Contenu du sommaire : L'hétérodoxie dans la pensée économique

The paper distinguishes between two routes along which orthodox theory can be criticized in order to establish the principle that aggregate demand may be insufficient to absorb the output obtainable from normal utilization of existing productive capacity. Keynes based himself on the obstacles which liquidity preference raises for the adaptation of the interest rate to changes in the incentive to invest. Another route has however been opened up by the critique of the orthodox notion of a «quantity» of.capitai which showed that there is no reason to assume a regular inverse relation between investment and the interest rate allowing the latter, even if flexible, to adjust investment to full employment savings. This second route deprives of its basis the neo-classical synthesis's attempt to confine «effective demand» to short period fluctuations and sets the ground for an analysis of its influence on accumulation.

This paper compares the pre-Keynesian approach to the theory of income and employment with the neoclassical synthesis and the monetarist approach (as represented respectively by Pigou, Modigliani and Friedman). On the basis of this comparison, it is maintained that the pre-Keynesian approach and the neoclassical synthesis share a common theoretical foundation, while there an ; no basic theoretical differences between neoclassical synthesis and monetarists. Thus all three approaches are subjected to the same basic criticisms.

The aim of this article is to assess the «heterodox» character of Marx' and Keynes' positions about wage and labour market theories. In a first part we present our interpretation of the distinction between «orthodox» and «heterodox» points of view. The two subsequent parts are devoted to the analysis of the contribution of Marx and Keynes in light of this distinction. Our thesis is that they both hold ambiguous positions, each for a different reason. Marx has elaborated conceptual tools which could have led him to an heterodox viewpoint ; however, he failed to draw their implications and has thereby fallen back to a position integrating wage theory into a general equilibrium approach. Keynes, on the other hand, while not really bothering about conceptual premisses, has better perceived the theoretical necessity of isolating the labour markets and to relate, at least implicitely, the domination of capital over labour to this feature.

Three positions, shared in common by both authors, allow to associate them in heterodoxy. 1. They lay the foundations of a dynamic analysis. The circuit and the neutral economy are images of a static approach, showing that the latter embodies neither the entrepreneur, nor credit. 2. They build a production economy, which is different from the exchange economy. For Schumpeter, the entrepreneur is the active factor of evolution, because he innovates while carrying out new combinations, the financing of which requires the use of credit. For Keynes, the entrepreneur anticipates the demand which calls for variable output and employment, and, taking into account a non-probabil- zed future, he uses credit to make the advance of wages and incomes which will allow realized production to be purchased. 3. Both authors conceive a monetary economy, characterized by the main following variables : capital, interest, and, for Keynes, wages and prices ; those phenomena are monetary ones, distinct from real phenomena.

This paper investigates different theories of the nature of a monetary economy focussing on the specific difference associated with money as the unit of value. The roles of money and of the financial circulation are considered and the specific difference associated with each is evaluated. Theoretical arguments associated with classical political economy, Marx, and Schumpeter are considered. An argument is put forward concerning the importance of money and of the financial circulation.

The analysis of the capitalist process of accumulation is deeply examined by Marx, Keynes and Schumpeter. To compare the theories of these three authors requires, in particular, to analyze the financing of and the changes in the production activity. In this paper we sum up, first, the Schumpeterian outline of the cyclical development. From this starting point, we derive some critiques of both the Keynesian analysis and the Schumpeterian interpretation of Keynes. By integrating the weakness of these two authors, it is possible to suggest an unorthodox interpretation of the open problems in Marx.

This paper tries to show that the first sight differences which allow to establish a distinction between Keynes' and Schumpeter's approaches and were traditionaly described by commentators were overemphasised. The analysis of both authors are indeed rooted in a common perspective. They are related to the originality of the treatment of microeconomic hypothesis, to \the principles which rule the theory of circulation and to the relations between micro and macroeconomic analytical levels. These common points differ drastically from the thesis defended by marginalist and neo-marginalist approaches. They tend to favour the study of macroeconomic constraints-of microeconomics rather than the analysis of microeconomic foundations of macroeconomics.

From the total economic reproduction's point of view, i.e. the reproduction of goods, firms, classes and money, the contribution of marxien-neoricardien and keynesian theories have only partial explanatory power. The first theory claims to cope with analysis of the relative costs where the determination of qualities and monetary costs does not occur, whereas the second prefers the single-good model where the function of the relative costs and the class conflict is consequently absent. Therefore both theories are not able to detect the totality of the economic reproduction.

Marx's and Keynes' criticisms of Say's Law are examined critically. A simple model of the circuit of capital is used to show that both theorists base the possibility of inadequate aggregate demand on the existence of money and of finite and variable spending lags for monetary assets. Both Marx and Keynes go further to discuss the type of agent that will exhibit such variable spending lags. Marx argues that capitalist producers will react to liquidity constraints and sales constraints with variable spending lags. Keynes argues that speculation is the primary factor responsible.

Mainstream economics circumscribes the field of Macroeconomics by the set agregates, such as those quantities that National Accounting Systems intend to measure. That conventional definition precludes the recognition of the conflict between two main interpretations of Macro economics, in the course of the history of economic analysis. One is Schumpeter's view of Macroecono- mies as the result of a process of agrégation of individual data. The other one is developed by Keynes who thinks of Macroeconomics as a System Analysis. This second interpretation strongly emphasizes the monetary nature of every component of the System it describes, breaking with the naturalist view of economics. Therefore, the central role played by money is recognized and explained.

Neo-liberal theory often appeals to the Schumpeterian notion of ((creative destruction» and to the assumed central importance of the entrepreneur. But it can be argued that, in modifying Marx's vision of capitalist development, Schumpeter stripped business cycles of their real destructiveness and unruliness. And it is unconvincing to interpret present economic problems as a Schumpeterian struggle between modernising enterprise and conservative societies. In particular, such an interpretation neglects the barriers to change which results from the defence of existing creditor positions, that is, it neglects the conservative side of capitalist production relations.

The analysis of the capitalist process of accumulation is deeply examined by Marx, Keynes and Schumpeter. To compare the theories of these three authors requires, in particular, to analyze the financing of and the changes in the production activity. In this paper we sum up, first, the Schumpeterian outline of the cyclical development. From this starting point, we derive some critiques of both the Keynesian analysis and the Schumpeterian interpretation of Keynes. By integrating the weakness of these two authors, it is possible to suggest an unorthodox interpretation of the open problems in Marx.

This paper focuses on the dynamics of competition and its relation to technical change in Marxian and Schumpeterian tradition. This theoretical tradition is summarized and then formalized in a production price model with transient surplus profit, multiple techniques and interfirm and interindustry differential profit rate.

The instability of capitalism, as analysed by Keynes, Schumpeter and Marx, cannot be satisfactorily understood in terms of dynamic instability only. The crucial instability concepts worked out by these authors have to be properly modelled in terms of structural instability. This approach may put us in a better position for analyzing the evolution of economic structures. The difficult but crucial problem of explaining structural change is articulated in two subproblems which appear more tractable : i) the explanation of the set of forces giving the economic system its peculiar degree of structural instability ; ii) the explanation of the characteristics of the relevant disturbances actually inducing a certain well-defined structural change.

Marx's statement lays down, as a law, in various and rather impervious spaces (those of physical goods, value concepts and monetary ratios) ; therefore, it seems ambiguous. Controversies take place about the main contrary influences — growing rate of exploitation (pl/v) and constant organic composition of capital (c/v) — dealing with distribution theory (the profit squeeze interpretation and competition theory (Okishio's theorem). An empirical study, based on the case of France since World War II, brings paradoxical evidence : both pl/v and c/v, considered as monetary ratios, remain constant until the crisis occurs. Thus, if the fa/ling rate of profit results from the crisis, it cannot provide it.

Marx has proposed a first analysis of the end of capitalism on the base of the general law of capitalist accumulation. This analysis shows a catastrophist view, related to political constraints and easily battled by Schumpeter. Nevertheless Marx goes on analytical elements — non systematically organized — on limits of capitalist mode of production which present a better interest. This paper questions them and seeks to marry the limits of merchant relations and capitalist ones with idea of socialization, idea Schumpeter has also developped. It is also concerned in the study of contradictory forms of labour socialization, implicit and explicit, formal and real one.

The divergence of the arguments put forward by Marx and Schumpeter to proclaim the end of capitalism and the inevitable passage to socialism rises from the opposition of two paradigms about the same proposal : the historical movement is the result of «the laws of development» which would determine the «contradictions of capitalism». This article tries to reconstitute how this différenciation determines two discording outlooks of the economic history. The paper explains that the foundations on which the opposition is built represent a key-point of the historical perspective-setting of the present capita/ism and of the current crisis.

The marxist thought of imperialism, especially through Lenin's works, is wellknown. Schumpeter, the author of Sociology of imperialisms gives an opinion upon the subject which will be adopted by the liberal school. Nothing could be found in Keynes' work concerning that subject. However, the analysis that could be derived from Keynes' thought (John Knapp, Michael Barratt Brown) enables a more thorough understanding of the present world order and its crisis.

In their works, Marx, Keynes and Schumpeter thought of capita/ism as a dynamic system but they forecast its end also. They described a drama where entrepreneur is the leading man. On the other hand, the proletarian (Marx), the consumer (Keynes) and the intellectual (Schumpeter) are the secondary actors on this scene. When we turn to the mecanism imagined by the three men, production is guided by profit but this concept has not the same meaning in the three works. The resulting game is the falling rate of profit (with regard to Marx), or the fall of effective demand (with regard to Keynes) or the settling down to circular flow (with regard to Schumpeter). It is possible to describe the evolution of capitalist system by means of models. Beyond analogies and differences, we observe that Marx insists on the death of capita/ism, Keynes gives us some remedies which are those of the Welfare State and Schumpeter recommends a transition to socialism by economic care of public money and by the alternative and political means of democracy.

This paper aims at justifying this exclusion by showing that economic known that the author of the General Theory held opposite views to those of Marx on that point, since he left A. Smith out of the field of classical analysis. This paper aims at justifying this exclusion by showing that economics agents identified by the terms «prodigal» and «projector» are still to be found in the Wealth of Nations, the former confusing capital and revenue, the latter misemploying the capital. Those two types of agents are then shewn to disappear from ricardian analysis when Ricardo had definitively adopted the principle «industry is limited by capital», the ricardian form of Say's Law.

It is out of question that Marx, Keynes and Schumpeter were heterodox in their relation to Economics considered as a science. A legitimate question however concerns the type of heterodoxy whic is characteristic of each of them. Kuhn's perception — and, to a lesser extent, Feyerabend's one — of the relations between heterodoxy and scientific knowledge are used here to display important differences, on this ground, among these three economists. The result is that the keynesian heterodoxy is the only one which really fits Kuhn's scheme about scientific revolutions ; schumpeterian heterodoxy being not so revolutionary and marxian heterodoxy being the sui generis case which is mainly discussed in this paper.

The heterodoxy of Marx's thought is commonly appreciated in respect to the principles of historical materialism. However, the place of historical analysis varies in the economics of Marx. This paper emphasizes the decline of this analysis in the economics of the «old» Marx. This decline has two origins : the historical difficulties encountered by Marx with some «typical sequences »and the logical problems raised by the introduction of socio-historical notions in economic analysis.

The aim of this paper is to show that the methodologies of two great historians of economic thought (Marx and Schumpeter), though different, have the same shortcoming. They both think that there exists a unique absolutely good theory. For Schumpeter, this theory is the general equilibrium of which he meant to extend the conceptual framework to the analysis of cycles. For Marx, this theory is his own elaboration. First, their prétention to unicity is contradictory with the definition of science. Secondly, it introduces a «bias», as Schumpeter would term it, in their reading of their predecessors. They both only consider the problems which are also formulated in their respectively completed theories, or, worse, they reformulate the problems and transform the concepts to make them match with their own ones.