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1976 | Buch

Keynes

verfasst von: D. E. Moggridge

Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan UK

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter
Introduction
Abstract
It is now almost thirty years since Easter Sunday in April 1946, when, while hundreds of thousands of Englishmen were enjoying their first post-war spring holiday at seaside resorts, the last of many heart attacks ended Maynard Keynes’s life. It is almost forty years since The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money ap- peared in British bookshops, priced by the author at five shillings to encourage the widest possible sale, especially amongst undergraduates.1 As I write, it is fifty years since Keynes sat in a Sussex farmhouse garden composing (and sharing with his friends) The Economic Consequences of the Veace.
D. E. Moggridge
1. Prologue
Abstract
Keynes was a product of Victorian and Edwardian England. This fact helps to explain many of his characteristic attitudes and habits of thought. Surely in that age one could assume that prices and interest rates were relatively stable, when 1914 saw prices eleven per cent below the level of fifty years earlier and when the range of fluctuation of long-term interest rates over the same period had been between 2.5 and 3.4 per cent. Again, one might be forgiven for normally assuming that the government of Britain was in the hands of an intellectual elite in an age when voters could choose between H. H. Asquith and A. J. Balfour as to who would exercise responsibility for a small Civil Service dominated by a meritocracy recruited by competitive examination in subjects which only Oxford and Cambridge seemed able to teach.
D. E. Moggridge
2. The Economist
Abstract
Before examining the development of Keynes’s economic ideas between the time of his return to Cambridge and his death, one should try to get inside the man and the mind behind the ideas in question—one must become aware of his habits of thought, his methods of working, his views as to the nature of economic enquiry and the like. Fortunately, although Keynes did not leave behind an autobiography or a treatise on the nature of economic enquiry, his drafts, correspondence, comments on the work of others and asides provide one with enough clues to begin to catch the flavour of the economist.
D. E. Moggridge
3. Glosses on Marshalliana, 1908–25
Abstract
When Keynes returned to Cambridge to teach in 1908, Marshall had just retired from the chair of Political Economy, and from the active teaching life of the Faculty, to devote himself to writing further volumes of his Principles of Economics. However, his work and personality continued to dominate Cambridge economics, and Keynes’s economics, long after his retirement and even after his death in 1924. Therefore, to understand the development of Keynes’s ideas, one must first of all look briefly at the starting point, the Marshallian inheritance.
D. E. Moggridge
4. The Period of Transition, 1925–31
Abstract
The years surrounding the preparation of the Treatise were transitional for Keynes in many respects. In August 1925, after living with her for some time, he married Lydia Lopokova of the Diagilev Ballet.1 The result was somewhat greater distance from the rest of Bloomsbury: ‘they had now become a delightful recreation instead of being the main background of his life’2 With his marriage, Keynes took a lease on Tilton, a farmhouse at Firle in Sussex and he came to divide his life roughly as follows: London during the week, Cambridge for long weekends during term and Tilton for vacations. He also visited Russia for the first time, became even more involved in Liberal Party politics and policy formulation and took a much more active part in industrial affairs. For economists, however, and probably for history, the Treatise on Money takes precedence.
D. E. Moggridge
5. The Years of the General Theory, 1931–7
Abstract
In April 1932, just fifteen months after the publication of his Treatise, Keynes concluded the Preface to the Japanese translation as follows:
I should add … that after a year and a half of further reflection and after having had the advantage of much criticism and discussion of my theories, I have naturally made many addenda and corrigenda in what follows. It is not, however, my intention to revise the existing text of this Treatise in the near future. I propose, rather, to publish a short book of a purely theoretical character, extending and correcting the theoretical basis of my views as set forth … below. (JMK, v, p. xxvii)
D. E. Moggridge
6. The Economist Statesman, 1939–46
Abstract
Between his heart attack in 1937 and the outbreak of war, Keynes was more or less out of action. True, he continued to edit the Economic Journal, contribute to discussions of policy through The Times and the Committee on Economic Information, play a useful role in his College and contribute occasional articles of review or comment to professional journals. His energies were so much directed to achieving with the collaboration of many minds an acceptance of something similar to his views in the General Theory or in discussions of the problems of preparing for a possible war, that it is possible to deal with his work during this period, either in passing, as in the previous chapter, or in the context of his wartime activities.
D. E. Moggridge
7. Conclusion
Abstract
Looking back over the career and work of Keynes, several elements of possible concluding sections for this book continually spring into one’s mind. However, the man himself, not to mention his influence, invariably eludes simple categories and forms of organization with his many-sidedness, his insistence on being ‘just ‘Keynes’. In the end, one is tempted to give up and echo the final line of Austin Robinson’s contribution to the art of short biography, which stands favourable comparison with many of Keynes’s forays into the field, ‘Maynard Keynes was utterly unique’.
D. E. Moggridge
Backmatter
Metadaten
Titel
Keynes
verfasst von
D. E. Moggridge
Copyright-Jahr
1976
Verlag
Palgrave Macmillan UK
Electronic ISBN
978-1-349-03033-0
Print ISBN
978-1-349-03035-4
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-03033-0