Monday, June 08, 2015

Two passages aboput Keynes from James Crotty's 1986 article

Marx, Keynes, and Minsky on the instability of the capitalist growth process and the nature of government economic policy

Keynes in 1933 “The decadent international but individualistic capitalism, in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war, is not a success. It is not intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous-and it doesn’t deliver the goods. In short, we dislike it and are beginning to despise it” 

"Keynes himself was quite class conscious and knew the class to which he owed allegiance. “I can be influenced by what seems to me to be justice and good sense,” he once argued, “but the class war will find me on the side of the educated bourgeoisie.” It was this fear of a radical working-class political movement that explains his interest in “semiautonomy” for the public authorities that were to direct investment and control capital flows in his new SSA. They were to operate under the guidance of an elite corps of upper-class intellectuals (such as himself) and were to be insulated to a significant degree from oversight by elected officials."

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