The Keynesian Episode (A Reassessment)

The late W. H. Hutt was a preeminent and persistent critic of the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes. In The Keynesian Episode, he presents a comprehensive review of Keynes’s General Theory, including the finest critique to date of the Acceleration Principle. He questions the very legitimacy of Keynes’s fundamental epistemology.

In Hutt’s discussion of economics there is a refreshing emphasis on the vital importance of the market price system as a coordinating process. As Dr. Hutt wrote: “The intellectual developments for which Keynes’s General Theory appeared to be responsible had caused a setback to scientific thinking about human economic relations at a crucial epoch. Keynes tried to find in the factors determining the value of the money unit the genesis of output and income. . . . He linked monetary theory to the economic world only through unsatisfactory concepts such as employment, income, and effective demand.”

In this unsparing analysis of the theories of John Maynard Keynes, W. H. Hutt explains why Keynes’s ideas attracted both practical politicians and ardent academics and why they do not square with the logic of long-accepted laws of economics. Professor Hutt outlines methods by which modern economies can extricate themselves from the disasters into which Keynesian theory has plunged them.