Mr. Keynes' General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
![handle is hein.journals/intlr135 and id is 351 raw text is: International Labour Review, Vol. 135 (1996), No. 3-4
Mr. Keynes' General Theory
of Employment, Interest and Money
A. P. LERNER *
Originally published in International Labour Review, Vol. 34 (1936), No. 4 (Oct.);
abridged.
rpe object of this article is to provide as simple as possible an account of
the most important line of argument that runs through Mr. J. M.
Keynes' book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, so
that, except perhaps in some details of presentation, it contains nothing
original. [...I
Keynes wishes sharply to distinguish his own system from what he calls
the classical economics. By that he means the orthodox body of doctrine,
first conceived in fairly complete outline by Ricardo, and developed by
almost all economists of repute from that time on, both in England and
elsewhere, which finds its present culmination in the works of Pigou. [...]
The last sentence in Keynes' preface reads: The difficulty lies, not in
the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those
brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds. I would
like to underline that sentence.
Keynes is concerned with the problem of unemployment. The classical
view is that in the absence of State interference or other rigidities, the
existence of any unemployment will have the effect of lowering wages.
This follows immediately from the definition of unemployment, for any
man who is not in employment but who does not try to get work at a lower
wage is no more considered to be unemployed than the man who refuses to
* London School of Economics. [Born in Romania, he studied at Cambridge and taught
at the London School of Economics and Political Science, the University of California at
Berkeley and a number of other universities.
Prior to its original publication, this article was read and approved by J. M. Keynes]
Copyright © International Labour Organization 1996](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/intlr135&div=37&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Mr. Keynes' General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
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