The Identity between Aggregate Supply and Demand Price Equilibrium and Labour Market Equilibrium at Less than Full Employment

Abstract

As Professor Harcourt has observed,¹ the same formal proposition can be expressed in any number of languages. The different linguistic expression does not always produce exactly the same meaning, although in general it conveys the same basic or general idea. As we all know, Keynes himself was not particularly wedded to any particular method of presenting his theory: indeed he was considering a new formulation when illness and governmental commitments intervened.² There should then be little reason to dispute alternative presentations. Instead, it may be more fruitful for those interested in Keynes’s ideas to try to identify the basic contributions of the General Theory in order to identify whether or not the different languages, or different approaches, express the same basic concepts.