Brad DeLong is brilliant, period. Anyone who reads his blog, let alone his papers, knows this. Still, it is breathtaking for him to accuse David Ruccio of intellectual claim-jumping –whether rightly or wrongly is not the point and I won't get into that – and *then* to lay down the law on what is "Keynesianism."

Have a look at that reading list. The phrase that turns up repeatedly is "sticky prices." This is no accident. For a certain type of modern macro-economist, sticky prices are the essence of what they call Keynesian doctrine. It is the essential term in the lexicon of self-described New Keynesians. Because prices are sticky, New Keynesians argue, markets do not clear, and there is a role for government in fighting unemployment. So far, so good. I have many friends and allies among New Keynesians on practical policy questions.

But to make this into the economics of John Maynard Keynes is to do deep violence to the ideas of that economist. And the attempt to do so, which goes back to the very first American reviews of the General Theory, is the essence of the intellectual claim-jumping that infuriates heterodox economists. Joan Robinson, who may be taken as an authority on this, called it "bastard Keynesianism."

To summarize radically, New Keynesians accept a supply-and-demand framework governing employment. The problem for them is that wages are sticky, that they won't fall as far as they should so as to guarantee full employment. And since this is the case, New Keynesians believe that something else should be done.

But Keynes entirely rejected the labor market analysis of unemployment, on logical grounds. In particular, he denied the existence of an upward-sloping supply curve of labor. That is what the opening chapters of the General Theory are about. Thus for Keynes, cutting wages is not the ideal solution for unemployment, while lower interest rates or government spending are some sort of second best. Rather, increasing aggregate effective demand is the *only* viable solution.

Keynes' own analysis is one thing. The "sticky wage" argument is another. You will not find it in Keynes. For New Keynesians to call themselves Keynesians is therefore intellectual claim-jumping of very long standing. But the fact that it has been well-established for half a century cannot change this, any more than time can erase the theft of the Black Hills from the Sioux.

Diane Coyle writes, correctly, that in the academy "‘laissez-faire neoclassical orthodoxy' has evaporated." She is also correct, in noting that teaching has not caught up with this. And no one would dispute her on gender and ethnic non-diversity in the field.

But Coyle's central claim is that the mainstream approach to heterodox topics effectively makes actual heterodox economists unnecessary. Call me rational and self-interested, if you like, but I don't think so. So, yes, the mainstream has "fatally watered down heterodox approaches by absorbing them." Or rather by pretending to absorb them.

Let me go on for a bit. Where did the theory of "imperfect competition" come from? In large part, it came from a 1933 book, entitled "The Economics of Imperfect Competition," by – Joan Robinson! That was part of the ferment, at Cambridge, of the Keynesian revolution. Later on, there was Paul Sweezy's 1939 article on oligopoly demand curves. That article fed into an argument about the theory of price control. Yes, seventy years later, the words are "in the mainstream." But the mainstream has largely forgotten what the ideas were about, or why they were important.

Who led the way on "increasing returns"? Initially Allyn Young; later Nicholas Kaldor. Why are increasing returns important? Because they fatally undermine the marginal productivity, market-based theory of the distribution of pay. Because they describe, in part, the way technical progress works over time. It's not just a topic in, say, international trade theory. It's a deep problem with the market-based world-view of wages and incomes.

I greatly admire George Akerlof. But did his lecture on missing motivations give due credit to the role of social norms in Veblen, or Commons, or even in Keynes, where it underlies the theory of investment and the long-term interest rate? I'm afraid it did not. So like others of my type, I listened to George with a certain detachment, as he rediscovered matters that have been at the core of alternative traditions for a century.

In most cases, the mainstream versions of heterodox topics are ersatz, deracinated, and defanged. The words are present, yes. But the critical content of the underlying ideas has been lost. Worse, the context is obliterated. It cannot be retrieved, because the words are taken over, and their meaning is changed.

Nothing is therefore more grating, than the mainstream tactic of attaching the word "new" to something and then taking it over. "New institutional economics" is not institutional economics. "New Keynesians" are certainly not Keynesians. They are neoclassicals who have accepted a single postulate of "sticky wages." That gives them a bit of overlap with Keynes's policy views. But it allows them to escape from his basic critique of the mainstream theory of the labor market.

What is interesting about the recent change in the mainstream is that, it's quite true, you can no longer reliably cite mainstream economists as defenders of arch-reactionary political positions. They are not necessarily against minimum wages, or regulation, or full employment.

But what are they for? Above all, they are for an economics that remains fundamentally centered on the concept of markets, but now conceding, rather than denying, market imperfections.

Keynes' General Theory is not centered on markets. It is, rather, centered on the elements of the national income accounts -- total consumption and total investment -- and on the working of the financial system. My father's major work of theory, The New Industrial State, is centered on organizations, and not on markets. For this reason, these works remain deeply subversive of the orthodox project. For this reason, they are largely excluded from the orthodox curriculum. Meanwhile, students and bystanders are told that the "best elements" have been absorbed into the mainstream. Don't believe it.