On the Relevance of Keynes to the Contemporary World: Post-Crisis Views on Economic Policy, Capitalism and International Monetary Reform

The 2007-8 crisis revived interest in the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, contributing to the emergence of a new vast literature about him. This work samples part of this literature, focusing on a series of books, which discuss Keynes’s views on economic policy, theory, capitalism and international monetary reform. The main conclusion emerging from this reconstruction is that Keynes’s ideas, with their insistence on uncertainty, stabilization, and fairness, offer relevant insight and possible solutions to many of today’s economic problems at the national and international level. Naturally, this offers no guarantee that the current Keynesian revival will last. Many obstacles exist in this direction, from the resilience of prevailing economic doctrines to the persistence of the status quo. Overcoming these obstacles, as Keynes himself would suggest, will require a disposition to experiment and “be bold”, drawing inspiration from Keynes’s pragmatism, sense of history and strong ethical vision as well as from his economics.