케인스주의에 대한 마르크스주의적 비판

Abstract

This paper intends to compare some key economic and political ideas of J. M. Keynes and K. Marx. After introducing and developing Keynes’ ideas, they are contrasted with Marx’s ideas. In the first part it traces the genealogy of Keynesianism in comparison with neoclassical economics. The so-called mainstream Keynesianism absorbed in the neoclassical synthesis has been discredited by the neo-liberal economics since early 1970s. Keynesians’ response to it was to form the post Keynesianism which has been materialised in Cambridge Journal of Economics and Journal of Post Keynesian Economics. The second part analyses the effective demand theory, the most important contribution by Keynes. Keynes’s classification of consumer, speculator and entrepreneur is contrasted with Marx’s distinction between capitalist and worker. And Keynes’s psychological tendencies ― marginal propensity to consume, liquidity preference and marginal efficiency of investment ― are evaluated by Marx’s valorization of capital. The necessity of the State to intervene in the economic process due to the lack of effective demand for full employment is criticised as logically inconsistent. In the third part the views on the joint stock company are compared. Keynes argues that the joint stock company will weaken the enrichment drive and individualism because the division between ownership and management will enhance public interests instead of private interests, and that capitalism will improve its functioning. On the other hand, Marx regards the joint stock company as ‘a necessary point of transition towards the transformation of capital back into the property of associated producers.’ The fourth part analyses Keynes’s view on the State. According to him, the State is a neutral third party, but as its bureaucrats don’t know how to deal with unemployment and unequal distribution of income, the ‘outstanding flaws’ of capitalism, the intelligentsia must take over the State organs in order to save capitalism. But from Marx’s perspective Keynes has a State fetishism anlacks an understanding of the State as an instrument of class struggle. In the five part the paper points out the antinomy of the State expenditure. When Keynes emphasizes the State expenditure as essential for eliminating unemployment, he does not take into account the source of the State expenditure as being an appropriation of capitalists’ surplus value. In other words, if the State expenditure does not increase the surplus value of capitalists as much as the taxes they paid, they will argue a reduction of the State expenditure. This logic is related with Marx’s designation of the State expenditure as unproductive.