Keynes the Meeting-point of History and Thought

Whatever theory of history we may hold, surely we must agree that Keynes was the instrument of profound effects on the events and the ideas of our century. But equally, it was the vast upheavals of our century that gave him opportunity and inspiration. A man of immense psychic energy and versatile, inventive mind found himself called on to help politicians take vengeance upon history for the appalling tragedy of war. He saw impractical demands for reparations instead of a sober effort at oblivion and co-operative reconstruction. Yet these demands, made by men who had not thought out what the effects would be of trying to impose them, brought him face-to-face with economic drama on a great scale. Here, suddenly, was a problem of ‘macroeconomics’. This was something different from questions of the self-adjustment of prices in orderly markets, of the web of mutual benefits achieved by specialism and exchange. Macroeconomics, the study of business in its aspect of large aggregates and their mutual relations and influences, could only be conducted in terms of money values. Keynes had already been concerned with ‘currency and finance’. The man of brilliant gifts, of mathematical training, of high intellectual background, of familiarity with the monetary field, saw his life work awaiting him.