Marx, Keynes and
the economics of the 99%
John Weeks
Professor Emeritus
SOAS, University of London
http://jweeks.org
Forthcoming book
(October 2013)
Economics of the 1%:
How mainstream economics
serves the rich, obscures
reality and distorts policy
Anthem Press
www.anthempress.com
(£13.95/US$ 18.95)
For the technical version of today's presentation, see
John Weeks, The Irreconcilable Inconsistencies of
Neoclassical Economics: false paradigm
(Routledge 2012)
and
"Effectiveness of Monetary Policy Reconsidered,"
Review of Political Economy (Issue 1, 2013)
Lionel Robbins specifies the problem:
Economics is the science which studies human
behaviour as a relationship between given ends
and scarce means which have alternative uses.
(Robbins, An Essay on the Nature and Significance of
Economic Science (London: Macmillan 1932), p16)
J M Keynes specifies the problem
When I began to write my Treatise on Money I
was still moving along the traditional lines…I
had made some progress towards pushing
monetary theory back to becoming a theory of
output as a whole. But my lack of
emancipation from preconceived ideas showed
itself in what now seems to me to be the
outstanding fault of the theoretical parts of that
work, that I failed to deal thoroughly with the
effects of changes in the level of output.
(Keynes, The General Theory, 1936, vi-vii, emphasis added)
What is the difference
& why does it matter?
(It is for real, go to www.astrology.org.uk)
versus
(also for real,www.alchemystudy.com)
Versus
Economics
Versus
"Neoclassical economics"
[aka Fakeconomics]
What is economics?
I propose:
The study of the mobilization of
resources to achieve full employment and
maximum feasible output, in order to
increase the general welfare.