Perry Mehrling asked:

> Who first thought it was a good idea to pretend that all was  
> darkness before Keynes brought light?

Keynes himself hinted (and sometimes explicitly suggested) that: see  
e.g. the preface to the French edition of the General Theory.

This induced Robertson to complain as follows, in a letter to  
Harrod:  "But in my heart I do think (though I don't expect you to  
agree) that Ch. 23 of the General Theory is rather an outrage. If K 
[eynes]. was going in for Dogmengeschichte at all at this stage, he  
had no business to stop short at Mummery and Gesell, thereby giving  
the impression that apart from a handful of dead cranks he was the  
first person to question the alleged 'classical' hypothesis of an  
automatically and instantaneously self-righting economy. He ought to  
have gone on to say something serious and appreciative of the work of  
his contemporaries, ???the Swedes, Haberler, myself; and a repetition  
of the pat on the back for Abbati would then have been in place. K.  
found it easier to be generous to cranks than to professional  
economists, but I think it is not unfair to say that he preferred  
even his cranks to be dead" (4 April 1950)

Daniele Besomi