The ideas of Keynes have been appropriated by the political left in recent years. The condemnation of Keynes that was characteristic of critics speaking for the extreme right has become mainstream with the takeover of macroeconomic theory by schools such as new classical economics. But how...

G.L.S. Shackle pointed out that Keynes's main methodological innovation was to approach economic processes through the eyes of agents while orthodox theory assumed the position of the omniscient external observer. It was this demarche that allowed Keynes to understand the full implications of...