Most of the essays in this book were first collected together in October 1931, immediately after Britain had left the gold standard. They reflected Keynes's attempts over the previous dozen years to influence public opinion and policy over the Treaty of Versailles, over which he had resigned from the Treasury in June 1919, reparations and inter-allied war debts, stabilisation policy, the gold standard and the shape of liberal politics in Britain. In 1972 the essays were reprinted with the full texts of the pamphlets - Can Lloyd George Do It?, The Economic Consequences of Mr Churchill, A Short View of Russia and The End of Laissez Faire. At that time, the full texts of his two post-1931 pamphlets - The Means to Prosperity and How to Pay for the War - were added. The book contains examples of Keynes's finest writing on economic policy and politics. This edition includes an introduction by Donald Moggridge.
John Maynard Keynes’s 1936 General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money is a perfect example of the global power of critical thinking. A radical reconsideration of some of the founding principles and accepted axioms of classical economics at the time, it provoked a revolution in economic thought and government economic policies across the world. Unsurprisingly, Keynes’s closely argued refutation of the then accepted grounds of economics employs all the key critical thinking skills: analysing and evaluating the old theories and their weaknesses; interpreting and clarifying his own fundamental terms and ideas; problem solving; and using creative thinking to go beyond the old economic theories. Perhaps above all, however, the General Theory is a masterclass in problem solving. Good problem solvers identify their problem, offer a methodology for solving it, and suggest solutions. For Keynes the problem was both real and theoretical: unemployment. A major issue for governments during the Great Depression, unemployment was also a problem for classical economics. In classical economics, theoretically, unemployment would always disappear. Keynes offered both an explanation of why this was not the case in practice, and a range of solutions that could be implemented through government monetary policy.
This volume, together with volumes 13 and 29, provides an insight into the development of Keynes's thinking in the monetary field from the time of the Tract in 1923 to the Treatise in 1930, onward to The General Theory in 1936, and after its publication.
This edition contains all Keynes's published writings, including less accessible articles and letters to the press, as well as previously unpublished speeches, government memoranda and minutes, drafts and economic correspondence.
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