by Important for MMT aficionado's. I was asked during an interview the other day from Paris whether I was a Post Keynesian. I replied not at all and explained that I have never felt that my ideas fit into that category although in a facile sense we are all post keynesian in a temporal sense. Most progressive economists would answer yes if confronted with that question, even most of the economists involved in advancing Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). My point of departure is that while there was a lot of important analytical material in Keynes’ writing that is worth preserving and integrating into, say, MMT, where Keynes went astray was his antipathy to the insights provided by Karl Marx. In particular, I consider that Keynes seriously misunderstood what the dynamics of the class conflict were
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Important for MMT aficionado's.
I was asked during an interview the other day from Paris whether I was a Post Keynesian. I replied not at all and explained that I have never felt that my ideas fit into that category although in a facile sense we are all post keynesian in a temporal sense. Most progressive economists would answer yes if confronted with that question, even most of the economists involved in advancing Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). My point of departure is that while there was a lot of important analytical material in Keynes’ writing that is worth preserving and integrating into, say, MMT, where Keynes went astray was his antipathy to the insights provided by Karl Marx. In particular, I consider that Keynes seriously misunderstood what the dynamics of the class conflict were within a capitalist mode of production. Keynes made major errors in his predictions that one can directly attribute to this blinkered approach to capitalism. I was reminded of this when I read an Op Ed in the Japan Times this week (March 10, 2024) – The economic future of our overworked grandchildren. This blinkered approach, which has fed into the modern Post Keynesian literature – which examines capitalism as if it is an ahistorical, neutral system of production and distribution – is a major reason that I do not associate my work with that school of thought.
Failing to note the economic importance of class and class conflict is a foundational error.
"Class struggle" is foundational for Marx. Keynes knew this, of course. R. H. Tawney's Religion and the Rise of Capitalism was published in 1926. Keynes would have been aware of Weber and Tawney as well as Marx, all of whom viewed economic systems as historically determined socio-economic artifacts rather than natural systems. Keynes acknowledge this in calling economics a "moral science," which was also Adam Smith's view. The big three — Smith, Marx, and Keynes — were on the same page here.
Class is something that Keynes could not have missed being a member of the British upper class in a highly class-ridden society. Not only that the rise of Marxism in Russia and it's challenge to the West by socialists and communists in in the West had a particular salience at the time that Keynes was writing.
Did he miss the importance of class conflict to economics, or was he intentionally countering Marx in the West as the time that socialism was rising as an option to capitalism ("bourgeois liberalism").
In other words, was Keynes at apologist for capitalism that tried to put a better face on a fundamentally flawed socio-economic system by tweaking it.
Where Keynes came down on this is still debated, and there is wide disagreement about what role Keynes played and how he actually viewed it himself.
On the other hand, Keynes also was working in what he terms the "classical" paradigm prevalent at the time, which is now called "neoclassical." As Bill says, Keynes's "blinkered approach ... examines capitalism as if it is an ahistorical, neutral system of production and distribution."
Keynes seems to have had a foot in two boats. Bill claims that this results in major issues.
How does Bill's position affect MMT, as he admits that he difference from some other MMT economists on such issues.
William Mitchell — Modern Monetary TheoryKeynes was wrong because he failed to consider class conflict
Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia