Michał Kalecki and Challenging the Norms of Capitalist Theory
Via Jacobin
Summary
Michał Kalecki was a self-taught Polish economist who independently developed many of the same macroeconomic insights as John Maynard Keynes, yet remains far less known today. Working from a Marxian class perspective, Kalecki built models of business cycles, effective demand, and income distribution that challenged the assumption that households, not firms, are the key economic decision-makers.
His most influential essay, "Political Aspects of Full Employment" (1943), argued that business leaders would always resist sustained full employment because high employment strengthens labor's bargaining power. Kalecki saw this as a fundamental political contradiction within capitalism — that the policies most beneficial to workers are the ones capital will most reliably undermine.
