Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 31 views

    Marxian Crisis Theory and The Role Nof Interest...

    Uploaded by

    yauliyacu
    This document discusses John Simoulidis' paper on Marxian crisis theory and the role of interest from an Unoist political economy approach. It analyzes the relationship between the rate of profit and the rate of interest on multiple levels. At the most abstract level, the rates have a clear relationship governed by capital's economic logic. However, this relationship is mediated by social institutions at more concrete levels. The document examines how state policy and oligopoly can reduce crisis severity but lead to imperialist war. It also notes challenges in determining the rate relationship historically given divergent interest and profit rates.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Marxian Crisis Theory and The Role Nof Interest...

    Uploaded by

    yauliyacu
    31 views1 page
    This document discusses John Simoulidis' paper on Marxian crisis theory and the role of interest from an Unoist political economy approach. It analyzes the relationship between the rate of profit and the rate of interest on multiple levels. At the most abstract level, the rates have a clear relationship governed by capital's economic logic. However, this relationship is mediated by social institutions at more concrete levels. The document examines how state policy and oligopoly can reduce crisis severity but lead to imperialist war. It also notes challenges in determining the rate relationship historically given divergent interest and profit rates.

    Original Title

    Marxian Crisis Theory and the Role Nof Interest...

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    This document discusses John Simoulidis' paper on Marxian crisis theory and the role of interest from an Unoist political economy approach. It analyzes the relationship between the rate of profit and the rate of interest on multiple levels. At the most abstract level, the rates have a clear relationship governed by capital's economic logic. However, this relationship is mediated by social institutions at more concrete levels. The document examines how state policy and oligopoly can reduce crisis severity but lead to imperialist war. It also notes challenges in determining the rate relationship historically given divergent interest and profit rates.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    31 views1 page

    Marxian Crisis Theory and The Role Nof Interest...

    Uploaded by

    yauliyacu
    This document discusses John Simoulidis' paper on Marxian crisis theory and the role of interest from an Unoist political economy approach. It analyzes the relationship between the rate of profit and the rate of interest on multiple levels. At the most abstract level, the rates have a clear relationship governed by capital's economic logic. However, this relationship is mediated by social institutions at more concrete levels. The document examines how state policy and oligopoly can reduce crisis severity but lead to imperialist war. It also notes challenges in determining the rate relationship historically given divergent interest and profit rates.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    You are on page 1of 1

    SIMOULIDIS, JOHN.

    MARXIAN CRISIS THEORY AND THE ROLE OF INTEREST:


    AN UNOIST APPROACH

    The paper to be presented can be best appreciated within the context of two fairly
    recent trends in Marxian political economy. Interest in multilayered analyses of the
    capitalist economy has been revived (by French Regulationists, the Social Structure of
    Accumulation School and others) since the collapse of the Keynesian consensus in the
    early 1970s. This particular trend has been motivated by an effort to distinguish
    between what is essential to capitalism in all of its phases and the historically specific
    forms it has taken. The second, more recent, trend has been a renewed interest in
    Marxs relationship to Hegel in terms of his dialectical method and its application to the
    critical analysis of capital and the law of value. In both respects, it is my view that
    Unoist political economy has gone the furthest in distinguishing the different layers or
    levels of analysis and in applying the dialectical method to the study of capital at the
    most abstract level of analysis. What I will seek to do is illustrate the uniqueness of this
    approach by examining a particular aspect of Marxian crisis theory, the relationship
    between the rate of profit and the rate of interest at the most abstract level of analysis,
    and the ways in which this relationship is mediated by institutional forms at more
    concrete levels of analysis that are not anticipated at this most abstract level.
    The necessity of analyzing the capitalist economy in terms of different levels of analysis
    is based on the understanding that the social reproduction of any society cannot be
    fully subsumed by the commodity-economic logic of capital. While there are many
    reasons why this is the case, perhaps the most fundamental is that the accumulation of
    capital is essentially dependent upon a non-capitalist commodity, labour power. Marx
    analyzed the regulation of industrial capitalism through the law of value, whereby the
    competition between capitals would tend towards the equalization of profit rates and all
    commodities would be supplied in socially necessary quantities and produced with
    socially necessary labour-time. But the law of value cannot directly regulate the supply
    of non-capitalistically produceable commodities. Periodic crises are necessary to
    ensure the continued commodification of labour power.
    In the theory of a purely capitalist economy, the rate of profit and the rate of interest
    have a clear relationship that is governed by the commodity-economic logic of capital.
    A particular variant of an excess capital theory of crisis (labour-power shortage) will be
    presented that sees crises triggered as the rate of interest gradually rise above the rate
    of profit and as capital moves from a phase of extensive to intensive accumulation. At
    the level of intermediate or stage theory, the relationship between the rate of profit and
    the rate of interest is mediated by a variety of social institutions. Here, the role of state
    economic policy and the rise of oligopoly led Uno (and before him, Hilferding and
    Lenin) to study how these could reduce the acuteness of periodic crises yet lead to the
    necessity of imperialist war. Finally, I will attempt to identify some of the problems
    associated with attempting to determine the relationship between the rate of interest
    and the rate of profit at the level of historical analysis, given that both interest rates and
    profit rates within and between countries and industries can be so radically divergent.

    You might also like