Der streit um keynes im lichte unserer erfahrungen

Abstract

The Keynes Controversy in the Light of Our Experience. — In 1953, Erich Schneider in an important paper tried to “solve” the Keynes controversy in Germany. He defended Keynes against attacks by Ropke, Hahn, Meyer, and others, who pretend that an application of his theory inevitably leads to permanent inflation, and he maintained, logically arguing, that Keynes’s theory is “general” in the sense that it leads to certain results in depression as well as inflation. In the present paper it is suggested that the Keynesian revolution changed the attitudes of entrepreneurs, trade unions and politicians considerably so that today the government is expected to run a full employment policy, the result of which is a tendency towards creeping inflation. Though in theory applicable to both depression and inflation, employment of Keynesian tools to control overall monetary demand is really successful in depressions only. Thus, given the above-mentioned expectations of trade unions and entrepreneurs, Keynesian policies have to be sustained by policies on the microeconomic level to allow for steady growth of national incomes and a stable price level.