The Political Thought of John Maynard Keynes

As a continuation of my research on the political theory of money, I am currently working on a book-length project on John Maynard Keynes’s political thought, based on his extensive political writings, his scattered theoretical reflections on politics, and his engagement with the history of economic and political thought. Keynes is today rarely, if ever, recognized for his political thought. He is more likely to be invoked as an adjective ("Keynesian”) that vaguely gestures toward either fiscal stimulus or the postwar welfare state. Both reductions are deeply misleading. Keynes was not just one of the most influential economists of the twentieth century, he was also an eloquent political commentator, an active political campaigner, and a perceptive theorist of domestic and international politics. My book reconstructs this much misunderstood political dimension and introduces political theorists to Keynes as an under-appreciated political thinker, emphasizing in particular his engagement with the politics of time and the problem of global economic governance at the dusk of empire.

Some recent samples:
Stefan Eich, “Are we all dead in the long run? John Maynard Keynes and the politics of time” (Chartbook 342, December 2024).
Stefan Eich, “Expedience and experimentation,” American Journal of Political Science (2024).

I am also currently working on a blue book for the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought that will bring together Keynes’s published and unpublished political writings.

Another part of the project related to Keynes’s discussion of Indian money and B.R. Ambedkar’s critique of Keynes will appear in the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to Ambedkar, edited by Anupama Rao and Shailaja Paik.