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Approaches to Macroeconomics

Class Unity

Sundays beginning March 1st at 2 PM EST.

To register, sign up for the group’s mailing list here. This reading group is open to the public.

Pressing economic concerns face everyone at present and give rise to social and political problems that define our times. Many on the left neglect economic theory in favor of social, political and cultural questions, while nevertheless espousing policies associated with certain economic theories (e.g. the Green New Deal, a federal Jobs Guarantee, economic stimulus: MMT). Should we leave the task of understanding the modern economy to others? Can we change capitalist society without understanding it first?[1] Clearly not. A firm stance on economy distinguishes Marxian or materialist socialism from utopian socialism or radical liberalism. And so, the purpose of this study group is to develop an understanding of macroeconomics and the contemporary economy as a totality from a realistic, non-dogmatic, and critical perspective.

Starting from the basics, we will discuss labor, currency, finance, capital, policy, and many other topics. But we will also pay special attention to the difference between the perspective of mainstream, orthodox economics—the ‘neoclassical school’—and more realistic or critical, heterodox perspectives—institutionalism, post-Keynesianism and Marxism. Consider, for example, the following very different definitions of what economics is, seen from these two different perspectives. The mainstream view defines economics as “the study of the allocation of scarce resources among unlimited wants”. The heterodox view defines economics as “the study of social creation and social distribution of society’s resources” (Mitchell, Wray, Watts, 2019, 5 & 7). We will try to not only understand the economy as a totality, but also the conflict between perspectives on it, which inform the political conflicts that arise from it.

We will meet weekly to discuss two chapters of introductory material per session. Our aim is simply to understand macroeconomic theory and the broader extent of its implications for contemporary purposes. In order to facilitate discussion, members will take turns adopting the responsibility of summarizing and presenting the core of the readings under consideration in a given week’s meeting.

All readings will be provided as PDFs. Required and recommended (not-required) readings will be marked accordingly.

Texts

Reading Schedule:

First Session: Introduction

Second Session

Third Session

Fourth Session

Fifth Session

Sixth Session

Seventh Session

Eighth Session

Ninth Session

Tenth Session

Eleventh Session

Twelfth Session

Thirteenth Session

Fourteenth Session

Fifteenth Session

Sixteenth Session

Seventeenth Session

[1] The young Marx, before the failure of the 1848 revolutions, famously wrote: “Philosophers [like Feuerbach] have only interpreted the world; the point is to change it”. The mature Marx later wrote of passionate critics of capitalism: “Sismondi… forcefully criticizes the contradictions of bourgeois production but does not understand them, and consequently does not understand the process whereby they can be resolved”.

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