This book grew out of my lectures to final-year honours economics students and to graduate students, on Keynes's The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, and on the Keynesian theories of accumulation of Harrod and Robinson. It is not meant to be a substitute for the reading of the original writings, but it should help to make them more accessible to students. Keynes's work continues to be important. The issues he raised, such as the problems of involuntary unemployment, the volatility of investment, and the complexity of monetary arrangements in modern capitalist economies, are still with us. Keynes pointed out that the achievement of full-employment equilibrium is only one of a large number of possible outcomes in a capitalist economy, and such an economy is likely to be operating for substantial periods of time in situations where there is unemployment. His method of analysis, which tries to allow for the complications of dealing with historical time, deserves careful attention. If economic policy is to be effective it must be formulated with an awareness of the need to observe the sequence of real time that cannot be dealt with in a mechanical fashion.

The General Theory is not an easy book to read, in part because the inherently difficult nature of its material does not allow for a simple treatment, and in part because Keynes did not spend (or have) the time necessary to work everything out in a consistent manner.