ABSTRACT
Is production merely a physical process of transformation, or can it also be viewed as a process of creation? If it were a process of physical transformation, would it still be possible to determine its result economically? And would there be a place for the definition of a net product? If we chose, instead, to express production in terms of value, would it be legitimate to consider output as the result of the implementation in (continuous or discontinuous) time of land, capital and labour? These are some of the questions we need to answer if we are to provide a satisfactory theory of production. Once again, our analysis will have to develop consistently with the nature of bank money, and with the laws governing the logical workings of a monetary system. To clarify the terms of the problem, we take up the distinction between ‘circular process’ and ‘one-way process’ theories of production, and we confront the theories pertaining to these two categories with the modern conception of production as a process of creation.
