The Theoretical Features of Post-war Keynesianism

Abstract

I regard the passage from Keynes to the Neo-classical Synthesis as a refinement of the theoretical tools provided by economics corresponding to a historical situation in which new institutions for the management of the class conflict were set up. The original theoretical apparatus of Keynes and the refined one of Keynesianism, or the Keynesian orthodoxy in the form of the Neo-classical Synthesis, differ because of the changing conditions of the class relations. Keynes was writing at a time in which the problem of working-class autonomy and its channeling was urgent and social experiments for its control such as the New Deal were relatively new. In the post-Second World War era, the practices of social regulation theorized and experienced earlier became a central feature of the capitalist regime. A gravity center for the class struggle was established through the productivity deals and the establishment of a reference point against which to measure the social proportion between surplus and necessary labor. Thus, whereas in the theoretical apparatus of Keynes, the subsumption of working-class autonomy is assumed as political project, in that of Keynesianism it is assumed as a fundamental institutional condition. This obviously had the limitation of any capitalist strategy of subsumption, founded on the belief that social conflict can indeed be frozen and the newly established institutions of capitalism are able to deal once and for all with the contradictions of the capitalist mode of production. The basic pillar of the Neoclassical Synthesis, the IS-LM model, assumes a concept of aggregate and a concept of time and equilibrium that corresponds to this new class situation.