Introduction

It is possible to begin investigating the basic features and indeed the structural dynamics of an economic system characterized by production of goods and services, without the need to formulate from the start a complex analytic framework. There exists a minimal theoretical scheme that allows the representation of almost all the basic characteristics of the structural dynamics of a production economic system.

We must however be prepared to make an abstraction from the inter-industrial complexities of actual economic systems, and consider what may be called a pure labour economy. The aim is to go with ease and spontaneity right down to the roots of the phenomena that cause the structural dynamics of production systems, without letting ourselves get tied up by the straitjacket of an analysis of inter-industry relations in which the technical coefficients cannot but be considered as constants.

At the same time, the analytic expedient of a pure labour economy permits us to frame the entire analysis, right from the start, in vertically integrated terms, so as to prepare the way to a generalization to the normal situation in which the various commodities are produced by means of labour and capital goods.

In this chapter a theoretical scheme will be formulated of a pure labour economy, by considering the flows that occur within a given period of time (i.e. within the unit of time that is taken as the basis).