ABSTRACT
This chapter uses Marx's class-struggle perspective to explain the big changes in economics and the absence of a similar big change after the 2008 crisis. The Postface to the second edition of Das Kapital states that when the ruling class is strong it bends economic discourse to a justification of the status quo, leaving room only for ‘hired prize-fighters’ and admitting limited modifications in favour of the lower classes only when these look strong. Applying this perspective, the socialist menace explains the success of the marginal approach in spite of its patent weaknesses; the Great Crisis of the 1930s and the fear of communism explain the success of Keynesian economics; the students’ protests and workers’ politicisation in the 1960s explain the opening to a number of radical economists; and the difficulties with controlling wage labour that explain the end of the Golden Age after 1973 also explain the victory of monetarism and New Classical Macroeconomics. The absence of an analogous change in the dominant discourse in economics after the 2008 crisis is due to the weakness of left-wing movements. The chapter then asks what explains this capacity of the political situation to influence economic discourse, and suggests five reasons.
