ABSTRACT
‘In the long run we are all dead’: the frequently quoted passage from John Maynard Keynes’s A Tract on Monetary Reform (1923/2000) applies to societies no less than to individuals, although obviously in a different sense to the former than to the latter. Methodological individualism is right to insist on the need to establish micro-foundations for collective entities like societies, states and nations. On the other hand, the histories of individuals are essentially embedded within the histories of states and societies, which transcend the lifespan of individuals in terms of basic functions like reproduction and socialization.
