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 
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„Gryf” Hibnera 3, zam. 739/75. n. 2000 ft v\ 
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