Bob Solow on the post keynesians

["RICHARD P.F. HOLT" <holtri@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In Harry Landreth's and David Colander's book _History_of_Economic_Theory_
they quote Bob Solow views about American post keynesians:

"I am very very unsympathetic to the school that calls itself post-Keynesian.
First of all, I have never been able to understand it as a school of thought.
I don't see an intellectual connection between Hyman Minsky, on the one hand,
who happens to be one of the oldest friends I have, and someone like Alfred
Eichner, on the other, except that they are all against the same thing,
namely the mainstream, whatever that is.
The other reason why I am not sympathetic is that I have never been able to
piece together ( I must confess that I have never tried very hard) a positive
doctrine. It seems to be mostly a community which knows what it is against
but doesn't offer anything very systematic that could be described as a positivetheory. I have read many of Paul Davidson's articles and they often do not
make sense to me. Some of Post Keynesian price theory comes forth from the
belief that universal competition is a bad assumption. I have all my
life know that. So I have found it an unrewarding approach and have not
paid much attention to it." p. 402 Landreth and Colander quote this from
Arjo Klamer, _Conversations_with_Economists_(Totowa, N.J.:Rowman and
Allanheld, 1984) pp. 137-138.

Well, Solow has definitely thrown down the gauntlet here. But he does raise
some important issues which post keynesians need to deal with. Have post
keynesians come up with a clear coherent positive theory that provides
an alternative to neoclassical thought? This is an issue we need to discuss.
Also maybe one of these years we can do a mini-conference at the Eastern
meeting on this topic. Also the literature does make this distinction
between British Post Keynesians and American Post-Keynesians. Usually
referring to the Brits as neo-Ricardians (maybe Philip Arestis  can say
something about this). Is this a fair distinction? And if there is a
distinction what are the issues?
-Ric Holt