> These Marxists were not employing and probably were not even well
> acquainted with R. Lucas and Thomas Sergeant's Rational Expectations
> theory. This is a peculiar theory of rationality designed
> specifically by Chicago to (1) save neoclassical value theory (the
> postulate utility maximization and equilibrium); and (2), bury the
> Keynesians. Rational Expectations means something quite specific and
> it cannot be willy nilly attributed to those working outside the
> neoclassical paradigm, and not even to some of those working inside of
> it.
This is true. It's part of my point. State policies are often significantly influenced by irrational views (one of which is the 'rational expectations theory') of both "rationality" and the role of "rationality" in this sense in economic behaviour e.g. in stock market behaviour. Machine Dreams has material relevant here (e.g. the discussion of the relation of Nash's version of game theory to his paranoia on pp. 340-2).
Now that you press me, I can't think of a recent Marxist analysis that treats state policy on behalf of capital as based on omnisciently rational expectations. I can think of some that treat them as rational in some more limited sense, however, i.e. as producing rationally foreseen consequences that are in the interest of capital.
An example is Leo and Sam's treatment (pp. 21-3) of the Volcker episode and neoliberal restructuring in their 2004 Socialist Register essay "Global Capitalism and American Empire." <http://www.yorku.ca/socreg/Panitch%20and%20Gindin%2004.html>
They don’t treat the “American imperial state” as omniscient (they see it as managing originally unforeseeable crises as these inevitably develop out of earlier policies, e.g. out of the arrangements put in place at Bretton Woods (p. 18), and as finding out how to do this via a learning process involving mistakes, uncertainties etc. (p. 20)). They also don’t treat the policies as rational and functional in all contexts – “Whatever neoliberalism’s successes in relation to strengthening an already developed capitalist economy, it increasingly appears as a misguided strategy for capitalist development itself.” (p. 28) Finally, though they view the American imperial state as acting “on behalf of capital” and “of acting not only on behalf of its own capitalist class but also on behalf of the extension and reproduction of global capitalism” (p.17), they allow it “a relatively autonomous role in maintaining social order and securing the conditions of capital accumulation” (p. 6).
They do however treat the Volcker episode and neoliberal restructuring as functional and rational in the developed capitalist context of America itself.
> By the end of the seventies, with the American economy facing a flight
> of capital (both domestic and foreign), a Presidential report to
> Congress (describing itself as ‘the most comprehensive and detailed
> analysis of the competitive position of the United States’) confirmed
> a steep decline in competitiveness -- one that it advised could be
> corrected, but not without a radical reorientation in economic policy
> to address the persistence of domestic inflation and the need for
> greater access to savings so as to accelerate investment.[76]
>
> The concern with retaining capital and attracting new capital was
> especially crucial to what followed. The opening up of domestic and
> global capital markets was both an opportunity and a constraint for
> the American state. Liberalized finance held out the option of
> shifting an important aspect of competition to the very terrain on
> which the American economy potentially had its greatest advantages,
> yet those advantages could not become an effective instrument of
> American power until other economic and political changes had
> occurred. The American state’s ambivalence about how to deal with the
> growing strength of financial capital was reflected in its policies:
> capital controls were introduced in 1963, but were made open to
> significant ‘exceptions’; the Euro-dollar market was a source of
> concern, but also recognized as making dollar holdings more attractive
> and subsequently encouraging the important recycling of petro-dollars
> to the third world. The liberalization of finance enormously
> strengthened Wall Street through the 1970s and, as Duménil and Lévy
> have persuasively shown, proved crucial to the broader changes that
> followed.[77] But this should not be seen as being at the expense of
> industrial capital. What was involved was not a ‘financial coup’, but
> rather a (somewhat belated) recognition on the part of American
> capital generally that the strengthening of finance was an essential,
> if sometimes painful, price to be paid for reconstituting American
> economic power.[78]
>
> The critical ‘turning point’ in policy orientation came in 1979 with
> the ‘Volcker shock’ -- the American state’s self-imposed structural
> adjustment program. The Federal Reserve’s determination to establish
> internal economic discipline by allowing interest rates to rise to
> historically unprecedented levels led to the vital restructuring of
> labour and industry and brought the confidence that the money markets
> and central bankers were looking for. Along with the more general
> neoliberal policies that evolved into a relatively coherent capitalist
> policy paradigm through the eighties, the new state-reinforced
> strength of finance set the stage for what came to be popularly known
> as ‘globalization’ -- the accelerated drive to a seamless world of
> capital accumulation.
>
> The mechanisms of neoliberalism (the expansion and deepening of
> markets and competitive pressures) may be economic, but neoliberalism
> was essentially a political response to the democratic gains that had
> been previously achieved by subordinate classes and which had become,
> in a new context and from capital’s perspective, barriers to
> accumulation. Neoliberalism involved not just reversing those gains,
> but weakening their institutional foundations -- including a shift in
> the hierarchy of state apparatuses in the US towards the Treasury and
> Federal Reserve at the expense of the old New Deal agencies. The US
> was of course not the only country to introduce neoliberal policies,
> but once the American state itself moved in this direction, it had a
> new status: capitalism now operated under ‘a new form of social
> rule’[79] that promised, and largely delivered, (a) the revival of the
> productive base for American dominance; (b) a universal model for
> restoring the conditions for profits in other developed countries; and
> (c) the economic conditions for integrating global capitalism.
>
> In the course of the economic restructuring that followed, American
> labour was further weakened, providing American capital with an even
> greater competitive flexibility vis-à-vis Europe. Inefficient firms
> were purged -- a process that had been limited in the seventies.
> Existing firms restructured internally, outsourced processes to
> cheaper and more specialized suppliers, relocated to the increasingly
> urban south, and merged with others -- all part of an accelerated
> reallocation of capital within the American economy. The new
> confidence of global investors (including Wall Street itself) in the
> American economy and state provided the US with relatively cheap
> access to global savings and eventually made capital cheaper in the
> US. The available pools of venture capital enhanced investment in the
> development of new technologies (which also benefited from public
> subsidies via military procurement programs), and the new technologies
> were in turn integrated into management restructuring strategies and
> disseminated into sectors far beyond ‘high tech’. The US proportion of
> world production did not further decline: it continued to account for
> around one-fourth of the total right into the twenty-first century.
>
This involves a view of the functioning of Wall Street and its effect on corporate decision making very different from the one set out in the passages from Keynes I quoted.
Ted