For some twenty years after the Second World War, Keynesian economic policies in countries of the capitalist West were successful in generating rapid growth with high employment. This “golden age of capitalism’ did not survive the economic traumas of the 1970s; nor has the more recent emphasis on monetarist policies and supply-side performance succeeded in regenerating comparable growth rates. Blending historical analysis with economic theory, this book seeks to understand the making and unmaking of this "golden age’, questions the basis of much present policy-making, and suggests alternative directions for policy.