“Benanav’s piece does not articulate anything that particularly distinguishes his (or Brenner’s) analysis from orthodox economics in terms of economic analysis”
“Benanav’s reliance on mainstream economists makes him uncomfortable”
“The Keynesian specter has haunted Marxism for almost a century now, and punching at such ghosts is a tried-and-true method for showing your radical bona fides”
“In any case, in the 1950s and into the ’60s, these breezy dismissive comments about Keynesianism made some sense. There was something concrete that was identifiable as “Keynesianism” that had great influence among both economists and the wider society”
“Economists — including the most influential ones — were never slavish devotees to even the caricature of Keynes taught in the textbooks. The “Keynesian Revolution” did not conquer the United States; at best it conquered the Boston area (for a limited time)”
“As historian Tim Barker has written about, there was cross-pollination between those fascinated by Keynes and those engrossed in Marx from nearly the beginning. Some were even fascinated by and engrossed in both”
“the legendary Joan Robinson became inspired by the arrival at Cambridge of an eccentric Polish Marxist economist who seemed to anticipate the core features of Keynes’s framework. Michal Kalecki, who would eventually return to Soviet Poland to attempt to influence economic planning there, provided a key intersection between Capital and the General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money”
“Robinson famously referred to the formulation of Keynesianism promoted by the top of the American economics profession as “Bastard Keynesianism.””
“the Left is long overdue for a higher-quality conversation about “Keynesianism.” The context provided here has mostly been absent from general-reader left-wing magazines”