Keynesianism

‘What’s happening?’ Corbyn asked a young man with a ‘CORBYN OUT’ placard. ‘He’s refusing to give free gap years and iPhones to the under-25s’. ‘CORBYN OUT!’ Corbyn shouted. ‘DOWN WITH CORBYN! END THE CORBYN JUNTA NOW!’”

The Daily Telegraph’s depiction of a delusional, childish movement forever unsatisfied with so-called economic realities tries to distract from the key reason for Jeremy Corbyn’s rise — that he represents a popular break with austerity.

A new radical think-tank kicked off last year in the UK. It's got a great name: Class: the Centre for Labour and Social Studies. Sounds socialist, even Marxist, doesn't it? Unfortunately, at its first meeting the speakers, especially the economists, were all Keynesians. All the arguments against austerity were Keynesian. Apparently, a Marxist analysis has no contribution to make in explaining the Great Recession and the ensuing long depression - or what to do about it.

• Keynes argued against cutting workers' wages in a recession and leaving the market to its own devices

• He argued that governments should cut interest rates and directly invest to lift the economy

• But he tailored his solutions to what bosses would accept

The ideas of John Maynard Keynes are back with a vengeance. This has been a consistent theme in the past few years, from the corridors of power to the pages of the Financial Times. After 30 years of deriding Keynes's ideas many are now reconsidering the economic remedies he prescribed.

Worries that banks might not get the returns they expected from lending to Greece and other states have provoked a fresh round of stock market panic. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has downgraded its global growth forecast for 2012 to 4 percent. By coincidence, this is exactly the same figure that in October 2008 it predicted for 2009. It had no idea, even after it had begun, that we were in for a spectacular contraction.

You studied mainstream economics, which is often made out to be "ideology-free" and treated like a branch of mathematics. Yet your new book, No Way to Run an Economy, discusses figures such as John Maynard Keynes and Karl Marx. How did you end up there?

I did a degree at City University in London which was heavily steeped in monetarism. Then I went on to do a postgraduate degree that was far more pragmatic and non-ideological at the University of Toronto. I came back from Canada to get my first job in the City and worked in London for Japanese banks throughout the 1990s.

Will Barack Obama be another Franklin D Roosevelt? That is the question many people are asking. Underlying the question is the assumption that Roosevelt, elected for the first time in November 1932, single-handedly brought about radical change in the US, providing a solution to the Depression that followed the 1929 Wall Street Crash.

"Everyone is in thrall to the great economist now." So ran a piece in the Financial Times about John Maynard Keynes. And so it seems. The same message comes from US treasury secretary Hank Paulson and the Fed's Ben Bernanke at one extreme and from left wingers like Larry Elliot and Graham Turner at the other. Keynes showed in the 1930s how to stop crises, they all say, and his methods can work now.

Financial cupboards that were declared bare for every other demand - public sector pay, pensions, education and public housing - are suddenly bursting with borrowed billions to bail out the system.

The ruling classes of mainland Europe are now trying to recover from the shock which hit them in the early summer. Their central project of pushing through neo-liberalism was thrown into crisis by the No vote in the French and Dutch referendums.

Since the referendum all leaders of the European Union's mainstream parties have repeated the same refrain. Europe's economies, they say, have no future unless the mass of people are prepared to work harder, and for lower wages and pensions in order to cope with 'the challenge from India and China'.

One concept will be much used at the European Social Forum in Paris next month - ‘neoliberalism‘. Some will use it as a synonym for the system of international capitalism, some for the present phase of that system (often also referred to as ’globalisation‘), and some for a particular economic arrangement chosen by governments.