Ȁȅǿ Partʺ: Economicsconcepts. Ļe orthodox doctrine he was attacking had not yet been spelled
out explicitly enough. Still, ample excuses for not having done or said
something are not, after all, the same as actually having done or said it.ţōş ŗőťŚőş ō“ŗőťŚőşŕōŚ”Ū
Despite Clower and Leijonhufvud, much of what Keynes says in theGen-
eral Ļeory(ȀȈȂȅ) does indeed resemble the supposedly vulgar Keynesian-
ism of the textbooks. If Keynes really was a disequilibrium theorist, why
did he make so much of the possibilityof equilibriumat underemploy-
ment? Why did he minimise and almost deny the automatic forces con-
ceivably working, however sluggishly, towards full-employment equilib-
rium? Why did he repeatedly worry (as in theGeneral Ļeory, p.ȂȃȆ) about
“a chronic tendency throughout human history for the propensity to save
to be stronger than the inducement to invest”? “Ļe desire of the indi-
vidual to augment his personal wealth by abstaining from consumption,”
Keynes continued (p.Ȃȃȇ), “has usually been stronger than the inducement
to the entrepreneur to augment the national wealth by employing labour
on the construction of durable assets.” Why did he say (p.ȂȀ) that a rich
community would find it harder than a poor community to fill its saving
gap with investment? Why did he argue (p.ȀǿȄ) that the more fully invest-
ment has already provided for the future, the less scope remains for mak-
ing still further provision? Keynes’s hints at the stagnation thesis and in
favour of government responsibility for total investment also suggest that
he worried aboutrealfactors making for a chronic tendency for demand
to prove deficient. So does his emphasis on a “fundamental psychological
law” of consumption spending and his hints in favour of income redistri-
bution (p.ȂȆȂ) to raise the overall propensity to consume.
His worries about excessive thrift date back to before theGeneral Ļe-
ory.Recall, for example, his parable in theTreatise on Money(ȀȈȂǿ, vol.ŕ:
pp.ȀȆȅ–ȀȆȇ) about the devastation wrought by a thrift campaign in an
economy of banana plantations; he goes on to compare his own theory
with the over-saving or under-consumption theories of Mentor Bounia-
tian, J.A. Hobson, W.T. Foster and W. Catchings. Keynes’s banana para-
ble describes too simple an economy to be amenable to interpretation
along the lines of Clower and Leijonhufvud. Ļe parable does not even
mention money. Clearly Keynes was worrying about over-saving as such.
Keynes’s emphasis in theGeneral Ļeoryon a definite multiplier rela-
tion between changes in investment and in total income also suggests