An Irreversible Economic Approach to the Theory of Production

The general equilibrium theory — the most elaborated form of the value theory — is unable to integrate firms unless under the etiquette of 'techniques'. However, to study important economic questions, as for example growth, without firms is at most doubtful. As an alternative to the attempts aiming to rehabilitate firms (as for example Coase and the theory of organization) we propose to adopt a new approach which not only treats firms as real decision makers, i.e. they make irreversible economic decisions, but describes them from a dynamic point of view, i.e. an Onsagerian type of dynamics is developed. The main charateristics of this approach are the no-loss choice rule vis-à-vis the profit maximization, and the integration of quantity signals (and past experience) vis-à-vis the unique price signals. As a result, we are capable of separating three questions which are generally not distinguished in neoclassical economics, namely the evaluation (profitability), the choice of production level and that of trade. Hence, even in the linear technology and price taker case we have a meaningful answer as, for instance, the level of output.