des Werks „Die protestantische Ethik und der ‚Geist‘ des Kapitalismus“ und der darin exemplarisch behandelten historischen Macht von Ideen beleuchtet der Autor einige Aussagen Webers vor dem Hintergrund der neueren Theorie und macht auf Grenzen des Arguments aufmerksam. Es folgt ein Überblick über die Aufnahme des Werks damals und heute und die große Bedeutung der „Weber-These“ in der modernen Religions- und Kulturökonomik. Nach einer kurzen Erörterung des Verhältnisses von Weber zu Marx wirft Kurz ein Streiflicht auf Webers Beitrag zum Verständnis von Macht und Herrschaft. Webers Werk erweist sich als gewaltige Schatzkammer von Ideen, von denen mehrere noch darauf warten, aufgegriffen zu werden.
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