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