Military Keynesianism Research Articles

Factors of military Keynesianism in modern economic policy in Russia

Historical aspects, general economic logic and theoretical discussions around military Keynesianism as a policy of stimulating the economy through increased government allocations for defense items are considered. A brief overview of empirical studies on the economic results of military spending is presented. In relation to the period 2022—2024 in the Russian economy, the size of the fiscal impulse due to defense budget items, its positive and negative effects are analyzed. The secondary nature and low controllability of economic effects of defense policy are emphasized. Among the factors hindering the success of military Keynesianism in modern Russia, limited spare capacity and labor are noted, which generate inflationary consequences, as well as the contradiction between tightening monetary conditions and continued fiscal stimulus. The conclusion is made about the predominance and possible aggravation of negative consequences of the expansion of financing through military spending

Государственное управление национальной экономикой в условиях геополитической нестабильности

We consider an economic system consisting of two sectors: public (including municipal) and private. It is shown that in the structure of the economic system the public sector occupies most of the economic space. It has been established that the public sector is, as a rule, less efficient than the private sector, but is capable, unlike the private sector, of stably providing the Russian state with the products necessary to maintain national security. Based on statistical data on economic efficiency in 2023 and the volume of budget financing of the Russian military-industrial complex in 2022–2024, it was concluded that the economic model of “military Keynesianism” is being implemented in the Russian Federation. Destructive endogenous factors have been identified, including a defect in the institutional structure that reduces the effectiveness of the implemented economic model and certain problematic aspects of the functioning of a mixed economy. Some proposals have been made for the transformation of the national economy in the post-crisis period.

The Dialectics of Abolition

The Dialectics of Abolition Lisa Lowe (bio) Ruth Wilson Gilmore has devoted decades to the study of the prison-industrial complex and to organizing for its abolition, and her profound contributions have become cornerstones of carceral studies and the prison abolition movement owing to their compelling explanatory power. Her famous formulations that "capitalism requires inequality and racism enshrines it"1 and that "racism is the state-sanctioned or extralegal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death"2 have become indispensable for scholars, students, and activists. Now, three decades of her essays are available to inspire new generations, meticulously collected and introduced by Brenna Bhandar and Alberto Toscano. It is a daunting task to attempt to briefly highlight Gilmore's contributions to our understanding of the conditions that lead to prison expansion and the abolition imperative, but I trust that collectively, this forum may highlight a range of them. In my comment, I emphasize the profoundly dialectical thinking and practice that underlie Gilmore's invaluable work on the buildup of US prisons in the 1980s, and the significance of her situating this expansion both within the contradictions of neoliberal globalization and in relation to the political struggles of people on the ground responding to these increasingly violent conditions. Gilmore's commitment to thinking and acting dialectically means that she always approaches prisons systematically within the conditions of globalizing racial capitalism. Situating the buildup of US prisons in the 1980s within contradictions of neoliberal globalization, she analyzes this historical shift as a transition from "military Keynesianism to post-Keynesian militarism."3 Significantly, she draws attention to how this entails the US postwar racial state's structural adjustment from "the welfare-warfare state to the workfare-warfare state"4 as well as the "organized abandonment" and "organized violence" of the "anti-state state."5 Yet Gilmore has emphasized repeatedly that "the prison fix" is not an isolated phenomenon: the decisions to build prisons—and to invest in industrial punishment, policing, and military rather than in public welfare, health care, roads or schools—have been central to a structural reorganization of the US postwar "landscape of accumulation and dispossession."6 [End Page 371] In other words, Gilmore emphasizes the ways that US prison expansion cannot be separated from the multiple crises of racial capitalism as it expanded globally in the second half of the twentieth century and thus, dialectically, that prisons cannot be countered as a single institution and that abolition cannot be understood or fought without consideration of this global imperial context. Racial capitalism is inherently unstable, and it comes into crisis when the contradiction between accumulation and exploitation reaches a level that is unsustainable, expressed in the United States by overproduction, diminishing profits, and unemployment, on the one hand, and widening wealth gaps, racial segregation, and increasing impoverishment of communities of color, on the other. These crises manifested internationally as foreign investment, flexible accumulation, and export processing, which rearticulated the colonial divisions between the first and third worlds and was secured by overt and covert US imperial wars in countries where socialism or left-leaning independence movements gained significant footholds: in Africa, Central America, Northeast and Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East. Meanwhile, these crises of globalizing racial capitalism were expressed domestically as deindustrialization, state withdrawal from social welfare, deepened economic divides, criminalization of racialized gendered poverty, and the militarization of the border. Yet while some may have declared that globalization meant the "end of the nation-state," Gilmore has always stressed that even as the traditional role of the state changes, the state does not become less powerful. To the contrary, the state expands and fortifies as it reorganizes, and it is precisely in prison buildup that we observe the apotheosis of the state's means to restructure both criminal justice and the political economy in order to safeguard capital and exerting social control. With increasing intensity since the 1960s–1970s, these contradictions of racial capitalism dialectically produced antagonisms that erupted in radical Black, Brown, Yellow, and Red Power movements, labor strikes, urban rebellions, and social movements, from antiwar to women of color feminist to anti-apartheid movements. The US state responded to these political challenges...

The effects of military expenditures on labor productivity, innovation and economic growth for the most militarized countries: panel data analysis

PurposeThere is extensive literature on the effect of military expenditure on economic growth. However, there is also a wide gap in the literature on the relationship between productivity and innovation, which is considered the driving force of economic growth and military expenditures. To this end, this study examines the effect of military expenditures on economic growth, innovation and labor productivity for the period 1995–2019 in most militarized countries.Design/methodology/approachThe tests used in the study's empirical analysis are techniques that take into account cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity. The stationarity of the variables was tested with the Pesaran’s (2007) unit root test. Then, empirical findings were revealed based on the analysis through Westerlund’s (2008) cointegration test and Emirmahmutoglu and Kose’s (2011) panel causality test.FindingsAccording to the empirical results, there is a long-run relationship, in other words, a cointegration between military expenditures and productivity, innovation and economic growth. Additionally, there are causality relationships between military expenditures and productivity, innovation and economic growth.Practical implicationsThese results support the arguments of military Keynesianism and the Benoit hypothesis.Originality/valueDespite the widespread theoretical debate, no empirical study tests the effect of military expenditure on productivity and innovation to the author's best knowledge. Hence, this study aims to fill this gap in the literature. Moreover, the fact that the econometric method used is based on second generation tests and the timeliness of the period range makes the study's findings more significant.

Negotiating Better Worlds in the ‘Anthropocene’: Critical Histories and Future Livelihoods

This symposium provides an opportunity to discuss, with a distinguished panel of scholars, some of the challenges for business and management arising from the epoch of the Anthropocene, developing things we have learned about organization from the experience of COVID-19. Presentations will address three principal challenges: (a) how to 'open up' negotiations with materials and practices (meat, plastics, animals, guns, food, clothing) that have been typically neglected in the standard histories of modern business and management in an effort to explain: how did we get here? (b) how management and organization studies can develop sustainable and cooperative models of working and living together in the Anthropocene based on these negotiations; and (c) assess what the future of work and management will look like in the Anthropocene by drawing on recent studies of contemporary but non-standard and non-modern business practices. The panel presentations are followed by interactive discussions and dialogues across the panel and with audience members. Each round-table is led by a chair and supported by a discussant. The round table sessions will allow participants to share ideas and critical reflections on living together in the Anthropocene. Man v Meat: The Hidden Anthropocene of Three Fleshly Case Studies Presenter: Bill Cooke; U. of York These Lips are No Longer Sealed: Restorying Non-Corporeal Connections Through Seal Hunting Presenter: Shelley Price; Gustavson School of Business, U. of Victoria French absolutist military technology: Fossil fuels, guns, and military Keynesianism Presenter: Richard Marens; California State U. Sacramento Clothing Ourselves in Hot Climates: Oulipean Experiments and Crafty Practices Presenter: Marta Gasparin; Copenhagen Business School Researching Ocean Plastic Pollution: A patchy road to Anthropocene knowledge-making in MOS Presenter: Seray Ergene; U. of Rhode Island Dee Constructing Organization: Fermenting Ethno-geomorphology and Becoming Activist Presenter: Damian O'Doherty; Critical Management Studies

The political economy of systemic U.S. militarism

In 2021 a large number of publications appeared intent on analyzing the scope of the so-called Military Industrial Complex, none of which offered a critical analysis. We go further in this article, explaining the configurations of the Iron Triangle: The first step is to express militarism in its contemporary form. The three configurations are: 1. military keynesianism, 2. global-neoliberal militarism, 3 . the completely instrumentalist always present configuration—Corporate Militarism. We explore a variety of related themes, above all those current policies designed to restructure U.S. seapower as the U.S. spearhead in its rivalry with China. We examine the recent and past steps that have given form to an industrial policy to create and drive-forward to the technological frontiers those corporations that comprise what is known as the Defense Industrial Base, as used to maintain U.S. industrial power.

The Asymmetric Relationship Between Military Expenditure, Economic Growth and Industrial Productivity: An Empirical Analysis of India, China and Pakistan Via the NARDL Approach

This research work aims to verify how military expenditure promotes economic growth and industrial productivity, as suggested by the Military Keynesianism postulate. The NARDL method is employed to achieve the above objective on the panel data of India, China, and Pakistan, covering the period between 1990 and 2018. The study finds that the positive and negative impact of military expenditure has a significant positive and negative effect on economic growth in the long run for China and India; however, in the short-run, only positive impact favors economic growth. Thus, there is a symmetric effect in the short-run and an asymmetric impact in the long-run. This asymmetric result supports the work of Military Keynesianism, helping policymakers in devising appropriate macro-economic policies.

Accumulation Crisis and Global Police State

Global police state refers to three interrelated developments. First are the ever more omnipresent systems of mass social control, repression, and warfare promoted by the ruling groups to contain the real and the potential rebellion of the global working class and surplus humanity. Second is how the global economy is itself based more and more on the development and deployment of these systems of warfare, social control, and repression simply as a means of making profit and continuing to accumulate capital in the face of stagnation – what I term militarized accumulation, or accumulation by repression – and that now goes well beyond military Keynesianism. And third is the increasing move towards political systems that can be characterized as 21st century fascism, or even in a broader sense, as totalitarian. Digitalization makes possible the creation of a global police state. The mounting crisis appears to cement the emerging digital economy with the global police state. There is a triangulation of far-right, authoritarian, and neo-fascist forces in civil society, reactionary political power in the state, and transnational corporate capital, especially speculative finance capital, the military–industrial–security complex, and the extractive industries – all three interwoven with high-tech or digital capital.

The Soldiers Welfare: The Military Keynesianism Perspective for The Indonesian Armed Forces’s Professionalism

Building professional soldiers into the wishes and commitments of many countries, this is due to the strengthening of threats that are not only traditional threats, but also non-traditional threats. This situation confirms that the presence of professional soldiers will ensure the sovereignty of the state, because the military institution can focus on its duties and functions on the defense of the country. In this context, the Indonesian Armed Forces (Tentara Nasional Indonesia—TNI) is also faced with situations that place TNI institutions to become professionals, relying on democratic civilian government through the defense ministry with an emphasis on improving the welfare of soldiers simultaneously with efforts to modernize Indonesia's defense system. Because the Military-Keynesianism approach believes that improving the welfare of the army is part of the consequences of increasing defense budgets. The paper argues that the increase in defense budget will be correlated with the welfare of the army, although the policy is not directly for the welfare of the army. The article also argues that the increase in the defense budget should improve the TNI foundation as an ideal institution by emphasizing the welfare of soldiers.

Kalecki on Technology and Military Keynesianism

Kalecki’s analysis of military Keynesianism highlights the difficulties of managing aggregate demand in one country, without coordination with trading partners. Military Keynesianism is effective as a means of reflation because, unlike civilian public works, it induces similar expenditure by political rivals. In this way it overcomes some of the trade difficulties that arise if aggregate demand expands in only one country. However, military technology is not immediately transferable to civilian production, and therefore tends to reinforce technological backwardness.

Multilateralism and military Keynesianism: Completing the analysis

ABSTRACTKalecki’s analysis of military Keynesianism highlights the difficulties of managing aggregate demand in one country, without coordination with trading partners. Military Keynesianism is effective as a means of reflation because, unlike civilian public works, it induces similar expenditure by political rivals. In this way it overcomes some of the trade difficulties that arise if aggregate demand expands in only one country.

The origins and evolution of military Keynesianism in the United States

From after World War II until late 1971, the U.S. economy demonstrated new capacities in terms of macroeconomic stability during the so-called Golden Age: recessions were brief and shallow while growth was strong, generating shared returns for the working class, a burgeoning middle class, as well as for capital-owners. Neither then nor up to now has there been sufficient recognition of the key role played by military expenditures in this dynamic process. These enormous outlays at times accounted for as much as 25 percent of gross domestic product—including their induced multiplier effects. This article examines the origins of what has been termed “military Keynesianism” during the Golden Age, emphasizing the little-known leading role played by Leon Keyserling. Keyserling exercised behind-the-scenes power in order to convert Keynesian theory into a macroeconomic policy that would be both consistent with the U.S. institutional context and sufficiently large to promote long-term conditions for full employment. With a degree of audacity, at a historically opportune moment given the socioeconomic resonance of the foundational document known as “NSC-68” promulgated by the “state within the state”—the National Security State—Keyserling successfully challenged the fallacious neoclassical “law” of guns or butter.

Orígenes y evolución de la política fiscal militar postkeynesiana en Estados Unidos

After the Second World War, during the so-called “Golden Age” the U.S. economy, until late 1971, demonstrated new capacities in terms of macroeconomic stability: recessions were brief and shallow while growth was strong, generating shared returns for the working class, a burgeoning middle class and for capital-owners. Neither then or since, up to the moment, has there been sufficient recognition of the key role played by military expenditures in this dynamic process accounting for at times —including induced multiplier effects— as much as twenty-five percent of the GDP. In this article we examine the origins of what has been termed “Military Keynesianism” during the Golden age, emphasizing the little-known leading role played by Leon Keyserling, who exercised behind-the-scenes power in order to convert Keynesian theory into a macroeconomic policy consistent with the U.S. institutional context that would be sufficiently large to promote long-term conditions of full employment. With a degree of audacity, at an historically opportune moment given the socioeconomic resonance of the foundational document known as “NSC-68” promulgated by the “State within the State” —the National Security State— Keyserling successfully challenged the fallacious neoclassical “law” of guns or butter.

Origin and Development of the Thoughts on Military Keynesianism During 1936–2012

The aim of the paper is to show how the thoughts of military Keynesianism have been developed and to define the role of military Keynesianism. First, the term ‘military Keynesianism’ will be introduced and its birth in the history of economic development will be dated and explained. Second, the development of the thoughts of military Keynesianism and also the development of the military–industrial complex will be described and the main different views on the application of military Keynesianism policy will be included. Finally, the authors will try to interpret opinions on the application of military Keynesianism during the economic recession, 2008–2012.

Can Penal Keynesianism Replace Military Keynesianism?

Military Keynesianism has positive supply-side and demand-side effects. However, it also has negative aspects, which make it difficult to sustain over an extended period. Might penal Keynesianism serve as a replacement? The prison system today draws from the pool of young adults with low levels of education and poor employment prospects, individuals who earlier might have found employment' in the military. There is a movement to increase employment of prisoners—in both prison and private-sector projects. And the number of prisons and the amount of total justice expenditures are seeing significant growth. This paper describes military Keynesianism, examines the evolution of the justice system, and contrasts penal Keynesianism with military Keynesianism in terms of labor supply, technology and infrastructure, and demand stimulus. I conclude that penal Keynesianism is a poor substitute for military Keynesianism, and I offer an alternative to both, in the form of a nation-wide program of public service employment that would target low-skilled, poorly educated workers.

The Social and Economic Consequences of US Militarism

This article reviews the forms of US militarism as they have evolved since Eisenhower’s famous 1961 speech and presents the deleterious effects military spending has on the social and economic well-being of the United States. In particular it shows that military Keynesianism is a blind alley which does not benefit the larger economy. This article will show that militarism impacts the minds of citizens and the contents of political debates and adversely affects the image of the US abroad. It can also be argued that it fosters economic and political decline for the only superpower which is today in competition with emerging rivals.

The Military Metropolis: Defense Dependence in U.S. Metropolitan Areas

This article examines the “military metropolis,” an urban community that depends highly on military expenditures in order to sustain economic vitality. We build on past theories of military Keynesianism and employ insights from urban political economy theory to examine the effects of defense contracts and defense personnel spending on five measures of labor market quality (median household income, income inequality, poverty 125 percent, unemployment, and casualization) in 276 U.S. metropolitan statistical areas in the year 2000. Whereas previous studies of military spending have focused primarily on nations and U.S. states, this study examines metropolitan areas. We test three hypotheses about how federal military outlays might influence urban economies: first, the defense–dependency hypothesis suggests that urban areas rely on defense dollars in varying degrees to sustain their economic stability and vitality. Second, the localized effects hypothesis proposes that defense personnel spending on military bases and civilian personnel will have more immediate effects on urban economies than spending on defense procurement contracts. Third, the gunbelt hypothesis predicts that military spending has affected urban economies unevenly, benefiting metropolitan areas in some regions of the country more than others. The results of this study support all three hypotheses. We offer interpretations of our results and discuss the policy implications for U.S. metropolitan areas.

Macroeconomic Stabilization Through an Employer of Last Resort

The employer of last resort (ELR) policy proposal, also referred to as the job guarantee or public sector employment, is promoted by its supporters as an alternative to unemployment as the primary means of currency stability. The core of the ELR proposal is that a job would be provided to all who wanted one at a decent, fixed wage; the quantity of workers employed in the program would be allowed to rise and fall counter to the economy’s cycles as some of the workers moved from public to private sector work or vice versa depending upon the state of the economy. Supporters have played an important advisory role in Argentina’s Jefes de Hogar jobs program that has provided jobs to over two million citizens – or five percent of the population; though there are some important differences, the Jefes program has many similarities with the ELR proposal (Tcherneva and Wray 2005). While ELR proponents argue the program would not necessarily generate budget deficits (Mitchell and Wray 2004), the program is based upon Abba Lerner’s (1943) concept of functional finance in which it is the results of the government’s spending and taxing policies in terms of their effects upon employment, inflation, and macroeconomic stability that matter (Nell and Forstater 2003). This is in contrast to the more widely promoted concept of “sound” finance, in which the presence of a fiscal deficit is itself considered undesirable. Rather than not being able to “afford” an ELR program, ELR proponents argue that societies would do better to consider whether they can “afford” involuntary unemployment. The proposed ELR’s approach of hiring “off the bottom” is argued to be a more direct means for eliminating excess, unused labor capacity than traditional “military Keynesianism” or primarily “pump-priming” fiscal policies, particularly given how the U.S. economy struggles to create jobs for the poor even during economic expansions (Pigeon and Wray 1998, 1999; Bell and Wray 2004). As Wray (2000) notes, “How many missiles would the government have to order before a job trickles down to Harlem?”. More traditional forms of fiscal stimulus or stabilization are still useful and complementary to an ELR program, though proponents argue that only the latter could ensure that enough jobs would be available at all times such that every person desiring a job would be offered one while also potentially adding to the national output.Regarding macroeconomic stability, it is the fluctuating buffer stock of ELR workers and the fixed wage that are argued by proponents to be the key features that ensure the program’s impact would be stabilizing. With an effectively functioning buffer stock, the argument goes, as the economy expands ELR spending will stop growing or even decline – countering the inflation pressures normally induced by expansion – as some ELR workers take jobs in the private sector. Regarding the fixed wage, traditional government expenditures effectively set a quantity and allow markets to set a price (as in contracting for weapons); in contrast, the ELR program allows markets to set the quantity as the government provides an infinitely elastic demand for labor, while the price (the ELR base wage) is set exogenously and is unaffected by market pressures. Together, proponents argue, the buffer stock of ELR workers and the fixed wage thereby encourage loose labor markets even at full employment. Aside from an initial increase as the program is being implemented (the size of which will depend upon the wage offered compared to the existing lowest wage and whether the program is made available to all workers), proponents suggest the program would not generate inflationary pressures and thus would promote both full employment and price stability. The purpose of this paper is to model quantitatively the potential macroeconomic stabilization properties of an ELR program utilizing the Fairmodel (Fair 1994, 2004). The paper builds upon the earlier Fairmodel simulations of the ELR in Majewski and Nell (2000) and Fullwiler (2003, 2005). Here, a rather simple version of the ELR program is incorporated into the Fairmodel and simulated. The quantitative effects of the ELR program within the Fairmodel are measured via simulation within historical business cycles and in comparison to other policy rules for both fiscal and monetary policies through stochastic simulation.

Blind faith: some personal reflections on Nigerian fieldwork

My own interests in Africa were nurtured in the late 1960s as an undergraduate in London, but they took form in, and were shaped by, the great political, economic and social firmament of the 1970s. With the powers of hindsight one can see what an extraordinary decade it was and how it necessarily framed our research programs, both in Geography and the social sciences more generally. The events of that decade bear repeating: an imperialist war in southeast Asia, a troubled American Fordism feeling the pressures of global competition, deepening class struggles over the future of embedded liberalism, the Nixon dollar devaluation and the turn to global financialization, massive volatility in commodities markets especially food and oil, a robust Third World nationalism and a raft of successful revolutionary movements ultimately hobbled by balance of payments deficits, massive public sector debt and Cold War 'low-intensity conflict' and proxy wars, popular energies unleashed by a global environmental movement, and not least, the first stirrings of what was to become, to quote Perry Anderson (2000), the global neoliberal 'grand slam'. My experience of the continent, in sum, came hot on the heels of the rebellion and turmoil of the 1960s and in the wake of the genuinely revolutionary moment of 1968. The 1970s actually became the high watermark for radical theorizing, enriched by exciting (and not so exciting) political experiments, not the least of which were the various African socialisms in the former Portuguese colonies (GuineaoBissau, Angola, Mozambique), in Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Tanzania and elsewhere. Some locations--one thinks in particular of Dar es Saalam, Zaria, Dakar, Nairobi--became centers of great intellectual vitality often attracting significant numbers of European and North American scholars, and became central to the global debate over development and underdevelopment. Any assessment of what has changed on the continent, and what it might mean for both knowledge production, field research and scholarly collaboration, must start, of course, from the firmament of the present moment. On its face the parallels between now and then are striking: another imperialist war-making adventure (prosecuted not in the name of anti-communism but of global democracy and anti-terrorism), another round of oil and food volatility (and more Malthusian talk of scarcity), another space-ship earth moment (this time detonated by the spectre of global climate change), seething nationalisms (or proto-nationalisms and communalisms of multifarious stripe) in the global south in reaction to decades of structural adjustment and 'economic realism', an anti-imperialism issuing not from the secular or revolutionary Third Worldist left but in the name of political Islam, and, of course, a deep crisis of capitalism triggered by the wreckless commodification of money and monetized assets. This time around one might say that the crisis is defined by the catastrophic consequences of the capitalist project launched in the late 1970s. Naturally the contrasts between the 1970s and the current conjuncture are as striking as the resemblances or repetitions. Nobody would question the observation that US hegemony, from the vantage point of 2010, looks much more rocky. China now appears as a profound counterweight to the American sense of a Pacific Century. The US militarization of its program of global financialization ('military neoliberalism') exceeds virtually anything encompassed by the military Keynesianism of the 1970s. Whether we believe that the last vestiges of the 1960s have been finally swept away, the fact is that neoliberalism does rule undivided across the globe. In this sense Karl Polanyi's (1947) belief that free-market liberalism was finally dead and gone (he wrote at the end of the Second World War) was horribly wrong. At the very least one can say that Africa itself was radically shaped and reconfigured by this neoliberal revolution--the 'counter-revolution' in development theory as it was called--and the continent, as a consequence, looks very different now. …

The Tasks of Keynesianism Today: Green New Deals As Transition Towards a Zero Growth Economy?

The world economy today is facing the juncture of two simultaneous crises: the deepest recession since the end of World War Two and an unprecedented world ecological crisis. Does Keynesianism offer viable ideas to face this combined crisis, alternative to the neoliberal policymaking that has prevailed during the last thirty years? Historically, if viewed from a longer-term perspective, the form of Keynesianism that has predominated, is military Keynesianism, defined as macro-economic policymaking by capitalist governments aimed at stimulating aggregate demand for goods. Thus deficit spending was already applied by the British government when it competed with other European states to gain world hegemony, in the late 17th and the 18th century. Again, whereas for a limited period of time after World War Two, a civilian type of Keynesianism has 'coexisted' with military Keynesianism, especially in Western Europe, – the military form of Keynesianism has clearly prevailed in the era of globalization, especially in the US. Keynesianism offers possibilities for a shift from current policymaking, but only if its mode of application is radically different from its historical modes. An ecological Keynesianism needs to fulfil both a social criterion – promotion of employment – and an ecological standard – countering capitalism's inherent tendency to destroy its natural surroundings. Three examples of an ecological Keynesianism initially come to mind: the state's use of transfer and investment measures so as to accelerate the shift from reliance on fossil fuels towards reliance on renewable energy; state intervention to discourage incineration of waste, and to enhance reliance on recycling; and conversion of military production facilities into units which produce for the sustenance of life on earth. The significance of these shifts can be illustrated by employing a model of social reproduction that diverges from Marx's and Keynes'. Yet while an ecological Keynesianism does offer ample possibilities to address today's combined crisis, the given policymaking needs to be understood as transitional. A solution to the world's ecological crisis is only possible via the transition towards a stationary state – a zero growth economy at the world level which protects the interests of the global South.