Political Economy Quarterly
Online ISSN : 2189-7719
Print ISSN : 1882-5184
ISSN-L : 1882-5184
Volume 48, Issue 4
Displaying 1-18 of 18 articles from this issue
  • Article type: Cover
    2012 Volume 48 Issue 4 Pages Cover1-
    Published: January 20, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (4914K)
  • Masashi SHIMIZU
    Article type: Article
    2012 Volume 48 Issue 4 Pages 3-6
    Published: January 20, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (964K)
  • Makoto ITOH
    Article type: Article
    2012 Volume 48 Issue 4 Pages 7-18
    Published: January 20, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The first chapter on the commodity in Marx's Capital forms a theoretical microcosm, where all the essential germs of the whole principles of capitalist economy are condensed. Therefore, we have to reexamine its theoretical implications or problems in view of the whole theoretical system of Capital. This essay presents four points which seem worthy of our contemporary reconsideration on this chapter. (1)This chapter begins with an impressive sentence that "the wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an 'immense collection of commodities'". What does the wealth of (either capitalist or other) societies mean? The central theoretical analysis in Capital shows how annual flow of labour products constitutes the social substance of wages, profit and ground rent in capitalist societies on the basis of labour theory of value. However, the wealth of societies must contain stock of asset as well as flow of income. Although analyses of values of fictitious capital concerning financial securities or land are analyzed to a certain degree in Capital, what to understand capital gain or loss in asset values seems to remain as a theoretically thorny problem in relation to the labour theory of value. (2)The first sentence of Capital introduces analysis of the commodity as an elemental form of capitalist societies. However, Marx well recognizes in the same chapter that commodities appeared before capitalism, originally as inter-social exchange trade relations. By emphasizing such an external historical origin of the forms of commodities, Kozo Uno reformulated Marx's theory of forms of value as the pure theory of forms of circulation without referring to the social substance of value. In this context, Marx's dialogue with Aristotle on the historical ground for evolution of the concept of value needs further reflection.(3)Marx's unique theory of value dualizes the notion of value into the forms and the substance of value. Prices as the developed forms of value of commodities and the quantities of labour-time embodied in commodities as the substance of values need not be directly proportional so long as surplus labour-time can be flexibly used outside of maintenance of reproduction of commodities. There is a problem how to incorporate such a range of disproportion between the forms and the substance of values consistently in our attempt to complete Marx's labour theory of value including the solution of long-standing transformation controversy. (4)Marx's treatment of complex labour has been another major source of debates against his labour theory of value. Following Ricardo, Marx basically disconnected the causal relation between the value and usevalue of labour-power. However, concerning the complex labour-power, he left problematic statements that the higher value of skilled labour-power enables its use-value hourly to produce more of labour substance in comparison with the case of general unskilled workers. My own reinterpretation on this issue is suggested from a more egalitarian theoretical stance.
    Download PDF (1048K)
  • Hiroshi NOGUCHI
    Article type: Article
    2012 Volume 48 Issue 4 Pages 19-30
    Published: January 20, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    In this paper, some economic principles on the post-industrial capitalism are examined. This capitalism is yet ambiguous but it may be accepted that this capitalism is featured by the economy of service, information and environment. Such economies are characterized in common by intangibleness. But intangible object is actually directed by tangible goods behind. Today, the character of goods or wealth is changing drastically. In this reason, our study should be focused on the use value problem. In chap. I, the concept of use value is studied in detail according to the Marx's context. The study proves that the concept of use value is insufficient for discussing the economic situation above. The concept of intrinsic value would be more acceptable for this situation. The concept of use value is abstracted from specific utilities or consumer's desire, as well as concrete use forms. Such concept is really significant only in the commodity society. There, the social attributes inherently inscribed on the use value are neglected. The personalities or peculiarities of use value also fade away. Therefore, the concept of use value is too narrow for discussing the current mode of wealth like service goods, information goods and environment goods. In contrast, the intrinsic value is the potential value realizing the effectual value through the development of user's acceptance capacity. The creative effort to make full use of the intrinsic value appears in the front. It leads to the prospects to conquer the alienated logic of commodity society, through the communication between producers and consumers. In chap. II, various aspects of information goods are considered systematically as follows, based on the intrinsic value. The information goods are generally the socially shared goods mediating representation, including the goods of representation, transmission, network, software and platform. The human communication generally appears as the signification of sign, but sometimes appears as the intangible information fetish. The social attribute of representation goods should be distinguished from the social form of those goods, as shown in the analog case of sculpture or the digital case of book. The value of the transmission goods like printed matter should be defined in relation to the licence fee. The network effect in relation to network goods is shown to originate from the winner's privilege like the seigniorage of money. The software goods are structured as the double character and the unique value definition of them is discussed. The platform goods play remarkable function for the information mediating services. Such goods will cause historically the new mode of division of work in the post-industrial capitalism. Finally, the main issues in this paper are summarized, and the coming problems are listed.
    Download PDF (1105K)
  • Shiro TANAKA
    Article type: Article
    2012 Volume 48 Issue 4 Pages 31-39
    Published: January 20, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    It is a starting point of this paper that we grasp today's socio-economic status as an excessive commodification. Recently, in so-called old socialist bloc and developing country by global scale the development of market economization is remarkable. Moreover, the excessive commodification is advancing in so-called area of the west side where the transition to market economy has already followed. And in Japan, quantitative and qualitative transformation seems to occur for the commodification. As for the thing of such recognition, this paper was intended to clarify the actual situation and structure. First, I clarified the logic of the commodification in the economics principle theory. On this occasion, I emphasized that the first commodity was intercepted with labor and was in the circulation form to the last. This recognition is extremely important, and becomes a pivot understanding today's excessive commodification. On the economics principle, the logic of the commodification is not simply like this in fact. The logic that capital (money), land, labor is commodified is developed. Capital (money), land, labor are said to be three elements of the production. The right of use of land and capital (money) is not only commodified in the form of a land rent and interest, but also it becomes fictitious capital called a land price and a stock price by carrying out capital reduction. In this way, they were commodified. Second, I clarified the actual condition, distinguishing between extensional excessive commodification and connotative excessive commodification. The extensional excessive commodification mentioned above means that commodification has permeated a domain called the modern state and modern family who do not get used to the logic of a market from the beginning. And although it is already commodified, it means again that various financial commodities which are followed to the limit by extension of the logic of capital reduction are produced. The connotative excessive commodification, as used in the goods which use value can realize as a natural attribute, for example food, means that use value is emasculated. I examined each as an example of the item of excessive commodification. By the way, although the concept of "excess" has already been used in this way, the arguments may become unstable if this meaning is not identified. Then, it was checked that there was a thing on condition of a natural science standard, and a thing which means so to speak self-denial in this concept. And in social science, I thought that the "excess" in the latter meaning was significant. Thinking as above, it may be said that the excessive commodification theory to insist on in this paper becomes "excessive" as a possibility. When we understand a term "excessive" in this way, it is because in a sense there is the side that is clarified for the first time as a result. It will be clear that a problem related to excessive commodification is a big problem in today's social economic condition.
    Download PDF (1075K)
  • Takahisa UEMURA
    Article type: Article
    2012 Volume 48 Issue 4 Pages 40-51
    Published: January 20, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Marx says, "socially speaking, ...(an individual) remains the creature of relations" in the Preface for the first edition of Capital, Vol.1. The current author's interest is how social relations operate individuals. But we can find for the first time that "individuals are personifications of economic categories" and few explanations about social relations working against economic agents in Capital. This article contains 3 parts. First: Why does Marx neglect the role of economic agents in his economic theory? The response to the question is Marx's excessive inclination toward Ricardo's theory in his latter years, where 'inner coherence' is the key word and significant character of the value theory promulgated Capital. The inner coherence is the obscure, or rather hidden, structure of the current mode of production. Ever-changing circulation and competition function as only noises or veils. It follows that personal relations in circulation (exchange) need no analysis and that research can concentrate on the inner coherence, which describes 'the economic law of modern society motion' as an bjective natural law bearing no relations to human will or behavior. Second: Is the inner coherence theory to be developed consistently and successfully? Value induction, a so-called distillation method, is so transcendental that there are no describing indispensable prerequisites, making value and abstract human labor hard to understand. Moreover, quantity of value defines technically, concerned with no changing market prices. In this way Marx make his point clear by revealing the economic law of motion purely without the prevention of phenomena pertaining to circulation. However, the changing price is the most important element of the mechanism of social labor allocation through the market. This is the core of the capitalist mode of production. Ignoring this is high risk to misunderstand peculiarity of this mode of production. By the inner coherence theory the form of value is also enabled to describe: The necessity of describing the form of value has the predominance over everything else here. Commodities have a 'dual nature': value and use-value, necessitating the possession of 'a double form', with their natural form being use-value which needs to have the expression of value. Marx tries to develop a simple form of value together with a total form of value, but the inner coherence theory makes any commodities general equivalents. Marx fails to induce the money form. Third: Private labor and economic agents are to have been required. The failure comes from having neglected private production as a most significant character of the capitalist mode of production, As Marx himself says, money is one element of mechanism the private labor in order to examine or evaluate as social labor, so money only induces private actors' behavior. In the section of 'Fetishism', though Marx refers private-social labor relationships, he fails in analyzing them. Revealing the value and the labor relationships hinders an analysis of the private-social labor relationships. In Grundisse, however, Marx describes private actors' behavior, the reification of personal relations, and the ruling mechanism of the reification to some extent. The reconstruction of Marxian value theory requires first and foremost the reconsideration of his relation theory.
    Download PDF (1192K)
  • Yoshihisa IWATA
    Article type: Article
    2012 Volume 48 Issue 4 Pages 52-63
    Published: January 20, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Though Schumpeter praised Clement Juglar as the pioneer of the endogenous business cycle theory, the recent studies on Juglar have been being published from the different point of view since about 2005, the centennial of Juglar's death and are changing the conventional view on Juglar. Of these the most important are the articles written by D. Besomi. He negates Juglar's position as the pioneer and he even described the conventional view as a myth fabricated by the secondary literature. Certainly, the views of the periodic crises are seen in the economic literature before Juglar. But Besomi and Schumpeter separate Juglar from the monetary orthodoxy in England and France in the nineteenth century. So, Besomi's method caused serious misunderstandings. That is, the classification of Juglar into "non-monetary theory on business cycle" by Schumpeter has not been understood correctly. In Schumpeter's work, the term "monetary" is defined as "by the bank credit". Schumpeter gave little explanation for Juglar's theory. Therefore, not a few commentators have regarded Juglar as "monetary theory", only by reason of Juglar's reference to bank and finance. But such a view misses the basic controversy over the monetary effects on economic fluctuations in the nineteenth century, in which Juglar was involved. The advocates for Free banking in France condemned the abuse of the monopoly privilege to issue the bank notes by the Bank of France for over-speculations and periodical commercial crises. Their view is strongly "monetary". Against them, Juglar, using the theory of the Banking school, denied the bank's responsibility for the crises, on the grounds that the bank credit is only passive and only complementary to the trade credit. The fundamental cause of the crises for him is not bank or monetary factor as the advocates of Free banking say, but the wide and spontaneous commercial world, and so the abolishment of the privilege to issue bank notes cannot stop overspeculations and crises. This article, based on the studies on Free banking by V. C. Smith and L. H. White, examines how the main schools on monetary theory were opposed to each other. We take up, the moderate Bullionists, the Anti-bullionists, the Banking school, the Currency school, French emission-monopoly school and the Free banking school. Incidentally, it is should be noted that the Banking school has non-monetary view on the business cycle as L. H. White and A. Schwartz point out. On these controversies, Juglar praised the Bullion Report of 1810 written by the moderate Bullionists. But he took "the excess of bank notes" of the Bullion Report for "the excess of all types of credit medium such as the merchant bill", from the point of view of the Banking school. So, he changed the monetary view of the Bullion Report into the non-monetary view. By the way, some advocates of the Banking school who denied the monetary effects on the economic fluctuations pointed out the real overinvestment as the cause of commercial crises. Though Juglar only denied the monetary effects, in a few cases he referred to the real overinvestment as the cause of commercial crises, using the works by James Wilson, the advocate of the Banking school. In conclusion, Juglar's theory is "non-monetary" because he emphasized the passivity of bank and denied the monetary effect. He also emphasizes that the hike of interest in the culmination of the commercial crises only reflect the result of the preceding over-speculation in the all commercial world, which is "predisposition", namely the essential cause of the commercial crises. But, he adopted some embryotic ideas of the real overinvestment theory in the business cycle though these ideas remained sporadic and nonsystematic.
    Download PDF (1165K)
  • Atsushi KUSUKI
    Article type: Article
    2012 Volume 48 Issue 4 Pages 64-74
    Published: January 20, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The purpose of this paper is to show that Schumpeter's theory of economic development has a contradiction. This contradiction is between a concept of an innovation and a concept of a banker. The innovation is an unpredictable phenomenon beforehand. In contrast, the banker is able to predict and evaluate the innovation beforehand. That is why both concepts become contradictory. However, Schumpeter paid little attention to this contradiction. The cause of this contradiction is derived from a conflict between Schumpeter's vision and his theoretical structure. His vision is that economic development is produced by the innovation. An entrepreneur executes the innovation which is an endogenous, discontinuous, irreversible and qualitative change. From the standpoint of the observer who is in full position of all relevant facts, the innovation is able to be always understood afterward. That is to say, no one is able to predict and evaluate the innovation beforehand. Schumpeter attempted to translate his vision into his theory. In a process of translation, he had to provide that the banker should predict and evaluate the innovation beforehand, because his theory could not be constructed without doing so. He adopted a "genetic explanation". Hence, the concept of development has to be developed from conditions in which there is no development. In order to execute a plan of the innovation, the entrepreneur has to borrow money from the banker, because Schumpeter regarded "redit creation by banker" as the only source of finance in his theory. In order to make the principle stand out clearly, Schumpeter assumed, in first approximation, absence of certain elements which are errors in diagnosis or prognosis and other mistakes. That is to say, when the banker loans money to the entrepreneur, the banker is able to predict and evaluate the innovation beforehand. As a result, the contradiction is caused between the concept of the innovation and the concept of the banker.
    Download PDF (1105K)
  • Naoki NABESHIMA
    Article type: Article
    2012 Volume 48 Issue 4 Pages 75-85
    Published: January 20, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Nowadays, mainstream macroeconomics has evolved into a new framework, which is labeled "new consensus macroeconomics", by integrating research results both of new classicals and of new Keynesians. It is said that oppositions between schools of thought over the analytical framework have nearly disappeared within mainstream macroeconomics today. It is notable that the new consensus recognizes the exogeneity of the shortterm interest rate and the endogeneity of the money supply. Nevertheless, the new consensus model exhibits strong classical features. In the model, the longrun equilibrium of the economy is exclusively determined by the supply-side factors, and effective demand has no influence on it. Therefore, in the long-run, monetary policy only impacts on the rate of inflation and doesn't improve the levels of production and employment. Further, proponents of the new consensus accept Wicksell's concept of the "natural rate of interest", and they consider that the departure of the market rate of interest from the natural rate gives rise to the movement of the aggregate price level. In addition, they inherit Wicksell's idea that the natural rate of interest acts as a center of gravitation. In contrast, Post Keynesian economists argue that aggregate demand not only determines the short-run output, but also plays a crucial role in directing the long-run growth path of the economy. Hence government economic policies have lasting effects on the real economy. Furthermore, Post Keynesians deny the existence of a unique natural rate of interest, and they maintain that the interest rate determined by monetary factors constitutes a center of gravitation. We can regard the rivalry between the new consensus and the Post Keynesian views as a modern manifestation of the rivalry between "real analysis" and "monetary analysis" that has shaped the history of economics. Today, Post Keynesian economics makes great contributions to the theoretical foundation of monetary analysis that believes capitalist economies inherently contain monetary and financial instability.
    Download PDF (1179K)
  • Ryojiro YATSUYANAGI
    Article type: Article
    2012 Volume 48 Issue 4 Pages 86-88
    Published: January 20, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (1015K)
  • Akiyoshi SAKAGUCHI
    Article type: Article
    2012 Volume 48 Issue 4 Pages 89-91
    Published: January 20, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (1011K)
  • Yuji HARADA
    Article type: Article
    2012 Volume 48 Issue 4 Pages 92-94
    Published: January 20, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (1004K)
  • Hiroshi SETOOKA
    Article type: Article
    2012 Volume 48 Issue 4 Pages 95-97
    Published: January 20, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (993K)
  • Shoshiro OGURA
    Article type: Article
    2012 Volume 48 Issue 4 Pages 98-100
    Published: January 20, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (1028K)
  • Mitsuhiko TSURUTA
    Article type: Article
    2012 Volume 48 Issue 4 Pages 101-103
    Published: January 20, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (1007K)
  • Naoki YOSHIHARA
    Article type: Article
    2012 Volume 48 Issue 4 Pages 104-106
    Published: January 20, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (1040K)
  • Ryoichi MOHRI
    Article type: Article
    2012 Volume 48 Issue 4 Pages 107-109
    Published: January 20, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (903K)
  • Seiya MORITA
    Article type: Article
    2012 Volume 48 Issue 4 Pages 110-112
    Published: January 20, 2012
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Download PDF (901K)
feedback
Top