A Note on Books

There must be hundreds of economic books that may be variously described as Keynesian, pro-Keynesian, quasi-Keynesian, semi-Keynesian, or “post-Keynesian,” and there must be thousands of such pamphlets and articles; but there is a great dearth when we come to any literature since 1936 that may be described as definitely anti-Keynesian—in the sense that it is explicitly and consistently critical of the major Keynesian doctrines. In the works of such writers as Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, Wilhelm Röpke, Frank H. Knight, Jacques Rueff, and others, we do indeed have an impressive non-Keynesian literature, based on “neo-classical” premises, with occasional explicit criticism of Keynesian tenets. But full-length books exclusively devoted to a critical analysis of Keynesism may be counted on the fingers of one hand.

First among these I should like to mention L. Albert Hahn’s The Economics of Illusion, a collection of essays, originally published separately, on various Keynesian themes. The same author’s Common Sense Economics is mainly devoted to developing a unified constructive doctrine, but involves explicit as well as implied criticism of Keynesian doctrine. A small volume by V. Orval Watts, Away from Freedom, especially emphasizes the moral and political weaknesses of Keynesism. And not even the shortest “anti-Keynesian” bibliography should omit Arthur W. Marget’s monumental study, The Theory of Prices (two volumes, 1,426 pages). This work is distinguished both for its penetrating comment and for the immense range of its scholarship, but its relentless prolixity and disheartening length have caused it to miss the influence it might otherwise have had.

Not until I had finished the present book did I have the good fortune, through his generosity, to spend an hour over the manuscript of a work in preparation by W. H. Hutt, now dean of the faculty of commerce at the University of Capetown, South Africa. This will be both a thorough and a thoroughly admirable work, which I am convinced will make a deep impression when it appears. Meanwhile I feel encouraged and corroborated in my own analysis by the numerous points of similarity to the analysis by Professor Hutt made from so distant a geographical perspective.

David McCord Wright, Dow professor of economics and political science at McGill University, Montreal, is now also engaged, I am informed, on a book on The Keynesian System. Judging from his article, “Mr. Keynes and the ‘Day of Judgment,’” which appeared in Science of Nov. 21, 1958, this book will throw much added light on the problems with which it deals.

Individual volumes have appeared devoted to criticism of single aspects of Keynesian doctrine. Among these W. H. Hutt’s The Theory of Idle Resources, and George Terborgh’s The Bogey of Economic Maturity, are outstanding. Milton Friedman has devoted a critical and careful study to The Theory of the Consumption Function, and Ernst W. Swanson and Emerson P. Schmidt, in Economic Stagnation or Progress, have written a critique of doctrines on the mature economy, oversavings, and deficit spending.

But much of the best critical analysis of Keynesian doctrines has appeared merely in individual chapters in a few pages of works by such writers as Benjamin M. Anderson, Arthur F. Burns, Philip Cortney, Gottfried Haberler, F. A. Hayek, Frank H. Knight, Ludwig von Mises, Melchior Palyi, Charles Rist, Wilhelm Röpke, and others, and in widely scattered articles, mainly in learned journals, by Harry Gunnison Brown, W. H. Hutt, Frank H. Knight, L. M. Lachmann, Joseph Stagg Lawrence, Etienne Mantoux (only in French), Franco Modigliani, Edwin G. Nourse, Melchior Palyi, Jacques Rueff, Jacob Viner, R. Gordon Wasson, John H. Williams, David McCord Wright, and others. These articles would have a far greater impact on current thought than they have had if they could be collected and made readily available between the covers of a single book.

I have not mentioned any pro-Keynesian literature because it is so vast and so easily available. But Seymour Harris appends a bibliographic note to his laudatory book on John Maynard Keynes: Economist and Policy Maker in which he lists seventeen volumes, mainly sympathetic, of which I should especially like to mention Dudley Dillard’s The Economics of John Maynard Keynes and Alvin H. Hansen’s A Guide to Keynes because they are so much better organized and so much more lucid than the General Theory itself.