Brief von Jerzy Osiatyński an Josef Steindl

Osiatyński, Jerzy

Bibliographic data

Correspondence

Document type:: Correspondence

Collection:: Josef Steindl Collection

Title:: Brief von Jerzy Osiatyński an Josef Steindl

Author:: Osiatyński, Jerzy

Recipient:: Steindl, Josef

Scope:: Typoskript, 1 Blatt, 2 Seiten

Place of publication:: Warschau

Year of publication:: 1979-06-29

Source material date:: 29th June 1979

Language:: English

Note:: Mit handschriftlichen Grußworten, Unterschrift und Postskriptum. - Auf der Rückseite befinden sich handschriftliche Notizen von Josef Steindl.

Shelfmark:: S/B.58

Correspondence partner:: Steindl, Josef Osiatyński, Jerzy

Rights of use:: Free access In Copyright

Access:: Free access

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.48671/nls.js.1504179610206

POLSKA AKADEMIA NAUK Zaktad Historii Nauki Oiwiaty i Techniki ol. Nowy ^wiol 72, pole. 19. lei. 26-83-05 00-330 WAR S Z A W A OVtCiV.^A<A Bear Professor Steindl, Warszawa, dnla...29.t.h...slune 197...q. r. Thank you very much for the offprint of your "Stagnation Theory and Stagnation Policy’’, which I got yesterday. I read it immediately and with delight. I liked especially your argument on the conscious anti full employment policy /with its political background/, arid on the impact of that policy on long-run trend. I am not sure, however, if I understand correctly your argument in the one-before-last complete paragraph on p. 7, where you say, inter alia, that: "Therefore the oligopolists* attempt to increase profits could /•*•/ lead only to a decline in utilisation". Beeline in utilisation due to a fall in consumption of^workers, and /partly/ of capitalists and rentiers too? Is,that rights What shall happen, however, ±£ in sectors the demand of which is inelastic, say, in governments xx armament spanding? A rise in profit margins, that is - at given and constant unit prime costs - a rise in prices of manufactured products /armsirients/ will then result in an increase in government outlays. If these additional expenditures are financed from budget deficits and/or from corporate profit taxation, and given that other expendi tures are unaffected because they have been predetermined by s®ne other factors /investments, capitalists’consumption,and workers’ consumption/, the net result in such a case seems to me not necessa rily to imply a lov/er utilisation of capacities, because then the degree of utilisation will be the same /and also real profits will be the same/. Bo you agree? Now, let me come to your "Some Comments on the Three Versions <£f Kalecki’s Theory of the Trade Cycle”. Kalecki’s Volume 2 is already at its proofs stage and your paper /in my translation/ will be included there as the last piece of the volume. I made all due acknow ledgments, saying also that your paper has been originally submitted for the Lipihski’s Festschrift; apart from gratitude for your kind permission to publish the Polish translation of your paper in Kalecki’s Works, I am afraid, I offer cannot offer you anything more. Will that be enough? Incidentally, v/hen translating your paper I realised I could not quite follow your criticism of Kalecki’s approach in the first complete paragraph of your section 5. In its 1939 version /of the Essays in the Theory of Economic Fluctuations/, the "Principle of Increasing Risk" ends with a section: ""Commitments" as a function of marginal net profitability”. Kalecki argues there, that "it is to the total amount of "commitments" that the curve of increasing risk relates" /p.106/, and that "commitments" are equal to the cost of the past investments constituting firm’s capital equipment, plus investment orders in execution, or recently given, minus private capital, initial and accumulated over the years, inclusive of amortization /p. 105-6/. Since the corresponding chapter of the Theory of Economic Dynamics /Chapter 8/ appears to me to be only a slightly abbreviated and more lucid version of Chapter 4 of the Essays..., with no revisions of substance there, I should think that those factors which refer to the entrepreneurial savings, and to which you xstfsK relate in the mentioned paragraph, are indeed taken account of tn Kalecki’s theory. But, of coures^ I may be wrong on this. c-.vJL ^ <r_. „Gryf” Hibnera 3, zam. 739/75. n. 2000 ft v\ os VW*, \W K 00cl ^

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