John Maynard Keynes and Economics: Kevin Hoover

Four talks on John Maynard Keynes in relation to the Bloomsbury Group: I. Maynard Keynes of Bloomsbury (Craufurd Goodwin); II. Keynes as Policy Advisor (E. Roy Weintraub); III. Keynes and Economics (Kevin D. Hoover); IV. Keynes and Hayek (Bruce Caldwell). The talks were delivered as part of roundtable discussion on John Maynard Keynes of Bloomsbury, the inaugural event of the Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke University, and were held in conjunction with Vision and Design: A Year of Bloomsbury, a campus-wide interdisciplinary program surrounding an exhibition of Bloomsbury art at Duke University's Nasher Museum. SSRN users can download this paper at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1348679

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Education

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• Economics
• Bloomsbury
• History
• Hoover

[mujaku]

I seriously doubt that Keynes' detractors have actually read Keynes. The matter is a bit like literary criticism, if you avoid citing the actual words in the author's text, then your criticism ain't shit. It is most likely a straw man attack.

[zsylvana]

@Questfortruth Yes right!Knut Wicksell's theory of cumulative process of inflation remains the first stung at the idea of money as a veil in opposition to I.Fisher's Quantity Theory.Wicksell noted,there was nothing inherent in the Neoclassical theories of value and output which implied any of this could make sense.He saw that Say's Law,which prevents aggregate demand for goods and factors from real aggregate supply under all circumstances,implied that Quantity Theory mechanism was contradictory

[Questfortruth86]

Keynes' confusions have only been magnified by his students and the abomination which was spawned after his death, that is, the New Keynesian synthesis. Operating under the confusions of the Ricardian paradigm, Keynes attempted to incorporate the continental, Austrian framework (Wicksell's work), which employs different assumptions, asks different questions, and is extremely nuanced in nature. But Keynes is not to blame; if anything, he was a step in the right direction for Anglo-economics.

[zsylvana]

1)Excellent video.If plain freemarket had worked there would never been a need for such critics as Keynes and Marx.Although both Marx and Keynes, then, though for different reason, recognize the capitalist dilemma in a declining rate of capital accumulation. Keynes diagnoses its cause as a lack of incentive to invest. Marx, looking behind the lack of incentive, finds the reason for it in the social character of production as a production of capital.

[zsylvana]

2)Keynes does not regard crisis and depression as necessary aspects of capital formation; they are uch only under laissez-faire conditions, and then only in the sense that the economic equilibrium does not include full employment. For Marx, however, a continuous capital accumulation presupposes periods of crises and depression, for the crisis is the only equilibrium mechanism which operates in capitalism with regard to its development.

[zsylvana]

3)Keynes criticism of the neo-classical theory through its criticism of classical theory. In its essentials, then, Keynes revolution consists in a partial re-statement of some of Marxs arguments against the capitalist economy and its theory. Keynes did not study Marx, and he did not feel the need for doing so because he identified Marxs theories with those of the classicists. By opposing the classical theory Keynes thought he was opposing.

[zsylvana]

4)Marx as well, in reality, however, he dealt with neither of these theories but with the neo-classical market theory which had no longer any significant connection with the ideas of Smith and Ricardo. Marxs critique of classical economy, however, resembles Keynes criticism of the neo-classicists, although it cuts deeper than Keynes because the classicists had been profounder thinkers than their apologetic emulators, and because Marx was not a bourgeois reformer.

[rkrueger202]

Fascinating perspective on the relevancy of Keynes' economics to today's crisis. And now when my wife asks me why I went out and bought that "big-ass flat screen TV" I can blame Keynes' animal spirits. :-)