We Get Knocked Down … but We Get up Again!

"The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for somebody to win an important, major fight 100 years hence, a lot of other people have got to be willing -- for the sheer fun and joy of it -- to go right ahead and fight, knowing they’re going to lose.

"You mustn’t feel like a martyr. You’ve got to enjoy it." (I.F. Stone)

It's not easy being a socialist. You won't make money in the process, or win powerful friends and influence people (it would be great, wouldn't it?). In fact, many will hate and despise you gratuitously. You will be slandered. Every little success will cost you dearly.

But you already know that, don't you?

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There is something, however, you may not already know: There are two ways to look at that.

This is one way:



This -- ask Chumbawamba -- is the other way:



No way is better than the other, in general. But one way might be better for you, in particular.

Whatever way life -- and you -- choose, I wish you good luck. May (the) God(s) -- if He/She/It/They actually exist(s) -- give  you strength comrade.

Always remember this:

"I was. I am. I shall be!" (here)

Replicability in Economics?

The latest scandal in economics? After considering 67 recent empirical papers published in 13 prestigious journals, Andrew C. Chang and Phillip Li found that "[b]ecause we are able to replicate less than half of the papers in our sample even with help from the authors [more precisely: 1/3 totally independently, less than 1/2 with the author's help], we assert that economics research is usually not replicable." (PDF)

Sounds bad, doesn't it? Don't worry about it, because it gets worse. Like, a lot worse.

Keynes on Trotsky.

1919 Russian Civil War White propaganda poster. Source: MIA.

Appearing originally on March 27, 1926 in The Nation and Athenaeum, John Maynard Keynes' "Trotsky on England" found its way -- rather strangely, as it's anything but a biography -- into "Essays in Biography", Keynes' anthology of biographical essays published six years later.

Trying to read that intensely exasperating essay (apparently conceived as a review of Leon Trotsky's 1925 book "Where is Britain Going?"), I found "Keynes on Trotsky", an old post by Larry Hamelin (who goes by the colourful moniker of "The Barefoot Bum", here).

Keynes or Marx? Ask Hardcastle.

"[I]t was Keynes, not Marx, who cracked the code of crisis economics and explained how recessions and depressions can happen." (Paul Krugman)

Edgar Hardcastle. Source: MIA

Although Whack-a-Krugman (with or without reason) has become a popular past-time among the Internet experts, I'm not reproducing the quote above (from "Why Aren't We All Keynesians Yet"; Fortune, August 17, 1998: link) to pick on Paul Krugman, or any other notable in particular.

Instead, my intention is to give a clear example of an unjustified triumphalism common not only among the multitude of commentators of unknown and/or questionable credentials (to say nothing of intellectual honesty and ability to read) populating comment threads and the Twittersphere, but even among mainstream bona fide Keynesian scholars (like Krugman). [*]

In both cases, I suspect, the comment is nothing more than an uncritical/confused endorsement of some previous authority's pronouncements (btw, I could give at least one good example, as good as the quote above, including a high-profile academic's candid admission, but I rather avoid hurting feelings).

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Edgar Hardcastle (1900-1995) -- and many others after him -- have abundantly written about the largely unacknowledged debt Keynesian economics owes Marx. From his June 1971 article "Marx and Keynes on Unemployment" for the Socialist Standard:

"Keynes was given the credit of having demolished the theories of 19th century economists who had taught that, if left to its own devices, capitalism would always and of its own accord tend towards full employment. What was little noticed was that most of the ground covered by him had been treated in detail by Marx three-quarters of a century earlier. Keynes was quite contemptuous of Marx, describing Capital as "an obsolete textbook which I know to be not only scientifically erroneous but without interest or application to the modern world" (A Short View of Russia, 1925) and he never seems to have appreciated that his own criticisms of earlier economists were much like those of Marx."

Read the rest here.

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That's not to say that Marxism and Keynesianism are fully compatible. For my own critique of a particular aspect of Keynesianism, start here.

Note:
[*] Incidentally, at the drop of a hat, many of the feral commentators do not hesitate in turning their tantrum from Marx to -- ironically enough -- people like Krugman.