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Keynes’s Revolutionary and “Serious” Monetary Theory

In: Keynes’s General Theory After Seventy Years

Author

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  • Paul Davidson

Abstract

On New Years Day in 1935 Keynes (1973a, p. 492) wrote a letter to George Bernard Shaw stating: To understand my new 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 …. I can’t expect you or anyone else to believe this at the present stage, but for myself I don’t merely hope what I say. In my own mind I am quite sure. The first page of text of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money reveals what Keynes thought was the revolutionary aspect of his analysis I have called this book the General Theory … placing the emphasis on the prefix general. The object of such a title is to contrast the character of my arguments and conclusions with those of classical theory … the postulates (axioms) of the classical theory are applicable to a special case only and not to the general case …. Moreover the characteristics of the special case assumed by the classical theory happen not to be those of the economics society in which we actually live, with the result that its teaching is misleading and disastrous if we attempt to apply it to the facts of experience. (Keynes, 1936a, p. 3)

Suggested Citation

  • Paul Davidson, 2010. "Keynes’s Revolutionary and “Serious” Monetary Theory," International Economic Association Series, in: Robert W. Dimand & Robert A. Mundell & Alessandro Vercelli (ed.), Keynes’s General Theory After Seventy Years, chapter 13, pages 241-267, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:intecp:978-0-230-27614-7_14
    DOI: 10.1057/9780230276147_14
    as

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