閤 Keynes's General Theory: Interpreting the Interpretations OR。 Bill gerrard The Economic Journal, Vol. 101, No. 405(Mar, 1991), pp 276-287 Stable url: http://inks.istororg/sici?sic0013-0133%28199103%029101%03a405%03c276%3akgtiti3e2.0.co%3b2-q The Economic Journal is currently published by Royal Economic Society Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.htmlJstOr'sTermsandConditionsofUseprovidesinpartthatunlessyouhaveobtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the jsTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that ap on the screen or printed page of such transmission STOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support @jstor. org http://www.jstor.org Thu mar1521:39:092007
Keynes's General Theory: Interpreting the Interpretations Bill Gerrard The Economic Journal, Vol. 101, No. 405. (Mar., 1991), pp. 276-287. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0013-0133%28199103%29101%3A405%3C276%3AKGTITI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Q The Economic Journal is currently published by Royal Economic Society. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/res.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. http://www.jstor.org Thu Mar 15 21:39:09 2007
he Economic Journal, IoI(March 1991), 276-287 Printed in great Britain KEYNESS GENERAL THEORY: INTERPRETING THE Ⅰ NTERPRETATIONS* Bill gerrard Keynes's General Theory has given rise to a variety of Keynesian research programmes. The development of these different Keynesian research pro- grammes is well-documented(see, for example, Coddington, 1976, Gerrard, 988; Hamouda and Harcourt, 1988, for surveys of Keynesian and post Keynesian economics). However less attention has been paid to explaining a striking feature of this Keynesian diversity, namely, the stress placed on discovering the real meaning of Keynes's General The legitimacy of any particular Keynesian research programme has been judged with regard to the authenticity of its implied interpretation of Keynes. Inevitably this concern for authenticity has generated much controversy, enveloping Keynesian economics in a 'doctrinal fog(Blaug, I980, P. 221). This paper attempts to pierce that Keynesian doctrinal fog. The central thesis is that the causes of the controversy surrounding Keyness General Theory lie, in part, in the different presuppositions made about the nature of interpretation. It is argued that much light can be shed on the Keynesian debate by drawing on the study of hermeneutics. The structure of the paper is as follows. Section I discusses the atomistic view of interpretation which is implicitly presupposed by most contributors to the Keynesian debate. Two variants of the atomistic view are considered the objectivist/essentialist approach and the relativist approach. Section II provides an alternative presupposition, the organicist view of interpretation, as exemplified by Ricoeur's dialectical approach in hermeneutics. The paper concludes in Section III with a re-examination the Keynesian debate in the light of the organicist view of interpretation . THE ATOMISTIC VIEW OF INTERPRETATION A principal aim of Keynesian economics has been to give a definitive answer to the question 'What does Keynes's General Theory really mean?'. Much of the resulting controversy arises from the nature of the question itself. In asking the question an atomistic view of interpretation is presupposed. The author, the text and the reader are treated as individual atomistic entities which are inter related in a purely external manner: the author produces the text which the reader interprets. There are two variants of the atomistic view of interpretation the objectivist/essentialist approach and the relativist approach This paper represents a development of themes contained in Gerrard I should like to thank Paul Brothwell, Meghnad Desai, Athol Fitzg John Hillard, Brian Hillier and the participants at the res conference as well as the editors and an anonymous referee for much in the yay of helpful criticism. The usual disclaimer applies
MARCH I99I] KEYNESS GENERAL THEORY 77 I.I. The Objectivist/Essentialist Approach From the perspective of the objectivist/essentialist approach, the aim of interpretation is the rational reconstruction of the text in order to recover the author's original meaning. Interpretation is seen to be problematic because the author's meaning is hidden. The latency of the original meaning creates confusion and generates the possibility of multiple interpretations. The task of the interpreter is to resolve this confusion by discovering the'true' meaning of a text. This presupposes that the true meaning is knowable Within the objectivist/essentialist approach, Ke eyes s ener viewed as containing a single essential meaning which is hidden as the result of the confusion created either by Keynes himself or by the economics profession in its reading of Keynes. The belief that Keynes's General Theory contains a single essential meaning is shared by most interpreters of Keynes. Leijonhufvud (I968)claims to have found the 'economics of Keynes' as opposed to Keynesian economics,, while Shackle(1967, ch 12)seeks Keynes'sultimate meaning. Fender(1981)sets out to find the ' exact nature of the theoretical contribution of Keynes'(pp I, 2) and, similarly, Chick(1983)attempts to remedy the fact that the ' macroeconomics that has been developed after Keynes, though claiming inspirations from the General Theory, in my view has not, with some outstanding exceptions, been macroeconomics after the manner of Keynes-with the method and perspective and insight of Keynes'(p v) From the objectivist/essentialist perspective, it is necessary to explain wh the essential meaning of the General Theory is hidden. There are three broad types of explanation I)The confusion is author-generated A number of writers have suggested that Keynes himself is the cause of the onfusion. There are a number of variants of this'author-generated confusio (i)Technical incompetence. It is often argued that Keynes had limited analytical abilities. For example, Hahn(1982, pp x, xi)writes that 'I consider that Keynes had no real grasp of formal economic theorising(and also disliked it), and that he consequently left many gaping holes in his theory. 'This follows famous remark by Shove that Maynard had never spent the twenty minutes necessary to understand the theory of value(quoted in Robinson, I964, p 79 (ii)Thevision thesis. Confusion arises as the inevitable consequences of the difficulties which Keynes faced in trying to formulate his underlying vision in a precise analytical manner. It is a line of argument originating wit Schumpeter(1946, p. 5o1)who distinguishes between Keynes's vision, that is his 'view about the basic features of society, about what is and what is not important'and Keyness technique, that is, the ' apparatus by which he conceptualises his vision and which turns the latter into concrete propositions or theories. According to Schumpeter the General Theory is the final result of a long struggle by Keynes to make his vision analytically operative. Leijonhufvud
THE ECONOMIC JOURNAL MARCH (pp. IO, II)adopts Schumpeter's distinction, arguing that Keynes was not entirely successful in translating his vision into a logically watertight model (iii)Stylistic difficulties. Keynes is often accused of a lack of clarity. This suggested by O'Donnell(Ig8ga, P. 6) as a reason for the difficulties in the interpretation of Keynes. O,Donnell approvingly quotes Wittgenstein's maxim that if anything can be said, it can be said clearly. Leijonhufvud(pp. IO, II) s far as to say that the General Theory is 'a badly written book ' and that epairs'has led to confusion because different writers have corrected Keynes's model in inappropriate ways. It is also argued that Keyness style is too loose and vague. This echoes Whiteheads criticism of Keynes's dissertation on probability as using the style of literature, not the style of logic and philosophy (iv)Inconsistencies. Some writers have suggested that Keynes did not have a coherent and consistent vision. It is an argument used by Leijonhufvud but also by Robinson (1973, p, 3)in her well-known comment that 'there were moments when we had some trouble in getting Maynard to see what the point of his revolution really was recent extreme example of the author- generated confusion'thesis is the neo-Ricardian argument that Keynes made a mistake in retaining the neoclassical concept of the marginal efficiency of capital (Milgate, I982). This created the possibility that, if the rate of interest is sufficiently low, there will be sufficient investment to maintain full employment. According to Milgate this undermined the principle of effective demand, the essence of the General Theory. Furthe ermore it forced Keynes to develop explanations of interest rate maladjustment; hence Keynes's misguided emphasis on expectations and liquidity preference. 2) The confusion is reader-generated An alternative explanation of the confusion surrounding the General Theory is to focus on the actions of the audience. Again there are a number of variants this explanation (i)Inappropriate framing. Readers have interpreted Keynes relative to inappropriate frame of reference. This results in the development of a variety of'subjective'interpretations based on personal beliefs and ideological and normative biases. In the process the objective meaning of Keynes becomes lost. This line of argument is epitomised by Leijonhufvud,'s distinction betwee Keynesian economics'and the 'economics of Keynes. It is an argument repeated by Fitzgibbons(1988, Pp. I-5) when he points towards the problem of 'systematically biased interpretation (ii)Selective reading. a closely related variant to the inappropriate framing rgument is the problem created by readers considering only parts of the text Thus O'Donnell (1989a, p. 4)sees the main reason for the multiple parts,rather than the whole of his relevant writing@ erpretations on selected interpretations of Keynes as the 'tendency to base int ii)Reliance on secondary sources. The tendency towards multiple interpret- tions of Keynes has been exacerbated by the tendency to read about Keynes rather than to read Keynes himself
] KEYNES S GENERAL THEORY (3)The confusion is generated by diferences in the composition of the stock of relevant Different interpretations may arise because of differences between interpreters th regard to the definition of the text to be analysed. There are two variants of this expla ana tion (i)Which lext? With an author as productive as Keynes, an inevitable problem is whether to interpret the target text in isolation or in the context of the author's other related writings. This can lead to multiple interpretations if readers find inconsistencies between different texts. The definition of ' other relevant writings may vary between interpreters, particularly with regard to the relative weights to be attached to earlier and later writings as well as to formal writings and more informal sources such as speeches, unpublished papers and private correspondence. Thus, for example, the recent emergence of Keynesian fundamentalism associated with Carabelli(Ig88) Fitzgibbons( 1988)and O'Donnell (198ga)amongst others, represents a shift of weight in favour of Keynes's early philosophical papers, a source largely ignored by previous interpreters (ii) Changes in availability. Not only can there ubjective'differences about the definition of the text, there may also be 'objective'differences over time as the stock of documents available for interpretation changes. Such changes have been particularly important in the interpretation of Keyness General Theory. The publication of the Collected Writings, especially volumes XIII and XIV, shed considerable light on the development of Keynes's thought immediately before and after the publication of the General Theory. The stock of de Its expanded subsequently with the publication of volume XXIX as the result of the discovery of a laundry basket of previously unknown papers by Keynes. These included early drafts of the General Theory focusing or e concept of a monetary production economy arious sources of confusion create the possibility of multiple interpretations. Convergence towards the correct interpretation is usually presumed to be ensured by the use of consistency with the textual evidence as the criterion of choice between competing interpretations(for example, Leijonhufvud, I968, P. 8). Interpretation is viewed, therefore, as a scientific problem. The scientific nature of interpretation has been highlighted by Stigler (I965)with particular reference to the problem of multiple interpretations Ricardo. Stigler argues that hand-picked quotations are insufficient to validate any particular interpretation. He proposes instead the use of two different principles of interpretation: the principle of scientific exegesis and the principle of personal exegesis. Scientific exegesis is interpretation which aims to maximise the value of a text to the science. In this case the text of an interpretation is its consistency with the main analytical conclusions of the author. This type of ed with form of the amended form of the text which removes 'blemishes such as logical tautologies. Personal exegesis, on the other hand, aims to discover the author really believed and thus the test of an interpretation consistency with the author's style, that is, what the author actually wrote