- 著者
-
伊藤 誠
- 出版者
- 経済理論学会
- 雑誌
- 季刊経済理論 (ISSN:18825184)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.51, no.3, pp.7-19, 2014-10-20 (Released:2017-04-25)
The world economy is in a continuous deep crisis originating from the US subprime financial crisis. The neo-classical micro economics cannot serve to clarify the causes of such a disaster so long as it lacks a crisis theory. It is natural to see a global revival of intellectual interest in crises theories in Marx's Capital, as well as in Keynesian or post-Keynesian theories. In this paper, let us reexamine multiplicity of Marx's crises theories, Uno's attempt to purify them at a level of basic principles of cyclical crises, and how to apply them to the contemporary world crisis. 1. Multiplicity of Crisis Theories in Marx's Capital Marx's crisis theory was not fully completed. There remained several different crisis theories in Capital. As basic causes, the difficulties to realization of value and surplus value due to either under-consumption or disequilibrium were emphasized in the excess commodity theories of crisis. However, we find other types of crisis theory which underline over-accumulation of capital in relation either to the limited supply of laboring population or to falling rate of profit due to rising composition of capital also in Capital. The fundamental instability in monetary and financial system was also extensively explored there. 2. The Significance of Uno's Theory of Crisis K. Uno's Theory of Crisis(1953) presented a powerful attempt to complete Marx's crisis theory upon the historical ground of typical business cycles in the mid-19 th century, relying on the labour shortage type of over-accumulation theory in combination with credit theory. In my view Uno's crisis theory can easily expanded to include the roles of speculative overtrading and credit expansion toward the end of prosperity, promoting disequilibrium among industries, and causing a destructive acute crisis. The fundamental contradiction of capitalism to treat human labour power as a commodity is stressed as a basic cause of crisis together with contradictory functions of financial system in its efficient elasticity eventually to cause cyclical destructive collapses. In the process of depression, the capitalist mechanism to reproduce industrial reserve army through technological innovation, also demonstrates the difficulty to treat labour-power as a commodity in another context with a resultant difficulty of under-consumption for capitalism. 3. How to Utilize Marx's Crisis Theories in the Contemporary World Uno used to be cautious about too direct application of Marx's basic theory of crisis in the contemporary world, as he was impressed by the great crisis since 1929 which was caused by strong impact of World War I and the consequent agricultural depression, being resolved by World War II. However, in my view capitalism since 1970s became to show again its intrinsic working together with its basic contradictions. Neo-liberalism reflects and reinforces such a basic trend since 1980s. Among others, the inflationary crisis of 1973-05 occurred after over-accumulation of capital in relation to laboring population in the advanced economies, as well as in relation to the flexibility of supply of primary products in the world market, causing a sharp profit-squeeze. Thus, Uno's crisis theory based upon Marx clearly showed its rather direct applicability in our age. D. Harvey in The Enigma of Capital(2010) agrees on this. However, he recommends a multi-causal approach to keep all the crisis theories in Capital to be applied to historically different occasions. He suggests the under-consumption model of crisis is more applicable to the subprime crisis, as real wages was continuously oppressed in the boom before the crisis. In such a multi-causal approach, the basic theory of crisis must be a bundle of possibilities and cannot demonstrate logical inevitability of cyclical crisis as a fundamental law of motion of capitalist economy, as Marx(View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)