Publisher's Synopsis
This book tells the story of the argument over the performance of the British economy in the period of depression between the two World Wars. It was an argument about policy, assessing what it was administratively feasible and technically sensible for government to attempt. Secondly, it was at crucial stages a political argument, challenging the conventional view of the economic role of the state and bringing political parties into electoral competition. Thirdly, it became an argument about economic theory, as the analysis of unemployment itself emerged as a professionally contentious matter.;Keynes played a central role in each of these overlapping disputes and the book sets out to understand his ideas. It follows the course of the argument in which he was engaged - into the province of government, into the arena of politics, and into the discipline of economics - over a period of a dozen years. This is a scholarly study of one of the major thinkers of the 20th century.
