If any contestant in this discussion has not yet read it, would he or she please read B. Schefold, "The 'General Theory' for a Totalitarian State? A Note on Keynes's Preface to the German Edition of 1936," Cambridge Journal of Economics, IV, 2 (June 1980), 175-176, reprinted in John Cunningham Wood, ed., John Maynard Keynes, Critical Assessments, second series, 8 vols. (London, 1983-94), V, 52-54? 

-----Original Message-----
From: Societies for the History of Economics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of James C.W. Ahiakpor
Sent: Monday, November 21, 2011 3:50 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [SHOE] Backhouse and Bateman, "Wanted: Worldly Philosophers"

E. Roy Weintraub wrote:
>  In my soon to appear "Keynesian Historiography and the Anti-Semitism 
> Question" (History of Political Economy, vol. 44 no. 1 (2012), pp. 
> 41-67), I quote from a letter from Patinkin to Skidelsky in which he 
> referred to Keynes' unpublished note on Einstein as "even worse than 
> the morally insensitive Preface to the German edition". Skidelsky has 
> a discussion of the German Preface of course. Put another way, and to 
> reconnect to the Subject line, this is well-known "old stuff" for 
> Keynes scholars like Bateman and Backhouse. 
A logical and important question then is, Did Keynes write the preface 
in German himself or was that a translator's rendition or embelishment?  
In the concluding paragraph (p. xxvii), Keynes acknowledges his 
"indebtedness  to the excellent work of [his] translator Herr Waeger 
..."  Are the significant differences between the English and German 
versions due to Herr Waeger?  After all, I've also heard some Keynes 
defenders (or scholars) argue that his theory is supposed to be relevant 
to a "depressed economy," not a "general theory" as he himself claims in 
the book.

James Ahiakpor

-- 
James C.W. Ahiakpor, Ph.D.
Professor
Department of Economics
California State University, East Bay
Hayward, CA 94542

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