Review of Radical Political Economics

This paper presents a Marxian theory of inflation under conditions of stagnation in a monopoly capitalist economy. The inadequacy of monetarist and Keynesian explanations of the 1970s inflation is discussed briefly. A more extended critique is offered of two influential non-mainstream theories of inflation, the mark-up pricing theory of inflation and the conflict theory of inflation. Current versions of those theories are shown to rest on the implicit assumption that capital does not pursue the maximum possible profits.

A theory of monopoly pricing is developed which rests on the assumption that monopoly capital pursues the highest rate of profit that can be sustained over the long-run. On the basis of this theory of monopoly pricing, it is shown that in a period of prolonged stagnation (such as the 1970s) monopoly sector pricing will set off an inflation process, which is then perpetuated through the interaction of monopoly capital, competitive capital, and the working class. The theory of "crisis inflation" presented in the paper incorporates class conflict and mark-up pricing in a manner that is consistent with profit maximization by capital, thus overcoming a major problem with current inflation theories based on conflict or mark-up pricing.

The role played in the inflation process by state interventions, such as corporate bailouts, Keynesian demand management, and central bank monetary expansion, is considered. Possible methods of ending crisis inflation are discussed.

This paper addresses the compatibility of Marxism with policies of planned childbirth and the relationship between Chinese population programs and economic modernization. The paper argues that family planning is not only consistent with Marxism but is fundamental to its whole notion of socioeconomic transformation. The posture adopted by the Chinese on the population question during the 1970s and early 1980s appears largely consistent with the conceptual framework initially set forth by Marx and Engels and stands as a significant application of it. China's efforts regulating births in order to improve the welfare of its population have a much different orientation than the actions normally suggested by quasi-Malthusians. China has succeded in realizing the historical significance of the population question, that is, the coordination of material production and procreation subject to a Marxian-socialist transformation.

Material and non-material work incentives policies in the capitalist and Communist systems constitute ideologies and practices of order. A study of the schools of Scientific Management and Human Relations in the U.S.A. and of material and moral incentives in the Communist world demonstrates how they all assume a basic harmony of interests between workers and their employers and managers, ignore the fact that work incentives are used in combination with coercion, and obscure the relationship between the workplace and society as a whole. The conditions under which these different approaches are predominant in the capitalist and Communist systems are also analyzed.

Contrary to Rosdolsky (and most analysts), Marx's proposed book on wage-labor was not incorporated into Capital. As a result, Capital does not develop an adequate totality, an organic whole, in which all presuppositions are results. The production of wage-labor, upon which the reproduction of capital depends, stands outside capital as a presupposition but not a result. With the logical development of the side of wage-labor, an adequate totality (capitalism as a whole) may be constructed which is characterized by "the worker's own need for development" as well as by capital's need for valorization-i.e., by two-sided class struggle.

Implications of the one-sidedness of Capital itself are exploredincluding the inadequacies which have produced proposals to abandon the concept of labor-power as a commodity.

Steedman rejects the labor theory of value on two grounds: that it says nothing that could not be said better within an alternative theory; and that it has limited generality as compared with the alternative theory.

The first ground is shown to involve a number of errors in reasoning, and it is suggested that the labor theory of value provides a clear basis for Marx's theory of exploitation, shows how exchange depends on labor productivity, and establishes a relation of "reflection" between the exchange of products in the market and the exchange of labors in the process of production. The second ground raises important questions about the possible scope of the labor theory of value. The initial mathematization of the concept of value, which identifies values with employment multipliers, is shown by Steedman's cases to be inadequate for a general theory of prices of production. However, a redefinition of value can and should be pursued.

Steedman's project for a new political economy of capitalism appears more consistent with a conception of socialism confined to the increase of the public sector, the transformation of capitalists into public officials, and the abolition of private rentier income, than with Marx's conception of the dissolution of social classes amid the dissolution of commodity production.