It is Gesell, not Marx ,that is embodied in the GENERAL THEORY

[pdavidso <pdavidso@xxxxxxx>]

>===== Original Message From "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." <rosserjb@xxxxxxx> =====
>Paul,
>      Yes, Keynes did recognize Marx's priority
>on that point and in a few other places as well.
>But a substantially larger part of his GT framework
>can be found in Volume III of Capital.  Of course
>this was part of the whole issue between him and
>Kalecki, with Kalecki's version very explicitly drawing
>on Marx whereas Keynes did so much more indirectly.
>      It is actually unclear to me to what extent Keynes
>was really aware of the extent to which his framework
>in the GT did resemble what could be in Marx.


IT SHOULD BE VERY OBVIOUS. In the PREFACE to the GT Keynes indicates that this
volume is "chiefly addressed to my fellow economists" -- who were "classical"
in orientation not Marxian.  Hence he is not talking to Marxians.

But more importantly in his discussion of Gesell Keynes wrote [ p. 355 of the
GT} "I believe the future will learn more from the spirit of Gesell than from
that of Marx."  Since Gesell was a German whose "purpose ...[was] the
establishment of an anti-Marxian socialism " [GT, p. 355] it is no wonder that
Keynes uses Gesell rather than Marx -- AND RIGHTLY SO. For it is Gesell that
points out that the rate of interest is primarily a monetary phenomenon, etc.
rguments that are basic to chapter 17 of the GT entitled
"ENSSENTIAL PROPERTIES of interest and money".  For it from Gesell and not
Marx that Keynes derives the essential properties of money that makes
LIQUIDITY preference the essence of the GT!!


paul


 I have
>the impression that he really did not spend a lot of time
>reading Marx as he did not fundamentally think much of him.
>So, I think it is probably more a matter of unconscious
>parallelism rather than stealing Marx's ideas without
>proper attribution.  Clearly he was not completely ignorant
>of Marx, but there are a lot of people who have read some
>Marx but don't get around to digging through Vol. III of Capital.
>Barkley Rosser
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Paul Davidson" <pdavidson@xxxxxxx>
>To: "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>
>Cc: <pkt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Sent: Saturday, April 20, 2002 9:24 AM
>Subject: Re: Globalization and its Discontents
>
>
>> At 04:10 PM 4/19/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>> >      With regard to _The Commanding Heights_, I
>> >   But the idea that his [Keynes's] views resembled
>> >those of either Marx or Lenin are fairly ridiculous in general,
>> >although much of his analytical framework can be found in
>> >Marx, not a point recognized openly by Keynes himself.
>>
>> Not true at all! In his lectures leading up to the GT, Keynes specifically
>> indicated that in the entrepreneurial system, the only function of the
>> enterprise is to end up with more money than it started the production
>> process with . Keynes then specifically indicated this was equivalent to
>> the Marx 's
>>   M-C-M' claim.
>>
>> \
>>
>> >And,
>> >given the strong evidence that the spread of Keynesian policies
>> >of various sorts has played a major role in stabilizing somewhat
>> >macroeconomies in the post WW II era, the general thesis
>> >of the series (and the book) that "Keynes was wrong and
>> >Hayek and Friedman are right" is way overdone.
>>
>>
>>
>> And like most of Barkley's writings this is an understatement ---)!
>>
>> Paul
>>
>>

Paul Davidson
Editor, Journal of Post Keynesian Economics
University of Tennessee
SMC 523
Knoxville, Tennessee 37996-0550
phone # (865)974-4221; fax #(561)737-8262;
email pdavidson@xxxxxxx
http://econ.bus.utk.edu/davidsonextra/Davidson.html