Robert Vienneau: Thoughts Economics

1.0 Introduction Stefano Perri has a working paper, "Sraffa's response to Eaton's review: a note on the standard commodity and Marx's general profit rate". In this post, I present the analysis rewritten in matrix notation. The claim is, more or less, that the rate of profits in the system of prices of production is the weighted average of the rates of profits, by industry, in the system of labor values. Each weight is the product of the labor value of capital advanced in that industry and...

1.0 Introduction I have previously quoted authorities disparaging Böhm-Bawerk's pamphlet examining the supposed contradiction between volumes 3 and 1 of Marx's Capital. I refer to Karl Marx and the Close of His System, first published in German, in 1896. Engels brought out volume 3 of Marx's Capital in 1894. Böhm-Bawerk's treatment, although it ultimately misses the point, is important from a historical angle: "...the historical importance of Böhm-Bawerk's criticism of Marx ... should...

1.0 Introduction In his book, Human Action, Ludwig von Mises defines 'praxeology' as the science of human action. He says that it is a subject of formal reasoning. Human action is conscious action in which the actor attempts to decrease felt uneasiness. 'Catallactics' is a subset of praxeology treating market exchanges. But von Mises is quite confused. 2.0 Does Formal Reasoning Enlarge Our Knowledge? Von Mises does not know. At one point, he says formal reasoning does enlarge our...

Karl Marx was born on 5 May 1818. Over half a century ago, economists, building on the work of Piero Sraffa, extended Marx's critique. They showed that his approach to political economy was basically correct. The marginal revolution was a mistake. Here are the titles of some of the books on my bookshelf: Syed Ahmad. 1991. Capital in Economic Theory: Neo-classical, Cambridge and Chaos. Edward Elgar. C. E. Ayres. 1946. The Divine Right of Capital. Houghton Mifflin. Eugen von...

Several editions have been published of the works of Marx and Engels. One can also look in the Marxists Internet Archive. Many individual works have been published in various translations in various places. Marx's manuscripts ended up in the Institute of Social History (ISH), in Amsterdam. A first attempt was started in 1927, the first Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA), in which the works were to be published in their original languages. This project was never completed. David Riazanov,...

1.0 Introduction This post argues that there is more than one labor theory of value. 2.0 The Labor Theory of Property John Locke argued that what one mixes one labor with, one has a right to own. One could read Marx's Capital as a reductio ad absurdum of this labor theory of property. I disagree with this reading. 3.0 Labor Commanded as a Theory of Welfare Given a unit of money - one dollar or one british pound - the labor commanded by that money is the amount of person-years of labor...

Table 1: Selected Events 1853 - 1856Crimean war.1861Emanicpation of the serfs under Alexander II.1877 - 1878Russo-Turkisk war.1881Alexander II assassinated by a Narodnik conspiracy.1883Plekhanov founds Emancipation of Labor Group, struggles against Narodniks.1898Russian Social Democratic Labor Party founded, first congress.1900 - 1901First publications of Iskra, an all-Russian underground newspaper for the RSDLP.1902Lenin publishes What is to be done?1903Second party congress of RSDLP,...

Guido Lorenzoni and Ivan Werning. Inflation is Conflict. Bob Rowthorn is referenced, as he should be. Frederick Guy and Peter Skott. 2005. Power-Biased Technical Change and the Rise in Earnings Inequality. The references on twitter must be to something more recent. Seth Ackerman interview with James Forder, about the myths economists believe about the Philipps curve and 1970s stagflation. Cybersocialist planning. This Jacobin article talks about Ian Wright's work among others....

In mainstream economics, marginal productivity does not determine distribution. Furthermore, every correct proposition of marginal productivity theory is consistent, under competitive conditions, with Marx's claim that workers are exploited by capitalists. Assume technology is given, the economy is in a stationary state, and one knows what technique is chosen. (Ludwig von Mises called a stationary state an 'evenly rotating economy'.) The technique consists of a list of the physical inputs...

1.0 Introduction I find the question in the title of this post hard to answer. I should probably say something about secondary literature, which I do not consider myself well-informed on. For purposes of this post, I ignore distinctions between socialism and communism. 2.0 Marx Wanted To Implement An Utopian Vision Of A Post-Capitalist Society You will sometimes find reactionaries assert that wherever Marxism was implemented, the government killed tens of millions. They are too ignorant...