Shigeto Tsuru’s “Institutionalism in the Broad Sense” and Theories of Contemporary Capitalism Constructed by Yoshihiro Takasuka and Shigenobu Kishimoto

Abstract

We discuss Shigeto Tsuru, who studied Marx and Keynes with Joseph Schumpeter at Harvard University in the 1930s and when faced with the post-war high economic growth in advanced countries, raised the question, “Has capitalism changed?” in the late 1950s. We investigate several studies of contemporary capitalism that began with this question and remember his research projects for a new political economy, the research of environmental issues, and the subsequent rediscovery of institutional economists in the broad sense such as Marx, Keynes, Veblen, Myrdal, Kapp, and Galbraith in the 1990s in his book, Institutional Economics Revisited, Cambridge UP, 1993. We also consider some Japanese political economists, for example, Yoshihiro Takasuka and Shigenobu Kishimoto, who developed the theories of contemporary capitalism based on not only Marx but also Kalecki, Sraffa, and Sylos-Labini, following Tsuru’s research orientation about contemporary capitalism in the 1960s and 1970s. Yoshihiro Takasuka developed the theory of “productivity differential inflation” as relative price changes and “stagflation” in contemporary capitalism. Shigenobu Kishimoto theorized the structures and dynamics of contemporary capitalism, focusing on the division of labor, the market system, and firm organization as well as the dual roles of wages in capital accumulation.