Thinking the Twentieth Century: Intellectuals and Politics in the Twentieth Century

by Tony Judt

we should recall that Keynes’s General Theory was a theory of “employment, interest and money.” Unemployment was the preoccupation of the British and the Americans, and in continental Europe of the Belgians. But employment wasn’t actually the theoretical starting point for French or German writing—which was much more concerned with inflation. The way in which Keynes matters to European policy makers was less about employment per se than about theorizing the role of government in stabilizing economies by counter-cyclical measures, such as deficit spending during recession. This meant not only measures to keep people in jobs, but measures to keep currency stable, and to ensure that interest rates didn’t fluctuate wildly and destroy savings. So employment, which is central to English and American thought, is not a universal obsession on the continent. Stability is.