Clower and Howitt (1998): Our Candid Opinion Is that Much of Keynes's Argument Was “Consciously Disingenuous”

In his 1934 “manifesto” Keynes not only queries the self-adjustment capabilities of “the existing economic system” but contumaciously declares “The system is not self-adjusting, and, without purposive direction, is incapable of translating our actual poverty into our potential plenty.” When Keynes wrote those words, the General Theory was substantially finished, so we find it natural to ask, On the basis of what ideas in the General Theory did Keynes consider it reasonable to flout “. . . almost the whole body of organized economic thinking and doctrine of the last hundred years”? Our candid opinion is, first, that much of Keynes's argument was consciously disingenuous and, second, that the analysis set fourth in the General Theory provides no reasonable grounds to reject the CSP [Classical Stability Presumption].

—Robert Clower and Peter Howitt, “Keynes and the Classics: An End of Century View,” in Keynes and the Classics Reconsidered, ed. James C. W. Ahiakpor (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998), 6, forthcoming.