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At 14:15 +0100 12-04-2000, Gerald Levy wrote:
>Riccardo asked in [OPE-L:2822]:
>
>
>> May I open a partiall different stream? May I ask to Fred and Martha, but
>> also to others, what a Marxist may learn from Keynes?
>
>Hard question to answer. Now had you asked what a Marxist could learn from
>Kalecki and/or Post-Keynesians, then it would be easier for me at least to
>offer an opinion.
>
>Perhaps the best that we can learn from Keynes is that a large part of his
>critique of "the classics" has validity. And perhaps also, given the
>supply-orientated perspectives of many Marxists, we need to re-discover
>what Marx already was aware of: i.e. the need to reject Say's Law and the
>importance of aggregate demand in the reproduction process. Thus, perhaps
>the legacy of Keynes suggests that Marxists need to re-discover and
>re-access Volume 2 of _Capital_.
>
>In solidarity, Jerry
Jerry,
your answer is what I expected from a true Marxist. In Keynes there was
nothing really new. The truth is in the Book.
If only we would have been careful enough to read the Master ...
BTW, I still think that this view implies their is no political economy
after Ricardo.
I you would disentangle Keynes's criticism (rather than critique) of the
Classics, frankly I don't know. Here Keynes made what also Schumpeter did,
also Boehm-Bawerk did, also Marx did. They all read (and offered criticisms
and critique) the predecessors implicitly starting from, and comparing them
to, their *positive* view of economics. Hence, if what is good in Keynes
was already in Marx, then the criticism of the Classics was already there
(though implicitly) in Marx.
riccardo
P.S.: I guess there is something worthwhile in, at least: (i) the category
of 'finance'; (ii) the notion of 'liquidity preference'; (iii) autonomous
investment; (iv) the priority of investment over saving; (v) the consequent
notion of effective demand. I would have said that we need to re-read Marx
after Keynes (at the same time offering a Marxian critique - not criticism!
- of Keynes).
P.P.S.: in a private exchange with my friend Joseph Halevi I had to fight
because, accoring to his opinion, Marx's first book is Ricardian.
Ridicolous, of course, as I said to him. But is it too ridicolous if one
look at the places where Marx seems to imply a priority of saving over
investment?
Riccardo Bellofiore
Office: Department of Economics
Piazza Rosate, 2
I-24129 Bergamo, Italy
Home: Via Massena, 51
I-10128 Torino, Italy
e-mail bellofio@cisi.unito.it, bellofio@unibg.it
tel: +39 035 277545 (direct)
+39 035 277501 (dept. secr.)
+39 011 5819619 (home)
fax: +39 035 249975
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