ABSTRACT
The objective of full employment emerged as a response to periodic crises in capitalism. In the twentieth century the Great Depression (1929–1932) represented a major influence on post-Second World War policy, with economists such as John Maynard Keynes and William Beveridge exerting influence on government policies in a number of Western economies. While in the aftermath of the Great War there had been a desire to return to normality, the period from 1945 was marked by a desire to break from the disastrous economic policies and doctrine which had typified the inter-war years. The perverse nature of persistent and high levels of unemployment was articulated clearly by Keynes (1972: 90), who noted:
The Conservative belief that there is some law of nature which prevents men from being employed, that it is ‘rash’ to employ men, and that it is financially ‘sound’ to maintain a tenth of the population in idleness for an indefinite period, is crazily improbable – the sort of thing which no man could believe who had not had his head fuddled with nonsense for years and years.
