Keynes’s famous account of how economic ideas reach politics is badly flawed.

Evidence

When considering the relationship of formal economic knowledge to social movements, it has become commonplace for pundits to quote the dictum of John Maynard Keynes in the General Theory: “Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.” However stylish was Keynes’s prose, the rudimentary sociology of knowledge propounded therein has turned out badly flawed. Far from ectoplasmic missives from the late lamented, a simulacrum of a genteel Edwardian séance, the injection of economic ideas into quotidian politics has been conducted in ways both more concrete and yet more convoluted than is suggested by this rather tendentious bit of economists’ self-flattery. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 42

When considering the relationship of formal economic knowledge to social movements, it has become commonplace for pundits to quote the dictum of John Maynard Keynes in the General Theory: “Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.” However stylish was Keynes’s prose, the rudimentary sociology of knowledge propounded therein has turned out badly flawed. … Far from ectoplasmic missives from the late lamented, a simulacrum of a genteel Edwardian séance, the injection of economic ideas into quotidian politics has been conducted in ways both more concrete and yet more convoluted than is suggested by this rather tendentious bit of economists’ self-flattery. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 42

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in the ‘thought collective’ — this is Mirowski beginning to reframe how ideas propagate, opposing the passive Keynesian pipeline theory. — connects to: Keynes treated unemployment as technical, missing its political role. — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention, 254; Early neoliberal economists disputed Keynes by arguing Germany could pay the reparations — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 380
• corroborated: 4 independent passages support this claim — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 42

Broader Connections

• Keynes treated unemployment as technical, missing its political role. #exemplifies (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 254
• Early neoliberal economists disputed Keynes by arguing Germany could pay the reparations #qualifies (0.72) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 380