ABSTRACT
There is a remarkable consensus among economists of all ideological and political persuasions—conservative, liberal, and radical—that capitalist economies must grow to be healthy and that the key to growth lies in the capital-accumulation, or savings-and-investment process. The first serious challenge to this deeply ingrained orthodoxy came in the form of Keynes's General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, published in 1936, shortly before the recession that began late the following year. The reason why the emerging debate of the 1930s was interrupted and forgotten while Keynes was being turned into a quite ordinary purveyor of business-cycle remedies is obvious: for some three decades after the beginning of World War II, capitalism seemed to have recaptured its youth. Recessions were mild, and after every setback investment bounced back at least as vigorously as during any comparable period in the earlier history of capitalism.
