Status Updates From Keynesianism, Monetarism an...

Rising public expenditure had meant that the incidence of taxation had moved progressively down the income scale, so that the welfare state brought a net advantage only to the lowest income earners, the mass of the working class benefiting more from cuts in taxation than from increases in public expenditure.

The ideological merit of the Conservative’s monetarism was that it made a virtue of necessity, representing these crisis measures as the core principles of a new ideology of state regulation. It was not so much its positive merits that gave monetarism its appeal, as the manifest failure of Keynesianism. This was articulated in Thatcher’s triumphant refrain that ‘there is no alternative’.

Trades unionism was relevant primarily in the defence of wage differentials. The general level of real wages was not determined through pay bargaining but by the relationship between the rise in money wages and the rate of inflation.

Trades unionism was relevant primarily in the defence of wage differentials. The general level of real wages was not determined through pay bargaining but by the relationship between the rise in money wages and the rate of inflation.

Trades unionism was relevant primarily in the defence of wage differentials. The general level of real wages was not determined through pay bargaining but by the relationship between the rise in money wages and the rate of inflation.

The Keynesian Revolution has been popularly depicted as a political revolution underpinned by an intellectual revolution, as a revolutionary theory won over a state dominated by classical ignorance. However this characterisation ignores the diversity of pre-Keynesian economists’ views,
overestimates the originality of Keynes, and exaggerates the extent of the political changes that took place.

Until the 1840s crises were not usually a sign that accumulation had reached its limits, but were merely temporary setbacks, often exaggerated by the weaknesses of a financial system in which the expansion of bank credit was virtually uncontrolled, and which was vulnerable to collapse in the face of relatively small financial shocks.

The Napoleonic Wars provided an enormous stimulus to capitalist development. Wartime demand gave a great boost to the growth of domestic production and the Continental blockade led to the opening up of new export markets.