MMT Arbitrates the Battle Between Keynes and the Classics

     As I told Greg in a comment I've never understood Marx here:

    "The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it."

      https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm

       This apparent elevation of action over contemplation misses something. For one thing, contemplation itself is action. More generally, while we would like to change the world don't we have to understand it first? 

      In any case that's what we're trying to do here. 

      "The Classical economists said that without monopoly markets would clear and there would be no mass unemployment. That is, it’s only a monopolist, such as a labor union, that causes unemployment and excess capacity in general. Keynes, on the other hand, said that even in the absence of monopoly there could be persistent mass unemployment, and then discussed characteristics of the monetary system that caused this to be the case. This ongoing impasse alone, which has continued unabated in academia for over 80 years, is sufficient evidence that neither side has yet to recognize that the currency itself is the monopoly in question."

    Now I don't know that this is true. I mean hello, what about Monetarism? I'm not a Monetarist myself-Market Monetarist or other-but don't they say that money is the issue? 

    Where MMT does differ is that it argues that the government is the monopolist issuer of money while Monetarists along with most mainstream Macro probably believe in some variant of barter or commodity money. 

    However, the MMT passage goes on to say this:

   "It is ME/MMT that recognizes both sides are correct. The classics were correct in stating it was a monopoly that was the cause of unemployment. And Keynes was correct in stating that it was the characteristics of the monetary system as he described them that caused unemployment. And the reason for the continuing disagreement is simply that neither side has yet to specifically recognize that the currency itself is a monopoly causing the unemployment in question. 

    "MEMMT is thus distinguished by its explicit recognition that the currency itself is a monopoly, and that unemployment is the evidence that the currency monopolist is restricting supply. More precisely, unemployment (as defined) is the evidence the currency monopolist is restricting the supply of net financial assets denominated in that currency. It is only government spending (or lending) that adds the financial assets required for the payment of taxes to the economy, and it is payments to that government that removes those financial assets from the economy."

    So the disagreement is over the nature of money-even as the Monetarists focus on the money market they don't agree that the government is the monopolist of this market.