Maggs Bros. Ltd Archives - Rare Book Insider

The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money

First edition, first printing. 8vo (220 x 145mm). [2], xii, 403, [1] pp. Original dark blue cloth, spine lettered and ruled in gilt, ruling continued to boards in blind, dust jacket (neat contemporary ownership inscription to front free endpaper, occasional neat pencilled marginal highlighting; corners only gently bumped, the cloth otherwise remains bright and virtually unworn; jacket rather worn and age toned with a few tiny nicks and short closed tears to edges, chipping to tips of spine panel and corners with minor loss, closed tear to foot of front joint, pencilled annotations to rear turn-in fold, still a very good copy overall). London, Macmillan and Co., Limited. Keynes' greatest work and surely the most influential text of twentieth-century economics - complete with a very good example of the scarce dust jacket. Prompted by the world wide-slump following 1929, Keynes set upon an 'explanation of, and new methods for controlling, the vagaries of the trade-cycle. First in A Treatise on Money, 1930, and later in his General Theory, he subjected the definitions and theories of the classical school of economists to a penetrating scrutiny and found seriously inadequate and inaccurate. . [Keynes'] programme for national and international official monetary policies [was based on the premise that the] national budget, over and above its function of providing a national income, should be used as a major instrument in planning the national economy. The regulation of the trade-cycle - that is to say the control of booms and slumps, the level of employment, the wage-scale and the flow of investment - must be the responsibility of governments. Lost equilibrium in a national economy could and should be restored by official action and abandoned to laisser faire' (PMM). The grip of Keynesian economics took hold almost immediately, informing aspects of Roosevelt's 'New Deal', the formation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, as well as many of the policies of the post-war British Labour government. PMM, 423; Moggridge A10.