Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Unproductive activity in a capitalist society
- 3 A Marxian accounting framework
- 4 A growth model of accumulation and unproductive labor
- 5 Rise of unproductive activity in postwar economy
- 6 Absorption of labor and capital and rate of surplus value
- 7 Absorption of new resources and growth in real income
- 8 Conclusions and speculations
- Appendix: Data sources and methods
- References
- Index
1 - Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 March 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Unproductive activity in a capitalist society
- 3 A Marxian accounting framework
- 4 A growth model of accumulation and unproductive labor
- 5 Rise of unproductive activity in postwar economy
- 6 Absorption of labor and capital and rate of surplus value
- 7 Absorption of new resources and growth in real income
- 8 Conclusions and speculations
- Appendix: Data sources and methods
- References
- Index
Summary
The paper entrepreneurs are winning out over the product entrepreneurs.
Paper entrepreneurs – trained in law, finance, accountancy – manipulate complex systems of rules and numbers. They innovate by using the systems in novel ways: establishing joint ventures, consortiums, holding companies, mutual funds; finding companies to acquire, “white knights” to be acquired by, commodity futures to invest in, tax shelters to hide in; engaging proxy fights, tender offers, antitrust suits, stock splits, spinoffs, divestitures; buying and selling notes, bonds, convertible debentures, sinking-fund debentures: obtaining Government contracts, licenses, quotas, price supports, bail-outs; going private, going public, going bankrupt.
(Robert Reich, New York Times, May 23, 1980, p. A31. Copyright © 1980 by the New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.)François Quesnay (1694–1774) was the first economist to systematically analyze the relations among the following four elements of an economic system: (1) surplus absorption, (2) unproductive activity, (3) accumulation, and (4) productivity. In Tableau Economique, the French physiocrat traced through the generation of surplus in the productive sector of agriculture, its absorption in the unproductive activity of manufacturing, and its consequent impact on the expansion of the productive sector. Quesnay was aware that a certain level of productivity must exist in agriculture in order to feed the members of the sterile class. But, writing as he did about a precapitalist mode of production, he did not and probably could not foresee the immense gains in productivity that were to come and their impact on the economic system as a whole.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Growth, Accumulation, and Unproductive ActivityAn Analysis of the Postwar US Economy, pp. 1 - 24Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1986