In
his opus The Wealth of Nations published in 1776 Adam
Smith drew a distinction between the progressive state,
the stationary state and the declining state. The progressive
state was one where capital accumulation would be occurring
at a rate faster than the growth of population, because
of which wages would be high and population growing;
in a declining state by contrast the opposite happened,
while in a stationary state the capital stock and the
population, and hence the labour force, was constant
and so were the wages, but at a level lower than in
the progressive state.
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This article was originally published in the Peoples
Democracy on July 21, 2024.
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