The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) was a British economist whose revolutionary ideas forever changed the landscape of modern economic theory. Keynes was raised in an intellectually vibrant household: His father was an economist and his mother served as mayor of Cambridge, England. Keynes’s early exposure to academia laid the groundwork for his future achievements. He studied mathematics at King’s College at Cambridge University, where he later became part of the influential Bloomsbury Group, a circle that blended intellectual discourse across literature, art, and science. This eclectic environment enriched Keynes’s perspective, encouraging him to question orthodox assumptions and seek innovative solutions to the economic challenges of his era.

Keynes’s professional career saw him traverse government service, academia, and the private sector—experiences that shaped his holistic understanding of the economy. During World War I, he worked in the British Treasury, gaining practical insights into finance and policy-making. His critical stance on the punitive reparations imposed on Germany in the Treaty of Versailles was outlined in his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), earning him both international recognition and notoriety. This willingness to challenge established norms would later manifest in his magnum opus, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), where he targeted the prevailing classical economic belief that markets naturally self-correct to full employment.