MAURICE POTRON'S LINEAR ECONOMIC MODEL: A DE FACTO PROOF OF ‘FUNDAMENTAL MARXIAN THEOREM’

Abstract

Maurice Potron was a French mathematician whose largely unknown contributions to economic analysis should be acknowledged as pioneering achievements. The purpose of this paper is to (1) reconstruct Potron's core model in terms of modern input-output analysis, (2) show that Potron proved de facto Fundamental Marxian Theorem (FMT) 48 years earlier than Morishima, Seton and Okishio by adapting the Perron-Frobenius theorems to economic problems, and (3) claim that Potron proved de facto FMT by considering heterogeneous labours 65 years earlier and even more generally than Bowles and Gintis.

‘Our daily bread’: Maurice Potron, from Catholicism to mathematical economics

“…The technical treatment by Abraham-Frois and Lendjel (2004) also involves the addition of vectors of different dimensions (p. 42) and a misunderstanding of the distinction between principal and secondary unknowns (p. 44). 20 More recently, Kenji Mori (2008) attributes to Potron the first version of the so-called 19 Source: Vittrant's report in the file 'Maurice Potron' (Archives de la Province de France de la Compagnie de Jésus, Vanves). 20 For a critique of Abraham-Frois and Lendjel's formalization (2001,2004,2005,2006), see Bidard and Erreygers (2007).…”

Charasoff and Dmitriev: An analytical characterisation of origins of linear economics

“…12 Maurice Potron, a French mathematician, proved de facto Fundamental Marxian Theorem 48 years earlier than Morishima, Seton and Okishio by adapting the Perron-Frobenius theorems to economic problems, and he proved it by considering heterogeneous labours 65 years earlier and even more generally than Gintis (1977, 1978). See Potron (1913) and Mori (2008). 13 On the other hand, in his example, where the basic assumption of 'Austrian' process is suspended, Dmitriev stated that the profit could exist without any labour input in the economy (Dmitriev, 1974, pp.…”

Strong Subjectivism in the Marxian Theory of Exploitation: A Critique

“…Second, the construction of the aggregate exploitation index and the relation between profits and exploitation do not exhaust the discussion of the normative and positive relevance of exploitation, but they are arguably crucial and do play a prominent role in the literature, including in a number of recent articles appeared on this journal (e.g. Veneziani, 2004; Fujimoto and Fujita, 2008; Mori, 2008; Fujimoto and Opocher, 2009). The general convex economies considered in this paper are appropriate to analyse both issues and the simplifying assumptions made are standard in the literature.…”