soziologie und gesellschaftliche entwicklung (35 mb) - ISF München

ut mostly the reference is to the liberal economic school that Keynes, with a misnomer,
called "the Classics". This school is essentially anti-keynesian, and has
decided to dress the colors of Keynes' enemies. Although extremist, this school is
academically well accepted. And because it is extremist, it appeals to extreme
liberals — including those that feel the urge to "change the System". It is not uncommon
today to find similar extremists in the "left wing": they generally don't
know the cultural roots of their own extremism.
3 Although less appealing than the perfect competition utopia. The "natural" enterprise
is totally autocratic, does not distinguish between the owners of the enterprise
and its managers, and all its components can be measured in price terms and
disaggregated at will.
4 This, by the way, is a problem for those politicians in Government that profess neomonetarist
principles: they would have to be continuously self-effacing; but in
order to make their ideas believed they have to exercise force, much beyond what
would be natural. Thus, we have liberalism by "diktat" in Great Britain, and a
Shacht-type keynesianism in the U.S.
5 I shall not quote the immense literature on the Phillips curve. Suffice it to say that
all neo-keynesians have subscribed it (Samuelson, Solow, Modigliani, Tobin) as well
as some post-keynesians (Kahn) and even young marxists (Rawthorne) — the latter
taking the inflation-unemployment trade-off as a sign of class struggle.
6 If so, and contrary to monetarist opinion, real wages will increase, due to the quasirent
accruing to a labor monopoly.
7 Keynes, in fact, recognized that workers can only determine money wages, while
real wages are determined by enterprises — that control prices. This did not mean,
however, that real wages are considered as given: Keynes' point was intended to
show that effective demand could not be systematically sustained by an increase
in money wages.
8 It is interesting to note that the term "structural" has completely changed meaning
over the last two decades: it was originally associated, with reference to unemployment,
to underdeveloped areas, where the problem was recognized as being rather
that of accumulation than of a lack of effective demand; this justified aid policies
in favor of such areas — a "progressive" idea. Today, the term "structural" is
applied to well developed economies, in order to justify the recent, large unemployment
rates; if unemployment is structural only faster accumulation can remedy it,
and this will take place only if the rate of profit is sufficiently high. In this manner,
a redistribution of income against wages and in favor of profits becomes the best
means to reduce "structural" unemployment. Monetarists are slightly less naive,
as they leave to enterprises' decisions to determine what is the natural rate of unemployment;
but there is no doubt that if the "natural investment rate" rises, then
also the natural employment rate will rise. As an aside, let us remind ourselves that
if both developed and underdeveloped areas have structural or natural unemployment,
the case for an aid policy in favor of the latter becomes very weak — both
areas will be considered as differing due to "natural" causes.
9 This implies that the (cost) supply curve of each enterprise is not increasing (Jossa,
1981) and that the demand curve for each product does not contribute to determining
prices, which therefore reflect production costs. In the economic System,
then, effective aggregate demand determines aggregate supply, but individual supply
curves determine prices. If aggregate (not the specific commodity's) demand could
be shown to influence all individual supply curves — in the sense that unit cost
curves will decline (rise) more the greater is the increase (decrease) in aggregate
demand (Leon, 1981) — then the change in aggregate demand, through individual
firms' cost curves, would have an influence on prices and, therefore, on income
distribution. Sraffa (1960) showed that income distribution is determined outside
the economic System ( he thought that the interest rate, via the keynesian liquidity
Lutz (1984): Soziologie und gesellschaftliche Entwicklung.
URN: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-100776