In few years, the publication of four more volumes will complete Section Two of MEGA, so that it will become possible to read the entirety of Marx's manuscripts of Capital in a printed form. In this article, after a general overview of Section Two, the author emphasizes the importance of manuscript dating based on source research in the editorial work for MEGA. This article focuses on the manuscript dating for Books Two and Three, and provides an explanation of how the editors of MEGA estimated the dates of Marx's manuscripts, and what were the results of their research. For the publication of MEGA-Volume II/4, the editors painstakingly researched the dating of the manuscripts to be included in it. The important fruit of their efforts was the joint article by Vygotsky, Miskevich, Chernovsky and Chepurenko. The author of this article, however, criticized some aspects of their dating. Eventually, after examining the evidence, the four authors of the article came to the same conclusions as the author, and based of his conjecture the editors of Volume II/4.1 described how Manuscript I of Book II came into existence. Incidentally, following the publication of Volume II/4.2, which includes Manuscript I of Book III, discussions among researchers are still underway regarding whether the parts of this manuscript were written in the order in which they appear, or in some other order. There were some points of contention regarding the dating of the manuscripts to be included in Volume II/4.3. One question regarded the order in which Marx wrote the four fragments for the beginning of Book III. This question was raised by Japanese researchers and solved in accordance with their opinion. Another question, raised by Prof. Tanaka, concerned the general order of manuscripts in Volume II/4.3, and this led to the original editorial structure of L. Miskevich being thoroughly reinvestigated and fundamentally revised. In terms of the dating of Manuscripts II and VIII, to be included in Volume II/11, there were no promising leads, unlike the other texts which could rather easily be dated relying primarily on the indications of Marx himself. L. Vasina, the editor in charge of Manuscript II, investigated the genesis of the manuscript in the context of related materials from the period found in Marx's literary estate. She reconstructed the multiple aspects of the manuscript while referring to Marx's earlier sketches of Book II of Capital. She also demonstrated how his work on Manuscript II was based on later sources, which throws new light on the question of the manuscript's genesis and chronological context. Her detailed examination made it clear that Manuscript II was written some time between the beginning of December 1868 and the middle of 1870. In terms of the date for Manuscript VIII, Engels could only presume that it was the final manuscript, written after 1877. The author of this article, who was responsible for Manuscript VIII in Volume II/11, concentrated on the dating of the manuscript during a stay in Europe in 1997. As for the debate regarding when the manuscript was written-which had previously been rather vaguely identified as falling between October 1879 and 1881- the author came to the conclusion, on the basis of his research, that Marx sketched out the text between the end of 1880 and the middle of 1881. This indicates that Marx, far from being in a state of resignation, carried on his effort to finish Capital up to the end of his life.

View full abstract

The MEGA(Marx-Engels-Gesammtausgabe; Marx-Engels complete works) edit group started its work in Sendai in January, 1998. The Sendai group has been editing the volume 12 of section II of MEGA that contains "Redaktions-manuskript zu dem zweiten Buch des Kapital von Friedrich Engels (1884-1885)"(the editor's manuscript of Frederick Engels for 'Das Kapital' volume 2 (1884-1885)). After publishing the third edition of 'Das Kapital' volume 1 (1883) Engels edited this manuscript from 7 different manuscripts by Marx in 1884-1885 and made a fair copy from it and published 'Das Kapital' volume 2 (1885). We publish the former in volume 12 of section II of MEGA in November 2005 in Berlin and the latter, 'Das Kapital' volume 2 (1885), in volume 13 of section II of MEGA in 2007. The international conference is held in November 21-26 2005 in Kyoto and Tokyo in celebration of the publication of the volume 12. The German Ambassador Mr. Henrik Schmiegelow delivered his congratulatory address at the ceremony of this conference in Tokyo. This thesis introduces the feature and originality in this volume 12 of MEGA edit.

View full abstract

The second MEGA, starting in the 1970s, has provided access to quite a lot of hitherto unknown and unpublished writings by Marx and Engels. It has allowed us to discover an unknown Marx, in particular with respect to his unfinished masterpiece, Capital. Because of the many manuscripts pertaining to this great project that have been published in recent years, we are now able to assess the long road that led towards what we know as Capital in much detail. As a matter of fact, Marx did actually write no less than four different versions of his critique of political economy, starting in 1857/58. When he died in 1883, he was not yet finished with it. We are also able to follow Marx' revising and rewriting of Capital, volume I from the first German edition of 1867 until the 3^<rd> German edition of 1883, which had still been largely prepared by Marx himself, Capital remained largely a work in progress. Thanks to the materials that already have been published or will be published in the years to come, we are now able to get a clear idea of Marx' work on Capital during the last 15 years of his life, when, as conventional wisdom has it, he seemed to have lost track of his great project. On the contrary, the evidence shows that he continued to work on it until his last days. Recently, Engels' work as editor of Marx' manuscripts for Capital, volume II and III, has been criticized harshly, once the original manuscripts for volume II and III of Capital had been published. As more of Engels' redaction manuscripts have been or are about to be published in the MEGA, we are now able to reassess Engels' work-and to refute most of the criticism as rather exaggerated.

View full abstract

The main function of the capitalist credit system is to create additional purchasing power in advance of future reflux of money, that is, credit creation. Commercial credit is the most fundamental form of credit creation, but it has the restrictions by individual situations, such as the sum of money due, the terms of payment and the acceptability of a bill. Banking credit is the capitalist social mechanism that overcomes the limitations of commercial credit, and realizes constant and overall credit creation. An individual bank, however, will be exposed to liquidity risk as well as credit risk, by responding to various requests based on many individual situations. This paper shows that the liquidity risk of banking credit is not actualized under the following conditions. 1) The banking system which has the mechanism of bill clearing and settlement, and of inter-bank lending or rediscount, is systematized. 2) The banking system is carrying out inclusion of the whole social reproductive process. 3) The social reproductive process is smooth and favorable. Under the conditions, bank liabilities, banknotes and deposits, which banks create in the course of bill discounting, circulate as means of purchase and payment, achieving the function as reserve that idle money has accomplished.

View full abstract

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between working time and employment. Long working time have been claimed as one of serious social problems in Japan, which becomes exacerbated after bubble burst. The changes of employment and working time after 1960 Japanese data are summarized according to the following three periods. The first period (high growth period from 1960 to 1970) is characterized by secular reduction in both actual working time and standard working time in concurrence with the high growth of employment. The second period (slow growth period from 1970 to 1991) still shows decreases of the actual working time as well as the standard working time, although the rates of decrease are smaller compared with the first period, but then the increase of employment comes to stop. The third period (low growth period from 1991 to 2002) shows the same decreasing tendencies of the actual working time and the standard working time as well, but in this period not only working time but also employment show decreasing trends. Therefore, a decline in scheduled or standard working time does not necessarily bring a decline in actual working time and an increase of employment. This implies the need of theoretical investigation which treats employment and working time separately. The theoretical problems on this line are hitherto rather poorly investigated with rare exceptions of Hart (1987) and Ohashi (1990). In this paper we present a theoretical model to explain these movements of working time and employment in Japan. Especially, we introduce the standard or scheduled working time into the model and discuss the effects of a decline of standard working time on actual working time and employment. We show the existence of marginal standard working time (MSWT) and if the standard working time is less than MSWT then we have overwork situation and, on the contrary, if the standard working time exceeds MSWT then we have no overwork. Moreover, MSWT is shown to depend on the standard real wage, the elasticity of wage to overwork and the job separation rate. Another characteristic of our model is to incorporate different determinants of real wage rate, namely Keynesian case where the emphasis is placed on goods markets and Classical case where labor markets matter to determine the real wage rate. We will show that the standard working time has negative effects both on employment and actual working time in Classical case, but has no effects in Keynesian case.

View full abstract

A fundamental proposition of historical materialism asserts that there exists a correspondence between material productive forces and the relations of production in society. Yet, how are productive forces and the relations of production related to each other? It is well known that in the course of the Industrial Revolution which began in late eighteenth-century Britain machinery with new technology was installed into the factory floor one after another, and mechanization of production advanced steadily, while in modern societies after industrial revolutions we see the establishment of the factory system and the proliferation of large-scale firms as well as the expansion of market economy. In a market economy the bulk of products are traded as commodities in product market, and even labor-power becomes a commodity to buy and sell in labor market; the industrial revolution has brought both new production technology and new economic structure to society. Then, what relations are formed between production technology and economic structure? In this paper we examine logical relations among mechanization of production, the establishment of the factory system, and the conversion of labor-power into a commodity. The ultimate goal of our study in this paper is not to depict the transition from pre-modern society to modern society, but to elucidate the internal structure of the latter. Nevertheless, since the origin of the problem can be traced back to the experiences of industrial revolutions and industrializations in a large number of countries, we began our investigation by referring to the historical experiences, following the tradition of political economy with the social and historical points of view. In particular, we referred to British industrialization from the beginning of the eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century, which revealed that full-fledged mechanization of production, the establishment of the factory system, and the expansion of market economy arose in the process of transition from pre-modern society to modern society, and that, more significantly, there was a rough concurrence of these transformations. This fact suggests that these transformations, i.e. mechanization of production, the establishment of the factory system, and the expansion of market economy, are not irrelevant to each other. After confirming this basic fact, we turned to a theoretical study. New production technology, a new form of business organization, and market economy were clearly defined, and the interrelations between these three concepts were analyzed. Our conclusions are summarized as follows. First, one of the characteristics of new technology in modern societies lies in the introduction of a system of machinery. Second, for production using a system of machinery to be realized, the establishment of firm, economic organization different from household, is required. Third, provided that firms are formed, depriving households of production activities, both the exchange of labor-power and goods between firms and households and the exchange of goods between firms take place, and a market economy emerges. Thus, in modern societies, production technology, economic organizations, and market economy are, far from being independent of each other, logically interrelated and mutually inseparable. Given the reproduction of the total labor force and the total products in the community, the development of large-scale mechanical industry make inevitable the formation of firm and the conversion of labor-power into a commodity. To put it another way, the economic structure of modern society characterized by the formation of firm and the conversion of labor-power into a commodity, stands on the foundation of production using a system of machinery.

View full abstract

Fair Trade is a growing field both in terms of numbers and ideas. The principles of Fair Trade were introduced by the Fair Trade Organizations in 1940s. Since then they have been putted into practice and, nowadays, they have a worldwide following. The Fair Trade movement seeks to alter conventional trade relations through a system of social and environmental standards, certification, and labels designed to help shorten the social distance and to link between consumers in the North and producers in the South. This paper explores the possibility of Fair Trade as a context of Global Development Policy. The approach of the World Bank towards combating poverty in agriculture sector, as Kydd and Dorward (2001) called Washington Consensus in agriculture, has three problems; Investment Dilemma, Green Revolution and Governance. The Alternative development approaches for those circumstances would be to increase the productivity of tradable goods or non-tradable goods. As the variety of farms in developing countries is so wide, the best way to combat poverty in farms are uncertain. Our research definitely shows there is a possibility for Fair Trade to be an alternative development tool to root out poverty, in some areas where the productivity and potential of tradable goods are high. The conditions imposed on Fair Trade is as follows; (1)maximize the productivity of South Community, (2)protect the structure of community, (3)no more productive Tradable Goods in the community and (4)low potential of Non-tradable Goods in the community. If these conditions are hold, Fair Trade would be a strong and desirable tool to be substitute for Washington Consensus in Agriculture. Another problem on this context is the demand in developed world. Although Fair Trade is getting more and more popular, the markets are still niche. To be an alternative tool to root out poverty, Fair Trade shall search for the possibility of coexistence with conventional retailers and companies. The essential point of my argument is that the results of Fair Trade movement since 1940s are now facing challenge to be mainstreamed. The coexistence with profits and Fair Trade under unclear ethical consumer market is still big issue.

View full abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explain how a bank-based system affects macro-economic stability. A bank-based system is a financial system in which corporate finance largely depends on a bank loan. Roughly speaking, Japan and continental European nations (for example, Germany and France) adopt this financial system. In post-Keynesian economics the performance of macro-economy with a bank-based system has been analyzed by assuming endogenous money supply hypothesis. Most of these analyses depend on these assumptions: 1) Loaned money is proportional to a firm's cash flow, and 2) Apart from a fixed loan interest rate no other restrictions are imposed on the bank loan. However, in a real bank-based system, as Schaberg [1999] says, a bank loan is in inverse proportion to cash flow and the bank loan, being adjusted to the loan interest rate, is decided by assessing the firm's management situation (in this pa per we suppose that the firm's management situation is assessed by the firm's output-capital ratio and debt-capital ratio). Taking into account the relevance of those specified features of a bank-based system, we reconstruct a post-Keynesian financial instability model useful to explain the stability condition of macro-economy. Some of our results are as follows. First, the fact that a bank loan is in inverse proportion to a firm's cash flow has both positive and negative effects. A positive effect is that a bank loan of that type can control real-side instability caused by long-term employment (note that long-term employment is easy to lead to so-called profit squeeze). A negative effect is that the bank loan may cause financial instability of macro-economy through three processes mentioned in the text. Second, in order to stabilize macro-economy, loan supply should not be sensitive to changes in the firm's output-capital ratio and debt-capital ratio. For example, if loan supply is restrained in face of the increase in debt-capital ratio of the firms, macro-economy will fall into a vicious spiral. Third, when applied to a real economy, our results seem to suggest that the regal control of the loan interest rate in Japan has contributed to its stable growth until 1980's.

View full abstract