tailieunhanh - History of Economic Analysis part 53

History of Economic Analysis part 53. At the time of his death in 1950, Joseph Schumpeter-one of the major figures in economics during the first half of the 20th century-was working on his monumental History of Economic Analysis. A complete history of humankind's theoretical efforts to understand economic phenomena from ancient Greece to the present, this book is an important contribution to the history of ideas as well as to economics. | History of economic analysis 482 taught Marx how not to go about his task and how to avoid the grossest errors. Therefore and also because Marx s theoretical developments seem to me to follow naturally from Ricardo s formulations given the direction in which those developments were to aim I do not think that there is any cogent reason for challenging Engels repudiation of the idea that Marx had borrowed from Rodbertus. To call Rodbertus a Ricardian is of course to limit the range of his originality. In addition there is s priority such as it is for any sort of exploitation theory and Owen s for Rodbertus labor notes currency .4 But neither amounts to much. For his own convenience the reader should keep in mind the following three points that I mention here by anticipation as specifically characteristic of the caliber of Rodbertus theorizing all of which have found admirers however I his thoroughly untenable theory of rent 5 II his factually and theoretically equally indefensible theory that the relative share of labor in the national dividend tends to fall in the course of capitalist development and III his underconsumption theory of crises that is based upon the proposition that overproduction must periodically result from labor s inability to buy back a sufficient amount of its product owing to II a type of underconsumption theory that should be but unfortunately is not beneath discussion. Sismondi who has some passages that seem to point in the same direction actually did much better than that. Rodbertus most important works are Zur Erkenntniss unsrer staatswirthschaftlichen Zustände 1842 Sociale Briefe an von Kirchmann 1850-51 English trans. as Overproduction and Crises 1898 2nd ed. 1908 Zur Erklärung und Abhülfe der heutigen Creditnoth des Grundbesitzes 1868-9 . Other writings that are of interest to us including letters that contain some important clarification have been posthumously published from time to time. There is a considerable Rodbertus .