Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The Turn Away from Laissez-Faire
- 2 The Bolshevik Revolution and the Socialist Calculation Debate
- 3 The Roaring Twenties and Austrian Business Cycle Theory
- 4 The New Deal and Institutionalist Economics
- 5 The Great Depression and Keynes’s General Theory
- 6 The Second World War and Hayek’s Road to Serfdom
- 7 Postwar British Socialism and the Fabian Society
- 8 The Mont Pelerin Society and the Rebirth of Smithian Economics
- 9 The Postwar German “Wonder Economy” and Ordoliberalism
- 10 Indian Planning and Development Economics
- 11 Bretton Woods and International Monetary Thought
- 12 The Great Inflation and Monetarism
- 13 The Growth of Government
- 14 Free Trade, Protectionism, and Trade Deficits
- 15 From Pleasant Deficit Spending to Unpleasant Sovereign Debt Crisis
- Index
- References
5 - The Great Depression and Keynes’s General Theory
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The Turn Away from Laissez-Faire
- 2 The Bolshevik Revolution and the Socialist Calculation Debate
- 3 The Roaring Twenties and Austrian Business Cycle Theory
- 4 The New Deal and Institutionalist Economics
- 5 The Great Depression and Keynes’s General Theory
- 6 The Second World War and Hayek’s Road to Serfdom
- 7 Postwar British Socialism and the Fabian Society
- 8 The Mont Pelerin Society and the Rebirth of Smithian Economics
- 9 The Postwar German “Wonder Economy” and Ordoliberalism
- 10 Indian Planning and Development Economics
- 11 Bretton Woods and International Monetary Thought
- 12 The Great Inflation and Monetarism
- 13 The Growth of Government
- 14 Free Trade, Protectionism, and Trade Deficits
- 15 From Pleasant Deficit Spending to Unpleasant Sovereign Debt Crisis
- Index
- References
Summary
John Maynard Keynes corresponded with George Bernard Shaw for decades after meeting him at Cambridge. Shaw was not only a famous playwright, but also an amateur economist (see Chapter 7). In January 1935 Keynes wrote to Shaw:
To understand my state of mind, however, you have to know that I believe myself to be writing a book on economic theory which will largely revolutionize– not, I suppose, at once but in the course of the next ten years– the way the world thinks about economic problems.
Keynes’s forecast was remarkably accurate. His characterization of his project as “a book on economic theory,” however, was a slightly misleading. Despite the eventual publication title of The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, he was– as many commentators have noted– very much writing a tract for the times.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Clash of Economic IdeasThe Great Policy Debates and Experiments of the Last Hundred Years, pp. 126 - 154Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012