Date: Sat, 28 Jun 1997 17:17:27 +1000
From: Rob Schaap <rws-AT-comserver.canberra.edu.au>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Malloy on competition


G'day again,

Just a thought on this political economic thread.  A few years ago, I was
looking at a book (*The Global Economy* - I think the bloke's name was
Holland) which talked about the 'meso-economic' level and stressed the
musings of a 1930s economist called Kalecki - who might, or might not, be
famous - I wouldn't know.

Anyway, I remember Kalecki pre-empted a lot of Keynes's ideas but differed
from that worthy gentleman in the respect that he focused on the firm,
presumed imperfect competition, and posited a theory of value and
distribution.  Altogether a much more integrated and dynamic work than
those of Keynes or the monetarists, by all accounts.  In fact, the author
credited Kalecki with a recognisably marxian sensibility in this respect.

Does anybody know anything about Kalecki, and had he anything to offer on
the transnational corporate order in which we live?  And as that Holland
book worth finding again in this connection?

Cheers,
Rob.

>So as to get Malloy's emphasis on fiscal policy straight, the following
>paragraph should have read like this (I have also added a few thoughts on):
>
>
>3. From a different angle, it seems that Malloy's interpretation of
>capitalist competition is structured by a restricted metaphor of natural
>selection. Her view of capitalist evolution seems to leave no room for new
>species or biological freaks (what Schumpeter called innovations); rather
>capitalist evolution seems to be understood exclusively as natural
>selection working on a *given* population, eliminating the weak (that is
>high cost producer). In her view, the President, using a tight budget,
>works as a Pearsonian eugenicist, indirectly creating the conditions for an
>advantageous differential reproduction between strong and weak capitals.
>
>Of course Laura Tyson has advocated a more hands-on industrial "eugenics",
>using subsidies and general industrial policy to directly aid the
>reproduction of stronger and potentially stronger capitals. But this has
>been rejected by people like Nicolas Spulber and editorialists at the Wall
>Street Journal on the same grounds that Bateson rejected Pearson's
>eugenics: that it failed to recognize that progress came from mutations and
>random discontinuous variations that could not be planned for. Just like
>Bateson rejected Pearson's planned eugenics as a method for progress, the
>Spulbers reject planned industrial policy and put their faith in the
>innovations that the market will create on its own.
>
>All the best,
>Rakesh
>
>Bernard Norton, "Fisher's entrance into evolutionary science: the role of
>eugenics". In Dimensions of Darwinism,ed. Marjorie Grene. Cambridge
>University Press, 1983
>
>
>
>
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