Re: <nettime> Keynesianism is IN

["Alex Foti" <alex.foti@gmail.com>]

sorry but the first statement is wrong, read the treatise on money. in
fact, keynes was the first to explicitly conceive capitalism as a
monetary production economy. also financial instability was as great
in the 20s and 30s as it is now. It also not true what you say about
the consumer, in fact kalecki (very close to keynes on this, e.g. the
paradox of saving)  posited that workers did not save in his model
linking profits, investment, market power and income distribution
("capitalists get what they spend, workers spend what they get"  in
joan robinson's words). consumer credit has worked as a substitute for
growth in real incomes in maintaining aggregate demand. today credit
is no longer able to support demand at any interest rate. only public
spending either by issuing debt or printing money is gonna take the
economy away from the doldrums of deep recession. of course, one can
have keynesian fiscal stimulus and have authoritarian state structures
and labor markets. the real difference today is that capital movements
are way freeer and faster. but if you say that keynes is not relevant
today, you're mistaken. just supplement it with minsky, another great
keynesian, and you have most of what you need.

ciao, lx

On 11/10/08, Stefan Heidenreich <stefan.heidenreich@rz.hu-berlin.de> wrote:

> maybe we should figure out some differences between what Keynes had in
> mind and what happens today.
>
> - Keynes was not aware of the credit money (or as some say: fiat money),
> that we have today - sticking still to some kind of gold standard. so
> generating further credit - and be it via the state - has become
> something entirely different from what it was in the 30s / 40s.
>
> - Keynes could never have imagined the amount of credit given to
> consumers. He regarded the consumer as someone saving. And he saw credit
> as something given to an investor and to be paid back through the return
> on investment.
>
> - Keynes had the idea that an initial push would be sufficient set the
> whole capitalist machinery of production and consumption again into
> maotion and to avoid the "liquidity trap" of money being just kept lazy.
>
> The huge bubble of finance money stuck in derivtives that we have now,
> he did not think of.
 <...>


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