Keynes Contemporary Responses To General Theory

Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (published in February 1936) is probably the most influential and controversial economics book of the twentieth century. Keynes claimed to have undermined the foundations of orthodox economics and to have developed a radically new way of thinking about unemployment. This volume brings together forty of the reviews published before the end of 1936, showing how a wide range of economists and political and literary figures responded to the book. Here we have perspectives on Keynesian economics that are untainted by the work of subsequent interpreters. ‘Nowadays when we read Keynes’s General Theory, we do so through a mist of literally hundreds of commentaries. Here is a book that allows us to travel backwards in time to witness what people said about the General Theory when it was still new and uncontaminated by secondary opinion.’ - Mark Blaug, author of Economic Theory in Retrospect