ABSTRACT
The General Theory is not a piece of writing to be dipped into and read casually. It is full of enlightenment, but its closely woven argument must be approached with a good deal of intellectual effort. Some of the early reviews of the book, both in Britain and the United States, showed considerable misunderstanding of Keynes’s meaning.1 (When this happens, the author is usually to blame!) However, despite such problems, the General Theory gives us a sharp insight into Keynes’s mind when, within the dense and sinewy prose, there is a sudden flash of imagination that illuminates dramatically the serious point that he is making. Here is one of the best-known examples:
even a diversion of the desire to hold wealth towards assets, which will in fact yield no economic fruits whatever, will increase economic well-being. In so far as millionaires find their satisfaction in building mighty mansions to contain their bodies when alive and pyramids to shelter them after death, or, repenting of their sins, erect cathedrals and endow monasteries or foreign missions, the day when abundance of capital will interfere with abundance of output may be postponed. “To dig holes in the ground,” paid for out of savings, will increase, not only employment, but the real national dividend of useful goods and services.2
