----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- Pat writes: >>it should be noted that the Hayek-Keynes debates were about Keynes's book on money, not his General Theory, and that Keynes claimed after the debates that he had changed many of the views expressed in the Money book anyway. So there was no Hayek- Keynes debate about the General Theory.<< Hayek provided fundamental arguments against _The General Theory_ in his _The Pure Theory of Capital_. Also, at a fundamental level, Hayek's articles "Economics and Knowledge", "Scientism and the Study of Society" and "The Use of Knowledge in Society" were aimed -- at the most fundamental level -- against the explanatory strategy of Keynes as much as anything. (As I suggested in an earlier post). Hayek continued to write against the Keynes of _The General Theory_ for the next 50 years. In any case, the notion of a Hayek-Keynes 'debate' is deeply misleading. Hayek engaged Keynes -- and offered arguments and reasons in favor of his own explanatory strategy & against Keynes' own -- but Keynes himself merely tossed witty insults at Hayek, and for all intents and purposes failed to engage Hayek's work. The remarks Keynes directed at Hayek didn't show deep familiarity with that work & basically failed to provide reasoned arguments which might count against it. One might like to think that Keynes' insults contain 'arguments' against Hayek within them, yet to Hayek these could only be more evidence Keynes had little familiarity with the material involved. One example here would be the clever insult Keynes used to attack the logic of valuation across time contained within Bohm- Bawerk's writings. The insult shows a failure to understand this logic, rather than a logical problem within it. I've never found much evidence that Keynes ever attempted to comprehend Hayek's economics. Keynes knew enough to know that Hayek's economics was something different from the economics that Keynes disparaged as 'classical' economics -- but that is the extent of it, as far as I've been able to determine. I'd be interested to know if anyone has evidence that Keynes read any of Hayek's major works. There is evidence that Keynes' read a couple of Hayek's articles on one matter or another. But this scattered reading could not have let Keynes in on what Hayek was doing. Did Keynes keep a record of his reading? Greg Ransom MiraCosta College ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]