Edgar Richard "Hardy" Hardcastle (1899 – June 1995) was a theoretician of

Marxist economics Marxian economics, or the Marxian school of economics, is a Heterodox economics, heterodox school of political economic thought. Its foundations can be traced back to Karl Marx, Karl Marx's Critique of political economy#Marx's critique of politi ...

. The son of a founder member of the

Socialist Party of Great Britain The Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) is a small 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 ...

, Hardcastle went to prison as a

socialist Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...

conscientious objector A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of conscience or religion. The term has also been extended to objecting to working for the military–indu ...

in the

First World War World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

, formally joining his father's party in 1922. After studying at the

London School of Economics The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), established in 1895, is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the University of London. The school specialises in the social sciences. Founded ...

under Professor Edwin Cannan, he worked all his life as a researcher in the

trade union A trade union (British English) or labor union (American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers whose purpose is to maintain or improve the conditions of their employment, such as attaining better wages ...

movement, first for the National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers, then for a short while for the international trade union movement in

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, 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 theories of money: it provides a framework for analyzing money and considers its functions (as medium of exchange, store of value, and unit of account), and it considers how m ...

. 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 a ...

'' 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 and philosopher whose ideas fundamentally changed the theory and practice of macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. Originall ...

on behalf of

Marx Karl Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. He is best-known for the 1848 pamphlet '' The Communist Manifesto'' (written with Friedrich Engels) ...

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 average price of goods and services in terms of money. This increase is measured using a price index, typically a consumer price index (CPI). When the general price level rises, each unit of curre ...

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 ma ...

. 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 Keith Sinjohn Joseph, Baron Joseph, (17 January 1918 – 10 December 1994), known as Sir Keith Joseph, 2nd Baronet, for most of his political life, was a British politician. A member of the Conservative Party, he served as a minister under f ...

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 ''

'' *"Edgar Richard Hardcastle ("Hardy"): Obituary". '' Socialist Studies'' № 17, pp. 17–20. *''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

'', 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 Eng ...

Edgar Hardcastle Lecture-Marxist and Monetarist Theories of Inflation Pt1 16 March 1980

Edgar Hardcastle Q-A-Marxist and Monetarist Theories of Inflation Pt2 16 March 1980

Edgar Hardcastle Lecture-Taxation and the Working Class Pt1 27 April 1980

Edgar Hardcastle Q-A-Taxation and the Working Class Pt2 27 April 1980

Edgar Hardcastle Lecture-Rent, Interest and Profit Pt1 18 May 1980

Edgar Hardcastle Lecture-Rent, Interest and Profit Pt2 18 May 1980

Edgar 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