SOURCE: "J. M. Keynes: Society and the Economist," in Keynes's Relevance Today, edited by Fausto Vicarelli, The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1985, pp. 99-125.

In the following excerpt, Steindl judges the contemporary relevance of Keynes's ideas. Basing his arguments on a discussion of several key topics in the criticism on Keynes, he outlines the main points of Keynes's economic theory, illustrates how the unorthodox content of the General Theory developed out of Keynes's active involvement in the formulation of economic policy during the 1920s and 1930s, identifies the focal points in the critical attacks on the General Theory, discusses the way in which the revolutionary arguments of the General Theory were undermined, and comments on the consequences of the defeat of many of Keynes's international finance proposals following World War IL Steindl's essay was drawn from the English-language translation of Attualita di Keynes, which was first published in Rome in...