ABSTRACT
John Maynard Keynes was unquestionably one of the most influential economists and intellectuals of the twentieth century. In the face of the social and economic crisis of the Great Depression in the early 1930s, a worldwide economic downturn that began with a stock market crash in the United States, Keynes tried to redefine academic understanding of the economic system. His book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money fundamentally reshaped the study and implementation of economic thought and policy. The General Theory is the founding text for Keynesian economics, one of the most influential schools of economic thought of the twentieth century and beyond. It engages with political and sociological questions about the structure of society, the relationship between the state and the economy, and the broader relationship between citizens and society. The key questions addressed in Keynes’s work are highly relevant to current social questions and policy debates.
