Theory: Preliminary Discussion

Abstract

In emphasising policy, the statement of Keynes’s theory here differs substantially from both Keynes’s own presentation and subsequent post-Keynesian interpretations. Keynes stated that the focus of the General Theory was theory, not practice:

its main purpose is to deal with difficult questions of theory, and only in the second place with the applications of this theory to practice. (CW VII, p. xxi)

It would need a volume of a different character from this one to indicate even in outline the practical measures in which they might be gradually clothed, (ibid., p. 383)