42 quotes
Even if the crises that are looming up are overcome and a new run of prosperity lies ahead, deeper problems will still remain. Modern capitalism has no purpose except to keep the show going.
Economic Heresies (1971)
Their attitude to Marx, as the leading critic of capitalism, is therefore much less cocksure than it used to be. In my belief, they have much to learn from him.
An Essay on Marxian Economics (Second Edition) (1966)
In all the talk in the Principles (as opposed to the formal analysis) it is not the saving of rentiers but the energy of entrepreneurs which governs accumulation.
Economic Heresies (1971)
Rosa Luxemburg maintained that the capitalist system can keep up its rate of investment (and therefore its profits) only so long as it is expanding geographically.
Economic Heresies (1971)
It seems that neither the Keynesian nor the Marxian prognosis of the future of capitalism is being fulfilled and we are left without any particular theory as to what will happen next.
Contributions to Modern Economics (1978)
Reality is never a golden age.
Economic Heresies (1971)
Why did the hunters in the Wealth of Nations exchange beavers for deer?
Contributions to Modern Economics (1978)
It is the business of economists, not to tell us what to do, but show why what we are doing anyway is in accord with proper principles.
Economic Philosophy (1962)
But the tygers of wrath go the other way. Do not ask me why. It is just a fact I noticed when I was looking through field glasses from a machan.
Contributions to Modern Economics (1978)
An agent must have some discretion.
Contributions to Modern Economics (1978)
When a large part of the market for British textiles was in the colonies, a fall in the price of tea and cocoa caused unemployment in Lancashire.
Economic Heresies (1971)
At any moment there is certainly not balanced trade between the various areas of the habitable globe that happens to be under separate national governments — there is an ever-changing pattern of deficits and surpluses.
Contributions to Modern Economics (1978)
If knowledge develops as capital accumulates, there need be no tendency to diminishing returns, and with constant returns there can be no tendency for the rate of profit to fall (always assuming that the problem of effective demand as ruled out).
An Essay on Marxian Economics (Second Edition) (1966)
I began to read Capital, just as one reads any book, to see what was in it; I found a great deal that neither its followers nor its opponents had prepared me to expect.
An Essay on Marxian Economics (Second Edition) (1966)
When I came up to Cambridge (in October 1921) to read economics, I did not have much idea of what it was about.
Contributions to Modern Economics (1978)
Marx, however imperfectly he worked out the details, set himself the task of discovering the law of motion of capitalism, and if there is any hope of progress in economics at all, it must be in using academic methods to solve the problems posed by Marx.
An Essay on Marxian Economics (Second Edition) (1966)
There is an unearthly, mystical element in Friedman's thought. The mere existence of a stock of money somehow promotes expenditure. But insofar as he offers an intelligible theory, it is made up of elements borrowed from Keynes.
Economic Heresies (1971)
To supply goods is a source of profit, but to supply services is a ' burden upon industry '. It is for this reason that when, as a nation, ' we have never had it so good ' we find that we ' cannot afford ' just what we most need.
Contributions to Modern Economics (1978)
Modern technique, as Marx pointed out, fosters the concentration of capital, and the levels of profits is supported by a scarcity of enterprise which is not due to the real cost of risk-bearing, but to the scarcity of individuals who have anything to risk.
An Essay on Marxian Economics (Second Edition) (1966)
In general, the nightmare quality of Marx's thought gives it, in this bedevilled age, an air of greater reality than the gentle complacency of the orthodox academics. Yet he, at the same time, is more encouraging than they, for he releases hope as well as terror from Pandora's box, while they preach only the gloomy doctrine that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
An Essay on Marxian Economics (Second Edition) (1966)