Rating: 
Summary: Worthless and Disproven
Review: Keynes was no doubt an influential economist. His theories and 'expertise' on economics influenced the post-New Deal economic policies of the United States and the internationalist wealth redistribution schemes like IMF. However, his ideas on economics failed miserably and it was application of Keynesian ideas that wrecked so much havoc on the U.S. particularly in the 1970s with the stagflation (an inflationary recession with unemployment which was theoretically impossible accordingly to Keynesism.) We have Keynes to thank for budget deficits and the nebulous idea that we can spend ourselves into prosperity through the largesse of the federal government. Read Planning for Freedom or Socialism by Ludwig von Mises instead.
Rating: 
Summary: Difficult to read, but influential
Review: Keynes, for better or worse, must be counted the most important economist of the 20th century. This is his most influential work, and no person who desires a basic education in economics should be unaware of its contents. Unfortunately, it is at times almost incomprehensible. Particularly maddening is Keynes' penchant for merely dismissing competing theories with which he disagrees without discussing why he disagrees. I found this suspicious since Keynes was brilliant - it couldn't possibly be because he didn't understand those other theories. I suspect he understood them all too well and recognized their threat to his own work.Plowing through this book will pay off, but you may not enjoy it. The reader should be advised, however, that according to Keynes' good friend (and opposing theorist) Frederich Hayek, shortly before his death Keynes told Hayek he disavowed this book in general. Hayek's account can be read in "Hayek on Hayek."
Rating: 
Summary: Worth the read
Review: Most of the reviews above are political diatribes against Keynes and his central conclusion that expanded government involvement is necessary in the economy for stabilization purposes. The key to understanding Keynes is the notion that at particular times in the business cycle, an economy can become over-productive (or under-consumptive) and thus, a vicious spiral is begun that results in massive layoffs and cuts in production as businesses attempt to equilibrate aggregate supply and demand. Thus, full employment is only one of many or multiple macro equilibria. If an economy reaches an underemployment equilibrium, something is necessary to boost or stimulate demand to produce full employment. This something COULD be business investment but because of the logic and individualist nature of investment decisions, it is unlikely to rapidly restore full employment. Keynes logically seizes upon the public budget and gov't. expenditures as the quickest way to restore full employment. Borrowing the money to finance the deficit from private households and businesses is a quick, direct way to restore full employment while at the same time, redirecting or siphoning off the funds from the private sector which caused the over-production in the first place. Although difficult to read, this book is essential to our understanding of modern economics. Far from being destructive, it alone has been responsible for nearly 60 years of growth without a major depression as we experienced worldwide in the 1930's. I recommend you read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting in the way _Mein Kampf_ is.
Review: Now that the "century of the state" is over and done with, it's fun to look back on some of the century's larger errors. One of the strangest was the "economist" (or whatever), Keynes. Although he said and thought almost nothing, for no easily guessable reason he got a huge amount of press mid-century. (Perhaps "Keynes" is a memorable name?) Keynes is infamous for his spectacularly vacuous and callous remark: "oh well, we're all dead in the long run." By the time the immense suffering, poverty and horror caused by "Keynesian" (ie, socialist, money-spending) governments became obvious and undeniable, even to Keynes, Keynes was asked if had a shred of guilt or unrest that his pseudo-philosophy had caused so much poverty and pain to so many millions, that his very name was used to describe that type of "Keynesian" socio-economic system. His reply was "oh well...we're all dead in the long run." Oh well, Keynes is dead now, I suppose. If you find it intriguing to read, say, Karl Marx (a bizarre figure associated with early socialism), by all means have a read of Keynes. (All Keynes books are as odd, utterly unintelligible and utterly pointless as the other, so it doesn't really matter which one you have a look at.)
Rating:
Summary: Apreciation for economist, the men behind the powers
Review: Page 383. The ideas of economist and political philosophers, both when they are right and wrong, are more powerful than commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who belive themselves to be quite exempt from any ntellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are still distilling thier frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years past. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual enroachment of ideas.
Rating:
Summary: Socialist Tripe
Review: The book that deepened the Great Depression, impoverished half the world and spawned the Welfare State in America. It is beyond poorly written, to the point that certain pages make about as much sense as reading aloud from a thesaurus. I studied this trash in college and quickly came to the conclusion that the collectivist world was just waiting for some moron, any moron, to put a plausible exposition of their odious ideas into a semi-respectable format. To any human with over a decahertz of electrical activity in his cortex, Keynes fails miserably and spectacularly. But for those falling below the electromagnetic Mendoza line (FDR, Louis Brandeis, Benjamin Cardozo, John Kenneth Galbraith et. al.), this stuff was and is mother's milk. It still boggles the mind that the greatest treatise of economics ever penned--Von Mises' Human Action--is not even touched on in university-level economics courses, yet this oleaginous tip sheet for Fellow Travelers is bruited about by economics professors as a theoretical monstrance, holding the dream of Borg-like equality for all. Keynes is coming. You will be assimilated. The fact is that this book is on the wrong side of logic, history and morality. If ever there was a compelling reason for the privatization of primary and secondary education, and the retreat of the Federal Government from the halls of higher learning, it is the disppearance of this book and its foul theoretical externalities from America's collegiate classrooms.
Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly, still an object of hate for reactionnaries.
Review: The hate-filled reviews this book, written by a Cambridge don and member of the Bloomsbury group, a patron of the arts who thought marxism "one the most boring productions of human mind except for teology",has received here, are somekind of a surprise, were it not for the fact that Keynes' intellectual honesty simply led him to discover that capitalist economy was not only unequal (something that can be readily accepted by reactionnaries who believe in meritocratic rewards) but also irrational, as it was prompted by irrational expectatives that made it to rock between bullish euphorias and bearish depressions. The fact that capitalist economy does *not* necessarily favour the most enterprising and bright, as upward expectations and good ideas do not necessarily coincide, and that the State must do something in order to alleviate the sufferings producted by economic cycles, is something rabid free-marketers can not even stand to hear without beginning to heap abuse. Definitely, a part of our permanent literature.
Rating:
Summary: Illogical, boring, highly assumptive
Review: The main problem with Keynes is the fact that he wrote so much, some of it has to be somewhat correct. The only problem though is that Keynes' ratio of correctness to incorrectness is highly weighted toward the latter. I sometimes wonder if Keynes did not sit down and write everything and anything he could think of in hopes of getting it right eventually. In short, a simplistic, often redundant, and economically flawed book. The reputation on this one truly overshadows it's non-reflective garbage aspect.
Rating:
Summary: a source of great evil
Review: The outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live are its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes. -Conclusion to The General Theory With these two assertions--the first dubious, the second simply wrong--John Maynard Keynes unleashed the most terrifying period of government expansion and social experimentation in the history of Western Man. Keynes basic argument was that the boom/bust cycle of the economy was inevitable and that government should intervene to dampen both the peaks (via confiscatory taxation) and the valleys (via deficit spending). The goal being to guarantee full employment and to redistribute wealth. Now, it's understandable that the generation of men who faced the Depression were driven to propose some aggressive solutions, but if we have to choose one, this is the moment when Western Man blinked. Keynes basically abandoned a two century old faith in the efficacy of capitalism and proposed that laissez-faire be replaced by the firm hand of government. The ensuing fifty years saw virtually every nation of the West surrender increasing control of the economy to the government, accept extortionate tax rates, pile up staggering deficits, and, all the while, spiral farther and farther into the abyss. The Keynesian Revolution brought the West to its knees before Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan seized back control and began the long, and as we speak uncertain, process of returning power to the marketplace. Interestingly enough, while the Left remains in thrall to his thoroughly discredited theories, it seems that Keynes himself might have been one of the first to abandon his own handiwork (this after all was a man who ditched the Bloomsbury Group and homosexuality when he fell in love with a ballerina), had he lived to see the disaster it was producing. In the conclusion to his book he states: ...the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, whom hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval; for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest. But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil. While his theories proved to be catastrophic, this paragraph is not only accurate, it proved to be prophetic. The real nadir, the West's point of greatest danger, came about twenty five or thirty years into the Revolution, when Richard Nixon abandoned the fight against Keynes and embraced the welfare state. With the last line of defense nearly routed, Goldwater, Reagan and the like were lonely voices crying in the wilderness, the final crack up came & by the late 70's people were talking about malaise and the failure of democracy and all kinds of defeatist twaddle. We were fortunate that folks were desperate enough to finally take a chance on the Iron Lady and the Gipper. Likewise, we are living through the first generation of the return to markets. Clinton could have been a significant historical figure had he had the courage of his supposed convictions and dragged the New Democrats over to the side of individual freedom and limited government. As it is, the idea is still being fought by the Left and we will see if the eventual result is a return to big government, or the kind of stasis we've achieved now, with government growing, but slowly, or whether there is a Democrat on the horizon who has the stature and vision to lead the party back to the future. Hopefully, Keynes was right and the power of the idea of freedom ensures its eventual victory. But, it must be acknowledged, Keynes General Theory was one of the greatest threats to our freedom that we have ever weathered. This book was a source of great evil in this century and Keynes must shoulder a significant portion of the blame for the sorry state of the West circa 1978-79. GRADE: F
Rating:
Summary: Pure Economic Gibberish, Poorly Written to Boot
Review: There are two ways a book like this should be judged, economically and stylistically. Unfortunately on both counts, Lord Keynes falls flat on his face. First, stylistically, this book is absolutely horrendous. It is so horrendous that even those who consider themselves "Keynesians"(such as Paul Samuelson) will tell you how poorly written the book is. It is illogically organized, and the prose is incredibly difficult to understand throughout most of the book. Indeed, half the challenge of reading the book is simply determining exactly WHAT Keynes is saying! But all that could be excused if, and only if, the book contained some valuable economic insights that would make it worthwhile reading. Again, Keynes fails miserably on this count as well. In fact, a great number of his theories are socialistic in nature(government spending itself out of a depression). The one great fault from which all of his ideas come from is his obsessive concentration on consumer spending and total ignorance of individual time preferences and how said time preferences determine the capital structure of the economy. Because of this ignorance, he is completely blind to the fact that as a direct result of his policy prescriptions(government spending and monetary inflation) the actual misery those policies are supposed to relieve will either become exacerbated or, in the case of an economy that is NOT in depression, will create an inflationary boom which MUST result in a subsequent bust. But picking apart all of the problems with his economic fallacies would take an entire book. Luckily such a book exists, "The Failure of the New Economics" by Henry Hazlitt, which is a point by point refutation of Keynes "General Theory". I implore everyone who has read Keynes' book, or is thinking of reading Keynes' book, to pick up Hazlitt's book and read it thoroughly. As far as the popularity of the "General Theory" is concerned, that is due to Keynes belief that government action could regulate the economy and ensure prosperity. It should come as no surprise that his policies were embraced by those in power the world over and implemented on a grand scale, thus resulting in the business cycle so familiar in the United States. All in all, gibberish, and poorly written gibberish at that.
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