Economists from the left?

[swirling_vortex]

It's a funny thing about how conservatives complain that education is trying to put a liberal bias on things. Yet, walk into any economics class and more than likely you'll be bombarded with how evil the government is at intervening in the market. Naturally, when I took my economics class, I pretty much accepted laissez-fail policies as the truth. Therefore, my source of knowledge (books) has a right-wing point of view from people like Ron Paul, Thomas DiLorenzo, Adam Smith, and Milton Friedman.

However, after becoming more comfortable with how socialism works and getting the misconceptions about it out of the way, I tried looking for some progressive or socialist economists. Karl Marx is an obvious one and even Keynes could be considered to an extent (although he was more of a state capitalist), but I don't really know any other economists from the left. Do you know any specific books or authors on economics that deal in this ideology?

[GPDP]

Look up Joan Robinson and other adherents of the Keynesian and Post-Keynesian schools. I would also suggest Robin Hahnel, and to a lesser extent Michael Albert.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Allin Cottrell http://www.wfu.edu/~cottrell/
Andrew Kliman http://akliman.squarespace.com/my-cv/

[peaccenicked]

I likes this from Kliman.



Bubbles are thus, according to the above, an inevitable result of efforts to “grow the economy” faster than is warranted by the underlying flow of new value generated in production. The more sophisticated and widespread the credit markets, the greater is the degree to which “forced expansion” (Marx) can take place, but also the greater the degree of ultimate contraction when the law of value eventually makes its presence felt. It’s like a rubber band stretching and snapping back. 1 (http://marxandthefinancialcrisisof2008.blogspot.com/2008/10/as-author-of-article-that-andrew-chitty.html)

But I find it a bit like a mobius strip (http://mathssquad.questacon.edu.au/mobius_strip.html) to one sided.

This is merely the form but when we look at the content.

Without a sharp break in the pattern of degradation, housing will lose another 20% to 25% nationally in value. The sharp break could come from a national USGovt program to reduce home loan balances. Even Jan Hatzius of Goldman Sachs sees the US housing slump as half done, with up to another 25% in price declines. The real mortgage problem is that perhaps one third to one half of all mortgage bonds are fraud ridden, with little proper securitization linking the bond to property titles. In the case of Fannie Mae, we are dealing with at least $1 trillion in outright counterfeit bonds. So solutions by the Wall Street syndicate are attempted (or sold to Congress) at the aggregate level, to support the fraud. They wish not to embark on a detailed approach loan by loan, since it would expose the fraud and counterfeit. See Counterfeit Capitalism again, the American byline. 2 (http://inthesenewtimes.com/2009/01/21/us-economylightning-earthquakes-hurricanes/)

We see that a new element has entered the bubbles definition. The economy
becomes corrupted and growth subject to volatility and increasing parasitism, and short selling type practices. There is also the claim that the US is one big Ponzi scheme.

Bill Gross, the founder of the world's largest bond fund manager Pimco, thinks Bernard Madoff is poised to become the fall guy for a whole generation. But the reality, he says, is that Wall Street and the US as a whole are full of 'culpable lookalikes.'
In his latest letter to investors published on the Pimco website, Gross says he believes the entire US economy has been structured like a Ponzi scheme for decades and there are many more people to blame than a single fallen hedge fund manager.
'Under the policy-endorsed cover of technology and somewhat faux increases in financial productivity, we became a nation that specialized in the making of paper instead of things, and it fell to Wall Street to invent ever more clever ways to securitize assets, and the job of Main Street to “equitize” or, in reality, to borrow more and more money off of them,' Gross says.
'What was not well recognized was that these policies were hollowing, self-destructive, and ultimately destined to be exposed for what they always were: Ponzi schemes, whose ultimate payoffs were dependent on the inclusion of more and more players and the production of more and more paper.' 3 (http://www.citywire.co.uk/selector/-/news/archive.aspx)

The trouble with most left economic theory is that assumes that criminality is peripheral, this is surprising when Marx puts it at the centre

Capital, insofar as it appears in the circulation process, confronts the ordinary observer mainly in the form of merchant capital, that is, a kind of capital which is engaged only in this operation, hence profit in this field is in part linked with a vague notion of general swindling, or more specifically, with the idea that the merchant swindles the industrial capitalist in the same way as the industrial capitalist swindles the worker, or again that the merchant swindles the consumer, just as the producers swindle one another. In any case, profit here is explained as a result of exchange, that is, as arising from a social relation and not from a thing. 4 (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/add3.htm)

He sees surplus value as unpaid labour. Though this can be taken as plain fact, it does imply a moral judgement that is wrong and indeed socialism remedies this injustice. In that unpaid labour becomes socialised, or taken out of private hands.
Financial speculation has left the law of value behind. This is capitalism gone mad. The deregulation of the markets has not begat self-regulation, and
this has lead to criminal speculation beyond any laws that tie capitalism
to its function as a mode of production. Beyond bourgeois legality and the law of value that is rooted in commodity production, we are witnessing the unravelling of a false economy.
It is as if the left believes that the capitalists are happy with the system of robbery and that it would not endanger itself.

[Hit The North]

Please follow the link: http://www.marxists.org/subject/economy/postmarx.htm for as many post-Marx, socialist economists you can shake a stick at. :)

[Hit The North]

The trouble with most left economic theory is that assumes that criminality is peripheral, this is surprising when Marx puts it at the centre


Capital, insofar as it appears in the circulation process, confronts the ordinary observer mainly in the form of merchant capital, that is, a kind of capital which is engaged only in this operation, hence profit in this field is in part linked with a vague notion of general swindling, or more specifically, with the idea that the merchant swindles the industrial capitalist in the same way as the industrial capitalist swindles the worker, or again that the merchant swindles the consumer, just as the producers swindle one another. In any case, profit here is explained as a result of exchange, that is, as arising from a social relation and not from a thing.

Isn't that a critique of those who would posit profit as the result of swindle, rather than an assertion that profit is derived from swindle?

[Vanguard1917]

Check out Henryk Grossmann. You can find some of his stuff on MIA from the link posted by Bob The Builder above.

And, btw, Keynes was not progressive or socialist in any sense. His aim was to restructure capitalism in order to save it from collapse, socialism and the vulgar masses. He even saw the British Labour Party as too radical for him on the grounds that 'it is a class party, and that class is not my class'. 'The class war will find me on the side of the educated bourgeoisie', he insisted.

In his own words:

'How can I adopt a creed [socialism] which preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeois and the intelligentsia who, with whatever faults, are the quality of life and surely carry the seeds of all human advancement?'

[peaccenicked]

bob
I think that the critique is not a dispute over the swindling aspect of exchange
but the viewing of it as the exchange of things and not a social relationship. Marx is not too clear in this quote now that I think of it but I suspect strongly that he is saying that is not random acts of exchange, but an institutionalized swindle.

I found this quote recently. From Capital volume 3 Chapter 27
"This is the abolition of the capitalist mode of production within the capitalist mode of production itself, and hence a self-dissolving contradiction, which prima facie represents a mere phase of transition to a new form of production. It manifests itself as such a contradiction in its effects. It establishes a monopoly in certain spheres and thereby requires state interference. It reproduces a new financial aristocracy, a new variety of parasites in the shape of promoters, speculators and simply nominal directors; a whole system of swindling and cheating by means of corporation promotion, stock issuance, and stock speculation. It is private production without the control of private property."

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Although the OP's point is correct, "classical liberals" like Adam Smith aren't "rightists." They came before the distinction, usually had some very socialistic tendencies (Smith basically spent half his life berating capitalists), and in fact we owe a lot of gratitude to their work.

[Sam_b]

One of my favourite current-day economists is Costas Lapavistas. You can download his meeting "Explaining The Credit Crunch" from Marxism 2008 here: http://www.resistancemp3.org.uk

Listen out for one of my friend's contriubtions at the meeting "the only crunch I know about is honey nut":laugh:

[peaccenicked]

Another competent analyst is F. William Engdahl
http://inthesenewtimes.com/2009/01/22/death-agony-of-thatcher-deregulated-finance-model/

[swirling_vortex]

Oh boy, looks like I got a bit of reading to do! :cool: Unfortunately, college this semester has been a bit busier than last semester, so I'll certainly try to look at something in my spare time.

[Agnapostate]

The aforementioned Robin Hahnel is an excellent source. He and his writing partner Michael Albert provide exemplary participatory economic models. Samuel Bowles is a similarly commendable source to consider, as well as David Schweickart, the market socialist.