The aim of Bernard Schmitt’s analysis of the monetary economy of production was twofold: to introduce and to explain the logical character of the macroeconomic laws governing our economies and to explain the origin of the pathologies that follow if these laws are not complied with. Schmitt’s main original contributions concern the theories of value, profit, and capital, as well as his explanation of inflation, unemployment and international payments, unified as quantum macroeconomic analysis. This book expounds on the key principles of quantum macroeconomic analysis as he conceived and developed them.
Schmitt’s starting point was the analysis of bank money and the way it is associated with produced output. His macroeconomics was not founded on microeconomics nor derived from the aggregation of microeconomic variables. Schmitt’s theory does not rely on mathematics and modelling either; instead, it is based on logical laws derived from the nature of money and monetary payments. Part I of this book deals with the quantum macroeconomic analysis of capitalism and its pathologies developed by Schmitt and provides the elements necessary to understand its ‘structural’ mechanism. Parts II and III deal with the principles of two reforms that enable the passage from capitalism to post-capitalism and from the present non-system of international payments to an orderly system.
This book provides essential reading for all those interested in heterodox approaches to macroeconomics, monetary economics, banking, international economics, and the history of economic thought.
Foreword: A biographical note on Bernard Schmitt
Introduction
PART I - 1959–1987: The years of Schmitt’s greatest insights
A. From money to capital
1 The discovery of the true nature of money and the origin of its purchasing power
2 The building blocks of a theory of national money: from Monnaie, salaires et profits (1966) to Théorie unitaire de la monnaie, nationale et internationale (1975)
3 Schmitt’s critical analysis of neoclassical, Keynesian, Marxian, and Sraffian economics from 1959 to 1988
4 1979–1984: The discovery of quantum time
5 Quantum economics and capital
6 Schmitt’s 1984 explanation of inflation and unemployment and the principles of his 1984 reform
B. From national to international money
7 International payments as a cause of monetary disorders
8 Schmitt’s first proposals for a world monetary reform
9 Schmitt’s contribution to the debate on European monetary unification: 1975–1988
PART II - 1987–1998: The years of further in-depth analysis
10 1987–1995: Schmitt’s first extended analysis of countries’ external debt
11 The analysis of capital and interest based on Schmitt’s unpublished manuscripts of 1993–1996
12 Schmitt’s new analysis of unemployment: his 1998 contribution
13 The development of Schmitt’s criticism of general equilibrium analysis
14 From capitalism to post-capitalism
PART III - 1999–2014: The final years of groundbreaking analysis
15 Towards the ‘interest theorem’: the double cost of interest payments
16 The final criticism of general equilibrium analysis
17 The discovery of the pathological nature of countries’ sovereign debt (2010–2014)
18 The one-country solution to the sovereign debt problem
Conclusion
Biography
Alvaro Cencini is Emeritus Professor of Economics, University of Lugano (USI), Switzerland.
