Capital as Will and Imagination (EPUB) von Mark D. Metzler

Joseph Schumpeter is not thought of as a theorist of credit-supercharged high-speed growth, but that is what he became in postwar Japan. This new view helps also to explain Japan's bubble, and the global bubbles that have followed it.

Introduction: Inflation and Its ProductionsChapter 1. The Revolution in Prices
1.1 Faustian Capital / 1.2 World War I and the Political Economy of Twentieth-Century Inflation / 1.3 Postwar Stabilization / 1.4 The Great Inflation of the 1940s / 1.5 Exporting Inflation / 1.6 The Inflation Comes HomeChapter 2. Dramatis Personae
2.1 "The Schumpeter Vogue" / 2.2 At the Monetary Bonfire / 2.3 The Marxists / 2.4 The Capital Creator / 2.5 The SchumpeteriansChapter 3. What Is Capital?
3.1 When New Capital Comes onto the Stage / 3.2 The Distribution of Promises / 3.3 Credit Inflation the Mechanism of Capitalist Development / 3.4 Capital as Indication / 3.5 The Capitalist Process as an Ideal–Material CircuitChapter 4. Flows and Stores
4.1 Energy, Capital, and Debt / 4.2 Flows of Production / 4.3 Stores of Promises / 4.4 Saving Follows from Investment / 4.5 Power and PlanningChapter 5. Japanese Capitalism under Occupation
5.1 Imagining Postwar Development / 5.2 First Responses: Burning, Looting, and Printing / 5.3 The Amplification of Monetary Flows / 5.4 The Constriction of Material-Energetic Flows / 5.5 Liquidating Japanese CapitalismChapter 6. Inflation as Capital
6.1 The Ishibashi Line / 6.2 The ESB Line: "Modified Capitalism" / 6.3 Inflation and Social Leveling / 6.4 Taxation as Monetary Regulation / 6.5 The Limits of Modified CapitalismChapter 7. Interlude (Deflation)
7.1 Joseph Dodge and the Theory of Capital Restriction / 7.2 The Sphere of International Capital / 7.3 Ministers of Restriction / 7.4 "The So-Called Stabilization Panic" / 7.5 Inside Money and Outside Money / 7.6 The World Economic CrisisChapter 8. The State-Bank Complex
8.1 Banking as Economic Governance / 8.2 Superdirect Finance / 8.3 The Privatization of the Positive PolicyChapter 9. The Turning Point
9.1 A Schumpeterian Turning Point / 9.2 Social Sources of Keynesian Stabilization / 9.3 The Second Try at Global Postwar Stabilization: Some Interim Conclusions / 9.4 Dollar Capital as Divine Providence / 9.5 "Dangerous Delusions"Chapter 10. High-Speed Growth: The Schumpeterian Boom
10.1 The Restoration of the Business Cycle / 10.2 "The Postwar Is Over": The Schumpeterian Boom Begins / 10.3 Ishibashi and Ikeda: The Ascent of the Positive Policy / 10.4 The International Circuit: The External Capital ConstraintChapter 11. High-Speed Growth: Indication and Flow
11.1 The Domestic Circuit: Imagined Capital for Real Growth / 11.2 Monetary "Flows," "Leakages," and "Absorption" / 11.3 Credit Creation as Planning; Planning as Credit Creation / 11.4 The Investment Doubling PlanChapter 12. Conclusions: Credere and Debere
12.1 Norms and Exceptions / 12.2 Stocks of Debt and Debt-Destruction Crises / 12.3 Autodeflation / 12.4 Mirrors and MiraclesAppendix
Table A-1. Basic indicators of money and credit, 1868–1965
Table A-2. Credit creation and industrial investment, 1940–1965
Table A-3. Prices and wages, 1936–1965
Table A-4. Indicators of manufacturing production, 1936–1965Notes
References
Index

With this book, Mark Metzler continues his investigation into the economic history of twentieth-century Japan that he began in Lever of Empire. In Capital as Will and Imagination, he focuses on the successful stabilization of Japanese capitalism after the Second World War. How did a defeated and heavily damaged nation manage reconstruction so rapidly? What economic beliefs resulted in the "miracle" years of high-speed economic growth? Metzler argues that the inflationary creation of credit was key to Japan's postwar success—and its eventual demise due to its instability over the long term.To prove his case, Metzler explores heterodox ideas about economic life, in particular Joseph Schumpeter's realization that inflation is intrinsic to capitalist development. Schumpeter's ideas, widely ignored within standard American neoclassical economic theory, were shaped by his experience of Austria's reconstruction after 1918. They were highly influential in Japan, and Metzler traces their impact in the period from the Allied Occupation, starting in 1945, through the Income Doubling Plan of 1960. Japan after defeat, Metzler argues, illustrates the critical importance of inflationary credit creation for increased production.