Unemployment and the real wage: the economic basis for contesting political ideologies

Using the Keynesian theory of effective demand, this paper demonstrates how particular models, such as that of "cooperative capitalism" enunciated by the left Keynesian social democrats, the Marxian model of "profit squeeze" emphasizing distributive conflict, and even the conservative model relying on "supply side" stimulus, fit in as particular variants of a more general theoretical scheme through a reconstruction of the familiar IS schedule. The argument is weaved around the theme of the relations between unemployment and real wage in the context of both a closed and an open economy to explain the common macroeconomic basis of contesting ideologies. Copyright 1990 by Oxford University Press.