Keynes’s General Theory
Keynes’s contribution to economic theory remains a matter of considerable
debate, despite almost seventy years having gone by since the publication of
the General Theory, in February 1936. Few economists would challenge
Samuelson’s (1988) view that Keynes’s influence on the course of economics
has been ‘the most significant event in twentieth-century economic science’
or that macroeconomics was his creation. Opponents are convinced that
Keynes was fundamentally mistaken (Hayek, 1983; see also the Friedman
and Lucas interviews at the end of Chapters 4 and 5 respectively). Keynesians
themselves are divided between those who, like Keynes, regard the policy
implications of the General Theory as being moderately conservative (Tobin,
1987), and others who see Keynes’s magnum opus as representing a revolutionary
break from mainstream classical and neoclassical doctrines (Robinson,
1971; Davidson, 1994, and Chapter 8). That the General Theory has had a
profound influence on the development of macroeconomics and the conduct
of macroeconomic policy making, for good or ill, is beyond question.
Keynes was essentially an applied economist brought up in the Cambridge
tradition of Alfred Marshall, where the attraction of economics lay in the
prospect it held out to its practitioners for making the world a better place.
But for Keynes to write the General Theory involved a ‘long struggle to
escape … from habitual modes of thought and expression’. The old ideas
from which Keynes sought to escape were the laissez-faire doctrines associated
with the liberal tradition of nineteenth-century classical economics.
Following Adam Smith, political economy had an underlying bias towards
laissez-faire. The classical economists, with some exceptions, were preoccupied
with government failure. In their view the state should confine its activities
to ensuring a peaceful, competitive environment within which citizens could
pursue their individual objectives as fully as possible. Only the evils of
monopoly power or too much state involvement in economic affairs could
prevent the price mechanism from yielding maximum national output, given
the constraint of scarce but fully employed resources. In contrast to this
orthodoxy, the most revolutionary aspect of Keynes’s work, which we can
detect in his writings from the mid-1920s onwards, was his clear and unambiguous
message that with regard to the general level of employment and
output there was no ‘invisible hand’ channelling self-interest into some social
optimum. Although Keynes’s iconoclastic vision emerges time and time again
in his critiques of UK government policy during the 1920s, many of his
policy recommendations lacked the theoretical structure from which they
could logically be derived. For example, in 1929 Keynes was arguing forcefully
for government programmes to expand demand via deficit financing in
full support of Lloyd George’s Liberal programme of recovery (see Keynes,
1929). But he was doing so without a theory of effective demand and a
multiplier mechanism which are so important to the argument (see Keynes,
1972, Vol. IX).
In order effectively to confront the existing classical orthodoxy head-on,
Keynes needed to provide an alternative theory. With the onset of the Great
Depression we find Keynes retreating ‘into his ivory tower at King’s to
engage, at age forty-eight, in a supreme intellectual effort to save Western
civilisation from the engulfing tide of barbarism which economic collapse
was bringing about’ (Skidelsky, 1992, p. xxvii). Keynes was acutely aware of
the extreme fragility of world capitalism at this point in world history.
The authoritarian state systems of today seem to solve the problem of unemployment
at the expense of efficiency and freedom. It is certain that the world will not
much longer tolerate the unemployment which, apart from brief intervals of
excitement, is associated … and, in my opinion, inevitably associated … with
present-day capitalistic individualism. But it may be possible by a right analysis
of the problem to cure the disease whilst preserving efficiency and freedom.
(Keynes, 1936, p. 381)
We therefore find Keynes from 1931 onwards groping towards his General
Theory, a book that, unlike many of his earlier writings, was addressed to his
fellow economists.
By late 1932, and certainly no later than early 1933, the initial vision or
‘grey fuzzy woolly monster’ in his mind was beginning to appear in his
Cambridge lectures (see Skidelsky, 1992; Patinkin, 1993). To his critics the
General Theory has remained a ‘monster’. Lucas, a leading modern critic of
Keynesianism, finds it a book ‘he can’t read’ which is ‘carelessly written’ and
represents a ‘political response to the Depression’ (see Klamer, 1984). Even
Samuelson, one of Keynes’s earliest converts, describes the book as ‘poorly
organised’ and ‘badly written’. But for Samuelson ‘it is a work of genius’
which, because of its obscurity and polemical character, will remain a longrun
influence on the development of economics (Samuelson, 1946). Galbraith
(1977), reaching a similar conclusion, sees the ambiguity contained in the
General Theory as a feature guaranteed to win converts, for:
When understanding is achieved after much effort, readers hold tenaciously to
their belief. The pain, they wish to think, was worthwhile. And if there are enough
contradictions and ambiguities, as there are also in the Bible and Marx, the reader
can always find something he wants to believe. This too wins disciples.
It is hardly surprising that it was mainly the younger generation of economists
at Cambridge UK and Cambridge USA that took quickly to the new
ideas. Whereas economists over the age of 50 were on the whole immune
from Keynes’s message, the General Theory ‘caught most economists under
the age of thirty-five with the unexpected virulence of a disease first attacking
and decimating an isolated tribe of South Sea islanders’ (Samuelson, 1946).
That change in economics comes with the changing generations also played
an important role some forty years later when the rise of new classical
economics infected mainly the younger generation of economists, so much so
that Keynesians appeared to be threatened with extinction
Keynes’s contribution to economic theory remains a matter of considerable
debate, despite almost seventy years having gone by since the publication of
the General Theory, in February 1936. Few economists would challenge
Samuelson’s (1988) view that Keynes’s influence on the course of economics
has been ‘the most significant event in twentieth-century economic science’
or that macroeconomics was his creation. Opponents are convinced that
Keynes was fundamentally mistaken (Hayek, 1983; see also the Friedman
and Lucas interviews at the end of Chapters 4 and 5 respectively). Keynesians
themselves are divided between those who, like Keynes, regard the policy
implications of the General Theory as being moderately conservative (Tobin,
1987), and others who see Keynes’s magnum opus as representing a revolutionary
break from mainstream classical and neoclassical doctrines (Robinson,
1971; Davidson, 1994, and Chapter 8). That the General Theory has had a
profound influence on the development of macroeconomics and the conduct
of macroeconomic policy making, for good or ill, is beyond question.
Keynes was essentially an applied economist brought up in the Cambridge
tradition of Alfred Marshall, where the attraction of economics lay in the
prospect it held out to its practitioners for making the world a better place.
But for Keynes to write the General Theory involved a ‘long struggle to
escape … from habitual modes of thought and expression’. The old ideas
from which Keynes sought to escape were the laissez-faire doctrines associated
with the liberal tradition of nineteenth-century classical economics.
Following Adam Smith, political economy had an underlying bias towards
laissez-faire. The classical economists, with some exceptions, were preoccupied
with government failure. In their view the state should confine its activities
to ensuring a peaceful, competitive environment within which citizens could
pursue their individual objectives as fully as possible. Only the evils of
monopoly power or too much state involvement in economic affairs could
prevent the price mechanism from yielding maximum national output, given
the constraint of scarce but fully employed resources. In contrast to this
orthodoxy, the most revolutionary aspect of Keynes’s work, which we can
detect in his writings from the mid-1920s onwards, was his clear and unambiguous
message that with regard to the general level of employment and
output there was no ‘invisible hand’ channelling self-interest into some social
optimum. Although Keynes’s iconoclastic vision emerges time and time again
in his critiques of UK government policy during the 1920s, many of his
policy recommendations lacked the theoretical structure from which they
could logically be derived. For example, in 1929 Keynes was arguing forcefully
for government programmes to expand demand via deficit financing in
full support of Lloyd George’s Liberal programme of recovery (see Keynes,
1929). But he was doing so without a theory of effective demand and a
multiplier mechanism which are so important to the argument (see Keynes,
1972, Vol. IX).
In order effectively to confront the existing classical orthodoxy head-on,
Keynes needed to provide an alternative theory. With the onset of the Great
Depression we find Keynes retreating ‘into his ivory tower at King’s to
engage, at age forty-eight, in a supreme intellectual effort to save Western
civilisation from the engulfing tide of barbarism which economic collapse
was bringing about’ (Skidelsky, 1992, p. xxvii). Keynes was acutely aware of
the extreme fragility of world capitalism at this point in world history.
The authoritarian state systems of today seem to solve the problem of unemployment
at the expense of efficiency and freedom. It is certain that the world will not
much longer tolerate the unemployment which, apart from brief intervals of
excitement, is associated … and, in my opinion, inevitably associated … with
present-day capitalistic individualism. But it may be possible by a right analysis
of the problem to cure the disease whilst preserving efficiency and freedom.
(Keynes, 1936, p. 381)
We therefore find Keynes from 1931 onwards groping towards his General
Theory, a book that, unlike many of his earlier writings, was addressed to his
fellow economists.
By late 1932, and certainly no later than early 1933, the initial vision or
‘grey fuzzy woolly monster’ in his mind was beginning to appear in his
Cambridge lectures (see Skidelsky, 1992; Patinkin, 1993). To his critics the
General Theory has remained a ‘monster’. Lucas, a leading modern critic of
Keynesianism, finds it a book ‘he can’t read’ which is ‘carelessly written’ and
represents a ‘political response to the Depression’ (see Klamer, 1984). Even
Samuelson, one of Keynes’s earliest converts, describes the book as ‘poorly
organised’ and ‘badly written’. But for Samuelson ‘it is a work of genius’
which, because of its obscurity and polemical character, will remain a longrun
influence on the development of economics (Samuelson, 1946). Galbraith
(1977), reaching a similar conclusion, sees the ambiguity contained in the
General Theory as a feature guaranteed to win converts, for:
When understanding is achieved after much effort, readers hold tenaciously to
their belief. The pain, they wish to think, was worthwhile. And if there are enough
contradictions and ambiguities, as there are also in the Bible and Marx, the reader
can always find something he wants to believe. This too wins disciples.
It is hardly surprising that it was mainly the younger generation of economists
at Cambridge UK and Cambridge USA that took quickly to the new
ideas. Whereas economists over the age of 50 were on the whole immune
from Keynes’s message, the General Theory ‘caught most economists under
the age of thirty-five with the unexpected virulence of a disease first attacking
and decimating an isolated tribe of South Sea islanders’ (Samuelson, 1946).
That change in economics comes with the changing generations also played
an important role some forty years later when the rise of new classical
economics infected mainly the younger generation of economists, so much so
that Keynesians appeared to be threatened with extinction
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