Marx & Keynes

[crippled sloth]

Marx built greatly upon the economic theories of adam smith. However, much later Keynes added much to economics that smith had not considered.

Does anyone know of any attemts to adapt marxist theory to keynesian as opposed to classical economics?

[Hit The North]

Written in the 1950s, the ideas in Paul Mattack's article, on the historical significance of Keynesian economics are now proved to be wrong, however it should give you a good introduction to a Marxist analysis of Keynesianism and the difference between that and Marxist economic theory.

See LINK (http://www.marxists.org/archive/mattick-paul/1955/keynes.htm)

[Dewolfemann]

Yes there has been lots of work by US academics trying to "improve" Marxism by synthesizing it with Keynesianism but rather than taking new particular insights of Keynes analysis and adding it to Marx, usually they try to substitute Keynes for Marx, stripping it away of all its revolutionary character.

[JimFar]

In the UK, Joan Robinson sought to combine the ideas of Alfred Marshall, John Maynard Keynes, with Marxist analysis. Her fellow Cambridger, Michal Kalecki, back when he was still in Poland had independently devloped an approach to macroeconomics that was similar to Kenynes' theory. Keynes noticed that this and so brought Kalecki to Cambridge. There, Kalecki sought to synthesize Keynesian economic ideas with Marxism. In the US, Paul Sweezy, was in fact one of the early Keynesians. He was influneced by both Robinson and Kalecki, so that his brand of Marxist economics bore traces of a strong Keynesian influence.