This fascinating book is intended to serve as ‘a comprehensive introductory overview of what has come to be called “the Classical-Keynesian approach to economics”’ (vii), by which the author means ‘a synthesis, by way of rational reconstruction, of the approach to production and distribution of the classical political economists from William Petty to Karl Marx – with Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Marx as the key figures – and the approach to aggregate economic activity levels of John Maynard Keynes and Michał Kalecki’ (2). The seven chapters in Part I set out Aspromourgos’ interpretation of the Classical-Keynesian approach (1–74), and the seven chapters in Part II deal with his proposals for an integrated analysis of nature and the human economy (75–171). Aspromourgos states his hope for the book is ‘that it will be intelligible to ‘the uninitiated’: it presupposes only quite basic knowledge of economic concepts and analysis, plus elementary algebra. Perhaps, with some effort, it will be comprehensible also for committed readers who have no prior education in economics’ (vii). Perhaps.

Six chapters of Part I deal successively with circular production and the social surplus (9–14), capitalism and distribution (15–25), economic activity levels (26–48), government and the public sector (49–54), money and finance (55–69) and a global economic system (70–74). Most of the arguments presented in these chapters will be familiar to readers of this journal. As Aspromourgos confirms, the classical approach to the capitalist economy is a somewhat simplified version of the analysis set out in Piero Sraffa’s Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, which can be synthesised with Keynes’ demand-side approach to activity levels so long as the latter is applied to the long period and to economic growth, and not restricted to the short period (20, 26).

Part II begins with an enlightening quotation from Heinz Kurz and Neri Salvadori, for whom ‘[m]uch of the conventional economic analysis is implicitly based on the twin assumptions of the free gifts of nature and the free disposal of wastes. Accordingly, the environment is envisaged as being simultaneously a horn of plenty and a bottomless sink’ (75). Aspromourgos is profoundly critical of these assumptions. There are seven chapters, entitled Acknowledging Nature (77–91), Nature Used: Inputs That Are Not Outputs (92–101), Nature Abused: Outputs That Are Not Inputs (102–122), Nature Renewed: Inputs That Are Outputs (123–133), A Theoretical Summing-Up (134–142), Guidelines For Policy (143–168) and Conclusion: A Lack Of Solidarity (169–171). Many of the arguments set out here are both original and important.

Aspromourgos begins by distinguishing ‘four mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive categories’. The first consists of ‘inputs that are not outputs…unprocessed, nonhuman natural resources’ (77). Then there are ‘outputs that are not inputs…the class of products that are not humanly useful but, rather, either harmful or merely useless’. The third category involves ‘inputs that are outputs … renewable or reproducible natural resources employable as inputs to production (for example, solar energy) or produced for direct consumption (for example, fisheries sustained by marine ecosystems)’ (78). Finally, there is ‘nature for its own sake’, involving ‘a kind of human psychic consumption’, such as the enjoyment of wilderness (78–79). Chapters 9–11 deal with the first three of these categories in some depth.

The policy implications are especially important. For Aspromourgos, ‘policy is an expression of theory combined with ethical norms so that good policy cannot be simply derived from good theory’. It follows that [u]niversally applicable policy conclusions are not available’. He proposes ‘three fundamental objectives of economic policy’: limiting economic inequality and achieving both full employment and environmental sustainability (143). The long and very interesting chapter 13 is devoted to these three questions. The book concludes by stressing the need for ‘overall theoretical coherence’, which is obtained by using the basic classical-Keynesian concept of the circular flow but recognising that it is necessarily incomplete, so that ‘the fundamental problem is that our human economies are not circular enough’ (169). Today’s looming environmental crisis comes from ‘a lack of solidarity … human-to-human in the present and intergenerationally, combined with a lack of respect, empathy and care for nonhuman nature (indeed, considerable human alienation from it)’ (169–170; original stress).

This is a very well-written and well-argued book on the most significant set of topics that are now faced by humanity. Whether non-economists will be able to cope with the analysis, which relies on no fewer than 94 equations, is (sadly) another question.