The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money. by KEYNES, John Maynard - 1936

London: Macmillan and Co, Limited,, 1936. A Nobel Laureate's copy of the defining economics book of the 20th century Octavo. Original blue cloth, spine lettered in gilt, double rules to spine gilt and to covers in blind. Very light rubbing at joints and extremities, minor soiling to front cover, contents clean. A near-fine copy, the spine bright. First edition, first impression, of perhaps the most significant economics book of the 20th century; the copy of the Nobel Prize-winning economist Richard Stone (1913-1991) with his ownership signature to the front free endpaper. An excellent association copy, as Stone worked with John Maynard Keynes during the war, together setting up the system of national accounts at the Central Statistical Office. During these years they had a close, somewhat fractious relationship: "While at the CSO, Stone usually went to see Keynes in the evening; Keynes was then a sick man, often tired and edgy, so their meetings were not always harmonious and could end in blow ups with Keynes saying he never wanted to see Dick again. Stone rode out such storms with his usual aplomb and good sense" (Pesaran and Harcourt, Life and Work of John Richard Nicholas Stone, 1999, p. 6). Stone was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1984, "for having made fundamental contributions to the development of systems of national accounts and hence greatly improved the basis for empirical economic analysis". The General Theory was written in the aftermath of the Great Depression, when the old economic order was widely seen to have failed. Keynes argued that government must intervene in the economy, directing wages, investment, and demand, in order to achieve full employment and end the boom and bust cycle. In so doing, a middle way was found between the laissez-faire policy of Classical Economics, as founded by Adam Smith in the 18th century, and the complete state control of socialist governments, derived from Marx's theories of the 19th century. Keynes's system of controlled capitalism defined much of the 20th century, as it was embraced by the political left and right alike across Western Europe and the United States. Keynes's theories became the near-undisputed economic orthodoxy of the decades following the war, until the counter-attack of the monetarist and neoliberal schools undermined his hegemony. Moggridge A10.1; Printing and the Mind of Man 423.