Steve Keen

Not very clear or convincing. Constantly feel like I need a glossary (uses "marginal productivity", "marginal product of labour" and "marginal revenue product" near interchangeably for example. No idea what makes each different). I fully admit this is at least partially my own fault - it would be ridiculous to expect to understand a huge amount of economics just reading straight through. But I felt it could have been made easier. I felt often like I could see how a neoclassical economist would rebut what's being said, although obviously not the details. I'm no friend of neoclassical economics but he seems to sell it a bit short - teaching ridiculously simplistic assumptions to undergrads and then teaching stuff closer to reality later is sadly pretty typical. He shows that the basis of neoclassical economics is crap but a lot of what he says is "right" feels remarkably similar. A lot of the time it didn't feel like it was hitting the right mark between "teaching neoclassical economics and showing the problems" and "sketching out an alternative".

Why is it taken as a given that capital makes a profit in and of itself? It's just stated with no evidence (chapter 7, while explaining Sraffa). Coming from a Marxist perspective it feels pretty pathetic. Actually a lot of the time I was reminded of Marx - for example talk about classes being better ways of analysing things, labour considered separately/important - but he criticises Marxist perspectives, even devoting a whole chapter to it. He apparently knows a lot about Marx but he makes a few criticisms which are just absurd - for example, the idea he quotes of a "commodity residue", which should somehow "prove" the labour theory of value is incorrect by showing that there's always a commodity that labour has to work with. This ignores that capitalism is presented by Marx as historical (therefore not everything previously made has been a capitalist commodity) for a start. http://mccaine.org/2012/07/04/steve-keens-critique-of-marxs-theory-of-value-a-re... This article gives a lot of criticism of this particular section.

He thinks science can be non-ideological but economics isn't and seems to think that the reason for this has nothing to do with the role of economics or anything, just that economists are stubborn or something.

Really it's not my ideological problems that are frustrating me, it's just that I'm not really building up a super clear picture either of neoclassical economics or his alternative because it's tough going with little help from the text in terms of either a glossary, summaries of concepts or anything like that. I don't know if I'm expecting too much but I guess it's important to point out that if you're looking for an intro to economics combined with a criticism of it you'll have a lot of trouble most likely.… (más)