Keynes held laissez-faire a popular distortion absent from Smith, Ricardo, and Malthus

Evidence

The very idea of laissezfaire, Keynes believed, was a perversion of the views expressed by its purported advocates. “The phrase laissezfaire is not to be found in the works of Adam Smith, of Ricardo, or of Malthus,” he reminded his audience. “Even the idea is not present in a dogmatic form in any of these authors.” Rather, it represented “what the popularisers and the vulgarisers said.” Those who sought to relay economic ideas to the untutored masses deliberately reduced them to abstract tenets that appealed to those with a limited capacity to understand. Having absorbed those shrunken lessons, the public had come to “regard the simplifi ed hypothesis as health, and the further complications as disease.” — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 11

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s articles on class-identity politics: the mechanism where vulgarized ideas aimed at the ‘untutored masses’ diverge from elite doctrine mirrors the popularization distortions discussed in ‘Complaints About Immodesty’. Also directly relevant to the Mont Pèlerin project - whether Austrian/neoliberal doctrine likewise suffered populist vulgarization. — connects to: Keynes held that free-market capitalism usually has deficient effective demand — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 1690; Laissez-faire doctrine originated with popularizers, not the classical economists; Keynes declared in 1924 that laissez-faire was coming to an end — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 10

Broader Connections

• Laissez-faire doctrine originated with popularizers, not the classical economists #corroborates (0.95)
• Keynes declared in 1924 that laissez-faire was coming to an end #corroborates (0.75) — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 10
• Keynes held that free-market capitalism usually has deficient effective demand #expands (0.72) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1690