Re: Depoliticisisng economics

[Ted Winslow <egwinslow@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Julio Huato wrote:

> Based on Keynes' own statements, he aimed to "reforming" capitalism --
> "managing" it in order to protect it from itself and its enemies.
> Early on, he said that "wisely managed capitalism" was economically
> superior to any other conceivable system.  As far as I know, he
> maintained this conviction until the end of his life.

He claimed a reformed capitalism was the most "efficient" way to  
solve the "economic problem", but "in the long run" it was to be  
transcended.

In "The End of Laissez Faire", he claims the “essential  
characteristic of capitalism” is “the dependence upon an intense  
appeal to the money-making and money-loving instincts of individuals  
as the main motive force of the economic machine.”  (IX 293)  In  
“Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren” he describes the money- 
loving aspect of this “main motive force” – “the love of money as a  
possession” - as “a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi- 
criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a  
shudder to the specialists in mental disease.”  (IX 329)  In the same  
context, he associates the money-making and accumulating aspect –  
capitalist “purposiveness” - with a psychopathological denial of  
mortality. (IX 329-30)

As in Marx, these irrational "passions" are treated as instrumental  
to the creation of the future possibility of transcending  
"capitalism" defined as a system dominated by these irrational "money  
motives".  Within a reformed capitalism, they will serve to solve  
"the economic problem".  Once this problem is solved, however,  
capitalism is to be transcended.

"do not let us overestimate the importance of the economic problem,  
or sacrifice to its supposed necessities other matters of greater and  
more permanent significance.  It should be a matter for specialists -  
like dentistry.  If economists could manage to get themselves thought  
of as a humble, competent people, on a level with dentists, that  
would be splendid!"[i] (IX 332)

With the “economic problem” solved, we will be free

“to return to some of the most sure and certain principles of  
religion and traditional virtue - that avarice is a vice, that the  
exaction of usury is a misdemeanour, and the love of money is  
detestable, that those walk most truly in the paths of virtue and  
sane wisdom who take least thought for the morrow.  We shall once  
more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful.  We  
shall honour those who can teach us how to pluck the hour and day  
virtuously and well, the delightful people who are capable to taking  
direct enjoyment in things, the lilies of the field who toil not,  
neither do they spin."  (IX 330-1)

This elaborates what is meant by his claim that "the republic of my  
imagination lies on the extreme left of celestial space." (IX 309)

He claimed we could begin making this transition to the "ideal social  
republic of the future" (XXI 241) in about 100 years.

“But beware! The time for all this is not yet. For at least another  
hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair  
is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice  
and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.  
For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity  
into daylight.”[ii]  (IX 331)

Ted