The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

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A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook

Title: The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money

Author: John Maynard Keynes

eBook No.: 0300071h.html

Edition: 1

Language: English

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Date first posted: February 2003

Date most recently updated: February 2003

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The General Theory of Employment, Interest and

Money

By John Maynard Keynes

● Print All

● General Introduction

● English Preface

● German Preface

● Japanese Preface

● French Preface

● Book I

INTRODUCTION

❍ Chapter 1: The General Theory

❍ Chapter 2: The Postulates of the Classical Economics

❍ Chapter 3: The Principle of Effective Demand

● Book II

DEFINITIONS AND IDEAS

❍ Chapter 4: The Choice of Units

❍ Chapter 5: Expectations as Determining Output and Employment

❍ Chapter 6: The Definition of Income Saving and Investment

■ Chapter 6a: Appendix on User Cost

❍ Chapter 7: The Meaning of Saving and Investment Further Considered

● Book III:

THE PROPENSITY TO CONSUME

❍ Chapter 8 The Propensity to Consume I: The Objective Factors

❍ Chapter 9 The Propensity to Consume II: The Subjective Factors

❍ Chapter 10 The Marginal Propensity to Consume and The Multiplyer

● Book IV:

THE INDUCEMENT TO INVEST

❍ Chapter 11: The Marginal Efficiency of Capital

❍ Chapter 12: The State of Long-Term Expectation

❍ Chapter 13: The General Theory of the Rate of Interest

❍ Chapter 14: The Classical Theory of the Rate of Interest

■ Chapter 14a: Appendix on the Rate of Interest in Marshall's Principles of Economics,

Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy and Elsewhere

❍ Chapter 15: The Psychological and Business Incentives to Liquidity

❍ Chapter 16: Sundry Observations on the Nature of Capital

❍ Chapter 17: The Essential Properties of Interest and Money

❍ Chapter 18: The General Theory of Employment Re-Stated

● Book V:

MONEY WAGES AND PRICES

❍ Chapter 19: Changes in Money-Wages

■ Chapter 19a: Appendix on Prof. Pigou's Theory of Unemployment

❍ Chapter 20: The Employment Function

❍ Chapter 21: The Theory of Prices

● Book VI:

SHORT NOTES SUGGESTED BY THE GENERAL THEORY

❍ Chapter 22: Notes on the Trade Cycle

❍ Chapter 23: Notes on Mercantilism, the Usury Laws, Stamped Money and Theories of Under-

Consumption

❍ Chapter 24: Concluding Notes on the Social Philosophy Towards Which The General Theory

Might Lead

● Appendix I:

PRINTING ERRORS IN THE FIRST EDITION

● Appendix II: Fluctuations in Net Investment in the United States (1936)

● Appendix III: Relative Movements of Real Wages and Output

End of this Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook

The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money by John Maynard Keynes

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The General Theory of Employment, Interest and

Money

By John Maynard Keynes

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Capitalism is not for the faint of heart. It is a system of supply and demand that reduces real

workingmen and workingwomen into graphs and equations subject to "aggregate" observations devoid

of any real human factors. If left to regulate itself, the economy should remain in check and avoid

dangerously radical changes in productivity, orthodox economists maintain. How then do we explain

terrible recessions such as the Great Depression, where unemployment figures were seen as high as 25%

with still more underemployed and working far below their experience and capability? Shouldn't the

system have corrected itself before such dire circumstances were created? Economists reply simply:

workers are unwilling to accept lower wages during times of decline, and would rather quit thus

jeopardizing the beautifully constructed, but apparently fragile, classical theory of economics. And if

these arguments were not effective, there was always the fallback plan of declaring "Social Darwinism,"

with the Great Depression serving as a perfect opportunity to weed out the worst employees and only

the best would emerge victorious at some unforeseeable future date.

In the first few months following an explosion of depressed economic data in 1929, perhaps the

population would nervously accept these postulates. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon even insisted

that "values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wreck from less-competent

people." But as the Depression deepened by 1932, and food lines grew, such disregard for the well

being of average working Americans would no longer be tolerated. Other economic systems such as

socialism and Marxism became attractive. Politicians like Hughie P. Long rose to power with popular

slogans that advocated "Share our Wealth" and "Every Man a King."

As he watched revolutions in both Germany and Russia, John Maynard Keynes was ready for drastic

action to rescue capitalism from the stubborn hands of classical economists who refused to intervene.

He set aside deeply rooted beliefs that "supply creates its own demand" and simply states, "the

postulates of the classical theory are applicable to a special case only and not to the general case." More

radical ideas were put forward as well, including a bold challenge to David Ricardo and Adam Smith.

Where Ricardo had once stated "Like all other contracts, wages should be left to the fair and free

competition of the market, and should never be controlled by the interference of the legislature," Keynes

took a more reasoned approach and replied that such hopes for a fair and balanced equilibrium in the

real wage "presumes that labour itself is in a position to decide the real wage for which it works, though

not the quantity of employment forthcoming at this wage."

Keynes encouraged government spending and short-term deficits during recessions to alleviate the

pressures of a contracting economy. His theories established the field of "macroeconomics" and his

influence is felt by every nation on earth. New transformations in this field have since emerged, such as

policy disputes over how and where the government multiplier effect should be used, but in general his

beliefs have laid a strong foundation for a different sort of government which does not see itself so far

removed from the daily operations of the economy. Perhaps Keynes truly did save capitalism - the

variables are too great to ever know for sure - but without a doubt since the introduction of his theories

the business cycle has smoothed and recessions are less severe. While it would be nice to say he

underestimated himself and modestly assumed his contribution to be "a voice in a choir", Keynes was

fully aware of the impact he and his fellow economists had on the world: "The ideas of economists and

political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is

commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to

be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist."

Steven Guess

February 16, 2003

Steven is Editor-in-Chief of Standard Profit.com, an economics analysis company

Table of Contents | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

The General Theory of Employment, Interest and

Money

By John Maynard Keynes

PREFACE

This book is chiefly addressed to my fellow economists. I hope that it will be intelligible to others. But

its main purpose is to deal with difficult questions of theory, and only in the second place with the

applications of this theory to practice. For if orthodox economics is at fault, the error is to be found not

in the superstructure, which has been erected with great care for logical consistency, but in a lack of

clearness and of generality in the pre misses. Thus I cannot achieve my object of persuading economists

to re-examine critically certain of their basic assumptions except by a highly abstract argument and also

by much controversy. I wish there could have been less of the latter. But I have thought it important, not

only to explain my own point of view, but also to show in what respects it departs from the prevailing

theory. Those, who are strongly wedded to what I shall call 'the classical theory', will fluctuate, I expect,

between a belief that I am quite wrong and a belief that I am saying nothing new. It is for others to

determine if either of these or the third alternative is right. My controversial passages are aimed at

providing some material for an answer; and I must ask forgiveness If, in the pursuit of sharp

distinctions, my controversy is itself too keen. I myself held with conviction for many years the theories

which I now attack, and I am not, I think, ignorant of their strong points.

The matters at issue are of an importance which cannot be exaggerated. But, if my explanations are

right, it is my fellow economists, not the general public, whom I must first convince. At this stage of the

argument the general public, though welcome at the debate, are only eavesdroppers at an attempt by an

economist to bring to an issue the deep divergences of opinion between fellow economists which have

for the time being almost destroyed the practical influence of economic theory, and will, until they are

resolved, continue to do so.

The relation between this book and my Treatise on Money [JMK vols. v and vi], which I published five

years ago, is probably clearer to myself than it will be to others; and what in my own mind is a natural

evolution in a line of thought which I have been pursuing for several years, may sometimes strike the

reader as a confusing change of view. This difficulty is not made less by certain changes in terminology

which I have felt compelled to make. These changes of language I have pointed out in the course of the

following pages; but the general relationship between the two books can be expressed briefly as follows.

When I began to write my Treatise on Money I was still moving along the traditional lines of regarding

the influence of money as something so to speak separate from the general theory of supply and

demand. When I finished it, I had made some progress towards pushing monetary theory back to

becoming a theory of output as a whole. But my lack of emancipation from preconceived ideas showed

itself in what now seems to me to be the outstanding fault of the theoretical parts of that work (namely,

Books III and IV), that I failed to deal thoroughly with the effects of changes in the level of output. My

so-called 'fundamental equations were an instantaneous picture taken on the assumption of a given

output. They attempted to show how, assuming the given output, forces could develop which involved a

profit-disequilibrium, and thus required a change in the level of output. But the dynamic development,

as distinct from the instantaneous picture, was left incomplete and extremely confused. This book, on

the other hand, has evolved into what is primarily a study of the forces which determine changes in the

scale of output and employment as a whole; and, whilst it is found that money enters into the economic

scheme in an essential and peculiar manner, technical monetary detail falls into the background. A

monetary economy, we shall find, is essentially one in which changing views about the future are

capable of influencing the quantity of employment and not merely its direction. But our method of

analysing the economic behaviour of the present under the influence of changing ideas about the future

is one which depends on the interaction of supply and demand, and is in this way linked up with our

fundamental theory of value. We are thus led to a more general theory, which includes the classical

theory with which we are familiar, as a special case.

The writer of a book such as this, treading along unfamiliar paths, is extremely dependent on criticism

and conversation if he is to avoid an undue proportion of mistakes. It is astonishing what foolish things

one can temporarily believe if one thinks too long alone, particularly in economics (along with the other

moral sciences), where it is often impossible to bring one's ideas to a conclusive test either formal or

experimental. In this book, even more perhaps than in writing my Treatise on Money, I have depended

on the constant advice and constructive criticism of Mr R.F. Kahn. There is a great deal in this book

which would not have taken the shape it has except at his suggestion. I have also had much help from

Mrs Joan Robinson, Mr R.G. Hawtrey and Mr R.F. Harrod, who have read the whole of the proof-

sheets. The index has been compiled by Mr D. M. Bensusan-Butt of King's College, Cambridge.

The composition of this book has been for the author a long struggle of escape, and so must the reading

of it be for most readers if the author's assault upon them is to be successful,a struggle of escape from

habitual modes of thought and expression. The ideas which are here expressed so laboriously are

extremely simple and should be obvious. The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from

the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our

minds.

J.M. KEYNES

13 December 1935

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