Keynes and Marx on unemployment

[sardoni@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Claudio Sardoni)]

For Marx (and Classical Political Economy) there can be
unemployment because the rate of growth of population (or labor
force) can be higher than the rate of growth of the economy.
Keynes was not concerned with this type of unemployment.
This being said, for me it is completely wrong to argue that
for Marx the existence of unemployment is independent of the
capitalist economy being a monetary economy. Capitalism, for
Marx, can exist only as a monetary economy. Capitalist
accumulation gives rise to unemployment because capitalists,
thanks to the existence of money, are not forced to invest all
that they save. In any case, unemployment derives from the fact
that capitalists prefer to keep money idle rather than to
invest it in means of production and labor force. Capitalists,
of course, keep money idle whenever they expect 'insufficient'
profits because of 'excessive' wages or because of insufficient
demand.
If there is an analytical relationship between Marx and Keynes,
it is in their refutation of Say's Law. Refutation which, in
both cases, depends on their notions of money and of monetary
economy, which are different from the classical and the
neo-classical notions respectively.
Claudio Sardoni
Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche
telephone +39-6-44284 231 fax +39-6-4404 572