ABSTRACT
After more than thirty post-war years, during which time most commentators believed that the oustanding questions in economic theory had been resolved, considerable doubt once again pervades the subject. In the opinion of increasing numbers, economics has singularly failed to find any coherent answers to the mounting problems facing capitalist economy throughout the world. Our purpose is not to examine this crisis in conventional economic theory, but we can certainly note the growing scepticism about the ability of Keynesianism to provide the basis for a viable economic policy in the capitalist world. After years during which it was complacently taken as read that ‘Keynes had answered Marx’ many now see in Keynesian deficit financing the source of the inflationary pressures currently threatening the stability of the western monetary system. Apart from this question of Keynesianism, of equal significance has been the attack launched against several of the principal tenets of neo-classical theory. It has been argued, for instance, that attempts to relate the return to capital to its ‘contribution’ are based upon circular reasoning, since it is impossible to conceive this return independently of the rate of profit. Other serious blows have also been struck at the marginal productivity theory of distribution in so far as it has been demonstrated that no unique relationship holds between the degree of capital intensity and the distribution of income. One effect of this work (for a selection see Hunt and Schwartz, 1972) has been seriously to undermine one traditional neo-classical justification for the existing pattern of income distribution by reference to technology.
