>Rakesh Bhandari wrote: > >>> >>>This brings us back to the discussion that set off the thread on >>>crises. Capitalism has proven resilient and has withstood a number of >>>shocks over the centuries. >> >>yes, michael, but the question is how are crises overcome? jim's >>theory leads to one conclusion--raising consumption and/or prices >>should work to restore a crisis of overaccumulation as jim d >>defines it ; grossman's, mattick's, yaffe's and cogoy's, shoul's, >>dunayevskaya's, daum's and moseley's present another diagnosis of >>the crisis, which implies that it will be cured in a different way. >> >>the historic evidence and theoretical reasoning are clearly in >>favor of the latter school of thought (which by the way has its >>origins in Grossman's recovery of the essence of Marx's crisis >>theory). > >Wouldn't many bourgeois economists and executives agree? Liquidate, >said Mellon; creative destruction, said Schumpeter; Enron's just the >say things work, said Paul O'Neill just the other day. What's >specifically Marxist about the notion? It's the Keynesians who are >the odd ones out. > >Doug
well the so called orthodox marxist answer here is the Keynesians were not the odd ones out (Samuelson was king) until the mixed economy went up in staglationary ashes and its limits thereby exposed. as michael p has underlined elsewhere, while schumpeter thought recessions, bouts of liquidation, periodic douches are in fact an intrinsic moment in the capitalist development process, he argued that the descent to full scale depression was the result of bad govt policy. I can't remember where I read that a one Smithies (a prominent economist who may have been Schumpeter's student) thoroughly criticized Schumpeter's explanation for the Depression. That is, Marxists argue that bourgeois economists and actors alike are boxed in by their ultimate belief in the equilibriating properties of the system--this is revealed, as Christopher Freeman points out, in Schumpeter's failed attempt to keep his vision and Walras' vision together. Schumpeter was scathingly critical however of purely monetary theories of disequilibrium presented by von Mises, Hayek and their popularizer today Mark Skousen. rb
