Architectures of Economic Subjectivity by Scott Sonya

Author:Scott, Sonya
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-136-19967-7
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

Time and ignorance: Keynes’ rejoinder to the static subjects of general equilibrium

John Maynard Keynes is arguably one of the most influential economists of the twentieth century, and his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money represents one of the most radical interventions in classical economic theory accepted (at least in part) by mainstream economics. Our examination of Keynes, however, is not a study of his entire scope of thought, but rather an attempt to glean the relevance of his ideas on time in the wake of the marginalist revolution and the classical tradition that emerged from Ricardo. While Marshall is indeed a precursor to Keynes, most direct references to Marshall’s work in the General Theory relate strictly to Marshall’s understanding of the rate of interest. It is rather the implicit and considerable concern with the problem of time, as raised by Marshall, that we see in Keynes’ work. It is an attempt to deal with the epistemological problems posed, not only to the economist as we witnessed in the Principles, but also to the subjects of the economy, people themselves, by the question of time and uncertainty. In Keynes’ opinion the world of economics was still at the turn of the twentieth century marred by the influence of Ricardian thought11 (and perhaps this comes through quite clearly in Marshall). This world, he claims, was still bound to view economic theory without noticing the lack of correspondence between economic law and empirical reality. The motivation, claims Keynes, for such wilful ignorance lies in the desire to defend the doctrine of laissez-faire economics, as they developed out of the Ricardian tradition by means of the naturalized laws of distribution. Keynes famously describes classical economists in the image of the idealist Candide, who refuses to look out of the mythical garden toward the difficulties of the world around him:

the celebrated optimism of traditional economic theory, which has led to economists being looked upon as Candides, who, having left this world for the cultivation of their gardens, teach that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds provided we will let well alone.

(33, original emphasis)

Keynes’ objective, then, is to combat such ungrounded optimism,12 and I will argue that he does so by unearthing the sources of economic mystification as he understands them to be bound up in time, money (specifically liquidity) and knowledge.

This examination of Keynes, therefore, aims to show the way in which his conceptions of temporality and subjectivity are a rejoinder to the temporality of general equilibrium theory. We saw in Walras’ Elements that the concern with time was strictly that of a present-future relationship for the temporally frozen agent of exchange, and that this future state was subsumed under the conditions of the present which are both made into and made from a position of subjective absolutism. We saw in Marshall a concern for the process of time, for the rhythm of the economy in time. And yet for Marshall there is an inevitable settling in the

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