‘Useless but True’: Economic Crisis and the Peculiarities of Economic Science*

2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Fine ◽  
Dimitris Milonakis
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Economic Science ◽  
Economic Crises ◽  
Capitalist Economy

AbstractThe recent economic crisis has brought to the fore another crisis that has been going on for many years, that of (orthodox) economic theory. The latter failed to predict and, after the event, cannot offer an explanation of why it happened. This article sketches out why this is the case and what constitutes the crisis of economics. On this basis, the case is made for the revival of an interdisciplinary political economy as the only way for offering an explanation of the workings of the (capitalist) economy in general and of economic crises in particular.

The Idea of a Meaningful Synthesis of Marxist and Non-Marxist Systems of Political Economy as a Mirror of Intellectual Turmoil (About V.T. Ryazanov’s Book «Modern Political Economy: Prospects of Neo-Marxist Synthesis»)

2019 ◽  
pp. 74-98
Author(s):  
A.B. Lyubinin
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Economic Science ◽  
Objective Reality ◽  
Commodity Production ◽  
Subjective Assessments ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Political Economic

Review of the monograph indicated in the subtitle V.T. Ryazanov. The reviewer is critical of the position of the author of the book, believing that it is possible and even necessary (to increase the effectiveness of General economic theory and bring it closer to practice) substantial (and not just formal-conventional) synthesis of the Marxist system of political economy with its non-Marxist systems. The article emphasizes the difference between the subject and the method of the classical, including Marxist, school of political economy with its characteristic objective perception of the subject from the neoclassical school with its reduction of objective reality to subjective assessments; this excludes their meaningful synthesis as part of a single «modern political economy». V.T. Ryazanov’s interpretation of commodity production in the economic system of «Capital» of K. Marx as a purely mental abstraction, in fact — a fiction, myth is also counter-argued. On the issue of identification of the discipline «national economy», the reviewer, unlike the author of the book, takes the position that it is a concrete economic science that does not have a political economic status.

scholarly journals The crisis in economics – nature and ways to overcome it

2019 ◽  
Vol 89 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-37
Author(s):  
A. D. Nekipelov
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Economic System ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Economic Science ◽  
Mainstream Economic ◽  
Pure Science ◽  
Economic Problems ◽  
Neoclassical Economic Theory ◽  
Multiple Alternative ◽  
Alternative Approaches

Recent decades have witnessed an upsurge in multiple alternative approaches to unraveling major economic problems, together with the mainstream economic theory, which in this study has been considered an indicator of economic crisis. In this study, we attribute institutional stasis, as well as methodological heterogeneity of its two constituent sections, micro- and macroeconomics, to the primary drawbacks of neoclassical economic theory. Overcoming the crisis of economic science correlates with the creation of a general economic theory on the principles of “pure science,” with elucidated functions of various socioeconomic disciplines. If “pure economic theory” intends to form an intellectual layout of the economic system, then the “realistic sciences,” also including modern macroeconomics in this study, are tools for analyzing specific socioeconomic phenomena and processes. As people with consciousness and interests act in the society, this study postulates the existence of a certain zone of ambiguity, which cannot be entirely covered.

Interdisciplinary Method in Economic Theory: Historical Experience and Prospects

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-214
Author(s):  
Kaysyn Khubiev ◽  
Alla Rassadina
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Scientific School ◽  
Economic Science ◽  
State University ◽  
Scientific Discussion ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Experience ◽  
Moscow State University

The review presents a discussion at the session of the Scientific Council of Moscow State University on the development of modern economic theory and Russian model of social and economic development. The session, held on November 28, 2019 at the Faculty of Economics in Lomonosov Moscow State University, was dedicated to two dates - the 215th anniversary of the Department of Political Economy and the 115th anniversary of N. A. Tsagolov. The topic of scientific discussion: “Interdisciplinary approach - the key to solving theoretical and practical problems of modern time”. During the discussion, issues related to interdisciplinary method in economic theory, University traditions and modern experience of interdisciplinary method in economic science were discussed. Speakers also concentrated on the problems of national political economy development, inseparably connected with the history of the Department of Political Economy at the Faculty of Economics in Moscow University. Special attention was paid to the period of the development of the Department under the leadership of N. A. Tsagolov and formation of the scientific school connected with his name. The discussion focused on the interdisciplinary approach developed by “Tsagolov School”, the possibility of its development under the conditions of a new scientific and technological revolution, and its role in the effective study of economy and society in the twenty-first century.

scholarly journals What can Learn the Economic Science and Economic Policy form the Global Economic Crisis Generated by the Pandemia?

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 9-18
Author(s):  
György Kocziszky
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
General Theory ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Economic Science ◽  
Economic Crises ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Current Crisis ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Growth Trends ◽  
Economic Thinking

Mynard Keynes’s The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money published in 1936, highlighted that the deep, global financial and economic crises have a profound effect on economic thinking and the economic policy-makers. The sage learns from this, and the fool recovers back to his previous flawed theories and practices. Today, it is also clear that the shocks that trigger these crises are living with us, breaking the growth trends of the economy from time to time, which raises again and again the question, what economics and economic policy practitioners have learned, and can learn from it, or the short-term economic policy interest overcomes the adjustments after the corrections? In his study, the author checks the effects of the recent global exogenous crisis caused by the pandemic and the desirable correction methods, without which the consequences of the current crisis may be protracted. Keywords: crisis, economic thinking, economic policy, pandemic, sustainability

Three questions to political economy (An attempt of system introspection)

2018 ◽  
pp. 118-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. B. Kleiner
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Modern World ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Science ◽  
Linear Component ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
Economic Space ◽  
Economic Relations ◽  
System Paradigm

The development of the system paradigm in economic science leads to the formulation of a number of important questions to the political economy as one of the basic directions of economic theory. In this article, on the basis of system introspection, three questions are considered. The first is the relevance of the class approach to the structuring of the socio-economic space; the second is the feasibility of revising the notion of property in the modern world; the third is the validity of the notion of changing formations as the sequence of “slave-owning system — feudal system — capitalist system”. It is shown that in modern society the system approach to the structuring of socio-economic space is more relevant than the class one. Today the classical notion of “property” does not reflect the diversity of production and economic relations in society and should be replaced by the notion of “system property”, which provides a significant expansion of the concepts of “subject of property” and “object of property”. The change of social formations along with the linear component has a more influential cyclic constituent and obeys the system-wide cyclic regularity that reflects the four-cycle sequence of the dominance of one of the subsystems of the macrosystem: project, object, environment and process.

Nikolay Sieber in the history of prerevolutionary Russian economic thought

2018 ◽  
pp. 95-110
Author(s):  
L. D. Shirokorad
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Organic Synthesis ◽  
Marginal Utility ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Three Stages

This article shows how representatives of various theoretical currents in economics at different times in history interpreted the efforts of Nikolay Sieber in defending and developing Marxian economic theory and assessed his legacy and role in forming the Marxist school in Russian political economy. The article defines three stages in this process: publication of Sieber’s work dedicated to the analysis of the first volume of Marx’s Das Kapital and criticism of it by Russian opponents of Marxian economic theory; assessment of Sieber’s work by the narodniks, “Legal Marxists”, Georgiy Plekhanov, and Vladimir Lenin; the decline in interest in Sieber in light of the growing tendency towards an “organic synthesis” of the theory of marginal utility and the Marxist social viewpoint.

Jean Tirole: The political economy of corporate finance (On the book by J. Tirole “The theory of corporate finance”)

2017 ◽  
pp. 128-141
Author(s):  
N. Ranneva
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Graduate Students ◽  
Corporate Finance ◽  
Critical Review ◽  
The Political ◽  
Institutional Economic ◽  
New Type ◽  
Finance Theory ◽  
Empirical Material

The present article undertakes a critical review of the new book of Jean Tirole, the winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Economics, “The theory of cor- porate finance”, which has recently been published in Russian. The book makes a real contribution to the profession by summarizing the whole field of corporate finance and bringing together a big body of research developed over the last thirty years. By simplifying modeling, using unified analytical apparatus, undertaking reinterpretation of many previously received results, and structuring the material in original way Tirole achieves a necessary unity and simplicity in exposition of extremely heterogeneous theoretical and empirical material. The book integrates the new institutional economic theory into classical corporate finance theory and by doing so contributes to making a new type of textbook, which is quite on time and is likely to become essential reading for all graduate students in corporate finance and microeconomics and for everyone interested in these disciplines.

Political Economy of Post-Soviet Marxism (Theses to Forming of Scientific School)

2005 ◽  
pp. 36-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Buzgalin ◽  
A. Kolganov
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Transition Economies ◽  
Alternative Schools ◽  
Scientific School ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Limited Ability ◽  
Socialist System ◽  
Soviet Marxism ◽  
Modern Russian

The limited ability of neoclassical "mainstream" to explain deep fundamental shifts in economic structures of the present day world determines the renaissance of alternative schools of economic theory, including Marxism. The article is aimed to show theoretical concepts of modern Russian neomarxism, which has a potential to explain the contradictions of the capitalist globalization, the tendencies of forming new types of socioeconomic relations, of the specific forms of transition economies in the post-socialist countries and basic causes of the birth and collapse of the socialist system.

Essays of a “comparatively progressive” economist (On the 150th birth anniversary of Vladimir Geleznoff)

2019 ◽  
pp. 135-145
Author(s):  
Viktor A. Popov
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
History Of Economic Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Russian History ◽  
Working Ability ◽  
Intellectual Inquiry ◽  
History Of

Deep comprehension of the advanced economic theory, the talent of lecturer enforced by the outstanding working ability forwarded Vladimir Geleznoff scarcely at the end of his thirties to prepare the publication of “The essays of the political economy” (1898). The subsequent publishing success (8 editions in Russia, the 1918­-year edition in Germany) sufficiently demonstrates that Geleznoff well succeded in meeting the intellectual inquiry of the cross­road epoch of the Russian history and by that taking the worthful place in the history of economic thought in Russia. Being an acknowledged historian of science V. Geleznoff was the first and up to now one of the few to demonstrate the worldwide community of economists the theoretically saturated view of Russian economic thought in its most fruitful period (end of XIX — first quarter of XX century).

150 Years of Das Kapital and No End in Sight. Unsystematic Remarks on a Never-Ending Story

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (6) ◽  
pp. 23-46
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Formal Structure ◽  
Monetary Theory ◽  
Economic Crises ◽  
General Introduction ◽  
The Third ◽  
Social Forms ◽  
Adequate Understanding ◽  
Theory Of Value ◽  
The Masses

Michael Heinrich, one of the leading Marx scholars, provides a general introduction into Das Kapital with emphasis on the latest interpretations of it. The circumstances surrounding its writing and publication are shown to have interfered with an adequate appreciation of it. The formal structure and organization of the first volume are obstacles to readers and demand much from their education and intellect. The article summarizes the basic trajectories of Marx’s criticisms of political economy, including the critique of naturalizing social forms arising under capitalism and Marx’s original monetary theory of value. The author disentangles Marx’s Das Kapital from views mistakenly ascribed to it, such as the idea that value is determined solely by labor and the prediction of pauperization of the masses. First, Marx’s theory of value goes well beyond explaining prices under capitalism. Second, his main prophecy concerned the inevitable growth of inequality between the masters of capital and the employed classes and did not forecast impoverishment. The paper also points out that the sequence of publication of different volumes of Das Kapital caused lacunae in interpreting Marx’s oeuvre. For instance Engels’ efforts made the third volume more accessible to readers but also obscured the overall pattern of Marx’s thinking. the article shows that Das Kapital was a dynamic and fluctuating project to such an extent that Marx himself several times revisited his views of the causes of economic crises and falling profits and also intended to deal extensively with ecological issues. Reaching an adequate understanding of the theory contained in Das Kapital cannot depend on the manuscripts of those volumes alone. Marx’s notebooks, which have only recently published, are an indispensable aid to understanding it.

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