The Triumph of Rhetoric: Pigou as Keynesian Whipping Boy and its Unintended Consequences

Before The General Theory (1936), John Maynard Keynes’ two most successful books had been The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919) and The Economic Consequences of Mr. Churchill (1925). Both books used the rhetorical device of a ‘whipping boy’ — in the first book there were three (US President Woodrow Wilson, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, and French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau), and the second book was devoted to just one.1 All those whipping boys were politicians pursuing objectives that Keynes regarded as inept and shortsighted.2 Keynes was not a petty person: he sought to mobilize public opinion in opposition to what he regarded as disastrous policy blunders that were bound to undermine civilization.