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Capitalist Revolutionary: John Maynard Keynes

Author

Listed:
  • Backhouse, Roger E.

    (University of Birmingham)

  • Bateman, Bradley W.

    (Denison University)

Abstract

The Great Recession of 2008 restored John Maynard Keynes to prominence. After decades when the Keynesian revolution seemed to have been forgotten, the great British theorist was suddenly everywhere. The New York Times asked, “What would Keynes have done?” The Financial Times wrote of “the undeniable shift to Keynes.” Le Monde pronounced the economic collapse Keynes’s “revenge.” Two years later, following bank bailouts and Tea Party fundamentalism, Keynesian principles once again seemed misguided or irrelevant to a public focused on ballooning budget deficits. In this readable account, Backhouse and Bateman elaborate the misinformation and caricature that have led to Keynes’s repeated resurrection and interment since his death in 1946. Keynes’s engagement with social and moral philosophy and his membership in the Bloomsbury Group of artists and writers helped to shape his manner of theorizing. Though trained as a mathematician, he designed models based on how specific kinds of people (such as investors and consumers) actually behave—an approach that runs counter to the idealized agents favored by economists at the end of the century. Keynes wanted to create a revolution in the way the world thought about economic problems, but he was more open-minded about capitalism than is commonly believed. He saw capitalism as essential to a society’s well-being but also morally flawed, and he sought a corrective for its main defect: the failure to stabilize investment. Keynes’s nuanced views, the authors suggest, offer an alternative to the polarized rhetoric often evoked by the word “capitalism” in today’s political debates.

Suggested Citation

  • Backhouse, Roger E. & Bateman, Bradley W., 2011. "Capitalist Revolutionary: John Maynard Keynes," Economics Books, Harvard University Press, number 9780674057753, Spring.
  • Handle: RePEc:hup:pbooks:9780674057753
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Roger E. Backhouse, 2013. "Responding to economic crisis: macroeconomic revolutions in the 1930s and 1970s," Chapters, in: Mats Benner (ed.), Before and Beyond the Global Economic Crisis, chapter 2, pages 38-54, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Anna M. Carabelli & Mario A. Cedrini, 2014. "Keynes's General Theory , Treatise on Money and Tract on Monetary Reform : different theories, same methodological approach?," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(6), pages 1060-1084, December.
    3. Edward W. Fuller, 2020. "Alchian on Keynes," The Review of Austrian Economics, Springer;Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, vol. 33(4), pages 503-511, December.
    4. Bradley Bateman, 2013. "Insights from John Maynard Keynes," Chapters, in: G. Page West III & Robert M. Whaples (ed.), The Economic Crisis in Retrospect, chapter 4, pages 78-94, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Felipe Rodrigues Sousa & Everton Sotto Tibiriçá Rosa, 2020. "Filosofia Econômica e Social: uma Conexão entre Alfred Marshall e John Maynard Keynes," Working papers - Textos para Discussao do Curso de Ciencias Economicas da UFG 083, Curso de Ciencias Economicas da Universidade Federal de Goias - FACE.
    6. Dusek, Tamás, 2022. "Keynes sikerességének és népszerűségének okai Keynes életrajzai szerint [Keynes success and popularity according to Keynes biographies]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(9), pages 1048-1072.
    7. Carabelli, Anna & Cedrini, Mario, 2014. "Not Beautiful, not Just, not Virtuous; 'And It Doesn't Deliver the Goods'. Capitalism and “Fear of Goods” in Keynes's Thought," Department of Economics and Statistics Cognetti de Martiis. Working Papers 201438, University of Turin.
    8. Roger E. Backhouse, 2014. "Hayek and Keynes," Chapters, in: Roger W. Garrison & Norman Barry (ed.), Elgar Companion to Hayekian Economics, chapter 5, pages 94-115, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    9. Panagiotis Evangelopoulos, 2014. "Consequences of the Public Debt Crisis on Growth and Stability," Review of Economics & Finance, Better Advances Press, Canada, vol. 4, pages 47-56, August.
    10. Szakolczai, György, 2023. "Megjegyzések és kiegészítések Dusek Tamás Keynes-esszéjéhez [Comments and additions to the Keynes essay by Tamás Dusek]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(5), pages 564-577.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Keynesianism; capitalism;

    JEL classification:

    • B3 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - History of Economic Thought: Individuals
    • H0 - Public Economics - - General

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