The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money was published 75 years ago today. I can think of one or two competitors, but it would not be absurd to argue that this is the single most important book published in the field of economics.- The full text of the General Theory can be found here. - Paul Krugman's introduction to the book is here.
- The New School for Social Research's page on the Keynesian Revolution is here.
- A good video on Keynes by historian of economic thought Mark Blaug is here.
- Bloomberg memorializes the anniversary here. They note the Harry Potteresque expectations about the book:
"Never has a book on economics been so anticipated.
John Maynard Keynes’s “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money” was published 75 years ago today. Back then, there were queues outside the Economists’ Bookshop in Houghton Street, London. Opening hours had to be extended to deal with the rush of those eager for an alternative to policies that had ruined the global economy.
The impact on the field of economics wasn’t unlike that on the scientific community when Charles Darwin published “On the Origin of Species” in 1859. Just as with Darwin’s book, Keynes’s shook the foundations of economic orthodoxy and had profound effects on his profession. The main thrust of Keynes’s work was also met with outright denial from his peers, including close colleagues, who reduced his theory to what one described as “diagrams and bits of algebra.” Above all, they denied the centrality of his theory of the rate of interest.
This “bastard Keynesianism,” as British economist Joan Robinson called it, subverted and continues to block the Keynesian revolution both in vision and in method."
- Bloomberg memorializes the anniversary here. They note the Harry Potteresque expectations about the book:
"Never has a book on economics been so anticipated.
John Maynard Keynes’s “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money” was published 75 years ago today. Back then, there were queues outside the Economists’ Bookshop in Houghton Street, London. Opening hours had to be extended to deal with the rush of those eager for an alternative to policies that had ruined the global economy.
The impact on the field of economics wasn’t unlike that on the scientific community when Charles Darwin published “On the Origin of Species” in 1859. Just as with Darwin’s book, Keynes’s shook the foundations of economic orthodoxy and had profound effects on his profession. The main thrust of Keynes’s work was also met with outright denial from his peers, including close colleagues, who reduced his theory to what one described as “diagrams and bits of algebra.” Above all, they denied the centrality of his theory of the rate of interest.
This “bastard Keynesianism,” as British economist Joan Robinson called it, subverted and continues to block the Keynesian revolution both in vision and in method."
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Bastard Keynesianism! Yes, I was just reminded of that by somebody.
ReplyDeleteYou see, I was in the Social Democracy blog, and I commented on how Amartya Sen, a social democratic economist, had viciously rejected and tried to halt the university career of Subramanian Swamy, a Keynesian trained by Paul Samuelson, at the Delhi School of Economics.
LK, the blogger, commented that Amartya Sen was trained by Joan Robinson, who claimed to be the true heir of Keynes, while Subramanian Swamy was trained by Paul Samuelson, whom Joan Robinson considered to be one of the distorters of Keynes' ideas and the creators of "bastard Keynesianism". The divide was not just across these two pairs of teacher-and-student, but across both MIT and Cambridge, it seems.
Am I wrong to say that there is no true heir of Keynes other than Keynes? Because Keynes admittedly was of such flexible views that there can be no established set of ideas that we can call Keynesian. This intra-Keynesian feud is just amazing, you know.
I wonder if Keynes lived long enough, he would have said what Marx once said: "I don't know what I am, but there's no way I am a Marxist", except with Keynesian instead of Marxist.
I am with you - I see value in both the Post-Keynesian/Robinson axis and the outgrowths of the Keynesian Synthesis.
ReplyDeletePeople act as if this is a liability that there are lots of different spins on Keynesianism... I've always found that critique a little odd. This is not physics - it's a complicated system we're describing. Better to come at it from lots of different angles with a good general orientation than to adhere to a strict dogma.
I think the intra-Keynesian fighting is most significant for the group on the outs - namely, the Post-Keynesians. Most others don't worry about it so much.
I think your comparison of Keynes to Marx is probably apt. There are certainly a lot of New Keynesians that sound more like Pigovians. Those are good insights, but to emphasize them above others and then call yourself "Keynesian" is supremely ironic.
Keynes himself was probably closer to what we now call post-Keynesians. He lived to see the beginnings of the synthesis, he understood the argument, and he flatly rejected it. Now - he may have eventually come around to a broader view, but he died a fairly consistent "post-Keynesian" by our parlance. But there was certainly ample precedent for other branches of Keynesianism in his work.
I was reading Krugman's intro also, and I find his use of "McCarthyism" with reference to Tarshis' textbook rejection tragic. It's like people want a persecution complex to be worn as a badge of honour. Gallup polls during 1950-54 showed that only 1% of Americans polled even considered the "witchhunts" an issue of concern.
ReplyDeleteAnd despite VENONA transcripts showing high levels of treason to foreign countries among too many American officials, it turns out that McCarthy did his work quietly and with little publicity, especially with most Americans not caring. Except Hollywood stars and academics with fat paychecks and privileged backgrounds.
The use of "McCarthyism" tells more about the person using it than the person directed, because it shows what a country club member and an ivory tower baby you have to be to consider such an investigation to be "traumatic". Even so, to compare it to even milder issue of textbook rejection is a sign that if that's the worst thing to happen in your life, you have much to be grateful about life. Millionaires like Krugman need to understand how badly such words backfire.
Opening hours had to be extended to deal with the rush of those eager for an alternative to policies that had ruined the global economy.
ReplyDeleteHahahahaha.
And how many of them understood what was written? How many readers do today?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE_fD-_rzJ8&feature=player_embedded#
ReplyDelete