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 Marx's as the first genuinely evolutionary economic theory. In this, the capitalist process incessantly brings about states which will by themselves generate the next ones. Thus as Schumpeter remarked, Marx was the first to 'visualise what even at the present time is still the economic theory of the future for which we are slowly and laboriously accumulating stone and mortar, statistical facts and functional equations'.

Marxian economic thought has a long and distinguished history in Japan dating back to World War I. During the 1920s the main focus was on two areas--the theory of capitalism expounded in the three volumes of Marx's Capital, and the particular characteristics of Japanese capitalism as it developed after the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Rival schools of thought emerged and staged brilliant debates at a time when interest in Marxism in the United States was still almost nonexistent. Since World War II the economics faculties of major Japanese universities have taught both Marxist and neoclassical approaches, and many of the most important writings of U.S. and European Marxists have been translated and are widely used in Japan. There has not, however, been a comparable familiarity with the rich Japanese Marxist tradition in the West. Professor Itoh's book makes an important beginning in rectifying this lopsided situation. It opens with a long and highly informative essay on the development of Marxian economics in Japan, and contains a number of the author's important and original contributions to this stream of thought.

Political economy, defined in the study of social relations and culture. Originally published in the former Soviet Union, was suppressed and after 1928 it was never re-issued. This is the first English-language edition. Includes an outstanding introductory essay on "Commodity Fetishism" by Freddy Perlman.

Each volume in this series includes a collection of authoritative essays from The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics, selected by the Editors to illustrate the range and diversity of economics thought on a particular topic.