3 Review(s)

The author has called this book the General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, placing the emphasis on the prefix general. The object of such a title is to contrast the character of his arguments and conclusions with those of the classical theory of the subject, upon which he was brought up and which dominates the economic thought, both practical and theoretical, of the governing and academicclasses of this generation, as it has for a hundred years past. The author shall argue that the postulates of the classical theory are applicable to a special case only andnot to the general case, the situation which it assumes being a limiting pointof the possible positions of equilibrium. Moreover, the characteristics of thespecial case assumed by the classical theory happen not to be those of theeconomic society in which we actually live, with the result that its teaching ismisleading and disastrous if we attempt to apply it to the facts of experience.