Category Archives: Karl Marx

A Must-Read: Frederick Lawrence’s “Between Capitalism and Marxism: Introducing Lonergan’s Economics”

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Frederick Lawrence (Boston College) is a co-editor of Bernard Lonergan’s Macroeconomic Dynamics.  We’ll have more to say later about Fred’s article, “Between Capitalism and Marxism: Introducing Lonergan’s Economics”; but perspicacious economists in academe, government, and banking will benefit greatly from an immediate reading.  For access to the article now, please use the following simple path:

In your main search bar, enter JSTOR and press your Enter key.

Then, in the upper left, Click into the box “Search journals, books, images, and primary sources“.

Then, type into that box 40338243 and press your Enter key.

Best wishes to all.

Lonergan’s Entry into Economics (1930-1944) and Reentry into Economics (1978-1983); Democratic Economics vs. Liberalism and Socialism

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The reader will note that most of what’s quoted below comes from a single section, “Lonergan’s Entry into Economics, 1930-1944”, of CWL 15’s “Editors’ Introduction,” authored by Frederick G. Lawrence.  Previously, in several of our own sections we have recommended that Editors’ Introduction as beneficial for putting Lonergan’s Essay in its historical, political, and purely theoretical contexts.  It is a must-read.  We have printed the Introduction’s Table of Contents in several places:  Click here, here, here, and here.  The Table is again printed at the end of this entry.

Lonergan’s Entry into Economics, 1930-1944

We quote: Continue reading →

Bernard Lonergan, Marx, and Liberty – Relevant to Issues of Today

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Lonergan demonstrates that Marx’s economics is insufficiently abstract and is contaminated by descriptive sociological and political categories; he finds Marx’s summons to class conflict perilous to humanity because it promotes and enforces a drift away from liberty to a totalitarianism culminating in the dreadful conditions of a no-escape “frontier, clear and firm indoctrination, controlled media of information, a vigilant secret police, and the terrifying threat of labor camps,” – all in the name of a mythical macroeconomics. (Continue reading)

Elizabeth Warren’s Advice to Jerome Powell; Sentiment Without Intelligence

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The Wall Street Journal of 7/25/2022 featured an article by Senator Elizabeth Warren:  “Jerome Powell’s Fed Pursues a Painful and Ineffective Inflation Cure.” Because she lacks an objective, normative, abstract, explanatory theory and, thus, fails to understand the functional interdependencies constituting the organic economic process, particular arguments in her article are a) sometimes contaminated by psychopolitical wishful opinions, b) often ignorantly one-sided because she is unaware that some policies have double edges, c) sometimes contradictory of her other arguments, and d) in at least one case, supercilious.

E. Warren suffers from the same plight as Thomas Piketty. To satisfy her responsibility to the public, she needs to achieve a scientific understanding of the organic economic process; she needs to get a “grip.”

We are at the heart of Piketty’s plight: he has no clue of the needed grip on the grounds of the inequality in history.  So, what else can he offer but a centralist solution, taxation, to history’s drunken careening. (McShane, Philip, Picketty’s Plight, 53)

In equity (the basic expansion following the surplus expansion) should be directed to raising the standard of living of the whole society.  It does not.  And the reason why it does not is not the reason on which simple-minded moralists insist.  They blame greed.  But the prime cause is ignorance.  The dynamics of surplus and basic expansion, surplus and basic incomes are not understood, not formulated, not taught….. [CWL 15, 82]

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Debunking Marx’s “Exploitation”; The “Iron Law” of Consumer Expenditures; (CWL 15, footnote 34; CWL 21, ftnt. 14 [Editor’s Intro] and 87)

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In explaining the normative pure cycle of economic expansion for which the process has a systematic exigence, Lonergan redefined “costs” and “profits”,

There is a sense in which one may speak of the fraction of basic outlay that moves to basic income as the “costs” of basic production.  It is true that that sense is not at all an accountant’s sense of costs; … But however remote from the accountant’s meaning of the term “costs,” it remains that there is an aggregate and functional sense in which the fraction… is an index of costs.  For the greater the fraction that basic income is of total income, the less the remainder which constitutes the aggregate possibility of profit.  But what limits profit may be termed costs. Hence we propose ….to speak of (c’O’  = p’a’Q’) and (c”O” = p”a”Q”) as costs of production, having warned the reader that the costs in question are aggregate and functional costs…. [CWL 15, 156-57] Continue reading →

Economics Is Economics, Sociology Is Sociology, Politics Is Politics; A Is a Distinct Science; It Is neither B nor C

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On Friday, October 8, N. Gregory Mankiw’s Blog featured Nick Romeo’s interesting article entitled “Is It Time For a New Economics Curriculum?”  Greg provided a quote from Romeo’s paragraph re  Jonathan Gruber’s take on CORE.

Jonathan Gruber, who teaches introductory economics at M.I.T., felt that CORE might introduce too much complexity for a foundational course. He worried that so much emphasis on the ethical and political dimensions of economics might make the subject feel like a different discipline altogether. “The question is, do you want the students to feel like they’re coming out of, you know, to be blunt, a sociology class or an economics class?” Gruber said.

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Centesimus Annus; The Hundredth Anniversary of Rerum Novarum

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This website focuses on the technical aspects of Lonergan’s macroeconomic dynamics. However, we have also pointed out that the science of economics must accept its rightful place within the broader culture consisting of technology, economics, and politics.  And this culture itself  stands within a hierarchy of values. Further, we have emphasized the need to achieve The Good of Order.  (Also see CWL 12, 496-7)

On the hundredth anniversary of Pope Leo XIII’s Encyclical, Rerum novarum, Pope John Paul II issued the Encyclical, Centesimus Annus, treating The Good of Order, the dignity of humans, the dignity of work, the right to private property, the right to freedom, the evils of Marxist totalitarianism, and the foundation of society in truth.

John Paul II (1991), Centesimus annus, (Encyclical Letter on the hundredth anniversary of Rerum novarum), Vatican

Centesimus Annus should be read by all economists who seek to be open-minded thinkers having broad perspectives, a hierarchy of values, and thus an understanding of the difference between the concepts of liberty and totalitarianism, morality and immorality, right and wrong.  (Continue reading)

Jamie Dimon’s Challenges to Himself and to the Nation

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4/7/2021:  Yahoo Finance today featured an article by Julia La Roche entitled ‘The fault line is inequality’: J.P. Morgan’s Dimon calls for fixing America’s ‘self-inflicted’ problems.  La Roche was reviewing the Public Policy section of Dimon’s 67-page Chairman and CEO Letter to Shareholders.  Mr. Dimon seeks to end the nation’s self-infliction of problems threatening the culture, the economy and the polity.  He particularly regrets “false arguments of fanatics, the certitude of ideologues and cycles of intolerance.” Continue reading →

Lonergan, Marx, and Liberty

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This section, Lonergan, Marx and Liberty, is presented simply in the form of a gathering of excerpts from different sources. The careful reading of the excerpts should inspire the reader to consult the sources for the rich context of each excerpt and for a fuller appreciation of Lonergan’s understanding and reasoning about the need for liberty. In brief, Lonergan demonstrates that Marx’s economics is insufficiently abstract and contaminated by descriptive sociological and political categories; he finds Marx’s summons to class conflict perilous to humanity because it promotes and enforces a drift away from liberty to a totalitarianism culminating in the dreadful conditions of a no-escape “frontier, clear and firm indoctrination, controlled media of information, a vigilant secret police, and the terrifying threat of labor camps,” – all in the name of a mythical macroeconomics. (Continue reading)