Last Phase in the Transformation of Capitalism

Kalecki, an economist whose work paralleled Keynes', was a government economist under the Polish fascist Pilsudski, recipient of a Rockefeller grant in 1936, and later an economic adviser to the Polish Communist regime. He considered himself a Marxist, despite his Keynesian bent, and is footnoted as such in various leftist economic writings, which may enhance interest in this collection of five very brief essays. Kalecki uses the appropriate vocabulary to propitiate his Party superiors, but otherwise exhibits scant adherence to Marxism as a philosophical or economic method. He rails about U.S. imperialism, but discusses the power relations within underdeveloped nations without reference to imperialist influence. He notes that Nazi finance was based on state debt and claims that democratic state capitalism, in contrast, was based on producing useful consumer and capital goods rather than war goods; but earlier he contradicts this view in an essay on the postwar U.S. economy's dependence on weapons manufacture. Fascism of Our Times lumps together Goldwater, the OAS, laissez-faire economists, Texas Oil, and West German revanchists in an unholy amalgam reeking more of inept Soviet propaganda than of Fascism ; and the analysis of Vietnam and U.S. Big Business, is wholly predictable. Considerably more interesting than the Kalecki pieces themselves is the long introduction by George Feiwel, which locates Kalecki's work firmly in the Keynesian tradition - but the introduction fails to carry the book, which shows Kalecki at his weakest. (Kirkus Reviews)