Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Changing attitudes to political economy in the working-class press 1816–34
- 2 The need for a working-class political economy
- 3 Charles Hall and Robert Owen: anti-capitalist and socialist political economy before the Ricardian socialists
- 4 Ricardian socialists/Smithian socialists: what's in a name?
- 5 The theory of labour exploitation and the working-class press 1816–30
- 6 The theory of labour exploitation and the working-class press 1830–34
- 7 Early socialist political economy and the theory of capitalist crisis
- 8 The popular political economy of crisis 1816-34
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - Early socialist political economy and the theory of capitalist crisis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Changing attitudes to political economy in the working-class press 1816–34
- 2 The need for a working-class political economy
- 3 Charles Hall and Robert Owen: anti-capitalist and socialist political economy before the Ricardian socialists
- 4 Ricardian socialists/Smithian socialists: what's in a name?
- 5 The theory of labour exploitation and the working-class press 1816–30
- 6 The theory of labour exploitation and the working-class press 1830–34
- 7 Early socialist political economy and the theory of capitalist crisis
- 8 The popular political economy of crisis 1816-34
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Classical economists did not deny the possibility of shortlived periods of economic difficulty characterised by unsold commodities, idle capital and redundant labour. Even James Mill, ever prone to outbursts of intellectual frustration with those who failed to grasp the tautological nature of his formulation of Say's Law, accepted the possibility of partial gluts. Yet for Mill, the overproduction of one commodity implied the underproduction of another. A surfeit of capital and labour applied to the production of one good necessarily entailed a deficiency of capital and labour in some other productive sphere: ‘It is … impossible, that there should be in any country a commodity or commodities in quantity greater than the demand, without there being to an equal amount, some other commodity or commodities in quantity less than demand.’ Such partial gluts must, therefore, be temporary phenomena disappearing when the movement of capital and labour reoriented the nation's productive base to match the prevailing structure of demand.
Ricardo also accepted the existence of temporary economic disequilibria when, for example, the too rapid accumulation of fixed capital produced a redundancy of labour.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The People's ScienceThe Popular Political Economy of Exploitation and Crisis 1816–34, pp. 158 - 190Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1985