Riccardo Bellofiore
Biographic Data
| ID | 715900 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Riccardo Bellofiore |
| GIVEN NAMES | Riccardo |
| FAMILY NAME | Bellofiore |
| SIGNATURE | BELLOFIORE R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Bergamo |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2945-0104 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 47 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 19 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 37 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 10 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1985 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Between the Times: Privatized Keynesianism, Permanent Catastrophe, and the Task of an Economy of Social Production
"Old-style neoliberalism," write Riccardo Bellofiore and Giovanna Vertova "is dead, or at least gravely ill. The new paradigm that may replace it has not yet been born or is not yet recognizable. In the middle, between the times, lies what we have proposed to call the permanent catastrophe: a regime in which capitalist responses in catastrophic form have become the norm, in which crises are no longer overcome but accumulate."
Augusto Graziani and Claudio Napoleoni: The Revival of Critical Political Economy in Italy—An Introductory Note
Claudio Napoleoni on the Liberation of Labor versus the Liberation from Labor: A Dialogue with Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, John Maynard Keynes – And Karl Marx
Marx: Key Concepts
Against the Streams: Alain Parguez and the Theory of the Monetary Circuit
Alain Parguez, together with Bernard Schmitt and Augusto Graziani, is one of the founders of the modern theory of the monetary circuit. Parguez was making his first forays into monetary circuitism in the 1970s, in the years of my formation, when I came in contact with Augusto Graziani. Graziani’s and Parguez’s reflections were independent, but converging. In the article, I consider the parallels and divergences. I will recall some elements of Ala…
A Tribute to Alain Parguez 1940–2022
International audience
The Winters of Our Discontent and the Social Production Economy
The economic policy reaction to the Covid-19 crisis has been considered from different angles. Here I will remind only the positions by Draghi (looking at this historical conjuncture comparing it to ‘war times’), Tooze (seeing in it the definitive closure of the ‘political economy of inflation’ as well as ‘the first crisis of Anthropocene’), Kregel (proposing ‘central controls for social provisioning’ as the pertinent macroeconomic policy). The p…
Smith Ricardo Marx Sraffa: Il lavoro nella riflessione economico-politica
Il volume propone un percorso di lettura sull’economia politica classica, e su Marx, che si prolunga sino all’opera di Sraffa. Un primo filo conduttore è dato da una visione della teoria del valore che non la riduce a determinazione individuale dei prezzi, ma ne sottolinea l’aspetto macrosociale: in Smith (lavoro comandato) come giustificazione del capitalismo, in Ricardo (lavoro contenuto) come base contraddittoria della teoria della distribuzio…
Hyman Minsky at 100: Was Minsky a Communist
Since the Great Financial Crisis of 2007–09, Hyman Minsky (1919–96) has been widely recognized as one of the late twentieth century's most insightful economic theorists. Nevertheless, if Minsky had still been alive at the time of the Great Financial Crisis, there would have been little likelihood that his new-found reputation would have resulted in his receiving the Nobel Prize in Economics given his heterodox and socialist economic views
Augusto Graziani and the Marx-Schumpeter-Keynes ‘Cycle of Money Capital’: A Personal Look at the Early Italian Circuitism from an Insider
The paper goes back to the origins of the theory of the monetary circuit in its Italian incarnation. Focus is on the evolution of Augusto Graziani's thinking between mid-1970s and mid-1980s, considering: (i) how Graziani connected (positively or polemically) with Keynesianism and Post-Keynesianism, both in its Cambridge and US incarnations; (ii) how Graziani interpreted the contributions of Keynes proposing a continuity between the Treatise on Mo…
Taking Up the Challenge of Living Labour A ‘Backwards-Looking Reconstruction’ of Recent Italian Debates on Marx’s Theory of the Capitalist Mode of Production
The Multiple Meanings of Marx's Value Theory
The Marxian critique of political economy is inseparable from the "labor theory of value." But what exactly does this theory mean? This article considers Marx's value theory from five perspectives: as a monetary value theory, a theory of exploitation, a macro-monetary theory of capitalist production, a theory of individual prices, and a theory of crises.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website
Towards a New Understanding of Sraffa
This book provides fresh insights on Piero Sraffa's work, by examining previously unpublished papers from Sraffa archives. It offers new perspectives on the connection between Sraffa amd Marx, and exa
Economic Crisis and Political Economy: Volume 2 of Essays in Honour of Tadeusz Kowalik
Rosa Luxemburg, Oskar Lange and Micha? Kalecki made important contributions to twentieth century political economy that guided the thinking of their student Tadeusz Kowalik. The chapters of this volum
Towards a New Understanding of Sraffa: Insights from Archival Research
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Thinker: Sraffa, Marx, and the Critique of Economic Theory
Sraffa’s relationship to Marx remains a controversial topic. After the opening of Sraffa’s Archive in 1993, with the Sraffa Papers (SP) and the Sraffa Collection (SC), we know that the Italian economist changed his attitude on the labour theory of value (LTV). In 1927–31 he was very critical of the LTV whereas in the early 1940s Sraffa thought that his inquiry would vindicate the ‘Old Moor’. A few years later he abandoned this view of strong cont…
The ‘Fragment on Machines’ and the Grundrisse: The Workerist Reading in Question
Marx's piece on machines was enthusiastically received by Italian Marxists, who discovered in its pages the possibility of a new reading of Marx: the 'Fragment on Machines' was seen by them as containing that surplus of subjectivity by which the established interpretations of the Italian Communist Party's Stalinist orthodoxy could be subverted. Workerism criticised and distanced itself from the millenarian objectivism proper to theories of capita…
Lost in Translation: Once Again on the Marx–Hegel Connection
This chapter deals in steps with the Marx-Hegel connection in Capital . The first step, surveys the most relevant positions in shaping the writer's own views. The second step reviews Marx's criticisms of Hegel and considers the debate within the International Symposium on Marxian Theory (ISMT). The third step argues that it is exactly Hegel's idealism which made the Stuttgart philosopher crucial for the understanding of the capital relation. The …
The Legacy of Rosa Luxemburg, Oskar Lange and MichaÅ Kalecki: Volume 1 of Essays in Honour of Tadeusz Kowalik
Rosa Luxemburg, Oskar Lange and Michal Kalecki made important contributions to twentieth century political economy that guided the thinking of their student Tadeusz Kowalik. These contributions are re
A heterodox structural Keynesian: Honouring Augusto Graziani
Translated from the Italian by Antoine Godin The article gives an appraisal of Augusto Graziani's thought as a heterodox structural Keynesian. Graziani has always challenged the basic assumptions of orthodox theory by rejecting the initial definition of the economic and social world as being populated by identical individuals, where consumers are sovereign, technology is exogenous and money is neutral. Since the 1970s, Graziani's efforts have aim…
In Marx's Laboratory: Critical Interpretations of the Grundrisse
In Marx’s Laboratory. Critical Interpretations of the Grundrisse provides a critical analysis of the Grundrisse as a crucial stage in the development of Marx’s critique of political economy. Stressing both the achievements and limitations of this much-debated text, and drawing upon recent philological advances, this volume attempts to re-read Marx’s 1857-58 manuscripts against the background of Capital, as a ‘laboratory’ in which Marx first began…
Deconstructing Labor: A Marxian–Kaleckian Perspective on What is ‘New’ in Contemporary Capitalism and Economic Policies
About a decade ago the radical left, both in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, had been gripped by an understanding of contemporary capitalism as based on a three pronged tendency: by ‘globalization’ as an already accomplished state, by the ‘end of labor’ due to mechanization, and by the ‘whittling away’ of the nation-state. Equally unreliable was the subsequent interpretation of the ‘new economy’ and of the world-economy by the authors stressing th…
The 'tiresome objector' and Old Moor: A renewal of the debate on Marx after Sraffa based on the unpublished material at the Wren Library
The as yet unpublished Sraffa material may help to break the no-communication monologues between Marxists and Sraffa's followers. This is possible only if we contest the vulgate that, after Sraffa, we have to accept a surplus approach which is mutilated from the labour theory of value. The connection between value and labour must be argued differently than in the old and new interpretations of Marx, according to the method of positing the presupp…
The Ascent and Crisis of Money-Manager Capitalism: Guest Editor's Introduction
This issue tries to answer two questions. Is the Marxian theory of crises, in its original formulation, useful to understanding the current crisis? Can the current crisis help us rethink Marx's theory of crises? The most widespread readings of Marx's theory of crises are the "tendency toward a fall in the rate of profit" and an underconsumptionist view concerning "realization crises." These two interpretations have been central in Marxist analyse…
Could Be Raining: The European Crisis After the Great Recession
This paper presents a general overview of the structural transformations marking the "new capitalism" and analyzes the contradictions of European neomercantilism within the Great Recession. In the past two decades, neoliberalism turned into a paradoxical sort of privatized financial Keynesianism based on the triad of traumatized workers, manic-depressive savers, and indebted consumers. It argues that the present European economic and political si…
Could Be Raining: The European Crisis After the Great Recession
This paper presents a general overview of the structural transformations marking the "new capitalism" and analyzes the contradictions of European neomercantilism within the Great Recession. In the past two decades, neoliberalism turned into a paradoxical sort of privatized financial Keynesianism based on the triad of traumatized workers, manic-depressive savers, and indebted consumers. It argues that the present European economic and political si…
Finance and the Labor Theory of Value: Toward a Macroeconomic Theory of Distribution from a Monetary Perspective
Marx Inside the Circuit: Discipline device, wage bargaining and unemployment in a sequential monetary economy
The aim of this paper is to show that Marxian labour theory of value can be consistently interpreted in terms of the monetary circuit model, where firms need initial finance to start production and where the money supply is endogenous. In contrast to the recently revived Marxian monetary models, in particular the New Interpretation, it is argued here that although the money wage is bargained for on the labour market, the real wage is determined b…
Against the Streams: Alain Parguez and the Theory of the Monetary Circuit
Alain Parguez, together with Bernard Schmitt and Augusto Graziani, is one of the founders of the modern theory of the monetary circuit. Parguez was making his first forays into monetary circuitism in the 1970s, in the years of my formation, when I came in contact with Augusto Graziani. Graziani’s and Parguez’s reflections were independent, but converging. In the article, I consider the parallels and divergences. I will recall some elements of Ala…
The Winters of Our Discontent and the Social Production Economy
The economic policy reaction to the Covid-19 crisis has been considered from different angles. Here I will remind only the positions by Draghi (looking at this historical conjuncture comparing it to ‘war times’), Tooze (seeing in it the definitive closure of the ‘political economy of inflation’ as well as ‘the first crisis of Anthropocene’), Kregel (proposing ‘central controls for social provisioning’ as the pertinent macroeconomic policy). The p…
Augusto Graziani and the Marx-Schumpeter-Keynes ‘Cycle of Money Capital’: A Personal Look at the Early Italian Circuitism from an Insider
The paper goes back to the origins of the theory of the monetary circuit in its Italian incarnation. Focus is on the evolution of Augusto Graziani's thinking between mid-1970s and mid-1980s, considering: (i) how Graziani connected (positively or polemically) with Keynesianism and Post-Keynesianism, both in its Cambridge and US incarnations; (ii) how Graziani interpreted the contributions of Keynes proposing a continuity between the Treatise on Mo…
The Multiple Meanings of Marx's Value Theory
The Marxian critique of political economy is inseparable from the "labor theory of value." But what exactly does this theory mean? This article considers Marx's value theory from five perspectives: as a monetary value theory, a theory of exploitation, a macro-monetary theory of capitalist production, a theory of individual prices, and a theory of crises.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website
Between Wicksell and Hayek: Mises’Theory of Money and Credit Revisited1
Mises'Theoryis grounded on the "ultra-Wicksellian" idea that the pure credit system represents the working of a modern monetary economy, and that forcing banks to raise the rate of money interest does not need to operate through some bindingbank-liquidityconstraint. It is the rise in the relative price of consumption goods against production goods that accounts for the end of inflation. According to Mises, it is in the power of the banks to resis…
Marx after Schumpeter
Contemporary marxist economic theory has repeatedly raised the issues of structural change and the nature of money. The economic system of Joseph Schumpeter is a key precedent in the integration of exactly those two themes: Schumpeter provides a theory of endogenous structural economic development tied to a theory of bank credit and finance. This paper explores the lessons that can be drawn for Marxist political economy
Money and Development in Schumpeter
In Schumpeter's model of economic development money plays an essential role and capitalism is seen as a structurally unstable process. These distinctive features of Schumpeterian theory are due to the endogeneity of innovations and, as a consequence, of money supply. The endogenous nature of technical change and the picture of the capitalist process as a monetary circuit are also important elements in the Marxian critique of political economy. Th…
Marx after Schumpeter
Contemporary marxist economic theory has repeatedly raised the issues of structural change and the nature of money. The economic system of Joseph Schumpeter is a key precedent in the integration of exactly those two themes: Schumpeter provides a theory of endogenous structural economic development tied to a theory of bank credit and finance. This paper explores the lessons that can be drawn for Marxist political economy
A Monetary Labor Theory of Value
A critical survey of the recent literature on the labor theory of value is offered, focusing upon the view of Marnian labor theory of value as a macroeconomic theory of exploitation within the money circuit of capita L The traditional and the 'new" solutions of the so-called transformation problem are rejected, and it is argued that the purely monetary reading of value and the revived clasical Marxist approach have mirror-like weaknesses. The pap…
Finance and the Labor Theory of Value: Toward a Macroeconomic Theory of Distribution from a Monetary Perspective
Guest Editor’s Introduction
Capital, Labour and Time: The Marxian Monetary Labour Theory of Value as a Theory of Exploitation
The last point to which attention is still to be drawn in the relation of labour to capital is this, that as the use value which confronts money posited as capital, labour is not this or another labour, but labour pure and simple, abstract labour; absolutely indifferent to its particular specificity, but capable of all specificities.... This economic relation — the character which capitalist and worker have as the extremes of a single relation of…
Marxian Economics: A Reappraisal
Springing from a conference held in Bergamo University on the occasion of the centenary of the publication by Engels of the third book of Capital, the papers collected in these two volumes reinstate M
Marxian Economics: A Reappraisal
Springing from a conference held in Bergamo University on the occasion of the centenary of the publication by Engels of the third book of Capital, the papers collected in these two volumes reinstate M
The Concept of Labor in Marx
(1998). The Concept of Labor in Marx. International Journal of Political Economy: Vol. 28, The Enigma of Value, pp. 4-34
Between Wicksell and Hayek: Mises’Theory of Money and Credit Revisited1
Mises'Theoryis grounded on the "ultra-Wicksellian" idea that the pure credit system represents the working of a modern monetary economy, and that forcing banks to raise the rate of money interest does not need to operate through some bindingbank-liquidityconstraint. It is the rise in the relative price of consumption goods against production goods that accounts for the end of inflation. According to Mises, it is in the power of the banks to resis…
Marx Inside the Circuit: Discipline device, wage bargaining and unemployment in a sequential monetary economy
The aim of this paper is to show that Marxian labour theory of value can be consistently interpreted in terms of the monetary circuit model, where firms need initial finance to start production and where the money supply is endogenous. In contrast to the recently revived Marxian monetary models, in particular the New Interpretation, it is argued here that although the money wage is bargained for on the labour market, the real wage is determined b…
Once Again on the Falling Rate of Profit
Money as Finance and Money as Universal Equivalent: Re-reading Marxian Monetary Theory
This book unites diverse heterodox traditions in the study of endogenous money – which until now have been confined to their own academic quarters – and explores their similarities and differences from both sides of the Atlantic.
Marx and the Macro-monetary Foundation of Microeconomics
The paper puts forward a macro-social and monetary reading of Capital I. It interprets and reconstructs Marx’s monetary theory of value and his determination of the wage and sitribution. The role of commodity money in Marx’s approach is clarified, and a perspective based on non-commodity bank-credit money is defended.
The Constitution of Capital: Essays on Volume 1 of Marx's Capital
The essays in this collection address specific themes in Volume I of Marx's Capital . Although the essays can be read independently, they present complementary perspectives on issues at the cutting edge of recent scholarship on Marx's work. Although all Parts of Capital I are discussed, the book is not intended to be a textbook. It will be read by specialists in the field as well as graduate students in the history of economic thought, political …
Contemporary Capitalism, European Policies, and Working-Class Conditions
In the first part the paper discusses critically what are the novelties of globalisation and the new economy, as the background on which the dynamics of the European capitalism must be set. In the second part, there is a discussion on how the precarisation and casualisation of employment has been driven both by macro and micro sequences. The Neo-Liberal stagnationist turn, the attack on Welfare State, the real subsumption of labour to finance, th…
The Monetary Aspects of the Capitalist Process in the Marxian System: An Investigation from the Point of View of the Theory of the Monetary Circuit
Karl Marx’s critique of political economy is a unique case in the history of economic thought. To speak of monetary ‘aspects’ of the Marxian system is not enough even, because what he offers is a view of the capitalist economic process as a whole where production, circulation and distribution are deeply affected by money and finance, so that any dichotomy between the ‘real’ and the ‘monetary’ is futile. Indeed, if there is an author for whom the …
Sraffa after Marx: An Open Issue
The Sraffa Archives at the Wren Library, Trinity College, Cambridge have been open for consultation for more than a decade. During these years there have been many conferences, and several volumes have been published which take the new material into account. In a 1998 conference1, I remarked that there has been almost no discussion concerning the new perspectives that the unpublished papers of the Italian economist could suggest about his relatio…
A Ghost Turning into a Vampire: The Concept of Capital and Living Labour
The first part of the paper makes a personal survey of some foundational approaches to Marx which have been relevant in shaping my reading of Capital, both on the issue of Marx and Hegel and on the notion of abstract labour. The second part of the paper summarizes my interpretation of Marx based on the essentiality of the notion of money as a commodity, and then my reconstruction of the critical political economy in a monetary circuit setting wit…
Re-reading Marx: New perspectives after the critical edition
Introduction R.Bellofiore & R.Fineschi New Perspectives Opened by the Publication of Marx's Manuscripts of Capital, Vol. II R.Hecker Karl Marx's Original Manuscripts in the Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA): Another View on Capital R.Roth Dialectic of the Commodity and its Exposition: The German Debate in the 70s: a Personal Survey R.Fineschi Reconstuction or Deconstruction? Methodological Controversies about Value and Capital and New Insights fro…
Rosa Luxemburg and the Critique of Political Economy
1. General Introduction: Rosa Luxemburg on Capitalist Dynamics, Distribution, and Effective Demand Crises 2. Rosa Luxemburg's Critique of Marx's Schemes of Reproduction: A Re-Evaluation and a Possible Generalisation 3. Where Does the Money Come From?: Rosa Luxemburg and the Marxian Reproduction Schema 4. The Monetary Circuit of Capital in the Anti-Critique 5. Late Marx and Luxemburg: Opening a Development within Political Economy 6. Rosa Luxembur…
Re-reading Marx
Could Be Raining: The European Crisis After the Great Recession
This paper presents a general overview of the structural transformations marking the "new capitalism" and analyzes the contradictions of European neomercantilism within the Great Recession. In the past two decades, neoliberalism turned into a paradoxical sort of privatized financial Keynesianism based on the triad of traumatized workers, manic-depressive savers, and indebted consumers. It argues that the present European economic and political si…
The Ascent and Crisis of Money-Manager Capitalism: Guest Editor's Introduction
This issue tries to answer two questions. Is the Marxian theory of crises, in its original formulation, useful to understanding the current crisis? Can the current crisis help us rethink Marx's theory of crises? The most widespread readings of Marx's theory of crises are the "tendency toward a fall in the rate of profit" and an underconsumptionist view concerning "realization crises." These two interpretations have been central in Marxist analyse…
Deconstructing Labor: A Marxian–Kaleckian Perspective on What is ‘New’ in Contemporary Capitalism and Economic Policies
About a decade ago the radical left, both in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, had been gripped by an understanding of contemporary capitalism as based on a three pronged tendency: by ‘globalization’ as an already accomplished state, by the ‘end of labor’ due to mechanization, and by the ‘whittling away’ of the nation-state. Equally unreliable was the subsequent interpretation of the ‘new economy’ and of the world-economy by the authors stressing th…
Economics (41 works) · Political Economy and Marxism (41 works) · Neoclassical economics (29 works) · Economic Theory and Policy (24 works) · Law (19 works) · Keynesian economics (18 works) · Political science (18 works) · Politics (16 works) · Philosophy (15 works) · Economic Theory and Institutions (13 works)