Political Econ of Growth. Paul A. Baran

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СКАЧАТЬ ideologies and institutions of feudalism, both reason and history were confidently invoked as the supreme arbiters in the fateful contest. There are no more magnificent witnesses to this grand alliance of the ascending bourgeoisie with reason and historical thinking than the great Encyclopedists of the eighteenth century, than the great realists of the nascent bourgeois literature.

      But when reason and the study of history began revealing the irrationality, the limitations, and the merely transitory nature of the capitalist order, bourgeois ideology as a whole and with it bourgeois economics began abandoning both reason and history. Whether this abandonment assumed the form of a rationalism driven to its own self-destruction and turning into the agnosticism of modern positivism, or whether it appeared frankly in the form of some existentialist philosophy contemptuously rejecting all search for and all reliance upon a rational comprehension of history, the result was that bourgeois thought (and economics as a part of it) turned ever more into a neatly packed kit of assorted ideological gadgets required for the functioning and the preservation of the existing social order.

      In its beginnings, economics was a revolutionary intellectual effort to seek out and to establish the working principles of an economic system best able to advance the cause of mankind. In its later days it has turned upon its own past, becoming a mere attempt at an explanation and justification of the status quo—condemning and suppressing at the same time all endeavors to judge the existing economic order by standards of reason, or to comprehend the origins of the prevailing conditions and the developmental potentialities that they contain. As Marx remarked: “The economists explain to us the process of production under given conditions; what they do not explain to us, however, is how these conditions themselves are being produced, i.e., the historical movement that brings them into being.”³

      Thus the concern with economic and social change was left to a “heretical” school of economics and social science. Marx and Engels accepted in essence the insistence of the classical economists on capitalism’s giant contribution to economic development. Yet, not wedded to the now dominant capitalist class, and neither “consciously nor unconsciously” compelled to regard capitalism as the “natural” form of society and as the ultimate fulfillment of human aspirations, they were able to perceive the limits and barriers to progress inherent in the capitalist system. Indeed, their approach to the matter was radically different from that of bourgeois economics. While the latter was (and is) interested in economic development only to the extent that it has led to the establishment, and is conducive to the stabilization, of the capitalist order, Marx and Engels considered the capitalist order itself as likely to survive only as long as it did not become a fetter on further economic and social progress. Overcoming the limitations of bourgeois thought, they were able to comprehend the era of capitalism as merely creating the prerequisites for a development of humanity that would lead far beyond the confines of the capitalist order. Once more: the critical efforts of Marx and his followers yielded most important positive results. They destroyed the veil of harmony with which bourgeois economics obscured the view of the capitalist system, and laid bare the conflict-laden, irrational nature of the capitalist order. Much if not all that we know about the complex mechanism responsible for the development (and stagnation) of productive forces, and for the rise and decay of social organizations, is the result of the analytical work undertaken by Marx and by those whom he inspired.

      Such might have remained the situation, with economic development relegated to the “underworld” of economic and social thought, were it not for historical processes that in the course of a few decades have drastically changed our entire social, political, and intellectual landscape. Indeed, while the neoclassical economists were, busy with further refinements of static equilibrium analysis and with the elaboration of additional arguments proving the viability and intrinsic harmony of the capitalist system, capitalism itself was going through far-reaching transformations.

      Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the first phase of the industrialization of the Western world was nearing its completion. The economic consequence of the thorough exploitation of the then available technology—based primarily on coal and steam—was not merely a tremendous expansion of heavy industry, a vast increase of output, and a revolution in the means of transportation and communication; it was also a momentous change in the structure of the capitalist economies. Concentration and centralization of capital made giant strides, and large-scale enterprise moved into the center of the economic scene, displacing and absorbing the small firm. Shattering the competitive mechanism which regulated, for better or worse, the functioning of the economic system, large-scale enterprise became the basis of monopoly and oligopoly—the characteristic features of modern capitalism. The world of neoclassical economics was rapidly disintegrating. Neither the slow (but steady) growth, nor relatively painless continuous adjustments on the margin were to be expected under conditions of ubiquitous indivisibilities and discontinuities, of increasing returns to scale, and of narrowing investment opportunites. The harmonious movement of capital from the advanced to the less developed countries that was expected to be propelled by the profit motive assumed in reality the form of embittered struggles for investment outlets, markets, and sources of raw materials. Western penetration of backward and colonial areas, that was supposed to spread the blessings of Western civilization into every nook and corner of the globe, spelled in actual fact ruthless oppression and exploitation of the subjugated nations.

      The powerful tendencies towards stagnation, imperialist conflagrations, and severe political crises discerned by Marx as early as the middle of the nineteenth century, and later observed and analyzed by Hobson, Lenin, Hilferding, Rosa Luxemburg, and others, expressed themselves so manifestly as to give cause for alarm to all but the most complacent. A frantic armaments race among the Great Powers began absorbing growing parts of their national outputs and became the most important single factor in determining the level of their economic activity. In quick succession the Sino-Japanese War, the Spanish-American War, the Boer War, the bloody suppression of the Boxer Rebellion, the Russo-Japanese War, the Russian Revolution in 1905, the Chinese Revolution in 1911-1912, and finally the First World War ushered in the present epoch in the development of capitalism—the epoch of imperialism, wars, national and social revolutions.⁴

      The Marxian theoretic challenge has become eminently practical. The “Indian summer” of stability, prosperity, and confidence in the future of capitalism—following the First World War—lasted less than one decade. The dream of “organized capitalism,” of a “Ford-versus-Marx” solution of all economic and social ills, and of “economic democracy” assuring justice and welfare to all became the shortest-lived utopia on the historical record. The Great Depression with its manifold and protracted repercussions rendered the continuation of the “conspiracy of optimism” about economic growth and social progress under capitalism increasingly difficult to maintain. The time-honored “scientific” and “objective” finding of economics that socialism is impossible was dramatically refuted by the success of the industrialization effort in the USSR.

      Tardily and reluctantly, economics began taking cognizance of the new situation. Although inspired by the immediate problem of counteracting depression and unemployment, and consequently addressing itself primarily to the issues of the short run, the “New Economics” of John Maynard Keynes carried implications that transcended by far its original scope. In an attempt at clarification of the determinants of short-run changes in the levels of output, employment, and income, Keynesian economics found itself face to face with the entire irrationality, the glaring discrepancy between the productive potentialities and the productive performance characteristic of the capitalist order. At the risk of grossly exaggerating the intellectual performance of Keynes, it might be said that what Hegel accomplished with respect to German classical philosophy, Keynes achieved with regard to neoclassical economics. Operating with the customary tools of conventional theory, remaining well within the confines of “pure economics,” faithfully refraining from considering the socioeconomic process as a whole, the Keynesian analysis advanced to the very limits of bourgeois economic theorizing, and exploded its entire structure. Indeed, it amounted to an “official” admission on the part of the “Holy See” of conventional economics that instability, a strong tendency towards СКАЧАТЬ