> On Jun 17, 2009, at 12:13 PM, SA wrote:
>
>> BTW, the dismissal of Greenbackery is part and parcel of M&E's
>> general dismissal of money and finance as somehow external to "the
>> real inner workings" of capitalism.
>
> No. Money and finance are central to the construction of scarcity and
> power. Mere manipulations in the monetary realm won't change
> productive relations or social structures, but that doesn't mean that
> m & f are external. "A man carries his bond with society in his
> pocket..."
Well, although I'm not for "mere manipulations" of money, I disagree here. A monetary policy that produces 3% unemployment instead of 7% unemployment will definitely change productive relations and social structure. Hence the Kaleckian argument about the politics of full employment.
But if you had tried that argument out on Marx, he probably would have thought it was pure monetary crankery. It's not his fault - he lived at a time when all leading bourgeois economists believed in the neutrality of money. He never read Keynes.
SA