Keynes's Monetary Revolution: From the 1923 Tract to the 1930 Treatise (BI: The Nature of Money) E1

Описание: This is the inaugural episode of our 8-part deep-reading podcast series dedicated entirely to John Maynard Keynes's seminal 1930 work, A Treatise on Money.

In this first episode, we lay the critical intellectual groundwork by exploring the path that led Keynes from his earlier, influential Tract on Monetary Reform (1923) to the complex theoretical structure of the Treatise. We establish the biographical and historical context (drawing from Skidelsky's work) essential for understanding this period of intense debate among the Cambridge economists.

In-Depth Analysis of Book I: The Nature of Money

We break down Keynes’s rigorous definitions, including the fundamental distinction between:

Money of Account: The unit in which debts and prices are expressed, and the theoretical "King" figure.

Money Proper: The actual physical thing that discharges the debt.

Forms of State Money: We analyze the crucial classifications: Commodity Money, Fiat Money, and the modern form, Managed Money.

Finally, we introduce the essential analytical framework that will drive the rest of the series:

Bank Money (Deposits): Classified by function into Income, Business, and Savings Deposits.

The Monetary Flows: The vital separation of money into the Industrial Circulation (related to output and income) and the Financial Circulation (related to assets, speculation, and existing wealth). This dichotomy is key to Keynes's dynamic theory of prices.

Next in Episode 2: We transition to Book II: The Value of Money, tackling the philosophical and practical difficulties of measuring "Purchasing Power" and the critical distinctions between various price indices (wholesale, consumption, and international standards). Subscribe so you don't miss it!