Keynesianism displaced austerity because it explained normal times, not just slumps

Evidence

But Keynes’s work was as much a consequence as a cause of the shift away from austerity. As Joan Robinson put it pithily, “Hitler had already found how to cure unemployment before Keynes had finished explaining why it occurred.” But these new ideas from Keynes and many others at about the same time were important precisely because, unlike the old instruction sheet, they explained not just the slump but normal times too, within one framework. Pro-austerity ideas could not credibly claim to do this after two decades of waiting for a recovery that was “just around the corner.” After all, the liquidation process had run its course for an awfully long time, but it seemed, against Secretary Mellon’s expectations, that there remained a shortage of more-competent people and cheap capital waiting—just around the corner—to pick things up again. Keynes’s General Theory could explain where such folks were hiding and why they were doing so. — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 340

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes Mattei’s historiography: ideas win on scope of explanation, not on factual accuracy. Also relevant to intellectual-history method of tracing idea displacement. — connects to: Neoliberal ideas were displaced by Keynesianism only briefly — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 157; Showing austerity failed does not require proving Keynesian alternatives right — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 996; Conservatives abandoned austerity as an intellectual argument once Keynesianism triumphed — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 352 (+3 more)
• SEED: Potential article angle: why theories win markets by explanatory breadth (normal times + crises) rather than empirical correctness - an intellectual-history pattern.
• CANDY: The Joan Robinson quip ‘Hitler had already found how to cure unemployment before Keynes had finished explaining why it occurred’ is a shareable one-liner about the lag between practice and theory.

Broader Connections

• Showing austerity failed does not require proving Keynesian alternatives right #qualifies (0.85) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 996
• Conservatives abandoned austerity as an intellectual argument once Keynesianism triumphed #exemplifies (0.80) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 352
• Austerity needed economic theory to justify unpopular cutbacks after World War I #complicates (0.75) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 874