Abstract
There can be little doubt that the writings of Marx and some of his followers (particularly Rosa Luxemburg) were important influences on Kalecki’s thinking (cf. pp. 3-4 above, Kowalik, 1964, p. 1, p. 3). In his first book (Kalecki, 1939, pp. 45-6) and in one of his last articles (Kalecki, 1968a), Kalecki linked his own ideas on effective demand with Marx’s scheme of extended reproduction.1 In Chapter 1 we sought to place Kalecki firmly within the Ricardian-Marxian tradition of economic analysis. These strands raise two interesting issues which we follow through this chapter. The first issue is that of the extent to which the writings of Marx permeated the thinking and writing of Kalecki, particularly in terms of conditioning the basic assumptions (often implicit) and the general intellectual framework used by Kalecki. For example, the idea of the two basic social classes of capitalism (capitalists and workers) used by Marx was also generally used by Kalecki in a way which suggested that this idea was part of his ‘vision’ of the capitalist economy.2
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Notes to Chapter 8
In a chapter headed Investment and Income (in Kalecki, 1939) he briefly discussed the relationship between his ideas, those of Marx and of Rosa Luxemburg in this respect. After a discussion on the derivation of the equality between investment and savings, Kalecki argued that the above equations are contained in the famous Marxian scheme of ‘extended reproduction’. Marx even considers the questions of how to provide ‘means’ for increased expenditure on investment. It must be added, however, that the problems discussed here are treated by Marx from a rather special point of view. He is interested in finding out, with the help of exchange equations, the pace of investment in investment and consumption goods industries respectively, which is necessary in order secure a steady expansion of output. (The rates of profit in both divisions of industry are assumed to be equal throughout and on this basis the process of expansion is constructed so as to make investment in each, at the end of every ‘production-exchange cycle’, equal to its saving so that there is no ‘shift of capital’ from consumption to investment goods or conversely.) He does not pay attention to the problem of what happens if investment is inadequate to secure the moving equilibrium, and therefore does not approach the idea of the key position of investment in the determination of the level of total output and employment. Exactly the reverse attitude is represented by one of his eminent pupils, Rosa Luxemburg. In her Akkumulation des Kapitals she stressed the point that, if capitalists are saving, their profits can be ‘realized’ if a corresponding amount is spent by them on investment. She, however, considered impossible the persistence of net investment (at least in the long run) in a closed capitalist economy; thus, according to her, it is only the existence of exports to the noncapitalist countries which allows for the expansion of a capitalist system. The theory cannot be accepted as a whole, but the necessity of covering the ‘gap of saving’ by home investment or exports was outlined by her perhaps more clearly than anywhere else before the publication of Mr Keynes’s General Theory (Kalecki, 1939, pp. 45–6).
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© 1985 Malcolm C. Sawyer
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Sawyer, M.C. (1985). Kalecki and Marx. In: The Economics of Michał Kalecki. Radical Economics. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18031-8_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18031-8_8
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