IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/hid/journl/v12y200421p7-28.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Frederick Allen and the Future of Capitalism

Author

Listed:
  • John E. King

    (Department of Economics and Finance - La Trobe University)

Abstract

In March 1938 Victor Gollancz’s Left Book Club published a book entitled Can Capitalism Last?, by Frederick Allen (the pseudonym of Denis Herbert Stott, 1909-1988). This was an original and ambitious attempt to synthesise Marx and Keynes, making deficient aggregate demand the fundamental economic contradiction of capitalism, but in a dynamic context in which technical progress raises productivity faster than real wages and generates a chronic problem of surplus absorption. Allen considers the potential contributions of consumption, investment, government expenditure and imperialism as outlets for surplus, concluding that none of them is able to solve the problem of inadequate purchasing power. But he is not a breakdown theorist: the future of capitalism, he concludes, is more a political than an economic question. In both structure and content Allen’s analysis is strikingly similar to that of Baran’s and Sweezy’s Monopoly Capital 1968 [1966]. His book displays many of their strengths and all of their weaknesses.

Suggested Citation

  • John E. King, 2004. "Frederick Allen and the Future of Capitalism," History of Economic Ideas, Fabrizio Serra Editore, Pisa - Roma, vol. 12(2), pages 7-28.
    • Handle: RePEc:hid:journl:v:12:y:2004:2:1:p:7-28
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.libraweb.net/articoli.php?chiave=200406102&rivista=61
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. M. C. Howard & J. E. King, 2004. "The economic contributions of Paul Sweezy," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(4), pages 411-456.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hid:journl:v:12:y:2004:2:1:p:7-28. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Mario Aldo Cedrini (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.libraweb.net .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.