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THORSTEIN VEBLEN AND POST-KEYNESIANS: ARE THE CAPITALIST SYSTEMS OF MEDICARE IN THE UNITED STATES TRULY SELF-ORGANISING?
September, 2019
By Mu-Jeong Kho
University College London - United Kingdom
Abstract
In a context of contemporary socio-economic disorder deepening in the capitalist system, there has been an understandable resurgence of interest in Post-Keynesian economics, which steps outside the dominant neo-liberal consensus. Albeit the field of post-Keynesian economics as heterodoxy is enormously affluent to research on the origin of disorder occurring capitalism and has hitherto reviewed that Veblen is no stranger to itself; however, the weakness that impedes its capacity seriously to challenge the ruling consensus is not only its fragmentation in development but also is its weak connection with Veblen, particularly on the question: whether capitalist systems of medicare in the U.S. are truly self-organising? If it is true, how, possibly the institutional matrix, full of the variations such as: market versus non-market on the one hand; on the other, pro-capital versus anti-capital. This paper, defining the term self-organisation as a process of reconstituting an order out of disorder, and the term order as ‘structure,’ and the term capital as the ‘result of the laws and institutions’ based on capitalist relations of production, aims to focus this particular agenda, to demonstrate the relations of Veblenian and post-Keynesian economics particularly in the context of the medicare of the United States since the 2007-2008 global financial crisis. By doing so, this paper argues: to the post-Keynesian economics, a dialogue with Veblen is one of the preconditions to deepen a Marxian approach looking beyond the capitalist systems of medicare.
Keywords: Veblen, Post-Keynesian Economics, Self-Organisation, Heterodoxy, Medicare, the United States
JEL Code: B00, B52, E12, I14
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Kho, Mu-Jeong (2019) ‘Thorstein Veblen and Post-Keynesians: Are the Capitalist Systems of Medicare in the United States Truly Self-Organising?’ Conference Paper, Session C: Post-Keynesian Economics International Conference on Economic Theory and Policy (September Conference 2019) by the Japanese Society for Post Keynesian Economics (JSPKE) & Meiji University (School of Political Science and Economics), Meiji University (Surugadai Campus), Tokyo, Japan, 15-17 September 2019: 1-21.
http://www.kisc.meiji.ac.jp/~confyagi/September2019.html