Paul Sweezy discussed Keynes, Keynesianism and Joan Robinson here. https://mronline.org/2010/06/11/about-keynes-and-keynesians/ ( https://mronline.org/2010/06/11/about-keynes-and-keynesians/ )
As Sweezy pointed out: " But that doesn’t mean that, as economic logic, Keynesian ideas weren’t miles ahead of anything else available at the time. It wasn’t really that they were put into effect as ideas by the New Deal or by anybody else. As a matter of fact, paradoxically, many of the policies of Nazi Germany were very much in line with Keynesian recommendations for overcoming a depression, and the German depression in general was overcome. Hitler’s Germany came out of the depression long before the United States did, and that was because they spent a lot of money, deficit financing, controlled investment, on a war program. As a matter of fact, the Great Depression never was over in the United States until the war. The New Deal did not act on Keynesian policies at all. " FDR actually once had a meeting with Keynes. That turned out to not be a very productive meeting since the president had no idea what the economist was talking about. As both Sweezy and Magdoff pointed out Keynes's ideas had little influence on the New Deal. And Keynes himself noted the similarities between the Nazi economic policies of the 1930's and what he was advocating for dealing with the Great Depression. In a preface that he wrote for the 1936 German edition of his *General Theory* he wrote: "The theory of aggregated production, which is the point of the following book, nevertheless can be much easier adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state [eines totalen Staates] than the theory of production and distribution of a given production put forth under conditions of free competition and a large degree of laissez-faire. This is one of the reasons that justifies the fact that I call my theory a general theory. Since it is based on fewer hypotheses than the orthodox theory, it can accommodate itself all the easier to a wider field of varying conditions. Although I have, after all, worked it out with a view to the conditions prevailing in the Anglo-Saxon countries where a large degree of laissez-faire still prevails, nevertheless it remains applicable to situations in which state management is more pronounced. For the theory of psychological laws which bring consumption and saving into relationship with each other, the influence of loan expenditures on prices, and real wages, the role played by the rate of interest - all these basic ideas also remain under such conditions necessary parts of our plan of thought." https://web.archive.org/web/20050215230651/http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/foregt.html ( https://web.archive.org/web/20050215230651/http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/foregt.html ) As Sweezy noted, the politics of Keynesian economists ranged all across the political spectrum. There were some. like Joan Robinson, who were on the far left. In fact during the late 1960's, Robinson became a kind of Maoist and she was a noted enthusiast for the Cultural Revolution in China. That, plus old fashion misogyny, are probably what cost her the Nobel Prize in economics. On the other hand, there were also right-wing business Keynesians too. Some of Nixon's economic advisers like Arthur Burns and Herbert Stein fell into that category. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#5799): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/5799 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/80077757/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
