Post-Keynesian

I think of Gramsci or Lukacs as the authors to read for understanding why Marxism might be called a "philosophy of praxis". Apparently, that phrase was first used by Antonio Labriola. His collection of letters to Georges Sorel was published as Socialism and Philosophy. In the following letter, "praxis" is translated as "practice" in the last two paragraphs. Rome, May 14, 1897 To return to my first argument, it seems to me that the following question is uppermost in your...

This post continues the treatment of this model. A number of conditions must be satisfied by quantity flows and prices to allow the economy to undergo smooth reproduction. The net output of each produced commodity meets the requirements for use: (B - A) q = d The amount of each quality of land that is farmed cannot exceed the available quantity: C q ≤ t A vector is greater than or equal to another if each element of the vector is greater or equal to the corresponding element...

[embedded content]Ryan Chapman On (The History Of) Socialism I found the above video fairly reasonable. Chapman tends to depict history as a debate about ideas, with little about material developments. In other videos, he seems unreliable on the new left, post modernism, and identity politics. My Marx includes a mathematical economist. This post provides some lists. As usual, I expect my lists are quite idiosyncratic. Some items, with more investigation, I might dislike. Books: Gary...

Figure 1: Wage Curves and Rent for an Example of Extensive Rent I more-or-less have a draft research article in five posts: post 1 post 2 post 3 post 4 post 5. I suggest that the current post can replace the fourth post. It is a variant on on this post. The analysis of the choice of technique in models of extensive rent can be based on the construction of wage curves, even though the outer envelope does not represent the cost-minimizing technique. The orders of fertility and rentability...

[embedded content]Noam Chomsky Having A Discussion With An Idiot This is more about current events than usual with me. Patrick Bet David talks to quite a range of people. But he is incapable of listening, partly because he 'thinks' there are two sides, Democrats and Republicans, in the United States today. I stumbled on the above after listening to a discussion with David Pakman, in which Pakman responds at one point with something like, "Some of those words mirror some of what I said."...

Table 3: Model Parameters and Variables Parameter or VariableDescriptionnThe number of produced commodities, with n > 1.kThe number of types of land, with k > 1.mThe number of processes available for producing corn on land, with m > k.a0A row vector of labor coefficients containing n + m - 1 elements. The element a0, j; j = 1, 2, ..., n + m - 1; is the person-years of labor needed to run the th process at a unit level.AA n x (n + m - 1) matrix. The element ai,j; i = 1, 2, ..., n; j...

I cannot write as much about these economists as they deserve. INET obituary for Victoria Chick. Her book, Macroeconomics after Keynes has a pun as its title. She is writing about macroeconomics that temporally follows Keynes and macroeconomics that builds on Keynes. The two do not need to be the same. Her book is good on the different time scales in the General Theory. Taking the short run to be when fixed capital ('plant') is given is different than defining the long run by given...

[embedded content]Neighbors of Zinn Make A Movie This was a year before my mother's mother's mother's ancesters came to this continent. It is on my mother's mother's father's side I am descended from a murderer's brother. My father's ancesters were probably on this continent in 1919, but in Canada. "A black American writer, J. Saunders Redding, describes the arrival of a ship in North America in the year 1619: Sails furled, flag drooping at her rounded stern, she rode the tide...

This post begins the presentation of an example in which extensive and intensive rent can both arise. I do not consider external intensive rent or joint production in general. Kurz and Salvadori (1995), in section 2.2 of Chapter 10, have a more general model that includes external extensive rent and joint production. It does not allow for more than one agricultural commodity, although they treat that in problems, with examples from the literature. Perhaps developing this example will help...

A Timeline For The United States This post provides an outline of the development of socialist and communist parties in the United States. The focus is on national political parties, not labor unions, not intentional communities, and not activist groups. The Socialist Labor Party (SLP), the Socialist Party (SP), the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), and the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP) are the most long-lived parties considered here. Democratic Socialists of...