Socialdem. 21st Century

Books on Post Keynesian economics and Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) appear every year, but over the past 9 years or so – especially after the financial crisis of 2008 – there seems to have been an embarrassment of riches in that many very good introductory and advanced books have appeared.I update below my earlier list of these recent books: Introductory Studies Davidson, Paul. 2009. The Keynes Solution: The Path to Global Economic Prosperity (1st edn). Palgrave Macmillan, New York and...

John E. King has a new book called Advanced Introduction to Post Keynesian Economics (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 2015). Publisher details and the contents can be seen here. In particular, Chapter 8 is a discussion of the global financial crises of 2008 as interpreted in Post Keynesian theory.This looks like an excellent new book, and along with Marc Lavoie’s Post-Keynesian Economics: New Foundations (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 2014) will be a foundational work for the advanced treatment of Post...

David Harvey is a Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.Class 5 of his video series on Reading Marx’s Capital, Volume 1 is below. This video deals with Chapters 7, 8 and 9 of volume 1 of Capital.[embedded content]Although I have not yet done Chapter 9, my own critical analysis of chapters 7 and 8 in Capital is here: “Marx’s Capital, Volume 1, Chapter 7: A Critical Summary,” July 31, 2015.“Marx’s Capital, Volume 1, Chapter 8: A...

An interesting passage from Wilhelm Liebknecht’s book Karl Marx: Biographical Memoirs (1901) about Marx’s predictions: “ … whoever prophesies revolutions is always mistaken in the date.Well, though Marx was a prophet looking into the future with sharp eyes and perceiving much more than ordinary human beings, he never was a prophesier, and when Messieurs Kinkel, Ledru Rollin and other revolution-makers announced in every appeal to their folks in partibus the typical, ‘To-morrow it will...

This is a discussion by Steve Keen of mathematics in economics and the abuse of mathematics in neoclassical theory. More discussion of the issue here and here.[embedded content]

This is for pure amusement and from Wilhelm Liebknecht’s fascinating book Karl Marx: Biographical Memoirs (1901).The context is that Marx and various friends were drunk and out on the town in London in the 1850s: “One evening Edgar Bauer, acquainted with Marx from their Berlin time and then not yet his personal enemy in spite of the ‘Holy Family,’ had come to town from his hermitage in Highgate for the purpose of ‘making a beer trip.’ The problem was to ‘take something’ in every saloon...

Bill Mitchell speaks here on MMT as part of reframing the progressive agenda, presented in London on August 27, 2015.[embedded content][embedded content]

In the links below I update my series of posts debunking Marxist economics and ideology, to complement my series on Debunking Austrian economics 101.As in the series on Austrian economics, not all posts actually debunk Marxism, but sometimes provide outlines or summaries of Marxist theory or interesting points on Marxism or Karl Marx’s life and thought. There are also some points where constructive things can be said: on endogenous money, the falsity of Say’s law and the monetary theory of...

This is a talk Steve Keen recently gave at Cartanega University in Colombia on the flaws of equilibrium modelling in neoclassical economics.[embedded content]

It is a crucial point: Austrians complain about asset bubbles, but their Austrian business cycle theory (ABCT) or economic theory in general does not focus on stock market speculation or asset bubbles as a fundamental and inherent means by which an economy is destabilised.For example, in the ABCT it is real and unsustainable higher-order capital investment that is supposed to wreck the economy, not debt-financed asset speculation.The Austrians today are falsely claiming that they have some...