Motivation: Approaching the General Theory Historically

Abstract

This is a book about a book. It takes as its task the exploration of the development of the economic ideas that came to fruition in John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, published in 1936. My purpose is to suggest some novel ways in which that book can be seen as a development of Keynes’s intellectual history and context. I take as a starting point, the object of my analysis, the text of the General Theory along with the original supporting documents assembled by the editors of Keynes’s Collected Works. Of particular importance in the Collected Works are the supporting documents that surround the General Theory — drafts, correspondences and related publications from Keynes’s papers. They are organized into three volumes. The first two (CW 13 and 14) correspond to Keynes’s pre-publication “Preparation,” and his post-publication (but pre-World War II) “Defense and Development,” of the General Theory. The last (CW 29), the contents of the now famous laundry basket later found in Keynes’s country home, supplement the earlier volumes with private papers from both periods. The form and novelty of the theoretical interpretation of the General Theory that emerges from my study is the result of historical research into the origins and development of the ideas found in these materials.