Edgar Hardcastle
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Edgar Richard "Hardy" Hardcastle (1899 – June 1995) was a theoretician of
Marxist economics Marxian economics, or the Marxian school of economics, is a heterodox school of political economic thought. Its foundations can be traced back to Karl Marx's critique of political economy. However, unlike critics of political economy, Marxian ec ...
. The son of a founder member of the
Socialist Party of Great Britain The Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) is a socialist political party in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1904 as a split from the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), it advocates using the ballot box for revolutionary purposes and oppos ...
, Hardcastle went to prison as a
socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...
conscientious objector A conscientious objector (often shortened to conchie) is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion. The term has also been extended to object ...
in the
First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, formally joining his father's party in 1922. After studying at the
London School of Economics , mottoeng = To understand the causes of things , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £240.8 million (2021) , budget = £391.1 millio ...
under Professor
Edwin Cannan Edwin Cannan (3 February 1861, Funchal, Madeira – 8 April 1935, Bournemouth), the son of David Cannan and artist Jane Cannan, was a British economist and historian of economic thought. He was a professor at the London School of Economics from 1 ...
, he worked all his life as a researcher in the
trade union A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits ( ...
movement, first for the
National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers The National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers (NUAW) was a trade union in the United Kingdom which existed between 1906 and 1982. It represented farmworkers. History The union was established as the Eastern Counties Agricultural Labou ...
, then for a short while for the international trade union movement in
Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...
, then till his retirement for the
Union of Post Office Workers The Union of Communication Workers (UCW) was a trade union in the United Kingdom for workers in the post office and telecommunications industries. History The union was founded in 1919 as the Union of Post Office Workers (UPW) by the merger ...
where he was chief adviser to a succession of UPW General Secretaries. His main interest was
monetary economics Monetary economics is the branch of economics that studies the different competing theories of money: it provides a framework for analyzing money and considers its functions (such as medium of exchange, store of value and unit of account), and it ...
. From the 1930s on, as his ''
Socialist Standard ''Socialist Standard'' is a monthly socialist magazine published without interruption since September 1904 by the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB). The magazine is written in a simple, direct style and focuses mainly on socialist advocacy ...
'' articles (written under the pen name of H.) testify, he did battle against
Keynes John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, ( ; 5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), was an English economist whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originally trained in m ...
on behalf of
Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 p ...
and also, on behalf of his old professor, Cannan. Edwin Cannan, a largely forgotten classical bourgeois economist from the Ricardian school of the early 20th century, could be described as the last of the classical political economists and, as such, shared with Marx certain economic views, in particular that
inflation In economics, inflation is an increase in the general price level of goods and services in an economy. When the general price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services; consequently, inflation corresponds to a reductio ...
was a purely monetary phenomenon caused by an excessive issue of an inconvertible paper currency and that banks were merely financial intermediaries without any power to " create credit." Both of these positions were denied by Keynes whose views became part of the economic orthodoxy. Hardcastle's empirical bent enabled the SPGB to refute, with the necessary statistical evidence, theories which have sometimes been attributed to Marx such as underconsumptionism, the increasing pauperisation of the working class, the collapse of capitalism (Hardcastle was the author of the famous 1932 SPGB pamphlet ''Why Capitalism Will Not Collapse'') and—more controversially within the Party—the increasing severity of
economic crises A financial crisis is any of a broad variety of situations in which some financial assets suddenly lose a large part of their nominal value. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many financial crises were associated with banking panics, and man ...
. Hardcastle gave a great input into the SPGB, particularly to the ''Socialist Standard'', serving on the editorial committee for over thirty years and contributing articles from the early 1920s onwards. He was also a member of the Executive Committee for decades and a Party lecturer and representative in debates (see Socialist Party of Great Britain debates) including cabinet minister Keith Joseph in 1974. Towards the end of his life, Hardcastle found himself a member of one of two branches which were expelled by a poll of all the membership for deliberately and repeatedly refusing to apply a democratically arrived-at Conference decision. The two expelled branches went on to form the '' Socialist Studies'' group in 1991, of which Hardcastle remained a member until his death some four years later.


References

*Obituary in the August 1995 ''
Socialist Standard ''Socialist Standard'' is a monthly socialist magazine published without interruption since September 1904 by the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB). The magazine is written in a simple, direct style and focuses mainly on socialist advocacy ...
'' *"Edgar Richard Hardcastle ("Hardy"): Obituary". '' Socialist Studies'' № 17, pp. 17–20. *''
The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...
'', 25 April 1975.


External links


Edgar Hardcastle Archive
at the
Marxist Internet Archive Marxists Internet Archive (also known as MIA or Marxists.org) is a non-profit online encyclopedia that hosts a multilingual library (created in 1990) of the works of communist, anarchist, and socialist writers, such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engel ...

Edgar Hardcastle Lecture-Marxist and Monetarist Theories of Inflation Pt1 16 March 1980Edgar Hardcastle Q-A-Marxist and Monetarist Theories of Inflation Pt2 16 March 1980Edgar Hardcastle Lecture-Taxation and the Working Class Pt1 27 April 1980Edgar Hardcastle Q-A-Taxation and the Working Class Pt2 27 April 1980Edgar Hardcastle Lecture-Rent,Interest and Profit Pt1 18 May 1980Edgar Hardcastle Lecture-Rent,Interest and Profit Pt2 18 May 1980Edgar Hardcastle Q-A-Rent,Interest and Profit Pt3 18 May 1980
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hardcastle, Edgar 1899 births 1995 deaths Socialist Party of Great Britain members Alumni of the London School of Economics British conscientious objectors British trade unionists Marxist theorists Marxian economists 20th-century British economists British political party founders