Universitario

Contenido
Preface 2
Chapter 1 The General Theory 6
Chapter 2 The Postulates of the Classical Economics 7
I 8
II 10
III 16
IV 17
V 19
VI 20
VII 23
Chapter 3. The Principle of Effective Demand 25
I 25
II 28
III 33
Chapter 4. The Choice of Units 36
I 36
II 36
III 39
IV 42
Chapter 5. Expectation as Determining Output and Employment 44
I 44
II 48
Chapter6. The Definition of Income, Saving and Investment 50
I. Income 50
II. Saving and Investment 59
Chapter 7. The Meaning of Saving and Investment Further Considered 63
I 63
II 64
III 66
IV 68
V 70
Chapter 8. 75
The Propensity to Consume: 75
I. The Objective Factors 75
I 75
II 77
III 82
IV 85
Chapter 9. 94
The Propensity to Consume: 94
II. The Subjective Factors 94I 94
II 96
Chapter 10. The Marginal Propensity to Consume and the Multiplier 99
I 100
II 101
III 104
IV 107
V 109
VI 112
Chapter 11. The Marginal Efficiency of Capital 115
I 115
II 117
III 120
IV 122
V 123

Preface
THIS book is chiefly addressed to my fellow economists. I hope that it will be intelligible to others. But its main purpose is to deal with difficultquestions of theory, and only in the second place with the applications of this theory to practice. For if orthodox economics is at fault, the error is to be found not in the superstructure, which has been erected with great care for logical consistency, but in a lack of clearness and of generality in the premisses. Thus I cannot achieve my object of persuading economists to re-examine criticallycertain of their basic assumptions except by a highly abstract argument and also by much controversy. I wish there could have been less of the latter. But I have thought it important, not only to explain my own point of view, but also to show in what respects it departs from the prevailing theory. Those, who are strongly wedded to what I shall call “the classical theory”, will fluctuate, I expect,between a belief that I am quite wrong and a belief that I am saying nothing new. It is for others to determine if either of these or the third alternative is right. My controversial passages are aimed at providing some material for an answer; and I must ask forgiveness if, in the pursuit of sharp distinctions, my controversy is itself too keen. I myself held with conviction for many years thetheories which I now attack, and I am not, I think, ignorant of their strong points.
The matters at issue are of an importance which cannot be exaggerated. But, if my explanations are right, it is my fellow economists, not the general public, whom I must first convince. At this stage of the argument the general public, though welcome at the debate, are only eavesdroppers at an attempt by an economistto bring to an issue the deep divergences of opinion between fellow economists which have for the time being almost destroyed the practical influence of economic theory, and will, until they are resolved, continue to do so.
The relation between this book and my Treatise on Money, which I published five years ago, is probably clearer to myself than it will be to others; and what in my own mind isa natural evolution in a line of thought which I have been pursuing for several years, may sometimes strike the reader as a confusing change of view. This difficulty is not made less by certain changes in terminology which I have felt compelled to make. These changes of language I have pointed out in the course of the following pages; but the general relationship between the two books can beexpressed briefly as follows. When I began to write my Treatise on Money I was still moving along the traditional lines of regarding the influence of money as something so to speak separate from the general theory of supply and demand. When I finished it, I had made some progress towards pushing monetary theory back to becoming a theory of output as a whole. But my lack of emancipation from...