Tuesday 29 July 2014

Hayek, the Post-Keynesian Hero?


Well, well, well, well. Look who's being quoted with barely disguised approval by, of all people, internet Post-Keynesians: Friedrich A. Hayek! Surprise!

Hayek, it seems, was a bit of a Popperian. According to Hayek, Marxism was "irrefutable" (by which he presumably meant that it was not susceptible of empirical testing and falsification, as Eugen Böhm von Bawerk supposedly refuted Marxism on logical grounds in 1896), therefore -- unlike his own economics -- it was not scientific. In the strictest interpretation of Popper's empirical falsificationism (which required the empirical test to be experimental), I suppose Marxism perhaps could be exiled, together with Darwinism/natural selection to the netherworld of metaphysical research programs. Oh, dear!

(I may or may not -- who knows -- have more to say about this in the future.)

At any rate, the man said what he said. Fair enough.

Nevertheless, Herr Professor Doktor Hayek said other things, too. Let us hear one of them:



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Seriously now. Amusing as they are, don't let these Hayek vs Keynes exchanges fool you: both men knew well back then, as their modern epigones do now, who their real enemy was.

That goes a long way to explain those surprising bouts of admiration.

But, who is that monstrous enemy such learned and sophisticated gentlemen hate and fear so? Karl Marx, who's been dead for over 130 years?

I don't think so.

If you are a worker, maybe you should look in the mirror to see who that enemy is.

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