In this tribute to Alain Parguez (1940-2022), I draw attention to the economic thought of the prominent medieval scholar, Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), specifically his seminal Al Muqaddimah (1377), which was the introduction ("Prolegomena") to his universal history (Kitab al Ibar, "Book of Lessons"). While caution should be taken in reading a six-hundred-year-old book, I try to show that Ibn Khaldun could be considered as a forerunner of the Theory of the Monetary Circuit. In his magnum opus, he attempted to lay down the factors that had pushed civilizations (especially the Arab-Muslim one) to bloom to their peak and to decline thereafter. This led him to examine the economic and social processes governing the history and the causes of wealth. Here Ibn Khaldun anticipated some economic mechanisms which form the core of the Theory of the Monetary Circuit.

This Encyclopedia is an invaluable reference book for post-Keynesian and heterodox economics. It consists of 300 entries, written by 180 different authors. The volume includes entries on key concepts of interest to post-Keynesians as well as descriptions of some of the seminal books in the post-Keynesian tradition. It will interest both students and scholars of heterodox economics, as well as policy makers around the world looking for a better alternative to mainstream economic policies at national and international levels in the aftermath of the global financial crisis that burst in 2008 and the COVID-19 pandemic crisis that began in 2020.

Hassan Bougrine, Massimo Cingolani, Thomas Ferguson, James K. Galbraith, Alicia Girón, Joseph Halevi, Wesley Marshall, Edward Nell, John Smithin, Pavlina Tcherneva and Slim Thabet University of Bergamo (retired), Bergamo, Italy; Laurentian University, Sudbury, Canada; University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada; Laurentian University, Sudbury, Canada; European Investment Bank, Luxembourg; Institute for New Economic Thinking, New York, NY, USA; University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA, USA; University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA; Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico; Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia; International University College of Turin, Turin, Italy; Autonomous Metropolitan University, Iztapalapa, Mexico; New School for Social Research, New York, USA; Aurora Philosophy Institute, Aurora, Canada; York University, Toronto, Canada; Bard College and Levy Economics Institute, Annadale-On-Hudson, USA; University of Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens, France

Going always further than the Master (Keynes indeed!), herein is the ultimate lesson taught by the life-long work of Marc Lavoie and Mario Seccareccia. Contrary to the Master, they were absolutely free from the language of the neoclassical economics. They strove always to find the way to a long-run stable growth, starting ab initio contrary to the Neo- Ricardians, from the essentiality of money. They founded what must be deemed the supreme Post-Keynesian synthesis by proving that money, being the existence condition of the monetary capitalist economy, was always perfectly endogenous as a pure credit, denying the scarcity principle. Contrary to many Post-Keynesians of the new generation, they never ignored that the ultimate truth of Post-Keynesianism was to emphasize the principles of economic policy leading to full employment. Such a policy, for them, was mainly fiscal policy relying on State deficits of which the sole limit was true full employment without rationing.

Se inicia explicando qué es la "deflación" en su forma moderna: una crisis acumulativa de la economía real caracterizada por un aumento incontrolado del desempleo y la inflación. Después se enfatiza lo que se considera como las "leyes objetivas" fundamentales del sistema, confiando en su marco más general: un circuito monetario intertemporal. Se demuestra que la condición de existencia del sistema es el compromiso del Estado de ser el "arquitecto del futuro" a base de su siempre creciente inversión productiva en capital tangible e intangible. Abandonar al sector capitalista privado a si mismo está cada vez más paralizado debido a su creciente ansiedad por el futuro. Ese papel del Estado requiere que su inversión más importante se refleje en su buen déficit productivo que está libre de deuda efectiva (o deuda en si misma).

Orthodox economists, whatever their vintage, are puzzled: How could the current deep recession triggered by the 2008 financial crisis be worsening despite the efforts being made to return to stability? For a brief moment after the crisis, Keynes became fashionable, but his ideas have again been forgotten. Technocrats and politicians do not find an answer in Keynes for the cause of the crisis, or as to the policies that they should implement. Again there is widespread fear that being too Keynesian could generate a collapse of the system. In this paper, we intend first to explain why the ongoing crisis is not a recession but a structural crisis of the capitalist system. The system's decline started well before 2008 and clearly reflects the core message of the General Theory, namely, that the capitalist system has a fatal tendency to decay. A fresh reading of Keynes provides the answer as to what finally transformed the tendency into an accelerating process that is destroying the pillars of capitalism. It also indicates what should be done immediately to prevent chaos and the restoration of a backward social and economic system. The authors address the remaining question of why so few Keynesians of the first generation and many new post Keynesians do not recognize Keynes's prophecy.

A l’heure ou le capitalisme semble serieusement ebranle par une crise financiere qu’on pensait restreinte aux marches immobiliers hypothecaires americains mais qui s’est tres vite propagee a toute l’economie mondiale, le plaidoyer de John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) et John Rogers Commons [1862-1945] pour un capitalisme regule n’a jamais ete autant d’actualite. Cet article sous la forme d’un portrait croise se penche justement sur la vie, les engagements politiques et le parcours intellectuel de ces deux grands esprits reformistes du XXe siecle. Alors que rien dans leurs origines sociales ne les predestinait a epouser un horizon commun, ces deux economistes a la forte influence politique voyaient l’economie avant tout comme un moyen pour ouvrir la voie vers un capitalisme raisonnable par le biais de l’action collective aussi bien au niveau national que sur le plan international.

In the second volume of the monumental biography R. Skidelsky established on J. M. Keynes, we can find an enigmatic, if not strange, passage. According to R. Skidelsky, J. R. Commons was "an important, if unacknowledged influence on Keynes". This feeling of strangeness is even stressed by the remarks expressed by J. M. Keynes himself in a letter that remained to J. R. Commons.In that letter indeed, dated from the 26th April 1927, Keynes was writing, "there seems to me to be no other economist with whose general way of thinking I feel myself in such a genuine accord". R. Skidelsky's passage, as well as J. M. Keynes' epistolary sentiments, raise a lot of questions to which this thesis is attempting to answer: First of all, when, and how did the relationship between J. M. Keynes and J. R. Commons begin? Then, if there actually was an influence by J. R. Commons on J. M. Keynes, at which level must it be situated? Eventually, insomuch as J. R. Commons represents one of the central figures of the American Historical Institutionalism and beyond the relationship between J. R. Commons and J. M. Keynes, can one consider that not only the institutions play a fundamental role in J. M. Keynes' economic thought, but also that his conception of institutions is itself peculiar?In order to answer these questions, one must now seriously reconsider the evolution of J. M. Keynes's economic thought in the light of J. R. Commons influence. We suggest to call this influence "the Commons Hypothesis". Accordingly, J.M. Keynes' economic thought is revisited through the concept of collective action as one among the incontrovertible ways of the resolution of modern capitalism "Economic Problem" that leads to a Reasonable capitalism. That way, which acknowledges the dynamics of conflicts and compromises, necessarily goes through the institutions as entities of mediation both between the micro and macroeconomic levels and between the groups of economic agents and the State.