Social antagonism and economics: A reformulation of the radical critique of Keynesianism

Radical economists have generally criticized mainstream economics for its ideological and apologetic character as opposed to a scientific discourse which instead is the domain of radical research. In this work the ideological and apologetic nature of mainstream economics is left in the background while its scientific character is critically evaluated. By economics as science I do not mean an objective value-free practice, but the elaboration of theoretical and analytical tools which are adequate to inform and frame strategies of capitalist accumulation, that is, strategies for the accumulation of the class relation of work vis-a-vis working class resistance and autonomy. This means that economics is a science which practice presupposes not only the capitalist class relation of work but also the attempt of its maintenance and perpetration in historical specific times. I thus define economics as bourgeoise economics on the basis of the fact that its theoretical categories are discussed without the assumption or the point of view of the transcendence of capitalism.;From the tradition of Autonomist Marxism, the essential thesis of this work is thus that social antagonism is of central importance in explaining the development of economic theory. The dissertation is divided in three parts. In the three chapters of the first part, I develop a Marxist critical methodology, which Harry Cleaver has called "the inversion of the class perspective." This move from the class nature of value production to show the relation between working class autonomy on one side and economic theory and economic planning on the other. In the three chapters of the second part I develop a theoretical critique of Keynesianism. I show first how Keynes' theory took shape against the background of growing social unrest of the 1920s and 1930s and the inability of classical economics to provide strategic indications able to resume the process of capitalist accumulation. I critically discuss then some main theoretical categories used by Keynes and postwar mainstream Keynesianism, that is, the Neoclassical Synthesis, to reveal their political meaning. In the four chapters of the third part I provide an illustration of the historical development of the Keynesian orthodoxy in relation to working class autonomy and the formation of the social institutions at the core of the Keynesian period of accumulation following the Second World War. In its entirety, this work therefore opens the way for further, much needed research based on the methodology here proposed.