Alan Freeman wrote: > > This is a request for some scholarly info. > > I'm doing a paper on (among other) Keynes's definition of > 'Classicals' as economists who accept Say's Law. Marx doesn't > fit this definition, which it seems to me Keynes must have known. > > Keynes had advisors including Sraffa (for example) who > must have known the definition was wrong as regards Marx. It is hard > to believe Keynes was generally ignorant of this. But I have > seen no widely-cited or informed proof that he wasn't. > > The question arises: did he suppress this information deliberately? > > Does anyone out there know of any hard information that > Keynes did actually know that Marx rejected Say's Law? Don't know about the fact that Keynes knew THAT specific part of Marx's _oeuvre_ but he knew a lot about Marx. The reason I know this is that when Maurice Dobb was an undergraduate at Cambridge, he was sent to Keynes for supervision. When Keynes asked him what economics he had read, Dobb told him that he'd read the usual institutionalist and heterodox types like J.H. Hobson, but ALSO told Keynes that he'd read MARX. Dobb remarked that Keynes was rather amused that Dobb had read MArx. Fast forward a year or so, when Dobb, still an undergraduate was invited to join the "Keynes Club" which was a club of undergraduate (and graduate?) economics students which used to meet once a month (or bi-weekly) to hear written analyses by students. Dobb said that his contribution was a paper about Marx which (with the 20 20 hindsight of maturity) he (Dobb) assumed was probably not very good. Dobb remembered that the undergraduates were all over him for daring to take Marx seriously, but, "Keynes defended me." Now, of course this doesn't answer Alan's question about whether K. knew about Marx's refutation of Say's Law --- but doesn't Keynes implicitly exempt Marx from his attack on the "classics" by noting that the belief in underconsumption remained in the nether world of economics with Major Barbara and Marx?? Where are you Alan? When are you coming to Amherst?? Cheers, Mike > > Or reasons to conclude that he genuinely did not know > Marx's position? > > Or the basis on which this information is omitted from > the classification in 'General Theory'? > > Thanx for any help > > Alan > -- Mike Meeropol Economics Department Cultures Past and Present Program Western New England College Springfield, Massachusetts "Don't blame us, we voted for George McGovern!" Unrepentent Leftist!! [EMAIL PROTECTED] [if at bitnet node: in%"[EMAIL PROTECTED]" but that's fading fast!]
