The Text Book Black Magic, or, How to Make the Keynes Theory Disappear

This paper looks into the question of how it can come about that, not uncommonly, contemporary macro textbooks start their exposition in Keynesian fashion, but end up presenting an essentially classical account. Using a typical textbook for illustration, our diagnosis is that when the AD/AS model is introduced into the discussion, then things go wrong. The AS analysis rehabilitates a pre-Keynesian conception of the working of the labour market, while uncritical and ill-informed use of the AD function effectively ‘tames’ aggregate demand by making it manipulable in such a way as to accord with conditions of labour supply. Not surprisingly, Keynes’s vision of the functioning of the macro system gets lost along the way.