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ISSN: 1870-1442

:: Number 44 (January - April 2023)

Editorial

Alain Parguez has died! Long live Alain Parguez! But he has left a trail of important reflections on political economy. Since the end of the sixties of the twentieth century he has already participating in a brilliant and bold discussion of an economy for the benefit of society; especially in the critique of conventional thought, this is witnessed by the Cahiers of the Institut des Science Économique Appliquée, which would become the Institut des Sciences Mathematiques Économiques Appliquées.

As an unconventional economist who did not fit into the French academic system, he became acquainted with independent thinkers in Canada, with whom he published frequently, with some of the great and old North American critics, and finally, in Mexico and Ola Financiera, where he published several relevant articles towards the end of his life. 

The content of this perspective is marked by two definitive aspects, on the one hand, its incisive critique of the direction of economic policy and, on the other, the theoretical aspects of conventional economics on which this economic policy is based. This allows him to state in a clear way that what is basically discussed are the interests of economic and political power. As an example, in the decade of the seventies, there is his book Monaie et Macro-économique. Theorie de la monaie en déséquilibre of 1975, in the context of the oil crisis and inflation.

His reflections always show that financial power can represent a danger, despite being a definitive lever for the creation of material wealth in the form of capital accumulation. His analyses show the strong competition between the sectors of productive and financial capital, but in this competition, it will be wages, that is, workers, who will bear the result of the success of one or the other, or both. That is why he proposes the necessary intervention of the State as a mechanism to temper the destructive forces of one sector or another, basically through a solid monetary presence, a sovereign monetary and fiscal policy; weakness or renunciation of that presence threatens the entire system. An orientation that has been rejected by mainstream thinking in economics and economic policy. This theoretical and practical position of Parguez were arguments to move away from the government of F. Mitterrand, who in the early eighties would lose control of his monetary and fiscal sovereignty as analyzed by Parguez in several of the texts included here, to the absurdity of the domination of monetary and fiscal policy from Brussels; at the same time, the objective of full employment was abandoned. Arguments that were a solid criticism of the governments of M. Thacher and R. Reagan and their trail of serious damage to societies and economies, whose result has been the concentration of wealth, and the indebtedness of the State without promoting growth and even less development, while workers and society in general are increasingly marginalized in almost all areas,  by dismantling the welfare state, in the face of rising unemployment and radical privatization as state policy in the world, crowning the Nobel prizes in economics of F. Von Hayek and M. Friedman, and already by the eighties and nineties the authoritarianism of the Washington Consensus.

The texts selected here, which fly over the twenty-first century, attack the problems of this period; characterized by their controversial and intricate dynamics, which in principle are a critique of conventional and dominant economics, theoretical and practical. The first two articles have a more theoretical orientation, while the remaining three articles are a staging of the theory. Always based on his general theory of the monetary circuit to pose the dynamics of the capitalist economy, as a monetary economy.  Theoretical proposal that he extended to dependent countries, through the theorization of the dependent monetary circuit. At the end of this issue, one of Parguez´s last texts is published, dedicated to Eugenia Correa, academic, architect, and who together with Alicia Girón and Patricia Rodríguez have made www.olafinanciera.unam.mx a reality.

In this way, a tribute www.olafinanciera.unam.mx paid to Alain Parguez, not only for being an important collaborator of this journal, but for a series of reflections that he has left us of great depth and relevance for the times.

 

 

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Made in Mexico, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), all rights reserved 2004-2023.

OLA FINANCIERA, Vol. 16 No. 44,    January - April 2023, is a quarterly publication, with international arbitration, edited by Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México by Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas, Ciudad Universitaria, Circuito Mario de la Cueva s/n, Ciudad de la Investigación en Humanidades, Coyoacán, C.P. 04510, México, D.F. Tel.+52 (55) 5623-0131, and Faculty of Economics, Ciudad Universitaria, Circuito Interior s/n, Coyoacán, C.P. 04510, México, D.F., www.olafinanciera.unam.mx, ola.financiera.unam@gmail.com Editor in charge: Dr. Sergio Cabrera Morales. Reservation of Rights to Exclusive Use: 04-2013-050912324700-203, ISSN electronic: 1870-1442. Responsible for the last update of this issue, Ing. Jesús Garrido López and Dr. Jesús Sosa Arista, Circuito Mario de la Cueva s/n, Ciudad de la Investigación en Humanidades, Ciudad Universitaria, Coyoacán, C.P. 04510, México D.F. date of last modification, january 09, 2023.

The opinions expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the position of the editor of the publication.

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