The Keynes Project: No Takers So Far
Jan. 12, 2012
If the professors on the Right were as productive as Walter Block, a handful of them -- maybe 200 -- could take on all of academic social science. If they were as productive as Jacob Neusner, it would take only 100. Maybe only 50.
Yet, in every field, we are short-handed.
In psychology, no one has systematically, relentlessly challenged both Freud and Skinner, in equal proportions. Yet we know Freud was a fraud and Skinner was absurd. (The most devastating book on Freud was 60 pages long in the first edition, and was written by a theologian, R. J. Rushdoony. The best book I know of on Skinner was written by a philosopher, Tibor Machan.)
In sociology, no one has taken Robert Nisbet's work, let alone Albert Hobbs' work (he remains unknown), to challenge the mathematical school, the functional school, or any of the other schools. Yet sociology is widely suspected of being a fake social science, which has only one law: "Some do. Done don't."
There never was one scholar who took on Karl Marx in all fields: his historical facts, his economic theory, his theory of causation, his materialist philosophy, his failed predictions, and his personal life. (I wrote Marx's Religion of Revolution as a graduate student. I was in academia part-time for one semester.) The Marxists were still riding high when the Soviet Union committed suicide in 1991, taking the Good Ship Marx to Davy Jones' locker.
There is no well-known academic challenger of John Dewey and progressive education who comes in the name of private education to state the case in history, in learning theory, and in actual performance. Yet the public schools are visibly failing. (Rushdoony challenged progressive education's theories of man, school, and state in The Messianic Character of American Education (1963). He was not in academia. John Taylor Gatto has challenged actual school performance. He was a high school teacher.)
In American history, there has never been a single scholar to challenge the Roosevelt myth: in foreign policy, in domestic economic policy, and in politics. We have waited for 70 years. (John T. Flynn was a journalist, not a scholar. Only Antony Sutton blew away the myth of FDR as the enemy of Wall Street. Sutton was not in academia.)
The lack of a challenger is most obvious in economic theory. There is only one man to refute: John Maynard Keynes. Take down Keynes, and the entire guild is exposed as would-be emperors with no clothes. Keynes was the weaver. Take down just one book by Keynes, The General Theory, and the non-Keynesians in the guild are exposed as the equivalent of the ten spies who came back from Canaan with a bad report: "There are giants in the land."
Sadly, there is no Joshua. I do my best to serve as Caleb.
Keynes has dominated modern economic thought. There is not one academic who has devoted his career to refuting Keynes' General Theory.
Henry Hazlitt did the best job. That was in 1959: The Failure of the "New Economics". Hazlitt never went to college.
I have offered a challenge. No one has accepted the challenge. The video is here.
I have outlined a plan: //www.garynorth.com/public/department135.cfm.
No Chicago School economist has done this. No supply-side economist has done this. No rational expectations school economist has done this. No public choice economist has done this. No Austrian School scholar has done this.
Thomas Kuhn described our situation a generation ago: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). He said that major changes in outlook take place when the facts are widely perceived as no longer fitting the prevailing academic theories. A paradigm shift takes place. A handful of younger scholars offer a rival theory, or an outsider does. Younger scholars discard the prevailing theory. Then the Establishment slowly dies off. "Science progresses one funeral at a time." -- Max Planck
The Keynesian worldview is under siege. Keynesian deficits are not working to bring down unemployment. Central bank monetary policies are failing. The Social Security system is failing. This is international.
This is why Keynesianism is ripe for defeat. The facts of world economics no longer fit Keynesian theory. They never did, but Keynesians got away with their revolution.
There should be one academic who sees the opportunity. He could become the next Keynes. But it would take a lot of work. It would take a systematic plan. There are no takers.