William O. Thweatt This book is the second in three surveys of the literature in the history of economic thought in the Kluwer Recent Economic Thought series. The first book, covering the pre-classical literature, has already been published; a third, on the neo-c1assical period, is planned for 1988. This middle book surveys the writings on classical political economy for the past 30 years, or roughly since the publication of Joseph Schumpeter's 1954 monumental History of Economic Analysis. Shortly after World War II, the American Economic Association spon sored a Survey of Contemporary Economics [1949]. That work covered 13 subdisciples of economics, and in 1952 a companion piece appeared in which surveys of 10 additional subdisciples were presented. As Bernard Haley, editor of the second volume, stated, even "though in the two volumes twenty-three fields have been treated ... there remain some aspects of the subject ... that have not been reviewed" [Haley, 1952, p. v].

This collection includes texts by Henryk Grossman that are primarily concerned with economic theory: monographs, articles, essays, letters and manuscript material. Many have never been published in English before, some in any language. The first in four volumes of Grossman’s works, it provides the basis for a deeper understanding of Grossman’s contributions to Marxist economic theory and critique of bourgeois economics. Rick Kuhn’s introduction explains the contexts in which the texts were written and establishes their contemporary relevance.

This exploration of some of the more important frameworks used for understanding the relationship between politics and economics includes the classical, Marxian, Keynesian, neoclassical, state-centered, power-centered, and justice-centered.

Samuel Hollander’s work has been provoking debate for over four decades. This book brings together key contributions of recent years, in addition to some brand new pieces. The essays are introduced by a Preface in which Hollander reflects on his past work and reactions to it. Highlights include two issues of particular current relevance. Conspicuous is an extensive chapter regarding Adam Smith’s often neglected arguments for government intervention in the economy to correct market failures, and his critical view of the business class as an anti-social force. Important economists considered in relation to Adam Smith’s position on the role of the state include Jeremy Bentham and the Scottish-Canadian John Rae. Similarly of high present-day interest is a re-examination of Karl Marx’s theory of exploitation, or the notion of profits as "embezzlement," demonstrating Marx’s effective abandonment of this perspective in the case of the small active businessman as distinct from the major joint-stock corporation. Other papers demonstrate the close intellectual relationship between David Ricardo and Thomas Robert Malthus; the extensive common ground between the British school and the French under the leadership of Jean-Baptiste Say; the failure of a so-called anti-Ricardian opposition in Britain represented by Samuel Bailey; and the denial of a sharp discontinuity between "classical" and later "neo-classical" economics. Finally, several biographical essays are included as well as an extension of the autobiographical account appearing in Collected Essays II.

This text deals with the distinctive method of Marx's political economy, with an emphasis on it's origins. It applies this method to key contemporary issues such as unemployment, globalization and the crisis of the welfare state.