Neoclassical Logic

Brad DeLong delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU
Fri Mar 16 09:46:47 PST 2001



>That segues all too easily into Keynes' pathetic comment, "For at
>least a hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone
>that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is
>not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little
>longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of
>economic necessity into daylight."
>
>Carl
>

Well yes, Keynes's "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren" was and remains a major intellectual influence on me.

But why "pathetic" rather than "tragic"? After all, "The bourgeoisie has... been the first to show what human activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades. The bourgeoisie, duirng its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature's forces, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation, whole populations conjured out of the ground-what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labor?"

Brad DeLong



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