Peer to Peer and Human Evolution

[Charles Brown <cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>"The ultimate reason for all
>real crises always remains the
>poverty and restricted consumption
>of the masses as opposed to the
>drive of captialist production to develop
>the productive forces as though only
>the absolute consuming power of
>society constituted their outer limit "
>(Capital vol. III, Moscow, 1959, pp.
>472-73) ; quoted in The Development
>of Capitalism in Russia.



________________________________

from GT, chapter 3
(http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/keynes/general-theory/c
h03.htm):


        The idea that we can safely neglect the aggregate demand function is


fundamental to the Ricardian economics, which underlie what we have
been taught for more than a century. Malthus, indeed, had vehemently
opposed Ricardo's doctrine that it was impossible for elective demand
to be deficient; but vainly. For, since Malthus was unable to explain
clearly (apart from an appeal to the facts of common observation) how
and why effective demand could be deficient or excessive, he failed to
furnish an alternative construction; and Ricardo conquered England as
completely as the Holy Inquisition conquered Spain. Not only was his
theory accepted by the city [the financial center, i.e.,  the "City"],
by statesmen and by the academic world. But controversy ceased; the
other point of view completely disappeared; it ceased to be discussed.
The great puzzle of Effective Demand with which Malthus had wrestled
vanished from economic literature. You will not find it mentioned even
once in the whole works of Marshall, Edgeworth and Professor Pigou,
from whose hands the classical theory has received its most mature
embodiment. It could only live on furtively, below the surface, in the
underworlds of Karl Marx, Silvio Gesell or Major Douglas.<

--
Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own