Re: Marx and Keynes on Unemployment

[sardoni@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Claudio Sardoni)]

ajit sinha writes
>This does not mean that one is
>claiming that capitalism is a non-monetary system or that wages are paid in
>real terms etc. It only means that theoretically the whole analysis could be
>conducted in real terms without a recourse to money. (So there you go Claudio
>Sardoni!).
>
I do not understand how a monetary economy can be analyzed without recourse
to money. Unless you behave as Keynes said neoclassical economists behaved:
let us pretend that there is no money even though we know that money exists.
>
>
>I agree with Caludio Sardoni that there can be unemployment without a technical
>change if the rate of growth of population happens to be greater than the rate
>of accumulation. As a matter of fact even on the neo-classical ground (without
>any special staus of money) one could prove that there could be persistent
>unemployment if we assume that real wages would not fall below a certain
minimum
>level and if the rate of growth of population is at least as large as the rate
>of accumulation (see Joan Robinson's 'The production function and the theory of
>capital'). And what is so terrible about assuming a minimum real wages? Why
>would anybody offer to work if the wages are not even suficient for survival?
>
But you can always treat technical change as an augmented rate of growth of
population (I'm not implying, however, that technical change can be taken as
exogenous like in traditional growth models).
>
>
Cheers,
Claudio Sardoni
Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche
telephone +39-6-44284 231 fax +39-6-4404 572