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Economic Science, Public Policy, and Public Understanding

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Walter Adams
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Extract

The great achievement of “contemporary” economics has been the articulation, implementation, and public acceptance of the Keynesian revolution. The gestation period extended over some three decades, highlighted by these turning points: the publication in New York in 1936 of The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, the enactment ten years later of the Employment Act of 1946, which formally acknowledged the government's responsibility for maintaining full employment; the official recognition in 1954 by a Republican Administration of its obligation to employ “Keynesian” weapons to fight recessions and depressions; and the statement in 1965 by the apostle of modern liberalism (John Kenneth Galbraith) that the “new economics” was the “new orthodoxy,” as well as the admission by the vicar of economic conservatism (Milton Friedman) that “we are all Keynesians now.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 17 , Issue 67 , September 1969 , pp. 1 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © 1969 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

1 For a discussion of the revolution and its implications, see S. E. Harris, John Maynard Keynes: Economist and Policy Maker, New York, Scribner's 1955; Robinson, Economic Philosophy, Garden City, N. Y., Anchor Books, 1964, pp. 75-100; and Heilbroner, The Wordly Philosophers, New York, Simon & Schuster, rev. ed. 1961, pp. 214-51.

2 J. M. Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, New York, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1963, p. 378.

3 Harris, op. cit.

4 J. K. Galbraith, Economics and the Art of Controversy, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1955, pp. 60-62.

5 W. W. Heller, New Dimensions of Political Economy, New York, Norton & Co., 1967. See also W. C. Freund, "Educating the Electorate: The Employ ment Act after 20 Years," Challenge, Nov.-Dec. 1965.

6 K. Boulding, "The Economics of Knowledge and the Knowledge of Economics," American Economic Review Proceedings, May 1966, p. 9.

7 Ibid., p. 13.

8 Heilbroner, op. cit., p. 285.

9 J. K. Galbraith, The Affluent Society, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1958, p. 253.

10 C. C. Killlingsworth, Structural Unemployment in the United States, Washington, U. S. Department of Labor, December 1965; and Jobs and Income for Negroes, Ann Arbor, Institute of Labor & Industrial Relations of the University of Michigan and Wayne State University, May 1968.

11 P. A. Samuelson, "A Brief Post-Keynesian Survey," in R. Lekachman (ed.), Keynes' General Theory: Reports of Three Decades, New York, St. Martin's Press, 1964, p. 339.

12 J. K. Galbraith, The New Industrial State, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1967.

13 A. A. Berle, The Twentieth Century Capitalist Revolution, New York, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1954, pp. 76-77, 62-63. See also Berle, Power Without Property, New York, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1959.

14 Ben W. Lewis, "Economics by Admonition," American Economic Review Proceedings, May 1959.

15 Ibid.

16 W. Adams, "Corporate Giantism, Ethics and the Public Interest," Review of Social Economy, vol. XXI, March 1963, pp. 3-6.

17 J. K. Galbraith, American Capitalism, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1952.

18 W. Adams, "Competition, Monopoly and Countervailing Power," Quarterly Journal of Economics, November 1953.

19 J. A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, New York, Harper & Bros., 1943, p. 84 et ff.

20 "The New Potentates Rule by the Numbers," Business Week, Jan. 6, 1968, p. 56.

21 Keynes, The General Theory cit., p. 298.

22 W. Leontief, Essays in Economics, New York, Oxford University Press, 1967. See also symposium on this subject in Review of Economics and Statistics, November 1954, pp. 357-86.

23 P. A. Samuelson, "A Brief Survey of Post-Keynesian Development," in Lekachman (ed.), Keynes' General Theory: Reports of Three Decades, New York, St. Martin's Press, 1964, p. 340.

24 Boulding, op. cit., p. 12.

25 "Systems Analysts Baffled by Problems of Social Change," N. Y. Times, March 24, 1968, p. 28.

26 T. C. Schelling, Arms and Influence, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1967, p. 1.

27 Ibid.

28 Boulding, op. cit., pp. 10-11.

29 A. N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, New Haven, Macmillan, 1925.

30 Ibid.