IS THERE A CASE FOR POST KEYNESIAN ECONOMICS?1
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9485.1995.tb01143.x |
| Date | 01 February 1995 |
| Published date | 01 February 1995 |
| Author | Victoria Chick |
Scomjh
Jouml
ofPoliricd
Economy,
Vol.
42,
No.
1.
February
1995
0
Scottish
Eccnomic
Society
1995. Published by
Blnckwell
Publishers.
108
Cowley
Road.
Oxford
OX4
IF,
UK
and
238
Main
Sh'cct,
Cambridge,
MA
02142,
USA
IS
THERE
A CASE
FOR
POST
KEYNESIAN
EC
ON
OM
I
c
s?'
Victoria
Chick'
I
INTRODUCTION
Solow claimed not to
be
able to define Post Keynesian Economics
(PKE):
he
protested that it was 'not
so
much a school of thought, more a
state
of mind.'
One interpretation of that view is that I must now defend the undefined, or even
the undefinable. But while professing puzzlement, Solow was in fact correct:
PKE
is
best identified as a way of thinking, a method of approach, inspired at
root by Keynes
and
Kalecki and their intellectual successors. If we follow
Sheila Dow
(1985),
all schools of thought can
be
identified by a combination of
their modes
of
thought-if you like, their
states
of mind-and their methods.
It is true that PKE is 'broad church', containing apparently disparate
elements, but
I
would argue that it is identified both by its mode of thought and
by its project. The PK project has
three
elements:
1. to recover the insights of Keynes, Kalecki and their early disciples,
2.
to extend those insights beyond the borders set by Keynes's
General
Theory
3.
to complete the Keynesian Revolution.
This
last element involves both bringing Keynes's theory into line with the
realities of modem economies and extending these principles
into
fields which
the GT did not address, e.g. growth, development, open economies.
The project, in other words, is to redevelop
the
whole of economics along
Keynes/Kalecki lines. The number
of
our practitioners is small but our
ambitions are large and all-encompassing.
The paper is organised into three parts.
I
shall begin with the case-or
cases-against PKE. (Given what
I
have just said, the charge of hubris might
be top of the list!)
I
shall then sketch
out
what
I
believe are basic PK principles
and signal some important PK results, enough,
I
hope, to answer the question,
posed by the title, in the affirmative.
(GT)
(1936)
and thus
II
THE
CASE
AGAINST
PKE
The case against PKE has
5
partly-interrelated elements: it is
1. not coherent, not identifiable;
'
President's Invited Lecture, Scottish Economics Society
Annual
Meeting,
6
April
1994,
Hemot-Watt University. The author express
thanks
for the invitation
and
for the lively
discussion which followed the lecture. The usual caveats
apply.
'
University College. London
20
IS
THERE A CASE
FOR
POST
KEYNESIAN ECONOMICS?
21
2.
not scientific, not formal, not logical;
3.
notmodem;
4.
nottheory;
5.
not economics.
Let me expand on each of these in turn.
1. First,
PKE
is not coherent. Apart from calling
PKE
a state of mind (which
I
assume was meant to
be
rather rude), critics have argued that
PKE
is unified
more by its opposition to neoclassical economics (NCE) than by any positive
attributes. Implicitly, coherence is being defined by maintained hypotheses
or
a
Lakatosian hard core. These relate to principles of economics narrowly
conceived, whereas
PKs
would define
themselves
by their methodology,
philosophy or epistemology.
2.
Not scientific.
This
is often coupled with the charge that PK is not formal
or
that it is not mathematical. Significantly, this charge is made by economists,
not scientists. Dow has pointed out that most economists’ conception of science
is based on a Cartesian
or
logical positivist mode of thought. She reports
(1985,
p.
25)
Hacking’s list of features of
this
conception (Table
1):
TABLE
1
The Cortesian
view
of
science
1.
A
line of demarcation can
be
drawn between science and non-science.
2.
Science is cumulative, adding to knowledge over time (whatever counts as knowledge).
3.
A
distinction can be drawn between observation and theory.
4.
Scientific concepts
are
precise in the sense of ‘susceptible to mathematical expression’ and
5.
The logical basis
for
justifying acceptance of a theory can be distinguished from the
6.
There is one scientific method,
so
that in principle
all
sciences are part
of
a single scientific
7.
There is one best description of any aspect
of
the
real world.
8.
Observations and experiments provide the foundations for and justification of hypotheses
and theories.
9.
Theories have a deductive structure in their expression, if not in their discovery (which
may
be
inductive); they
are
tested by deducing observation reports from theoretical
postulates.
scientific terms have fixed meanings.
circumstances in which the theory was formulated.
structure.
Point
(4)
indicates that the question of formal, usually mathematical, statements
of hypotheses is tightly bound up with
this
view of science.
A
colleague of mine
at UCL reflects
this
view perfectly: he has said that if a theory cannot
be
expressed
in
mathematics,
it
is not science. When saying that PKE is ‘not
logical’, the logic is classical formal logic. Mathematics conforms to
this
logic,
so
the two are often conflated. But the essence of the matter
is
that formal logic
is
;
designed for closed systems in which everythmg
is
commensurable.
Fortunately there
are
other forms of logic (e.g. Ramsey’s Human Logic, fuzzy
logic), for life does not always conform to the conditions under which classical
formal logic applies.
(a) Modem economics is mathematical, and PKE is not expressed
3.
Not modem.
This
charge has two elements:
0
Scottish
Economic Society
1995
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