SOURCE: "J. M. Keynes' Concept of Economic Science," in The Southern Economic Journal, Vol. XV, No. 3, January, 1949, pp. 249-66.

In the following excerpt, Gruchy examines Keynes's economic thought at its various levels of analysis—from his theory of output and employment, to his theory of the capitalist order, to his set of proposals for remedying the capitalist system as it was then operating in England—illustrating how his views on the nature of economic science adhered to and diverged from the orthodox position of the Cambridge school.

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Recent attempts to reduce Keynes' economics to the general textbook level raise the very interesting question as to what after all are his views concerning the nature of economic science. If one were to accept the view of economics found in Paul A. Samuelson's Economics, An Introductory Analysis (1948) as representative of Keynes' position, then the latter's economics would turn out...