Accumulation and Stability Under Capitalism

by Patnaik, Prabhat

• ISBN13: 9780198288053
• ISBN10: 0198288050
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-04-17
• Publisher: Clarendon Press

Summary

Prabhat Patnaik's starting point is the fundamental question of how we can explain the resilience and durability of capitalist economies - after all, the writings of most of the giants among economists have been permeated by a sense of the transitoriness of capitalism. His argument is thatthe existence of a periphery of less developed countries provides a buffer that allows (relatively) crisis-free and non-inflationary growth in the capitalist core. The analysis unifies two fields that are normally separate: models of growth and stabilization policy in advanced economies and theeconomics of open developing economies. Consequently, Patnaik embraces both a thorough analysis of modern fiscal, monetary, and inflation policy in advanced capitalist economies and the constraints that systematically hinder development in less developed countries. Accumulation and Stability under Capitalism uses macroeconomic principles to solve problems currently addressed with microeconomic tools, establishing macroeconomics as a framework for analysing phenomena as wide-ranging as migration, imperialist systems, technological change, and labour markets.In the tradition of Keynes, Harrod and Domar, Marx, and Kalecki, it offers an alternative path to the choice-theoretic models that have appeared to be the only modern analytical path.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction	1	(16)
I. ACCUMULATION AND STABILITY	17	(44)
2. Accumulation and Economic Growth	17	(20)
3. Steady Growth and Price Instability	37	(24)
II. STATE INTERVENTION AND STABILITY	61	(34)
4. Monetary Policy as an Instrument of Stabilisation	61	(14)
5. State Intervention through Fiscal Policy	75	(20)
III. STABILITY THROUGH UNEQUAL INTERDEPENDENCE	95	(86)
6. Capital Accumulation in Conditions of Unequal Interdependence: A Preliminary Model	95	(18)
7. Accumulation and Unequal Interdependence: A Fuller Discussion	113	(24)
8. Technical Progress and Uneven Development	137	(26)
9. A Critical Review of the Argument So Far	163	(18)
IV. IMPERIALISM AND THIRD WORLD DEVELOPMENT	181	(122)
10. A Theory of Imperialism	181	(21)
11. The Market Question in a Historical Setting	202	(21)
12. Diffusion of Activities and the Terms of Trade	223	(33)
13. The Limitations of Enforced Diffusion	256	(25)
14. Socialism and Third World Development	281	(22)
Bibliography	303	(10)
Index of Names	313	(2)
Index of Subjects	315