Classical Political Economy Research Articles

COVID-19 and economics education: a view from India

In this note, I argue for an economics education which incorporates the ideas of embeddedness, interdependence, and necessaries, all visible in the works of the classical political economists. Thes...

Стоимость как расчётная категория

The article considers the possibility of calculating indicators of the theoretical cost category using modern inter-industry interregional tools for forecasting economic development. The principles of displaying production relationships implemented in them and the resulting calculated indicators in the cost dimension do not contradict the categories of classical political economy. In parallel, the concept of redistribution of nominal value by means of Finance between interconnected producers and consumers was introduced when applying the intersectoral approach. The paper provides an example of calculations. The usual financial statements are used as an instrumental basis, but the number of employees is set as an input measure of all costs. As a result, all calculated data: prices (aggregated prices), indices of their changes in dynamics, current financial flows are recalculated in labor costs. The tables below represent the corresponding indicators aggregated by region. Despite the proximity of the financial and cost categories, the use of cost characteristics in financial instruments to calculate them affects the quantitative results to a certain extent. In particular, comparison of indicators of forecasts of financial and cost statements of tasks connected with one initial base of tasks of material composition shows the following. The dynamics of changes in the total income of the population, budgets, volume of loans, etc. for indicators in value units are overwhelmingly lower than the corresponding values of the mentioned purely financial task. This suggests that the rates calculated in current prices (the financial task) have a greater inflationary impact than similar indicators calculated in value units. Or, regional differentiation of calculated units of product value above the corresponding indices of consolidated prices of purely financial statements. To a certain extent, this is due to the fact that the task adopted assumptions for a certain alignment of economic activity conditions by region due to the differentiation of Federal taxes.

Economics and Political economy textbooks: 28 years of interaction

The article analyzes the methodology of modern economic theory. The advantages and disadvantages Of the McConnell and brew economies are analyzed. It is compared with the textbook “Political economy” of the period of the USSR and Soviet Russia. A literature review has shown that many authors are critical of Main stream and are looking for alternative theories and methodologies. The article analyzes the institutional reasons for teaching Economics. Given the growing global crisis of industrial civilization and, in particular, the systemic crisis of its economic and political leader-the United States, the question is raised about the need to create a new type of textbook on economic theory. The article describes the philosophical roots of Economics and Marxist political economy. According to the authors of the article, these two areas of science and education in the twentieth century became examples of a “secular form of religion”, since their ideological orientation prevailed over the scientific content. “Russian Economics” is a textbook for undergraduates that has broader system relationships with other Sciences (sociology, political science, Cybernetics, zoopsychology, etc.) and applies, along with well-known models of Economics, also qualitative methods and models of classical political economy within the framework of a systematic approach. The article describes the methodological principles of a new type of textbook that reflect the basic provisions of traditional European culture and can serve to form the concept of the “third way economy”, as an objectively emerging model of a mixed economy.

Tea War: A History of Capitalism in China and India by Andrew B. Liu

Reviewed by: Tea War: A History of Capitalism in China and India by Andrew B. Liu Elizabeth Joy Reynoldsereynolds@wustl.edu Andrew B. Liu. Tea War: A History of Capitalism in China and India. Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020. 344 pp. $50.00 (cloth). Andrew B. Liu's Tea War transforms our understanding of the dynamics of global capitalism in China and India. Through an analysis of the competition over the tea trade, Liu rethinks the definition and scope of capitalism as we know it. The narrative structure of the book situates the work equally in both Chinese and Indian historiographies, as Liu presents a back-and-forth between the tea industries of China and India beginning with the First Opium War (1839–1842) and ending with the outbreak of the Second World War (1937–1945). Over the course of seven chapters, Liu traces the rise of the Chinese tea industry into the 1880s and shows the response of the colonial Indian tea industry in Assam, which overturned China's success by the 1890s and catalyzed a new mode of political economic thought among the Chinese reformers and intellectuals. Liu's work engages directly with the growing body of scholarship on North Atlantic histories of capitalism but does so from the perspective of the colonial and postcolonial contexts of China and India. Weaving a Marxist approach into a deep understanding of classical economy, he offers a groundbreaking work that must be required reading for any scholar seeking to understand the integration of China and India into a global capitalist market. Competition and labor are Liu's windows into the inner dynamics of capitalism. Competition in particular provides readers with a coherent method by which to understand the entangled nature of the tea trade in China and India. Specifically, it helps us locate the social and economic pressures placed on tea producers and laborers across interconnected geographies. Liu shows how China and India, despite not being at the center of Wallersteinian "cores," nonetheless engaged with globally competitive forces of capitalism. And, at a societal level, these pressures created the need for greater labor productivity in the marketplace. Through a history of the labor-intensive tea industries that were transformed by the global competition over the tea market, Liu demonstrates that the logic of capital accumulation was already present in China and India by the nineteenth century. Chapter 1 presents a longue durée narrative of tea cultivation and trade, while chapter 2, one of the most exciting for China scholars, focuses on the nineteenth-century tea industry in Anhui and Fujian, showing how global competition drove tea producers to increase productivity by relying on extant technologies. Factories in Anhui, for instance, used incense sticks that burned at a regular rate to create a regimen of fixed, abstract "timed labor," resembling the systems of work discipline recognized by E. P. Thompson (48). Though using incense sticks as timekeeping devices has a long history, Liu argues that their repurposing to increase labor productivity, and even to serve as a basis for remuneration, was an innovation that took place in the midst of China's integration with a global capitalist economy. "The rise of Industrial capitalism," as he puts it, "coincided with qualitative changes in the perception and consciousness of time" (66). In chapters 3 and 4, Liu shows how labor indenture in Assam emerged out of a crisis of political economic principles in colonial India. Originally holding fast to doctrines of classical political economy (embodied in the ideals of free market and free labor), the British could not make tea profitable (and could not effectively compete with the Chinese) without creating a system of indentured labor. The success of the tea industry in colonial [End Page E-34] Assam (and in China too), therefore, directly challenges the notion that capitalist production must rely on free labor and technological innovations. In Liu's words, "mechanization cannot stand in for the history of capitalism as a whole but rather is best resituated within the broader social compulsion toward rising productivity" (118–19). In other words, instead of defining capitalism through industrial technologies...

Growth and/or development: specificity of the Russian economic model

The article provides a systematic description of the main features of the post-Soviet economy. The methodology and categorical apparatus of classical political economy, classical institutionalism, as well as of other directions of heterodox economic theory are the basis for identifying the content, the structure and the peculiarities of Russian economy. The authors demonstrate the influence of climatic, spatial, and historical characteristics of Russia on the formation of these characteristic features. The main stages of the evolution of Russian economy are highlighted, as well as the particularities of their growth / decline as shown by macroeconomic quantitative indicators. Special attention is paid to qualitative indicators characterizing social results and contradictions in the development of the main sectors of the economy. On this basis, conclusions are formulated that reveal the reasons for the deep recession in the 1990s, extensive development in the 2000s and stagnation in the 2010s. The author comes to the conclusion that nonrandom the presence of two main concepts for the further development of Russia - a neoliberal concept and a concept focused on enhancing social regulation and social orientation of development (and not just economic growth) – is not accidental.

Gestão da riqueza velha e criação de riqueza nova: uma crítica à Modern Money Theory (MMT)

Resumo A discussão sobre política monetária, a moeda e sua natureza voltou ao centro do debate econômico no Brasil e no mundo. No cerne do debate proposto estão questões centrais, como, por exemplo, a da impossibilidade de um governo soberano não honrar dívidas denominadas em sua própria moeda, proposição central da Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), além da colocação em dúvida do que foram, até pouco tempo atrás, pressupostos basilares da teoria econômica convencional, como por exemplo a imprescindibilidade de uma organização da política monetária em torno do estabelecimento de um Banco Central Independente que persiga metas de inflação. Nesse contexto, este artigo possui dois objetivos principais. Primeiro, busca-se identificar com maior precisão as molduras teóricas que sustentam duas visões distintas sobre o que é a moeda em uma economia capitalista plenamente desenvolvida. De um lado, a visão da moeda-mercadoria, que incorpora a construção teórica da economia política clássica; de outro, a moeda vista como uma instituição social, pertencente ao arcabouço teórico de matriz keynesiano-marxista. Segundo, busca-se compreender os principais pressupostos da MMT e seus pontos de convergência e divergência em relação às duas visões supracitadas. A partir da perspectiva keynesiano-marxista, conclui-se que não se sustentam as abordagens teóricas que tratam Estados e mercados como entes abstratos, que operam em cenários ideais, afastados das reais condições econômicas, sociais e políticas do momento presente, dentre as quais se destaca a MMT.

Methodology for Analysing and Evaluating the Effectiveness of Investment Projects: from Idealism to Consumer and System Approaches

The article studies the theoretical and methodological approaches of subjective and objective idealism, general scientific subjective and consumer methodological approaches in relation to the systematization of the fundamental foundations for evaluating the effectiveness of projects. The scientific positions of the economic schools of mercantilism and marginalism are analyzed, the views of the economic school of physiocrats, the ideology of objective rationalism of classical political economy are considered. In the course of theoretical scientific research, the process, trend and regularity of transformation of the main principles of subjective and objective idealism into the basic characteristics of consumer and system methodological approaches, respectively, which are the basis for evaluating the economic efficiency of investment projects, are established.

Property as an Object of Theoretical Research: Political Economy and Economic Policy

The article reveals the understanding of property in institutionalism and in classical political economy with an emphasis on the Marxist direction of the latter. It is shown that in the works of modern authors belonging to the Post-Soviet School of Critical Marxism – one of the main directions of modern theory of classical political economy in Russia – the specific, concrete historical content of property relations is firstly investigated. This content in the framework of this direction, inheriting the tradition of the “Tsagolovskaya” school of political economy, is connected through the system of production relations of a particular society. It is shown that both private and public forms of property have different socio-economic contents in historically different socio-economic systems – pre-bourgeois, bourgeois, post-capitalist. The author proposes political and economic systematization of patterns of property that are characteristic of the modern stage of economic development, which in the article is defined as late capitalism. These forms include not only different types of private and public property, but also transitional forms that contradictory combine private-capitalist and associated forms of appropriation. It is specially emphasized that public property is not reducible to state property and includes a special type of relationship – “ownership by everybody of everything”, which is characteristic of the sphere of co-creation. It is shown that in certain types of economy, state ownership can hide relations not only of public, but also of private-capitalist appropriation, as well as non-economic coercion. The contradictions of the transformation of property relations under the conditions of late capitalism and the most relevant practical problems associated with this are revealed.The article includes a polemic dialogue of the author with representatives of the institutional direction and the works of George B. Kleiner.

Маркетинг як економічна наука

The aim of the article. The purpose of the article is to form evidence that marketing is an economic science. The results of the analyses. Marketing is an economic science that studies the problem of sales in the capital cycle, ie the issue associated with the transformation of the commodity form of the value of capital into the monetary form of the value of capital. Marketing in terms of commodity production solves the problem of sales in the capital cycle. The reason for the emergence of marketing is the emergence of the buyer's market at the stage of mechanization of the industrial stage of commodity production. The subject of the study of marketing is the study of the problem of sales in the capital cycle. The essence of marketing is a support at the stage of sale of the continuity of the capital cycle. Marketing, like any economic sciense, is evolving, and the stages of evolution must be tied to the way goods are produced. Since the advent of classical marketing theory, the method of production has changed, so it is logical to assume that its periodization should change adequately. In the context of digitalization of the economy, the Internet and other digital channels are changing the forms and methods of marketing, the era of omnichannel marketing has come, the marketing of the XXI century. Conclusions and perspectives for further research. Marketing is the result of the development of four economic doctrines: mercantilism, classical and neoclassical political economy, marginalism, institutionalism. The genetic roots of marketing go back to the early stages of capitalism, and the evolution of marketing theory is intertwined with the evolution of economic theory. With the digitalization of the economy, the Internet and other digital channels are changing the forms and methods of marketing, the era of omnichannel marketing has come. Automation, targeting, personalization, video content, multimedia projects, online marketing research modernize marketing in form. But the mission of marketing remains the same as to solve the problem of sales in the capital cycle of enterprises. In the future it is necessary to study the evolution of the marketing paradigm taking into account the changes in technological systems during the XX-XXI centuries. Keywords: marketing, economics, mercantilism, political economy, marginalism, institutionalism, omnic marketing.

Evolution of decision-making models: from classical political economy to behavioral economics

Evolution of decision-making models: from classical political economy to behavioral economics

The state of the study of the market in political economy: China’s rise shines light on conceptual shortcomings

The minimalist, atomistic classical liberal definition of markets is dominant in the global political economy literature, if often implicitly so. But major shifts are occurring in the 21st century, including China’s rise, which highlight the deficiencies of this definition and challenge us to develop fresh tools to conceptualize global markets. There are three ways in which China’s emergence challenges established market conceptualizations: the continued resilience of China’s authoritarian state-led capitalist economic model, China’s positioning around notions of power and fairness in the global economy, and China’s mixed preferences regarding global markets. The study of China’s rise, far from only impressing upon us how different China is, shines a light on dynamics that are prevalent everywhere, yet suffer from a lack of attention. This paper argues that the political economy literature is limiting the development of richer conceptualizations of the market because it operates within three conceptual ‘straitjackets’: the notion of the pure market as ideal- type, the state-market dichotomy and the notion of a sequential progression towards a market economy. The fact that markets are an underdefined concept deprives us of useful tools for elucidating important questions about markets in the global economy and limits our capacity to evaluate China’s impact on global markets. Drawing from diverse literatures, from comparative politics, to classical political economy and economic sociology, this paper develops an institutionally grounded set of tools, including a list of characteristics and a typology, to define, evaluate and compare markets, and inspire others to contribute to the endeavour.

Classical Labor Values: Properties of Economic Reproduction

We consider economic value as a property that renders heterogeneous goods and services commensurable. Starting from the basic division of output between workers and non-workers, we are able to derive value as a property of systems of economic reproduction. We show its relation to value in classical political economy and in Sraffian economic theory. We go on to discuss the applicability of the derivation and its relevance for analyzing distribution, productivity and employment in a wide range of economies.

Теория ренты Рикардо в трактовке Зибера

The article deals with the Ricardian theory of rent as interpreted by one of the first Russian Marxists, Nikolai Sieber. Sieber made great efforts to popularize Marxʼs ideas in Russia. He believed it was his mission to make complex theoretical constructions of Marxism simpler and more understandable for the majority of readers. Sieber began his way to Marxism with the study and translation of the writings on classical political economy by D. Ricardo. Furthermore, Sieber’s texts focus on a wide range of opinions on land rent presented in the works of Russian and foreign economists of the XIX–XX centuries. This article also pays considerable attention to the political aspects of rent, which are perhaps crucial to the issue of rent. This is due to the fact that rent has been and remains an important tool for the redistribution of national income and, therefore, is an element of the political structure. Ricardian theory of rent came into being during the debate over high bread duties in England and was, in fact, an instrument of struggle against landowners who received rental super profits because of high grain prices. Subsequently, this theory was considered as a tool of struggle against the industrial bourgeoisie, which caused its fierce criticism from the apologists of the bourgeoisie.

«Экономия и право первобытного общества»: разбор эпистолярного наследия Н.И. Зибера

The article deals with the epistolary heritage of Nikolaj Ivanovich Sieber (1844–1888), who was a representative of the classical political economy and a follower of Ricardo and Marx. Since Sieberʼs personal archive has not survived, the legacy is presented in twentytwo letters, which he addressed mainly from Europe to Pyotr Lavrov, Rosalia Idelson, Pyotr Kropotkin, Pavel Axelrod, and to his closest friends and colleagues – Alexander Chuprov and Ivan Yanzhul. Collected from the archives of St. Petersburg, Moscow and Amsterdam, Sieberʼs letters shed light on the circle of his correspondents, the nature of relations with publishers and editors, and clarify a number of issues of his theoretical legacy. In the context of the debate about the nature of Sieberʼs Marxism, the letters reinforce the position that he was a consistent theoretical Marxist and adherent of classical political economy. The details connected with the publication of the book «Essays on the Primitive Economic Culture» are extremely important. For researchers, it remained not entirely clear why Sieber never introduces the concept of «economic culture» and practically did not use it in his work. Correspondence with Yanzhul made it clear that the author proposed a different title – «Economics and Law of Primitive Society». This title clearly corresponds to the logic of the book, since it focuses primarily on the comparison of two spheres of the evolution of primitive, pre-state society strictly interconnected: economic institutions and legal relations. In general, the letters of Sieber indirectly confirmed the thesis that he was a consistent Marxist before the appearance of Marxism and an economist-anthropologist before the advent of economic anthropology.

Land questions in the 21st Century Postcolony

AbstractThe question of land, its commodification and role in capital accumulation has come to occupy centre stage in political economy since the last decade of the 20th century. Such concerns are however not confined to the agrarian question as in classical political economy but have emerged primarily in the wake of land being integrated into circuits of speculative capital accumulation constituting novel processes of dispossession. This financialization of land and accompanying processes of dispossession, often justified through neoliberal developmentalism, not only has consequences for agrarian actors and ecologies but also poses questions about the role of land in current accumulation dynamic, especially in transitioning economies in the global South. Based on a review of three recently published books on the contemporary land question and politics around it in India, this essay explores how such incorporations and dispossessions are driven by multiple developmental imperatives and asks what such logics mean for conceptualizing the land question in the 21st century.

Анти-Аузан: критика одной социальной философии Часть 1

<span>В статье дается ответ на вопрос, почему в новой институциональной экономической теории (НИЭТ) игнорируется институт денег, несмотря на то, что этот институт является центральным в капиталистической экономике. Дело в том, что НИЭТ, продолжая традиции сначала классической политической экономии, а затем и неоклассического экономикс, нацелена на легитимацию монетарного социального порядка, в котором эмиссия значительной части денежной массы осуществляется частными банками при выдаче кредитов. Монетарный социальный порядок впервые возник в Англии в результате «Славной революции» 1688 г., следствием которой было подчинение государства буржуазии. Деньги при этом становятся основным источником власти, на сокрытие чего и нацелена преподаваемая в университетах экономическая теория. Впервые деньги как социальный институт последовательно стали рассматриваться в институциональной экономике Джона Коммонса, и НИЭТ, выхолостив ее основные понятия, продолжает, как университетская учебная дисциплина, дело идеологического прикрытия монетарного социального порядка.</span>

The intersubjective ontology of need in Carl Menger

AbstractAs I have argued elsewhere, there is no room for the concept of need in the prevailing neoclassical school of economics—without reducing the need to a purely subjective construct. Not so, however, both in classical political economy and in the contemporary heterodox schools of economics. The main aim of this paper is, firstly, to show the existence of the concept of need as such in Carl Menger—widely acknowledged as one of the fathers of modern economics; and secondly, to trace the concept’s erasure in the orthodox school along with its rediscovery in the heterodox schools. With this exposition on the history of the idea, I hope to demonstrate how taking the concept seriously would urge us to engage ontological research and would mandate a significant change in economic analysis, regardless of whether this change is considered to reside within the orthodox tradition or be deemed a departure to heterodoxy.

Neo-classical liberalism, ‘market freedom’, and the right to private property

ABSTRACT Neo-classical liberals aim to offer a more consistent, coherent, and morally ambitious form of liberalism than the traditional classical and social liberal alternatives by providing grounds for a strong commitment to both individual economic liberty and social justice. The key neo-classical liberal claim is that the stringent protection of negative economic liberty does not conflict with, but is rather an essential component of, a commitment to political and social justice. My focus in this article is not on this key neo-classical claim itself, but rather on the conceptually prior question of the meaning and institutional implications of the negative conception of individual economic liberty. In addressing this question I trace some lines of argument which derive from the classical political economy of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Drawing in particular on ideas and arguments developed by the American economist and social critic Henry George, I argue that a fully coherent and defensible conception of negative economic liberty is compatible with a commitment to a strongly conditional form of private landownership, but is incompatible with a commitment to absolute private property in land.

Instruments of Cognizing the Social and Economic Field of Society: Objectives, Challenges and Prospects

Today’s concepts, theories and methodology of classical political economy, economics in general, state and economic governance clearly demonstrate their unsoundness in resolving issues of rational organization of public reproduction by levels of economic management. They are characterized by the subjective-contract and dogmatic tool and the relevant theory of cognition, which are aimed at retaining the discriminative-degrading, religiouspolitical initial model of man and society vital functions in nature, i. e. ‘Tyrant – Victim’. Their alternative is the system-integrated inter-disciplinary methodology providing the development of scientific, objective economic theory, rational practice of state and economic governance of public production, which excludes political mongering, subjectivism and voluntarism. The current internal and external situation in Russia shows that neither traditional public sciences and their leading academics, nor state bodies and their advisers-scientists, nor politicians can produce a variant of further positive development of society and production for the near future. An additional set of notions, categories and tools of cognition supplementary to the traditional one was designed on the basis of approaches put forward by supporters of classical political-economic, biosphere, noosphere and fundamental sciences. It does not reject the accumulated experience, which can be adapted, concretize and correct to improve the quality of research in accordance with the extended totality of objective general, social and economic laws of man and society development in nature.

Review of Classical Political Economics and Modern Capitalism: Theories of Value, Competition, Trade and Long Cycles by Lefteris Tsoulfidis and Persefoni Tsaliki

This book review presents and critically evaluates core issues raised in the recently published book titled: Classical Political Economics and Modern Capitalism: Theories of Value, Competition, Trade and Long Cycles coauthored by Lefteris Tsoulfidis and Persefoni Tsaliki. The book under review is one of the very few efforts to comprehensively cover major topics of the classical political economics approach. Among these topics included are the following: the theory of value, economic reproduction, and true competition in domestic and international markets as well as long economic cycles in the movement of key economic variables. A salient feature of the book is that the “laws of motion” of modern capitalism are derived and supported by empirical evidence based on refined economic data and appropriate input–output or econometric analysis. The overall evaluation is at the end of the present review along with a critical account for further research efforts.