Political Econ of Growth. Paul A. Baran

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СКАЧАТЬ whenever the outputs to be compared consist of more than one product, whenever, therefore, changes in output may affect its components unequally, and whenever certain products appear in the output of one period without appearing in the output of the other. This familiar index number problem, disturbing as it is even with regard to slow, gradual growth, becomes particularly vexing when what is considered is more or less rapid economic growth, the outstanding characteristic of which is profound change not only in the magnitude but also in the composition of output. Indeed, intertemporal comparisons threaten to be outright misleading when the periods to be compared are separated by changes in economic and social organization, by big spurts in urbanization, by decreases or increases of the “marketed share” of output, and so forth. Especially troublesome is the services sector, the expansion of which would cause an increase in Gross National Product (as conventionally defined) suggesting thus “economic growth”—although in most countries it would be considered to be a retrograde step rather than one in the direction of economic progress.⁷ Pigou’s famous gentleman marrying his cook and thus reducing national income comes readily to mind. Equally easily can one imagine a tremendous expansion of national income caused by the introduction of compulsory payments to wives for services rendered.

      But we shall assume that increases of aggregate output over time can somehow be measured, and shall ask ourselves how such increases come about. They can be the result of one of the following developments (or of a combination of them) : (1) The aggregate resource utilization may expand without changes in organization and/or technology, i.e. previously unutilized resources (manpower, land) may be brought into the productive process. (2) The productivity per unit of resources at work may rise as a result of organizational measures, i.e. by a transfer of workers from less productive or unproductive occupations to more productive pursuits, by a lengthening of the working day, by an improvement in nutrition and strengthening of incentives available to workers, by rationalization of methods of production and more economic utilization of fuel, raw materials, and so forth. (3) Society’s “technical arm” may become stronger, i.e. (a) worn-out or obsolete plant and equipment may be replaced by more efficient facilities, and/or (b) new (technologically improved or unchanged) productive facilities may be added to the previously existing stock.

      The first three routes to expansion of output—(1), (2) and (3) (a)—are typically not associated with net investment. Although it is probably impossible to impute to each of these four processes a proper share of the increase of output that has actually taken place, there can be little doubt that the economic application of increasing technical knowledge and net investment in additional productive facilities have been the most important sources of economic growth.

      To be sure, in actual fact some net investment may be needed for all of them: previously unused resources may be unusable without some outlays on equipment, soil improvements, and the like; organizational changes may be predicated upon the installation of conveyor belts or similar devices; technological progress yielding improved machinery to be added to or substituted for worn-out equipment may be forthcoming only under conditions of large net investment. “If … technique largely depends on the state of science, science depends far more still on the state and the requirements of technique. If society has a technical need, that helps science forward more than ten universities. The whole of hydrostatics (Torricelli, etc.) was called forth by the necessity for regulating the mountain streams of Italy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We have only known anything reasonable about electricity since its technical applicability was discovered.”⁸

      On the other hand, plowing back amortization allowances—without any net investment—on a higher technological plane may per se support a significant expansion of output. Therefore where the capital intensity of the productive process is already large—in other words, where depreciation allowance constitutes an important part of the cost of the product—there is continuously available a source of capital for financing technological improvements without any need for net investment. While this aggravates the instability of the advanced capitalist economies by increasing the amount of currently generated surplus that has to be disposed of by investment, it also gives the advanced countries a major advantage over the underdeveloped countries where the annual amortization allowances necessarily amount to little.⁹

      Net investment in any case can take place only if society’s total output exceeds what is used for its current consumption and for making good the wear and tear on its productive facilities employed during the period in question. The volume and the nature of net investment taking place in a society at any given time depends, therefore, on the size and the mode of utilization of the currently generated economic surplus.

      Both, as we shall see later, are essentially determined by the degree to which society’s productive resources have been developed, and by the social structure within which the productive process unfolds. The understanding of the factors responsible for the size and the mode of utilization of the economic surplus is one of the foremost tasks of a theory of economic development. It is not even approached in the realm of “pure” economics. We have to look for it in the political economy of growth.

      ¹ Lionel Robbins, The Theory of Economic Policy in English Classical Political Economy (London, 1952), p. 19. It is strange, therefore, to read on the next page of Professor Robbins’ book: “… I find it hard to understand how anyone who has given serious attention to the actual works of these men … can question their integrity and their transparent devotion to the general good.… It has become fashionable to dismiss them and their ideas not on grounds of logic and assumptions, but on the grounds of alleged class interest. On this view the classical economists are the spokesmen of business, and consciously or unconsciously the apologists of the dominant class.” (Italics added.) Yet “consciously or unconsciously” is precisely the issue. No serious writer to my knowledge has asserted that the classical economists-at least the great and important ones-were consciously servile scribes of a dominant or rising bourgeoisclass. In that case they would have hardly been worth the paper they were printed on, let alone the paper they are being constantly reprinted on. The crux of the matter is that they were—probably most unconsciously—the spokesmen of a rising bourgeoisie whose interests they objectively served. Professor Robbins himself has clearly seen the distinction between subjective awareness of interests and their objective contents in his The Economic Basis of Class Conflict (London, 1939) (p. 4). In general it may well be said that for the appraisal of a group’s or an individual’s role in the historical process, subjective motivations (conscious or unconscious) are much less important than objective performances. In case of doubt, it is always useful to ask in all such matters: cui bono? The answer may not always be conclusive—it is never irrelevant.

      ² Thus it is by no means fortuitous that the marginal utility theory, the static character of which is one of its outstanding features, has become the heart of neoclassical economics.

      ³ Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy (Stuttgart-Berlin, 1921), p. 86.

      ⁴ “The record of the main European wars … is shown by the following index series (combining size of the fighting force, number of casualties, number of countries involved, and proportion of combatants to total population) : Century: 12th 13th 14th 15th 16th 17th 18th 19th 20th Index : 18 24 60 100 180 500 370 120 3080 For details see Pitirim Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics, Vol. 3, 1937, and Quincy Wright, A Study of War, Vol. 1, Chap. 9 and Appendixes, 1942”; cited in Harold D. Lasswell, World Politics Faces Economics (New York and London, 1945), p. 7.

      ⁵ H. G. Johnson, Economic Journal (June 1955), p. 303.

      ⁶ Colin Clark suggests a different definition: “Economic progress can be defined simply as an improvement in economic welfare. Economic welfare, following Pigou, can be defined in the first instance as an abundance of all those goods and services which are customarily exchanged for money. Leisure is an element in economic welfare, and more precisely we СКАЧАТЬ