Value, Distribution and Development: Perspectives of Classical Political Economy

This book explores the crisis of neo-classical economic theory in an attempt to explain developments in the post-war period. It explores two important aspects: strengthening the tradition of classical political economy (CPE) that arose in response to various critiques of neo-classical economic theory and exploring the potential of CPE to deal with issues of development. The advantage of an alternative to mainstream economic theory is that it can explain value, distribution, and developmental issues of capitalist as well as non-capitalist economies around the world. The chapters in this volume—written by eminent economists in honor of Krishna Bharadwaj—present a critique of the structure of neo-classical theory in terms of the scarcity approach and go deeper into the failure of the determination of a uniform rate of profit and limited substitutions of labor and capital. The volume resurrects Sraffa’s system of production determining prices and the rate of profit allowing the possibility of output dynamics to be dealt with separately. Krishna Bharadwaj worked passionately towards these objectives, and this book establishes the foundations of CPE in the light of her writings. The book will be of interest to students, teachers, and researchers of Economics, Economic Theory and Philosophy, Political Economy, Development Dynamics, and History of Economic Thought.