A SMALL shelf of new books covers the I L gamut of economic policies proposed for the postwar world, from the virtual socialism of the first two works to the free enterprise system of the third, and through the working compromises envisaged in the last two documents. The literary pieces of the Left and Right are done in bold strokes and brilliant hues: they are addressed to the eye and to the heart. The official pieces are coolly rational, moderate, and a trifle dull. Without intimating that the car of economic policy should in fact be steered according to the guidebook of greatest literary pungency and novelty, let us turn first to the Economics of Full To the theoretical economist this will be the most interesting of the lot because it displays the logical conclusions of one branch of the Keynesian revolution. In the introductory essay F. A. Burchardt considers theories concerning the Cause of Unemployment under three main divisions. The first set of ideas, ascribing to deviations from free competition, is made by Burchardt to mean indifferently that monopolistic organizations in industry and in the labor market . . . restrict output and employment opportunities, or that unemployment exists because wages are too high (pp. I, 13). The latter more prescinded and less defensible proposition apparently discredits in Burchardt's thinking the former, much more inclusive, idea. Similarly natural wave theories, which embrace the concepts of self-generative cycles, are for him thoroughly discredited as explanations of because he believes they regard the cycle as beyond human control. We are thus left with the demand-deficiency theory of unemployment. Burchardt believes that the revolutionary discovery (p. 32) that the free play of the market does not automatically produce full employment renders obsolete the idea that market forces work in any way toward a rational utilization of resources. A second essay, by Michael Kalecki, marked by daring abstractness in analysis and daring inventiveness in policy, weighs the relative merits of (i) deficit spending, (2) stimulating private investment, and (3) redistributing income from the rich to the poor, as Three Ways to Full Employment. Kalecki's general conclusions are that the second is relatively unsatisfactory, that the third is promising, but that it will probably have to be supplemented by the first. Kalecki regards political opposition as the only significant limit on achieving full employment by income transfers (p. 55). Otherwise we have the categoric pronouncement that redistribution of income from higher to lower income classes increases effective demand; here (as throughout the Schumacher essay on public finance) the squeezing of profit margins always encourages fuller production and employment. The deterrent effect on investment which may proceed from differential taxes on profits or from steeply progressive income taxes, and which some authors regard as more or less completely offsetting the stimulus to consumption, is neglected entirely. The inferiority of stimulating private investment as a road to full employment is a consequence of Kalecki's underlying assumption of I The Economics of Full Oxford: Basil Blackwell. I944. Vii, 2I3 pp. I2 shillings, 6 pence. [Six studies in Applied Economics prepared at The Oxford University Institute of Statistics.] Full Employment in a Free Society, by William H. Beveridge. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc. I945. 429 pp. $3.75. The Road to Serfdom, by Friedrich A. Hayek. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. I944. Viii, 248 pp. $2.75. Employment Policy. New York: The Macmillan Company. I944. 31 pp. $I.00. [Published by Permission of the Controller of His Majesty's Stationery Office.] Economic Stability in the Postwar World: The Conditions of Prosperity after the Transition from War to Peace. Geneva: League of Nations. I945. 3I9 pp. $2.50 (paper). [Report of the Delegation on Economic Depression, Part II.]