The Keynes Plan and the White Plan at Bretton Woods

Abstract

Abstract The chapter explores the context in which a Keynes plan, and then a rival White plan had originated from 1941 onwards; and how to understand why Keynes contrived to agree on the proposals that became the agenda for Bretton Woods in 1944. For this represented a dilution, or even a betrayal, of the Keynes plan in the form in which it had originally been presented and discussed. In this context, it can be seen that much in the Keynes plan that had initially attracted Kalecki’s sympathetic attention in 1943 had meanwhile been subsumed or subverted within an agreed compromise that was closer to the American White plan. And the responsibility for this reorientation lay with Keynes himself, now acting not as an economist so much as an emissary of the increasingly beleaguered British Government, with its dependence on American support ever more evident.