The Founding Texts of Economics

ISBN-13: 9781032648972 / Twarda / 2024 / 184 str.

Philippe Gilles

Opis

Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Marx’s Capital and Keynes’s General Theory are foundational to any study of economics. These great books are being read less as the price of their success. The aim of this book is to encourage the reader to re-read these texts, by providing theoretical and conceptual entries in the spirit of a reasoned dictionary.

Spis treści

Introduction   Part I: Adam Smith and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations    Chapter 1. From the Pin Manufacture to the Division of Labor as the birth of the economic subject, a condition for the opulence of Nations Chapter 2. From the conditions of the opulence of individuals to that of Nations: the Market and the invisible hand Chapter 3. From spontaneity to the System of natural liberty: The State as superintendent of the industry of private people, charged with directing it towards the employments most suitable to the interest of society Part II: Karl Marx (Trier, 1818, London, 1883) and Capital. A Critique of Political Economy (Das Kapital. Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie) (1867) Chapter 4. From the theory of value to the transformation of surplus value into profit and value into production price Chapter 5. Accumulation of individual capital and accumulation of total social capital: conditions and mechanisms of simple reproduction and reproduction on an expended scale Chapter 6. Business cycles and the dynamics of capitalism Part III: John Maynard Keynes (Cambridge 1883, Firle 1946) and The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) Chapter 7. The General Theory as the foundation of modern macroeconomics: from the demonstration of underemployment to economic policy proposals for a return to full employment Chapter 8. Enterprise, Speculation, Convention and Human Nature or economic instability as a consequence of the state of long-term expectation General conclusion

O autorze

Philippe Gilles, full Professor, Dean of the Faculty of Economics, University of Toulon, France