Chapter dzDz: Hutt and Keynes ȀȇȄAnother characteristic is lengthy brooding over the meanings of terms
and concepts. Hutt once recorded his “strong dislike for mere ‘terminolog-
ical innovation’” (SeptemberȀȈȄȂ, p.ȁȀȄ), but this is a dislike that he man-
aged to overcome. Some wag once said that he wrote in Huttite. Hutt
offered lengthy and sometimes obscure definitions of such concepts as
market-clearing prices for inputs (ȀȈȆȆ, p.ȀǿȄ), competition (ȀȈȆȆ, p.ȀȄȃ;
ȀȈȆȃ, pp.ȀȄ–Ȁȅ), exploitation (ȀȈȆȆ, p.ȁȀȇn.), money (ȀȈȆȆ, p.ȁȄȃ), and
some nine or ten varieties of idleness (throughout hisȀȈȆȆ). Presumably
out of aversion to theorizing with aggregates and averages, Hutt avoided
the term “price level,” saying “scale of prices” instead (for example, Septem-
berȀȈȄȂ, p.ȁȀȆ;ȀȈȆȈ, p.ȁȀȃ).
Hutt used one term so much that I, anyway, became accustomed to it:
“withheld capacity.” Ļis term suggests that people who, in ordinary lan-
guage, are having a hard time finding jobs or customers arewithholding
their capacity to work or produce by insisting on wages or prices above
market-clearing levels. So doing, they are withholding their demands for
the goods and services of other people and thereby causing other prices
and wages, if unchanged, to be excessive. Ļis terminological allusion to
villainy serves to shunt aside analysis of the nature and reasons for price
and wage stickiness, including ways that the interdependence of wages
and prices narrows the reasonable options available to individual price-
setters and wage negotiators. His terminology helps Hutt to damn real-
ity for being real. Yet he himself briefly recognized (for example,ȀȈȆȆ,
pp.ȀȂȅn.,ȁǿȃ) that resistance to wage and price adjustments can be “indi-
vidually rational” although “collectively irrational.”
His terminology would permit him, if pressed, to defend propositions
that are startling on their face.
Ļe withholding of capacity which is capable of providing currently valu-
able services is always a case of restraint on freedom. (ȀȈȆȈ, p.ȂȆȀn.)
[T]he labor of all able-bodied persons was demanded throughout the
depression years.It was not supplied. (ȀȈȆȈ, p.ȀȅȈ)
[W]hat is usually called “unemployed labor” could be more realistically
called “unsupplied labor.” (ȀȈȆȃ, p.ȆȈ)
Individuals actively “prospecting” for remunerative jobs are employed.
(italicized section heading inȀȈȆȆ, p.ȇȂ)
[In the] phrase “excess supply” of labor ... the word “excess” ... could
more appropriately be “deficient” or “insufficient”! (ȀȈȆȃ, p.ȇȅ)