Authored by Jesus Huerta de Soto via The Mises Institute,
It is interesting to note that Marx, in his analysis of the capitalist economic system, basically concentrates on the study of the imbalances and maladjustments which occur in the market.
This accounts for the fact that Marxist theory is primarily a theory of market disequilibrium and that occasionally it even coincides remarkably with the dynamic analysis of market processes which was developed by economists of the Austrian School, and particularly by Mises and Hayek themselves. One of the more curious points on which a certain agreement exists relates precisely to the theory of the crises and recessions which systematically ravage the capitalist system. Thus it is interesting to observe that certain authors of the Marxist tradition, such as the Ukrainian Mijail Ivanovich Tugan-Baranovsky (1865–1919), reached the conclusion that economic crises originate from a tendency toward a lack of proportion among the different branches of production, a lack Tugan-Baranovsky believed inherent in the capitalist system. According to Baranovsky, crises occur because
the distribution of production ceases to be proportional: the machines, tools, tiles and wood used in construction are requested less than before, given that new companies are less numerous. However the producers of the means of production cannot withdraw their capital from their companies, and in addition, the importance of the capital involved in the form of buildings, machines, etc., obliges producers to continue producing (if not, the idle capital would not bear interest). Thus there is excessive production of the means of production.
Clearly part of the underlying economic reasoning behind this analysis bears a strong resemblance to that behind the Austrian theory of the business cycle. In fact Hayek himself mentions Tugan-Baranovsky as one of the forerunners of the theory of the cycle he presents in Prices and Production.
Furthermore it is interesting to note that Hayek himself, for a time, came to believe, like Marx, that economic crises were inherent in the capitalist economic system, although Hayek considered them the necessary cost of maintaining an elastic monetary and credit system, the expansion of which, at all times, would “guarantee” economic development. Specifically, Hayek asserted that economic crises arose
…from the very nature of the modern organization of credit.
So long as we make use of bank credit as a means of furthering economic development we shall have to put up with the resulting trade cycles. They are, in a sense, the price we pay for a speed of development exceeding that which people would voluntarily make possible through their savings, and which therefore has to be extorted from them. And even if it is a mistake – as the recurrence of crises would demonstrate – to suppose that we can, in this way, overcome all obstacles standing in the way of progress, it is at least conceivable that the non-economic factors of progress, such as technical and commercial knowledge, are thereby benefited in a way which we should be reluctant to forgo.
This early thesis of Hayek’s, which partially coincides with that of Marx, would only be valid if the very Austrian theory of business cycles had not revealed that economic crises cause great damage to the productive structure and widespread consumption of accumulated capital. These effects seriously hinder the harmonious economic development of any society. Moreover (and this is even more important) the theoretical, legal, and economic analysis carried out here is aimed at demonstrating that economic crises are not an inevitable by-product of market economies, but on the contrary, result from a privilege governments have granted banks, allowing them, with respect to monetary demand deposits, to act outside the traditional legal principles of private property, principles vital to market economies. Thus credit expansion and economic cycles arise from an institutionally-forced violation of the property rights involved in the monetary bank deposit contract. Therefore crises are in no way inherent in the capitalist system, nor do they inevitably emerge in a market economy subject to the general legal principles that constitute its essential legal framework, an economy in which no privileges are conferred.
A second link connects Marxism and the Austrian theory of business cycles. Indeed if any ideology has justified and fed the class struggle, strengthening the popular belief that it is necessary to strictly regulate and control labor markets to “protect” workers from entrepreneurs and their capacity for exploitation, it has precisely been Marxist ideology. Hence Marxism has played a key and perhaps unintentional role in justifying and fostering the rigidity of labor markets, and therefore in making the readjustment processes which inevitably follow any stage of bank credit expansion much more prolonged and painful. If labor markets were much more flexible (a situation which will only be politically possible once the general public realizes how damaging labor regulation is), the necessary readjustment processes which follow credit expansion would be much less lasting and painful.
There is a third possible connection between the Austrian theory of economic cycles and Marxism: the absence of economic crises in systems of “real socialism,” an absence many authors have highly praised in the past. Nevertheless there is no point in arguing that economic crises do not arise in systems in which the means of production are never privately owned and all economic processes are coordinated from above through a coercive plan which public authorities deliberately impose. We must remember that depression appears in a market economy precisely because credit expansion distorts the productive structure, so that it no longer matches the one consumers would voluntarily maintain.
Thus wherever consumers lack the freedom to choose and the productive structure is imposed on them from above, it is not that successive stages of boom and recession cannot occur, but rather, with all theoretical justification we may consider that such economies are continually and permanently in a situation of crisis and recession. This is due to the fact that the productive structure is imposed from above and does not coincide with the desires of citizens and it is theoretically impossible for the system to correct its maladjustments and discoordination.
Therefore to contend that an economy of real socialism offers the advantage of eliminating economic crises is tantamount to affirming that the advantage of being dead is immunity to disease. Indeed after the fall of the socialist regimes of Eastern Europe, when consumers were again given the opportunity to freely establish the productive structure most in line with their desires, it immediately became clear that the scale and magnitude of past investment errors would make the readjustment process much deeper and much more prolonged and painful than is common in the stages of recession which affect market economies.
It has become evident that most of the capital goods structure which existed in socialist economies was completely useless with respect to the needs and objectives characteristic of a modern economy. In short socialism provokes a widespread, intense, and chronic malinvestment of society’s factors of production and capital goods, a malinvestment much more severe than that caused by credit expansion. Hence we may conclude that “real socialism” is immersed in a deep “chronic depression,” i.e., in a situation of constant malinvestment of productive resources, a phenomenon which has even been accompanied by cyclical adverse changes and which has been studied in certain detail by various theorists from the former Eastern economies.
The appalling economic difficulties presently confronting the economies of the former Eastern bloc stem from many decades of systematic economic errors. These errors have been much more serious (and have been committed at a much more rapid pace) than those which have regularly appeared in the West due to credit expansion by the banking system and to the monetary policy of public authorities.
via http://ift.tt/2nHQve2 Tyler Durden