On the Catastrophic Impact That the Many Myths Created by Joan Robinson Between 1936 and 1980 About J M Keynes and the General Theory Have Had on Macroeconomic History

Abstract

The many, many myths created by Joan Robinson about J M Keynes and the General Theory, starting in the early 1930’s, have become embedded in the history of macroeconomics.

These myths, such as the claim that Joan Robinson worked closely with Keynes on the writing of the General Theory, that R. Kahn developed, explained and taught Keynes the theory of the multiplier, that there was no IS-LM model in the General Theory, that J. Hicks originated and developed the IS-LM model in the April,1937 issue of Econometrica, that fundamental uncertainty, as opposed to the uncertainty related to Keynes’ Evidential Weight of the Argument concept from his A Treatise on Probability (1921) ,was the central foundation of the General Theory, that Kalecki had written a version of Keynes’s General Theory in 1933-1935 in Polish that covered Keynes’s Theory of Effective Demand, that Keynes had not taken the 20 minutes necessary to learn the theory of value, that there was no formal, mathematical, microeconomic foundations in the General Theory, that Keynes did not understand the purpose of the General Theory and had to have it explained to him, that the General Theory was written as a chain of literary statements without the use of mathematical analysis, that Keynes was a Marshallian who had destroyed all of his mathematical analysis in the General Theory before publishing it, etc., are all simply the silly, stupid, foolish unexamined assertions of a mathematically illiterate economist who, due to her extreme mathematical and statistical ignorance, could not pass a sixth grade grammar school introduction to elementary algebra.

An examination of a 2019 paper by G. Akerlof shows how deeply these myths of Joan Robinson have become entrenched in the history of macroeconomics. It is simply not possible for economics to be called scientific, much less a science, given the extent of this mythology, of which I have barely scratched the surface in my discussions about examples above. I can find no claim made about J M Keynes or the General Theory made by Joan Robinson in her lifetime that is not at least partially or completely false.