The Relevance of Jim Crotty’s Keynes Against Capitalism to Solving Macro economic Problems under Conditions of Class Conflict

Abstract

Was Keynes trying to save capitalism or create “Liberal Socialism”? Jim Crotty’s unique approach to this long-standing question makes his work an outstanding contribution to heterodox macro policy. Tracing Keynes’s policy positions from World War I to Keynes’s death in 1946, Jim combines rich historical detail with Keynes’s insistence that the realism of assumptions affects the truth content of hypotheses. Jim’s book can serve as a guide to policy positions to sustain full employment through the socialization of investment under conditions of class struggle. Contrary to the position that Keynes denied class conflict, there is no fundamental contradiction between Marx’s assumption of class conflict and Keynes’s policy positions in support of full employment through the socialization of investment. JEL Classification: E6, E11, E12