Re: Marx and Keynes on Unemployment

[Jim Devine <JNDF%LMUACAD.BITNET@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 27 Apr 1995 19:44:16 -0600 Ajit Sinha in Oz said:
>Anyway, let's be clear about one thing, I'm not a religious Marxist and when I
>say that something is there in Marx or something is not there in Marx, it does
>not mean that it is by definition true or false. However, I think Marx is a
>good theoretician and his theory and its internal cohesion should be taken
>seriously. Anything I or you believe is true should not be attributed to Marx.
>That would not be a good scholarship to say the least. History of thought is a
>serious subject and it is sad to know that you get bored by history of thought.
The word "boring" is perhaps inappropriate.
I am not bored by serious history of thought studies. However, I
am bored by endless biblical-style argument, especially if they
threaten to limit one's understanding of the world. (E.g.,
Paul Davidson trashed me because I thought a somewhat off-
neoclassical theory should be relevant to Post Keynesians. He
said it _wasn't in Keynes_ and was therefore theoretically
bad. (BTW, it isn't in Marx either.)  The study of the history
of thought, as far as I can see, is not an end in itself but
a means to getting new insights into the questions I'm trying
to answer.

I take the "internal cohesion" of Marx's theory _very seriously_
and I think that internal cohesion is a good thing for a theory
to have.

However, Marx's theory is _incomplete_ and can be made more
complete by bringing in ideas since his time. For example,
the distinction between saving and investment is very
undeveloped in Marx, was later developed by Keynes and others,
and can be added to Marx without hurting the coherence of
Marx's thought.  (He had a different critique of Say's
law than Keynes did, but that doesn't mean we can't use both.)
More generally, as Simon Clarke argues in his recent book
on Marx's theories of crisis, Marx's macroeconomics was
unfinished. Marx's theory also lacked an explanation of
events such as the Great Depression of the 1930s and
the long boom of the advanced capitalist world after
World War II until 1970 or so.

In the end, even though I find Marx's formulations of
specific aspects of theory convincing a lot of the time
(or even most of the time), I focus on his method as
the central of the Marxian vision of the economy (cf.
Lukacs).

The rest of Ajit's missive is based on poor communication
on our part rather than showing any real differences of
opinion, so I'll not get into it.

sincerely,

Jim Devine
jndf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx or jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ., Los Angeles, CA 90045-2699 USA
310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950