Robert Skidelsky — Creative destruction: our economic crisis was wholly predictable

Keynes, Hobson, Marx - and the crisis of capitalism

Is it to the wrong ideas of economists or to the interests of the power-holders that we should turn to explain the “Great Contraction” of 2008-2009? John Maynard Keynes believed that the Great Depression of 1929-32 was caused by the wrong theory of how the economy worked in the minds of policymakers – the remedy for which was to equip them with the right theory.

But this ignored one thing: that the reigning ideas are, more often than not, the product of the dominant power structures.

Economics, therefore, needs to be supplemented by political economy – the study of how power affects the choice of ideas and policies and the distribution of income; in short, Keynes plus J A Hobson and Karl Marx.

Bingo!
New Statesman
Creative destruction: our economic crisis was wholly predictable
Robert Skidelsky
(h/t Philip Pilkington via FB)