New starting point(s): Marx, technological revolutions and changes in the centre-periphery divide

Abstract

This paper presents the last book that Marx excerpted in his life: La Physique Moderne, written by Hospitalier and published in 1882. This last Notebook (B156, in the IISG’s archives) contains hints of other issues that he was researching in his last years, especially societies at the periphery. This combination of issues - an emerging technological revolution and societies at the periphery - may contribute to a better understanding of connections between technological revolutions and the centre-periphery divide. Technological revolutions, sources of new starting points, have been shaping and reshaping the structure of that divide, its nature and structure.

A Classical-Keynes Model of Money and Finance for Transiting Economies

“…Second, we are driven by scholars that have discerned a serious interest in the emergence of new technologies in Marx's late unfinished writings (de Paula et al, 2017). Indeed, to borrow a quotation that is prescient, for Marx the connection between science and capitalism '… makes science a potentiality from production which is distinct from labour and presses it into the service of capital' (de Paula et al, 2017, p. 10).…”

“…Our analysis can be regarded as a positive and normative translation of this international dynamic of a modern and a traditional world sector to the national sphere. We are pushed by Marx's questioning of the assumption of the 'law of diminishing productivity of land' and, consequently, whether technical change could not be implanted there to provide food for a growing population and raw materials for industry (de Paula et al, 2017). We are aware of a contradiction highlighted by Marx between the exploitation of the proletariat (long run) and the effective demand represented by the working class (short run).…”