READ CAREFULLY AND SEEK THEIR WORK.
Department of Economics University
Metropolitan Unit
Iztapalapa, Mexico.
a big heart and a clear mind ceased to exist on Christmas Eve 2010. After a painful illness that tore their fruitful intellectual life of many decades, the French economist died Gérard Destanne De Bernis victim of an unexpected heart attack.
Gérard de Bernis is undoubtedly one of the most important French economists of the twentieth century. Bye student Maurice and François Perroux - another giant of French economic thought of the century - Marxist and Communist by conviction, De Bernis was a prolific thinker, but also in its scope, a man of action. College student in France in the late forties, was
Unlike many French intellectuals and developed countries, including Marxists - who delight in the Eurocentric, Gérard was always a third world, a true internationalist. He was adviser to several African governments agreed to
His work is vast and rich, though not widespread, even in his native France. Among his major books and articles are, with Maurice Bye, Relations économique Internationale (1987) 2 of volumes collectively signed by him Groupe de Recherche south
Économiques International Relations This book is the fifth edition of a text created by Maurice Bye. The document was completely rewritten by De Bernis, but as he said in the preface to the work in accordance with Bye's widow, kept her name as a tribute to the intellectual debt he had with his teacher. The 1336 edition added pages, which presents the picture of international economic relations. We present the major theoretical references and describes the general economic equilibrium theory applied to international economic relations. Therefore, we discuss the pure theory international trade and some of its variants and developments and international monetary theory. Only then proceeds to develop an alternative construction, the theory of regulation applied to international economic relations. In this part of the text, once you have given the historical, theoretical contribution is proposed on international economic relations. The central concepts are regulating, productive system, crisis and stability in the process of accumulation. 3
The two volumes entitled Crise et Regulation result discussion and the collective work of a research group created by De Bernis in the late seventies at the University of Grenoble. The texts to be found in these two volumes account for results of research on substantive issues of economic theory. There is a systematic discussion with the key proposals of the orthodox theory. Some of the products of the research work of this group are included in the series on the theory of regulation
De Bernis was one of the founders of the so-called French school of regulation, which are associated the names of Michel Aglietta and Robert Boyer. Emerged the theory of regulation of a creative reading of the crisis of the seventies, is one of the most original contributions for understanding the "great crisis" of capitalism, along with financial and post-Keynesian theory of long waves.
Unlike Aglietta and Boyer stressed the role of the development and adaptation of institutions in the regulation of capitalism in their contradictions, De Bernis without ignoring the importance of those in long-term evolution of this system , put the emphasis on objective contradictions of the capitalist mode of production, and specific forms are assumed to its development and in each of its phases. In particular, placed in the center of his theorizing in the two laws of profit studied by K. Marx, which are the engine of capitalist accumulation, namely: the law of the falling rate of profit and to balance the rate of profit, or the tendency to form an average gain. For him - and the risk of simplification in the extreme in this 4
brief note thought so rich - the regulation may be understood as the effective linkage of these two laws of profit, that although different and exposed by Marx in separate Capital, obeyed a single process governed by the law of profit maximization. When the joint of these laws was effective, ie when the counter-down of the rate of profit and the formation of the average profit operating properly, the system, de Bernis, was regulated and reproduction of capital flowed steadily . By contrast, when the effectiveness of these counter-tendencies are exhausted, the average rate of profit fell, and opened a fierce competition among the capitalists, which broke the system of distribution of value based on the average profit. At that time the mode of regulation stopped working and displayed a "great crisis", a process of uncertain duration and output, which involved the destruction and restructuring existing production systems.
Bernis We owe to the proposal that the "great crisis", regardless of their specific differences, go through two phases: an initial inflation and the prevailing trends of the national productive systems to turn to the exterior, and a second deflationary and protectionist, where the brunt of the crisis pushed the nation states to fall back into 8. The reality of capitalism in the last four decades validating the richness of your intuition. The late sixties and the decade of the seventies are examples of the predominance of trends to inflation and the outward projection of the economy, while the eighties - with the external debt crisis as a turning point - represent the beginning of a deflationary phase, different from that expressed during the depression years of Thirty - which leads to the financialisation of the economy and increasing instability, as demonstrated by the various financial crises, systemic scope of so-called emerging countries in the nineties, culminating in the crises that erupt in the hegemonic center of the system: the crisis of technology stocks in 2000 - 2001 and the current global crisis, whose origins are in the banking and credit system U.S.
9 About now the global crisis hit Europe hard, De Bernis anticipated since 1987, the difficulties that now spans
"(...) The Europe of six, nine, ten (even of the twelve), is not a production system. Of course we can describe all the different production systems countries under the general title of European production system. But this is only a formal exercise. We can not reduce the expression of the productive system to the juxtaposition of a number of capacity (...) The notion of production system postulates the notion of coherence , which is self-sectoral consistency in determining income adjustment procedures exist between the structures of production and consumption " 10 .
And in another work highlighted what were the forces that moved the springs of integration: 6
"No - said - firms from Europe who choose to work at the scale of the EEC, major mergers or capital originating in the EEC countries (...) The states had no ideological reasons that eventually to transfer to Europe some of its powers. And because they behaved in this way, there was no no force related to the implementation of a European production system (...) The EU is a grouping of countries of unequal size and power "(De Bernis, 1987, 1199). 11
In other words the difficulties that Europe now exhibits with the crisis are not new, but reveal genuine problems
Gérard de Bernis always maintained a relationship with the academic world in Mexico and Latin America, in line with its vocation Third. He was in Mexico for the first time in 1977, invited by Angel de la Vega, who served as graduate coordinator of the Faculty of Economics
International "For a political alternative: a world of work for all" in the instalaiones U of G in Spring, Mexico. Again we had the participation of a large group of scholars. The document presented by De Bernis is undoubtedly of great relevance for the present 13. Discusses the problem of work for all but the only way is wage labor. Consider the problem of technological progress and the need for systematic programs of job creation and prevents on the progress of deflation as part of crisis work. In this context, even in developed economies show high levels of unemployment, even compatible with a certain level of economic growth.
Halfway through the nineties and beyond, thanks to the initiative of Gregorio Vidal,
But perhaps the most important legacy that De Bernis left between us, was his initiative to start development of Euro-Latin Study Network Development Celso Furtado (www.redcelsofurtado.edu.mx). Celso Furtado
The death of Gérard de Bernis is, as stated
Mexico City, December 2010
1 Véase al respecto G. Bernis "industrializing industries and content of a policy of regional integration" in Applied Economics. T. XIX, N. 3-4, Paris, 1966, ISMEA. 2
2 Mr. Bye and G. Destanne de Bernis. International Economic Relations. Paris, 1987, Dalloz, 5a. edition.
3 GRREC. Crisis and regulation. Collection of Texts, 1979-1983. Grenoble, 1983, Universidad
6 G. De Bernis. "Reading Guide" in Contemporary Capitalism, Mexico, 1988, Editorial Nuestro Tiempo, pp. 17-80
7 De Bernis text is presented on an early version at the Institute of Economics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in January 1977. In 1977 he published G. De Bernis. "Régulation analyze ou dans l'équilibre économique", in L'idée de régulation dans les sciences , sous la direction de G. Gadoffre, A. Lichnerowicz et F. Perroux, Paris, 1977, Maloin, pp. 85-101. The book is the result of presentations at the College de France (Collège de France).
9 G. de Bernis. "De l'urgence of abandonné the dette of peripheries" Economies et Sociétés N. 37, Paris, 2000, ISMEA. No translation into English and Arturo Vidal Gregorio Guillen. "In the urgency to leave the debts of the peripheries Rethinking development theory in the context of globalization. Homenaje a Celso Furtado. Buenos Aires, 2007, CLACSO
13 The text was reissued recently in: G. De Bernis. "For an alternative policy: Work for everyone everywhere in the World" in Wave Financial, Section Classics, no. 4. Mexico, 2009, Economic Research Institute and Faculty of Economics, UNAM, pp. 191-206.
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