Bastard Keynesians Research Articles

On Joan Robinson’s Completely Successful Indoctrination of John Kenneth Galbraith: Turning a Potential Keynesian Into an Actual Robinsonian

Joan Robinson took an anti scientific approach to methodology and philosophy of science. Her belief was that Keynes’s models (which she misrepresented as being R. Kahn’s models) were TRUE models while the Classical and Neoclassical models were FALSE models. This showed up again in the early 1950’s in the useless and sterile controversy about the neoclassical aggregate production function model. Joan Robinson believed that this was a FALSE model. Apparently ,her opponents believed it was a TRUE model. The only relevant question ,from a scientific point of view, is the question “Is this model useful or not in helping to explain the phenomenon under investigation? ”Asking this question would have put an end to this so called “debate” before it surfaced and ended up being published in economics journals. Of course, Keynes NEVER believed that models are either true or false. Models are useful, but they are, at best, only approximations to reality. Therefore, a model can’t be true or false; it can be better or worse than other models or an improved, better version of an existing model. The goal in economic science is to continually come up with useful models that were better than previous models or improved versions of older models, so that more of reality could be more accurately explained. Joan Robinson did not teach economics to students. Joan Robinson’s goal was to indoctrinate students in her own unique, deviate, peculiar version of Bastard Keynesianism. Her goal would be to create brainwashed students who would aid in the promotion of the agenda of the Pseudo Keynesians. The Pseudo Keynesians were composed of her lover, Richard Kahn, her husband, Austin Robinson, and their ally, Roy Harrod, who was intensely jealous and envious of Keynes’s exalted position as the greatest living economist on the planet Earth. In 1937, John Kenneth Galbraith came to Cambridge, England to study under J M Keynes. Unfortunately, indeed most unfortunately, Keynes’s massive May,1937 heart attack made that impossible. Instead, John Kenneth Galbraith was personally instructed by Joan Robinson. What she taught John Kenneth Galbraith, however, was her bastard Keynesianism (Robinsonianism). The results were a striking success for Joan Robinson. An examination of Galbraith’s comments on Keynes and the General Theory in Money (1975) demonstrate that Galbraith accepted all of the myths that Joan Robinson “taught” him and passed those myths on to many others in his books and publications.

‘The Provocative Joan Robinson’ Was Completely Ignorant of Keynes ’S Chapter 21 Is-Lm Model on Pp. 298–299 of the General Theory Even Though She Supposedly Read the Final 1935 Draft of the General Theory: The Exchanges of September to November, 1936 Between Keynes and Robinson Show Her Complete Ignorance

‘The Provocative Joan Robinson’ Was Completely Ignorant of Keynes ’S Chapter 21 Is-Lm Model on Pp. 298–299 of the General Theory Even Though She Supposedly Read the Final 1935 Draft of the General Theory: The Exchanges of September to November, 1936 Between Keynes and Robinson Show Her Complete Ignorance

J M Keynes’s Is-Lm Model in Chapter 21 in Part IV of the General Theory on Pages 298–299: Some Examples of Cognitive Dissonance Among Economists Attempting to Deal With Keynes’s Innovation in 1936 in 2018–2019

No macroeconomist in the 20th or 21st century has been able to deal effectively with Keynes’s original work done on his IS-LM model that he carried out between December ,1933 and February ,1936,where the final version appeared in the General Theory or in his deployment of that model in his reply to Jacob Viner in his February,1937 Quarterly Journal of Economics article. The major impediment to the grasping and understanding of Keynes’s IS-LM model for economists appears to be the claim, made by the astonishingly mathematically illiterate economist ,Joan Robinson, about having collaborated with Keynes on the writing of the General Theory. This belief is easily demonstrated to be false for any economist who reads pages 134-148 of Volume 14 of the Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, where Keynes, in letters to J. Robinson, categorizes Joan Robinson’s understanding of his liquidity preference theory of the rate of interest as being ”nonsense”. These important pages of correspondence , especially the letters from Keynes to J. Robinson of November 4th,November 8th ,and November 9th, 1936,completely demolish any claims made by J. Robinson about assisting Keynes or collaborating with Keynes or helping Keynes in the writing of the General Theory .Keynes’s mention of help received from J. Robinson in his Preface to the General Theory was clearly withdrawn in these exchanges between September,1936 and November ,1936. What Keynes discovered in this correspondence in 1936 was that J. Robinson was completely ignorant of the basic concepts used by him in the construction of his liquidity preference theory of the rate of interest in chapters 13,14,15,16,17 and 21 of the General Theory. J. Robinson’s comments on Keynes’s General Theory relied completely on her being coached, assisted and supported by her husband ,Austin Robinson, and her lover,Richard Kahn.There are a number of similarities between Joan Robinson and Elizabeth Holmes ,who was able to successfully escape being exposed as an intellectual fraud from 2003-2018.Joan Robinson continues to be accepted as a researcher who worked closely with Keynes,despite massive evidence to the contrary. Joan Robinson claimed in 1962 that the IS-LM model was the work of Bastard Keynesians ,who did not understand what Keynes was doing in his analysis in the General Theory. It is Joan Robinson, and not the Bastard Keynesians, who ,unfortunately, only got it half right, who did not understand what Keynes was doing in both the General Theory and the 1937 Quarterly Journal of Economics article. The continuing impact of Joan Robinson in misleading the entire economics profession for 84 years can be traced simply by examining the recent literature written about the General Theory and /or the IS-LM model. Keynes’s total contribution in the General Theory in 1936, which was the IS-LM model ,combined with the D-Z model that incorporated expectations and uncertainty, will never be recovered until the many myths made up about Keynes by J. Robinson are finally removed from the literature on Keynes.

How Kahn and the Robinsons Knew for Certain by August 1937, that Keynes's Theory of Interest Rate Determination Combined Liquidity Preference with the Incomplete Neoclassical Theory in Keynes's IS-LP(LM) Model in the General Theory

Keynes made it crystal clear in his comments on the draft copy of Pigou’s future 1937 article in the Economic Journal that Pigou’s fundamental error was to have two different theories of the rate of interest, one determined by the demand and supply of money, and the other one determined by the amount of spending out of current income on consumption and investment goods. Keynes made it plain that neither determined the rate of interest alone. Both of Pigou’s ‘theories’ had to be combined together in order to determine the rate of interest. Of course, Keynes’s LP(LM) curve had to be combined with the IS curve to have a determinate theory of the rate of interest. Keynes sent his formal, unpublished comments to J. Robinson, A. Robinson, and R. Kahn in 1937 before publishing them in the December issue of the Economic Journal. Therefore, J. Robinson, A. Robinson, and R. Kahn knew for certain by 1937 that Keynes’s theory of the rate of interest, as presented in both the General Theory and the Quarterly Journal of Economics reply article, published earlier in February 1937, was an IS-LP(LM) approach. However, J. Robinson, A. Robinson, and R. Kahn never mentioned this and claimed constantly throughout their lifetimes that Keynes’s theory of the interest rate had nothing to do with IS-LP(LM) and that IS-LP(LM) was ‘Bastard Keynesianism’, because Keynes had supposedly denied that formal, mathematical modeling was possible in macroeconomics. This position is directly contradicted by Keynes himself in chapter 21 in sections IV, V and VI on pages 298-306, as well as on pages 199-203, 208-209 of chapter 15 of the General Theory. The only conclusion possible is that J. Robinson, A. Robinson, and R. Kahn deliberately sought to hide this information in their lifetimes because it contradicted their claims that Keynes would never use a simultaneous equation model, given his Marshallian pedigree. Kaldor’s paper, published in the same issue as Keynes’s, uses a version of Keynes’s IS-LP(LM) analysis to critique Pigou. No economist in the twentieth or twenty first century was able to spot the great contradictions that existed between Keynes himself and J. Robinson, R. Kahn, or A. Robinson. Champernowne and Reddaway, if combined, are vastly superior to the claims of the Robinson’s and Kahn concerning the General Theory.

Who were the Real Bastard Keynesianss? The Neoclassical Synthesis Keynesians (Samuelson, Hansen, Hicks, Klein, Solow) or the Post Keynesians (Joan Robinson, Austin Robinson, Richard Kahn, G L S Shackle, Sydney Weintraub, Paul Davidson)

J M Keynes developed, taught and applied his IS-LP(LM) model in the time period from December, 1933 to the publication of the General Theory in February, 2 1936. He provided a formal, mathematical analysis of his simultaneous, four equation, IS-LP(LM) model in the General Theory in chapters 15 and 21. Keynes integrated uncertainty, defined as an inverse function of the A Treatise on Probability’s concept of the weight of the evidence, into both the IS and LM curves. Keynes’s uncertainty concept represented different degrees of uncertainty. There was no such thing as radical uncertainty except in the case of investment in fixed, durable capital goods subject to technological innovation, change and obsolescence in the future. Keynes also provided a microeconomic, mathematical foundation for an economic model using elasticity analysis that incorporated his general case and the Classical (Neoclassical) special case in chapters 20 and 21 of the General Theory on pp. 281-286 and pp. 304-306. This formal model, which Keynes called the D-Z model, incorporated changes in expected prices, expected profits and money wages. It served to support the Y income expenditure multiplier model, which was contained in the IS and LP(LM) equations. The neoclassical special case was demonstrated by Keynes to assert that the aggregate supply curve for output as a whole was completely inelastic because consumption and investment goods production was inversely or negatively related because a decrease in consumption would lead to an increase in savings that would lower the rate of interest and increase investment. Keynes’s theory showed that this was not the general case. The general case was demonstrated by Keynes to be one where there was only some degree of elasticity. Keynes incorporated this analysis into his 1936 correspondence with Hicks and Harrod. Neither Hicks nor Harrod ever replied to Keynes’s points concerning his elasticity analysis. The Post Keynesians (Joan Robinson, Austin Robinson, Richard Kahn, G L S Shackle, Sydney Weintraub, Paul Davidson, John Kenneth Galbraith) have denied for over 80 years that Keynes ever had any mathematically correct, developed, formal models of IS-LM or any micro foundations in the General Theory because Keynes supposedly realized that the all-powerful effects of radical (irreducible or fundamental) uncertainty made any such mathematical modeling impossible. This is completely wrong. The Neoclassical Synthesis Keynesians (Samuelson, Hansen, Hicks, Klein, Solow), on the other hand, argued that Keynes did provide a mathematical model of his theory in the General Theory, but that it had to be extracted from a number of various different chapters in the General Theory. They also argued that Keynes’s emphasis on uncertainty, while interesting, was not fundamental to his model as extracted by Meade, Hicks and Harrod, and later by Hansen. Parts of this view are correct. This paper shows that the Post Keynesians are completely wrong while the Neoclassical Synthesis Keynesians have some things right about Keynes’s analysis in the GT and some things wrong about Keynes’s analysis in the GT. What they have wrong, however, can’t be expressed formally in the subjective theory of probability. Tobin would be an example of this in his “liquidity preference as behavior toward risk” paper. Therefore, the real Bastard Keynesians turn out to be the Post Keynesians, who were the first to us the term “Bastard Keynesians”, to attack Samuelson and other such economists.

Confirming Robinson's Statement? A Lakatosian Analysis of Keynes and his Immediate Orthodoxy

Was the Keynesian message alive during the second half of the XXth Century, or was it betrayed by his followers? This article in the fields of the history of economic thought and methodology contrasts the Scientific Research Programmes (SRPs), a Lakatosian concept, of Keynes in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (TGT) with those of its immediate orthodox schools: Monetarism (MS), Neoclassical Synthesis (NS), New Classical Macroeconomics – rational expectations – (RE) and General Disequilibrium (GD). The objective is to to assess the immediate impact of Keynes’s vision in economics. It can be concluded according to this comparison that Keynes’s bequeath was alive during the period between 1950 and 1980, but that it was accepted under different names. Many economists deny this statement. However it is hereby argued with the help of Lakatosian methodology that in both economic and philosophical terms the MS, NS, RE and GD SRPs are degenerative variants of Keynes's SRP. The Keynesian reasoning chain – a non self-regulated system, non neutrality on the part of money, organicism, non-ergodicity, historical time and uncertainty – is misunderstood and hence misapplied on the part of these deviant schools, or transformed into “bastard Keynesianism”, to quote Joan Robinson (Joan Robinson, 1975[1973], 125). In other words, Keynes’s economics is different from Keynesian economics as was firstly proposed by Axel Leijonhuvfud (Leijonhuvfud, 1968). The internal history of macroeconomics in those periods is undertaken, since it is is the rational reconstruction of the meaning of a SRP.Section 1 is an introduction to basic concepts related to philosophy of science and methodology, especially Lakatosian methodology, which can be skipped by the specialized reader. Section 2 is an analysis of Keynes’s hard core in his SRP, also being an introduction to the problem as it outlines Keynes’s thinking, Section 3 describes initial Post Keynesianism, which was faithful to the original message. Sections 4, 5, 6 and 7 outline the hard cores of Monetarists, Neoclassical Synthesis, New Classical Macroeconomics and General Disequilibrium, respectively. Section 8 is a comprehensive analysis of the differences between the mentioned paradigms, and hence concludes. References are listed at the end of the article.

The Second Time Farce: American Business School Ethicists and the Emergence of Bastard Rawlsianism

John Rawls is the most cited modern philosopher in the business ethics literature, and trails only Kant and Aristotle among the field’s icons. One might assume especially in light of recent controversies that Rawls’s popularity is a reflection of his concerns regarding economic egalitarianism, the rise of American militarism, and the connection of both to democratic institutions. Such an assumption, however, would be inaccurate, since he is usually cited in the literature for his rule-making heuristic, his “veil of ignorance.” Although his “difference principle” very occasionally appears, it is almost never applied to economic inequality, in keeping with the field’s almost total silence on this issue. This neglect of his central ideas can be analogized to the “bastard Keynesianism” that arose in the 1950s in the United States, which similarly avoided the most challenging and controversial of Keynes’s ideas. The difference, however, is that “Keynesian” macroeconomics had a measurable impact on American society, whereas “bastard Rawlsianism” has been employed in the service of a business ethics field that has not managed to generate any significance influence upon the non-academic world.

What About Keynes?

Review of Bastard Keynesianism: The Evolution of Economic Thinking and Policymaking since World War II by Lynn Turgeon.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Bastard Keynesianism: the evolution of economic thinking and policymaking since World War II

Preface Introduction Classical Keynesian Thinking Economic Thinking during and after World War II Eisenhower and the Rejection of Military Keynesianism The Return of Military Keynesianism under Kennedy-Johnson Conversion of President Nixon to Non-Military Keynesianism The Non-Military Non-Keynesian Ford Interregnum Jimmy Carter, the Populist and Military Non-Keynesian Military Keynesian and Supply-Side President Ronald Reagan George Bush, Another Non-Military, Non-Keynesian President Can President Clinton Become a Non-Military Keynesian? The Unraveling of Classical Keynesian Economics in the United States over the Past Half-Century Where Do We Go from Here? What Would Keynes Say Today? Appendix A: Development of Keynesianism within the History of Economic Doctrines Appendix B: What Is Military Keynesianism (and What Is the Alternative)? Appendix C: Thinking about the Partial Devaluation of the Dollar Appendix D: Incomes Policies at Home and Abroad Appendix E: How Keynesian Are the Canadians? Notes Glossary Annotated Bibliography

Keynesianism And Public Investment: A Left-Keynesian Perspective On The Role Of Government Expenditures And Debt

With the successful rise of the so-called mixed economy during the early post-war period, bastard Keynesianism (to use Joan Robinson's familiar expression) ruled supreme. In contrast with present-day Chicago- style neoclassical policy nihilism, the former ideology made allowance for a positive, yet limited, scope for active government intervention in the market-place. Indeed, advocates of this hybrid Keynesianism both recognized and professed that the state could and should intervene whenever there was market failure.

The Cambridge Keynesians and the “Bastard Keynesians”: A Comment on Economists and Their Understanding of the Inflationary Aspects of Keynesian Policy

(1990). The Cambridge Keynesians and the “Bastard Keynesians”: A Comment on Economists and Their Understanding of the Inflationary Aspects of Keynesian Policy. Journal of Economic Issues: Vol. 24, No. 3, pp. 886-890.

The microfoundations of the ‘generalisation of The General Theory’ and ‘bastard Keynesianism’: Keynes's theory of employment in the long and the short period

The microfoundations of the ‘generalisation of The General Theory’ and ‘bastard Keynesianism’: Keynes's theory of employment in the long and the short period

Post Keynesian Economics: An Institutional Compatibility?

After World War II, orthodox macroeconomic analysis developed into what Paul Samuelson calls the post-Keynesian, neoclassical [27, p. 329] whose development I have evaluated elsewhere (3; 4). Basic to the synthesis and the policy-oriented econometric models often derived therefrom was the accompanying faith in fine-tuning and precise determinability assumed in the synthesis by its proponents [28, p. 133; 2, p. 317]. Thus, Keynesian economics-which stressed uncertainty both in The General Theory and in Keynes's reply to Jacob Viner [16]-was turned into an analysis that stressed certainty, IS-LM determinability, zero elasticity of expectations, and a belief in fiscal-monetary fine-tuning. The concept of precise determinability and, thus, of fine-tuning has been recently attacked by many post-Keynesians, including John R. Hicks, the father of the IS-LM analysis [12; 13], Alan Coddington [7], Ivan Johnson [14], R. W. Clower [6], Axel Leijonhufvud [17], Sidney Weintraub [35; 36; 37], W. R. Brazelton [3], Joan Robinson [22; 23; 24; 25], and Richard Chase [5]. Indeed, was Robinson in her critique of bastard Keynesians [22, p. 90] who summarized the post Keynesian position concerning a rejection of precise determinability. Robinson states that it is from this point post-Keynesian theory takes off. The recognition of uncertainty undermines the traditional concept of equilibrium [23, p.

Stagflation and the Bastard Keynesians

Stagflation and the Bastard Keynesians

Stagflation and the Bastard Keynesians

Stagflation and the Bastard Keynesians