Political Economy Quarterly
Online ISSN : 2189-7719
Print ISSN : 1882-5184
ISSN-L : 1882-5184
Volume 51, Issue 2
Displaying 1-16 of 16 articles from this issue
  • Article type: Cover
    2014Volume 51Issue 2 Pages Cover1-
    Published: July 20, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
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  • Noriko MAEHATA
    Article type: Article
    2014Volume 51Issue 2 Pages 3-5
    Published: July 20, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
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  • Teinosuke OTANI
    Article type: Article
    2014Volume 51Issue 2 Pages 6-17
    Published: July 20, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
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    The completion of Section II of the MEGA got together all materials written by Marx necessary for a settlement of the so-called "plan-problem". In this paper the author tries to trace the process that led Marx to characterize Capital as "the general analysis of capital" in relation to "the method of political economy". At the end of 1862 Marx wrote in a letter to Kugelmann that he intended to publish an independent work, Capital. This work would include only "capital in general", which was expected to constitute Section 1 of Book I of "a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy". On the other hand, in a plan that Marx noted for Chapter 3 of the Section "Capital and Profit" during this time included two heads on "Formation of a General Rate of Profit, and Transformation of Commodity Values into Prices of Production". The discussions in these heads clearly suppose "many different capitals". As the "capital in general" in the original 6 Books plan of 1857-59 had strictly excluded "many capitals ", the word "capital in general" in the letter above undoubtedly differed in content from that of the earlier plan. In addition, Marx used the very term "capital in general" nowhere after p. 1288 of the Notebook XX, which was written in March to May 1863. Later, in Manuscript I of Book III of Capital written in 1864-1865, Marx characterized Capital as "the general analysis of capital"(MEGA^2 II/4.2, S. 305)or "the general investigation of capitalist production"(MEGA^2 II/4.2, S. 215). "Particularity" or "singularity" as distinguished from "generality" of "capital in general" signifies "particular capitals"(concurrence)or "singular capitals"(credit). There-fore using the term "generality" this time, Marx strictly limits the object of his analysis or description to "the general". On the other hand, "particularity" as distinguished from "generality" in "the general analysis of capital" and "the general investigation of capitalist production" is a "particular analysis" or "particular investigation", so both of these expressions mean that the examination or description is on a general level. In his "Introduction" to the Grundrisse Marx explained "the correct scientific method" of description, i. e. the "way" through which the "abstract determinations" upon the object viz. "the real subject outside the mind" proceeds "to the reproduction of the concrete" and thus reproduces the object as "the concrete totality" in the thinking mind. From the point of view of this "method" the distinction between "capital in general" and "the general analysis of capital" is obvious. In the case of the former, the "reproduction" of "the concrete totality" viz. capital still remains on the middle of the way and could not be completed without advancement to the "particularity"(concurrence)and the "singularity"(credit). In the case of the latter, however, the analysis is completed by the description of "the varied forms assumed by capital in the course of its development [Gestaltungen des Gesamtprozesses]", yet it still remains on a general level. Thus, when Marx used the word "capital in general" at the end of 1862, he used it with a different meaning from the earlier one. This usage was a trigger and a precursor to the process through which Marx's work took off its corset -"capital in general"-, which tightly constricted only a part of the body, in order to put on a loose garment -"the general analysis of capital"- which wraps the whole body as

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  • Thomas KUCZYNSKI, Teinosuke OTANI
    Article type: Article
    2014Volume 51Issue 2 Pages 18-30
    Published: July 20, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
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    The author shows why the historical-critical editions of Capital Volume I in the MEGA2 make it necessary to revisit former German text editions of this fundamental work. He makes clear that the complete set of these editions is the indispensable starting point for a new(German)text edition. The following topics are treated in the paper: 1. Engels'inevitable misinterpretation of the entries Marx made in his personal copies of Capital Vol. I; opposite evaluations of the French edition by Marx and Engels; Marx's changing ideas about future translations as a combination of two editions, i. e., the second German one and the French one. 2. Previous discussions about Engels' fourth German edition; plans for its revision, esp. by Valerie(Wally) Kropp and Kurt Nixdorf, and their stoppage. 3. Advantages and disadvantages of the French edition compared with the second German edition. 4. Some consequences of the fact that Marx quoted rather often from memory; how Engels treated the problem differently in his English translation and his fourth German edition. 5. The different features of the planned text edition in comparison with the historical-critical editions in MEGA^2. The exposition includes many quotations and some illustrative examples.
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  • Akira MIYAKAWA
    Article type: Article
    2014Volume 51Issue 2 Pages 31-41
    Published: July 20, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
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    The core of progress in the formative history of Das Kapital the second volume during Marx's last years was when he reached his ultimate critique about "Smith's Dogma", classical reproduction theory, by finishing the theory of circuits of capital, and developed an original new paradigm on the theory of reproduction. Until the second manuscript(1868-1870) he could not overcome the concept of capital-revenue transformation and resolve the value-theory of the classical school so his discussion was limited within the framework of the means of consumption sector-led dogma that has the stand point of a money-veil view, but by finishing 5-7 manuscripts of the circuits of capital in late 1870', he made the discovery of multilayered ties between capital(/revenue) and general commodity circulation, as well as a mutual relationship between money-capital and money. Furthermore, he found that capital itself circulates and by this(working as a lever) he could finally overthrow the classical theory of reproduction based on dogma and achieve the accomplishment of establishing his original theory, the theory of reproduction based on the circuits of capital. In the discussion of formative history for the second volume, the evaluation of Marx's step regarding the theory of reproduction, 2 conflicting opinions between the one way of "understanding of manuscripts in gradual consistency" and the other way of "grasping of a drastic theoretical development" are rekindled. It depends on how the process is seen but the fact is that Marx clearly denied his former way of understanding the classical concept of capital-revenue transformation and of resolving the theory of value Dogma. In this report, using clues from the publication of drafts of the MEGA second section 11^<th> volume, the 8^<th> manuscript was found to be the watershed in which it can clearly be seen how Marx overcame the dictates of classical Dogma and, as a result, it can be concluded "the grasping a final drastic development in the 8^<th> manuscript" is correct.
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  • Korefumi MIYATA
    Article type: Article
    2014Volume 51Issue 2 Pages 42-53
    Published: July 20, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
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    The entire contents of K. Marx's Manuscript of Capital have been revealed thorough the completion of MEGA II. This occurrence marks a new epoch of advanced research. That is to say that this makes it possible to precisely understand the theoretical contents of Capital and to consider them. In particular, we have to pay attention to the first Manuscript of Capital Volume III(MEGA II/4.2)as the release of MEGA II revealed that some statements and paragraphs were deleted and re-arranged by F. Engels and furthermore that he had made up the several titles and sections. As such, thanks to MEGA II, we can now read Marx's own descriptions more directly and correctly. The aim of this paper is to clearly grasp the main theme and theoretical contents of K. Marx's manuscript of Capital Volume III Part three, "The Law of the Tendential Fall in the Rate of Profit", by examining the crisis analysis. Through this process, this paper will analyze the relation between it and manuscript of Capital Volume III Part five, "The Division of Profit into Interest and Profit of Enterprise". In this paper, I will mainly argue the following three points. This paper will firstly reveal new aspects of the theoretical contents of the manuscript of Capital Volume III Part three acquired by MEGA. This is required since Engels's editing work has complexified Marx's analysis, and this caused unnecessary misunderstanding. Secondly, this paper will examine the main theme of manuscript of Capital Volume III Part three and the crisis analysis within this. There are mainly three conflicting positions regarding the understanding of this analysis in the Part three Chapter 15; the first one is called the theory of "an absolute overproduction of capital" which is pointed out by Uno [1974] and the second position refers to the "overproduction of commodities" discussed by Imura [1984] and thirdly, Tomizuka [1975] pointed out "the antinomic character" of these two theoretical statements. The common feature among these three positions is that they analyzed crisis within the sphere of which the law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit is not basically related to moments of crisis. However, strictly following Marx's view, these positions are not examined in such ways since the main theme throughout the entire manuscript of Capital Volume III Part three is on "the law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit" and Marx scrutinizes the moments of crisis through this law. Marx also does not regard a causal or conflicting relation between "an absolute overproduction of capital" and "overproduction of commodities". In order to understand, it is necessary to strictly follow through the manuscript and examine how Marx analyzed crisis, regarding the law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit as in the manuscript of Capital Volume III Part three. Finally, this paper will examine the relation between the manuscript of Capital Volume III Part three and its fifth part. Since the relations between these two parts have not thus far been clarified in existing research, I will examine these relations with a view to disentangling them.
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  • Kazuo KONISHI
    Article type: Article
    2014Volume 51Issue 2 Pages 54-64
    Published: July 20, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
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    MEGA II 4.2 contains the first Manuscript of Marx on "Capital VolumeIII" edited by Engels (Engels Edition). In the Manuscript, the parts of 25^<th> chapter to 35^<th> chapter of "Capital VolumeIII" (Engels Edition) are the delineation of the chain and Marx wrote 5)in the beginning of this part. In the part 5) Marx wrote I ), II ) and III) in the places which correspond to the beginning of 28^<th> chapter, 29^<th> chapter and 30^<th> chapter of Engels Edition respectively. Then what is the main theme of the part 5) in Marx's Manuscript. Until recently, it has been believed to be credit system theory or banking credit theory according to Engels Edition. But when the Manuscript is read, we can understand that the main theme of the part 5) is the form and the movement of interest bearing capital under the credit system, in other words moneyed capital theory. Especially most important theme is "Money-Capital and Real Capital" in part III)(30^<th> chapter to 35^<th> chapter of Engels Edition). This argument is a treasure house of theory to analyze the present capitalism, especially the latest "Financialization". But the study on the theme of "Money-Capital and Real Capital" has been insufficient. What is the reason of this state? Firstly it needs understanding the thought of Marx on Crisis and Industrial Cycle to understand "Money-Capital and Real Capital". We find it in Part III of "Capital Volume III"-namely "The Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall". While in most cases this law has been misunderstood or has been disregarded by most economists. Secondary traditional "Credit Creation Theory" is entirely disparate with Marx's theory. It is impossible to understand the content of "Money-Capital and Real Capital" from that point of view. We would like to expect that many economists get over these issues and research Marx's Manuscript without bias.
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  • Kei EHARA
    Article type: Article
    2014Volume 51Issue 2 Pages 65-76
    Published: July 20, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
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    Crisis theory in Marxian political economy has been regarded to be of utmost significance for the critical study on capitalism in spite of its incompleteness in Karl Marx's own literatures and has been one of the most fiercely debated subjects among Marxian economists. Enormous amount of theoretical studies in Japan on this topic can be largely categorized into two types according to the view on the principal cause of crisis: one is overproduction theory and the other is profit squeeze theory. This categorization, however, often overlooks the importance of historical perspective that Kozo Uno provided in his studies on crisis. It is true that Uno's crisis theory considers wage rise as the cause of profit squeeze, but what distinguished his work from other Japanese Marxian literatures was the linkage between the crisis theory and the stage theory, in which historical development of capitalism is theoretically conceptualized and empirically investigated with the theoretical image of crisis being one of the standards of analysis. If we are to understand the surge of drastic transformation that recent capitalism is experiencing, this historical sensitivity in Uno's crisis theory must be sophisticated further. That is to say, Uno's crisis theory cannot stay the same as a simple profit squeeze theory and must seek for a reasonable kind of multi-causal approach in order to capture the diversity of crisis phenomena. In Uno's schema, profit squeeze caused by wage rise does not indicate the outbreak of crisis itself. It is literally just a fundamental cause of crisis and practically marks the end of stable growth of capital accumulation by itself. What follows it is an unstable boom, not an immediate downturn. Indeed, wage rise is important not because it directly leads to crisis, but because it is a distinctive turning point of the stability of economy. We must, then, reconsider the process of accumulation towards labour shortage, which might bear another trigger for instability. While capital accumulation expands its scale of production and employs more labourers, it also accompanies technological innovations that are put into practice through fixed capital investment and lets plural conditions of production coexist. The process of accumulation has two aspects: the expansion of employment of labourers and the stratification of conditions of production. The latter should be discussed in relation to market circumstances, since industrial capital tries to evaluate the productivity of condition of production in monetary terms. As the accumulation goes on, the stratification of conditions of production deepens and makes the price system in capitalistic market increasingly complex, thus it becomes more and more difficult for individual industrial capitals to evaluate each production technology. The level of this difficulty in the price evaluation differs among industries, hence affecting investment choice in industries and disturbing the balance in social production. The following market disruption should be another consequence of the process of accumulation than the exhaustion of industrial reserve army. Wage rise is not the exclusive moment that precedes crisis. The systemic defect in capitalistic market with regard to the price evaluation must be conceived of as the other fundamental cause of crisis. These two factors constitute the dichotomy in the concept of crisis under capitalism.
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  • Hiroyuki UNI
    Article type: Article
    2014Volume 51Issue 2 Pages 77-88
    Published: July 20, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
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    According to K. W. Kapp, the principle of cumulative causation is at the core of institutional economics and sets it apart from earlier and contemporary non-institutional approaches, and particularly from the mechanistic equilibrium approach. Cumulative causation, in short, means that changes in multiple factors proceed in parallel and cumulatively through mutually reinforcing effects working among these factors. There are two streams in the theory of cumulative causation, whose themes are different. The first stream originated from Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class. Its main theme is two-way causation between the evolution of human instincts and the evolution of social institutions. The second stream is macroeconomic dynamics that applies the concept of cumulative causation, which originated from A. Young's paper in 1928 and was developed further by G. Myrdal, N. Kaldor and R. Boyer. They analyzed two-way causation between various economic variables such as labor productivity growth and demand growth, where institutions play the role of mediating causation. However, there is no explicit reference to cumulative causation in J. R. Commons' primary work, Institutional Economics that consists of about 900 pages. Furthermore, Commons was never taken up in historical studies on theories of cumulative causation. Nevertheless, does Commons' system of institutional economics not include the principle of cumulative causation? This paper will consider this issue, based on Institutional Economics and a manuscript written in 1927 that was newly found by the author. In comparison with this 1927 manuscript, Commons' theory in Institutional Economics published 1934 has developed greatly. Between 1927 and 1934, there was Great Depression, the rise of Stalinism and fascism, revitalization of the labor movement and the start of the New Deal. These drastic social and economic changes affected Commons' theory. I think that, through his consideration of this large-scale lack of demand, Commons changed his view on scarcity from the one of emphasizing the supply side to the one of taking count of both sides of supply and demand. I assume that the unbalanced description in the 1927 manuscript, emphasizing only sellers' control of the quantity of supply, was deleted as a result of this conceptual expansion of "proprietary scarcity." Moreover, by including institutional economic adjustments at the macro and meso levels, the concept of "rationing transaction" is expanded significantly in Institutional Economics, as compared with "judicial transaction" in the 1927 manuscript. As a result, although Commons did not use the words "cumulative causation" in Institutional Economics, he reached very close to an idea of cumulative causation similar to that of Kaldor and Boyer by expanding the concepts of "proprietary scarcity" and "rationing transaction."
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  • Atsushi TAZOE
    Article type: Article
    2014Volume 51Issue 2 Pages 89-96
    Published: July 20, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
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    In the paper I show that the relation between capital and labor in Japan was changed by estimating the Okishio type profit rate in the Japanese economy from 1985 to 2005. Since in the period so called the Japanese-style business management suffered transformation in many ways I focus on the period. I use connected input-output tables with some modifications. What I produced based on basic input-output tables are social technological input output tables. Since these include wage goods as input factors it is possible to estimate the effect of wages on a rate of profit. Based on the estimated profit rates I get conclusions stated below. The Japanese economy enjoyed the "bubble" economy between 1985 and 1990. Meanwhile profit rates suffer wage pressure. There was so called profit squeezing happened in the Japanese economy. This suggests labor had the bargaining power in the period. The profit rates were fallen from 1990 to 1995 even if wages were fixed at 1990's level. But fallen rate of profits with fixed wages were more moderate than what real happened. This suggests both labor and capital shared the cost of the collapsed babble economy. This shows the Japanese-style business management had still survived in the period. The rate of profits recovered after 1995 and this recovery heavily depend on the pay cut. While this is true, we should notice that characters of pay cut from 1995 to 2000 and from 2000 to 2005 are different. The pay cut from 1995 to 2000 parallels a decrease in labor time. This means the wage rate was not changed. Labor was not so weak in this period. In contrast, wages were severely reduced after 2000. The falling rate of wage was lower than that of labor time. Based on stated above I conclude that labor lost the power to bargain with capital over a wage in this period and the old fashion Japanese-style of business management had collapsed.
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  • Makoto ITOH
    Article type: Article
    2014Volume 51Issue 2 Pages 97-99
    Published: July 20, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
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  • Nobuteru TAKEDA
    Article type: Article
    2014Volume 51Issue 2 Pages 100-102
    Published: July 20, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
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  • Takio MIZUSHIMA
    Article type: Article
    2014Volume 51Issue 2 Pages 103-105
    Published: July 20, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
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  • Kenji HASHIMOTO
    Article type: Article
    2014Volume 51Issue 2 Pages 106-108
    Published: July 20, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
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  • Ken'ichi MURAKAMI
    Article type: Article
    2014Volume 51Issue 2 Pages 109-111
    Published: July 20, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
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  • Satoshi MATSUI
    Article type: Article
    2014Volume 51Issue 2 Pages 112-114
    Published: July 20, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: April 25, 2017
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