Página 19 - Coordinación de Servicios de Información

JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES (1883-1946)
• Keynes' principal work focused on one central issue: the deter–
mination of levels of national income and employment in indus–
trial economies, and the cause of economic fluctuations . Earlier
schools of economic thought had given little systematic attention
to this problem. The classicists were too preoccupied with ques–
tions of long-period economic growth to concern themselve directly
with short-period instability; in a ny even t -apa rt from the
postNapoleonic war years- the matter was not of mayor signifi–
canee in their day ' and age. Marx came closer to Keynesian con–
cerns but his work was always overlaid with the pre-judgement
that the downfall of capitalism was inevitable; in his view wide–
spread fluctuations were the result of an incurable malignancy
within the capitalist system. Thougnh some neo-classical writers
made reference to 'industrial fluctuations' and to the 'inconstancy
of employment', they were far more interes ted in the forces influ–
encing output in particular markets than in those governing the
output of the economy as a whole. Moreover, they were persuaded
that full employment was the long-run equilibrium position toward
which the economy naturally gravitated and their anlysis was built
on this premise.
Even befor his doubts about neo-classical presuppositions had crys–
tallized, Keynes was suspicious of this attitude -' in the long run'
he observed, 'we are all dead'. As his thought took shape in the
General Theory, economic analysis was reconstructed to bring
short-period aggregative problems to the center of the stage. The
micro-economic questions around which the neo-classical tradition
had been organized were pushed toward the wings. At the same
time Keynes was at pains to dissociate his position from the Marx–
ist contention that capitalism was doomed. The essentials of the
system, he maintained, could be preserved if reforms were made in
time. An unregulated capitalism, however, was incompatible with
the maintenance of full employment and economic stability.
English lar Economists 17