Monday, Mar 15th 2010
Yesterday I spoke to Professor Terrence McDonough on the phone, about his talk at the recent TASC conference entitled Towards a Progressive Economics. In a conversation that lasted about 30 minutes Professor McDonough described how orthodox economics is commonly (and inaccurately) understood and suggested that the left in all its forms should take a fresh [...]
Thoroughly Modern Marx
“The economic crisis has spawned a resurgence of interest in Karl Marx”, says Leo Panitch in his recent Foreign Policy article. “Worldwide sales of Das Kapital have shot up (one lone German publisher sold thousands of copies in 2008, compared with 100 the year before), a measure of a crisis so broad in [...]
John Maynard Keynes once remarked that “practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”. Are we approaching a time when practical men (and women) will have to make a conscious choice between the philosophies of two long-dead economists: Keynes himself and Karl [...]
The view from the world’s second-tallest building, the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, is a bit of an anti-climax - once you get near the top there’s not much to see that can compare with the skyscraper itself. You can’t help being impressed, though, at the ambition behind the Towers. In case visitors over-look what [...]
To most Irish political and media commentators, the Republic is a capitalist economy without a capitalist class structure. They argue that its citizens are mostly middle class, with a working class rump that exists on the margins. The past fifteen years, in their eyes, has seen an expansion of that middle class, as well [...]