Comment on David Andolfatto on ‘Kalecki on the Political Aspects of Full Employment’
Blog-Reference and Blog-Reference
The state of economics is this: theoretical economics (= science) had been hijacked from the very beginning by political economists (= agenda pushers). Political economics has produced NOTHING of scientific value in the last 200+ years.
The major approaches ― Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism, MMT ― are mutually contradictory, axiomatically false, materially/formally inconsistent and all got the foundational concept of the subject matter ― profit ― wrong. What we have is the pluralism of provably false theories.
Obviously, economists violate the core principle of science, i.e. to bury refuted theories for good: “In economics we should strive to proceed, wherever we can, exactly according to the standards of the other, more advanced, sciences, where it is not possible, once an issue has been decided, to continue to write about it as if nothing had happened.” (Morgenstern, 1941)
The characteristic of science is ‘Conjecture and Refutation’, i.e. to ensure the material and formal consistency of a theory, to bury a theory at the Flat-Earth-Cemetery if refuted, and to replace it with something better. The characteristic of non-science, i.e. religion, politics, and common sense, is to endlessly repeat the same silly stories and the same false claims and only to defend/adapt them by ever more intricate reinterpretations.
Non-science means to keep everything in the swamp between true and false where “nothing is clear and everything is possible” (Keynes). Science means to get out of the swamp.
Economics is NOT science. Economists are NOT scientists but political agenda pushers.#1 The very characteristic of agenda-pushing is meta-communication or what the Ancients called sophistry or what the Moderns call mindfuck.
Science tries to figure out whether a given statement that relates to a real-world subject matter is true or false. Scientific truth is well-defined by material/formal consistency. Mindfuck is not about reality but about what others say or think about reality and the motivation behind it.
Kalecki is a case in point. He argues
“[1] Absent full employment policy the ‘state of confidence’ will produce business cycles. Under laisser-faire then, industry leaders can credibly use this fact to exert a powerful indirect control over government policy.
[2] Supporting obviously beneficial public sector investments leads to a slippery slope. The government may wish to encroach in other areas in competition with private enterprise.
[3] In a perpetually full employment economy, the threat of unemployment vanishes as a discipline device for employers. As well, the social position of the boss would be undermined and the self assurance and class consciousness of the working class would grow, leading to political instability.”
Obviously, Kalecki speculates about what goes on in the heads of politicians, workers, and the captains of industry. Obviously, Kalecki is NOT concerned about how the economic system works. He is NOT doing science but brain-dead folk-psychology.#2
Thinking hard about how the actual economy works will eventually lead to the true employment theory. Mindfuck, on the other hand, will never get out of the self-referential cycle of second-guessing and motive-imputation.#3
Kalecki, to be sure, is but one incompetent scientist in the history of economics mindfuck which is euphemistically called the history of economic thought. No thought there, merely political blather.
Kalecki, to be sure, is refuted on all counts.#4, #5, #6 High time for Mr. Andolfatto to bury him and to end those proto-scientific mindfuck exercises.
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke
#1 There are NO crank scientists in economics because economics is NOT a science
#2 Cross-references NOT a Science of Behavior
#3 The economist as storyteller
#4 Truth by definition? The Profit Theory is axiomatically false for 200+ years
#5 Kalecki got it wrong, Allais got it right
#6 For details of the big picture see cross-references Kalecki
Related 'The problem with economics as a discipline' and 'Economic narratives are for the scientific garbage dump' and 'Economics ― the science that never was' and 'Ending the pluralism of provably false economic theories with the long-overdue Paradigm Shift' and 'Stop Recycling Dead Economic Theories, Start the Paradigm Shift'.
