Kalecki and fiscal policy

Why Not Fiscal Policy? by Chris Dillow

Simon Wren-Lewis suggests there might be “other motives at work“ than macroeconomic reasoning for the government’s refusal to consider using fiscal policy to combat rising unemployment. 

If he is anything like the Oxford macroeconomics lecturers of my day, he is hinting at Michal Kalecki’s 1943 paper, Political Aspects of Full Employment: 

Under a laissez-faire system the level of employment depends to a great extent on the so-called state of confidence…This gives the capitalists a powerful indirect control over government policy: everything which may shake the state of confidence must be carefully avoided because it would cause an economic crisis. But once the government learns the trick of increasing employment by its own purchases, this powerful controlling device loses its effectiveness... The social function of the doctrine of 'sound finance' is to make the level of employment dependent on the state of confidence…. 

'Discipline in the factories' and 'political stability' are more appreciated than profits by business leaders. Their class instinct tells them that lasting full employment is unsound from their point of view, and that unemployment is an integral part of the 'normal' capitalist system.

A lack of discipline in the factories and political instability should be valued more by the left than wage gains. That is, lasting full employment should be *the* priority.

The goal should be to allow "government to increase employment by its own purchases." The doctrine of "sound finance" should be fought root and branch.