ABSTRACT
John Maynard Keynes used his new theory to argue in The General Theory that unless Liberal Socialism replaced capitalism in Britain and elsewhere, the world was likely to remain mired in economic stagnation amid rising political distress. Keynes sought to differentiate his general theory of capitalism from what he saw as the special case embedded in classical theory. Classical theory had both historical and ideological roots. The historical underpinning was the fact that the British economy grew rapidly and became economically and financially dominant in the global economy from the mid-eighteenth century through most of the nineteenth century, a period that Keynes often referred to as the “glorious nineteenth century.” Keynes built his theory of agent choice on the core assumption that future states of the economy, including future financial asset prices, are unknowable or fundamentally uncertain in the present moment.
