Socialdem. 21st Century

Here Skidelsky gives lecture 4 of a series at the University of Warwick on economics. This lecture concerns banks and banking reform.[embedded content]

In Friedrich Engels’ Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science (1894; first published in 1878), he describes the “law of value” in two passages: “The feudal middle ages also developed in its womb the class which was destined in the future course of its evolution to be the standard-bearer of the modern demand for equality: the bourgeoisie. Itself in its origin one of the ‘estates’ of the feudal order, the bourgeoisie developed the predominantly handicraft industry and the exchange of...

A piece of history, even if, of course, dated.Gunnar Myrdal (1898–1987) gave this lecture at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1966 about the US, Europe, and international development in the Third World.Gunnar Myrdal was a much underrated economist, and so much so that G. L. S. Shackle – whether rightly or wrongly – judged that “had the General Theory never been written, Myrdal’s work [sc. Monetary Equilibrium 1931] … would eventually have supplied almost the same theory”...

Here Skidelsky gives lecture 3 of a series at the University of Warwick on economics. This lecture concerns fiscal policy.[embedded content]

It seems that a large number of the migrants who came into Europe in 2015 are mere economic migrants, not genuine refugees, as is becoming painfully clear from recent news: (1) Even left-wing and social democratic Sweden has discovered that it may have to deport as many as 80,000 of the migrants who came into Sweden in 2015 (see here and here). Why? Because they are not genuine refugees. The figure of 80,000 would be 49% – nearly half – of the 163,000 who arrived in 2015. Some migrants who...

This is a major error of neoclassical theory, and the mistaken view some people still attribute to Keynes: that wage and price flexibility in theory is still a reliable and effective mechanism for reaching full employment, even if the real world has wage and price rigidities. In fact, Keynes rejected that view.Curiously, even some Institutionalist economists have failed to understand it. For example, even Gardiner C. Means – the American Institutionalist who developed administered price...

The most promising Democratic candidate in … as long as I can remember. Forget corporate shills like the Clintons: Bill Clinton’s economic record was just neoliberal poison (see also here). Why would Hillary be any better?Sure, you can make criticisms of Bernie, but there is nobody else as good as him.[embedded content]One point: he should go big on fiscal policy first and make the economy boom before reforming the tax system. Leave tax system reform until after unemployment has fallen to low...

Here Skidelsky gives lecture 2 of a series at the University of Warwick on economics. This lecture is a discussion of central banks and monetary policy, especially before the crisis of 2008.[embedded content]

Another lecture by Engelbert Stockhammer on the basics of Post Keynesian economics.[embedded content]

It is not difficult to identity them: (1) the use of a proto-effective demand theory by Marx;(2) endogenous money theory;(3) Marx’s rejection of Say’s law;(4) the notion of a monetary production economy (also developed as a theory by Keynes); and(5) a conflict theory of the distribution of income, and the recognition that workers and capitalists have unequal power. However, the trouble is that none of these insights prove that Marx’s overall theory was right: far from it.There are many...