Chapter 20 Employment, Money and Prices
An Unproved Functional Relationship
I hope I have not said it too often, but as we advance in the general theory, the confusions and fallacies become progressively denser
This is not surprising. In chapters 20 and 21, for example, which we shall now consider together, Keynes applied to the theory of money and prices, as one Keynesian has put it, the tools of analysis which he had developed earlier in the book.
and Prices, as one Keynesian has put it, the tools of analysis which he had developed earlier
in the book.
But as these tools of analysis, as we have seen, nearly all consisted of faulty and confused
concepts, a discussion of their supposed interaction merely compounds the confusion.
As we have already analyzed these basic confusions, I need not repeat the analysis, though it
It may be necessary to remind the reader from time to time of these basic confusions in
calling attention to the additional and derived confusions that arise when these fallacious
concepts are made the basis of further reasoning concerning their alleged interrelationships.
The substance of Chapter 20, the employment function, need not detain us long.
It is in effect to work out a series of mathematical equations concerning the employment function.
Keynes offers an alleged definition of the employment function on page 280, but what
he really gives us is, as in other cases, an equation without a definition.
He does tell us, however, that
The object of the employment function is to relate the amount of the effective demand
measured in terms of the wage unit directed to a given firm or industry or to industry
as a whole with the amount of employment, the supply price of the output of which will
compare to that amount of effective demand.
Page 280.
The reader may make whatever he can of this, but a few hints will probably economize his
time and mental effort.
The first thing he can do is to put aside the phrase measured in terms of the wage unit.
Though Keynes defined the wage unit as a quantity of employment, page 41, his explanation showed
that he really defined it as meaning merely a quantity of money paid to persons employed.
In fact, it seems to mean merely the average national hourly wage rate at any moment as
measured in shillings or dollars.
But in accordance with the philosophic principle of Occam's razor that entity should not be
If these mean nothing more than the average national hourly wage rate, and if this is, say, $2, then it is easy to convert total wage payments into total man-hours worked, or vice versa.
vice versa if we know one sum or the other. Then we shall at least know whether what we
are talking about is total man-hours worked or average hourly wage rates in dollars or
total wage payments in dollars, and we shall be at least one step nearer to clarity of
thought. When a few other simplifications have been made, we shall find that all Keynes
Hans is talking about is the relation of effective demand, another confused conception, the aggregate
income or proceeds which the entrepreneurs expect to receive, page 55, to the amount
of employment.
But without analyzing this further, what reason is there to suppose that this relationship
is a functional relationship at all, that there is any such thing as the employment
Function.
Keynes never condescends to offer any statistical evidence that any such function exists, or
for that matter, that any of his other functions exist, and certainly he does not offer any
plausible deductive proof that it exists.
We touch here upon an economic error that long antedates Keynes.
It can be traced back as far as Cournot in 1838, and was revived in its modern form chiefly
by Jevons in 1871.
It is the basis today of a huge literature of mathematical economics.
When an empiric or presumptive relationship seems to exist between one economic quantity
and another, so that one seems to vary proportionately or increasingly, decreasingly or inversely
Similarly with another, some economists have fallen into the habit of calling the first
a function of the second.
This suggests a mathematical analogy, and perhaps little harm is done as long as it
is treated merely as an analogy, as a figure of speech.
It is unobjectionable to say, for example, that other things remaining unchanged, the
The demand for a commodity, in the sense of the amount bought, seems to vary almost as if this demand were a decreasing function of the price of the commodity.
But the moment we put this in the form of a mathematical expression, the moment we write, for example, D equals F P, or use some similar notation to stand for such a relationship, we are in danger of making an illicit leap.
We have assumed in our formula that this mathematical relationship exists.
We can, of course, assume such a relationship by hypothesis, but this can never yield anything
better than a hypothetical conclusion.
We can no more prove that a relationship exists by expressing it in a mathematical equation
than by expressing the same assumption in words.
We are merely more in danger of deceiving ourselves because we have made our assumption
precise, though it may be precisely wrong.
Let us remind ourselves, for example, of exactly what a function is.
Once more I take the definition.
If a variable y is related to a variable x in such a way that each assignment of a value
That a given value of x in any assigned meaning definitely determines one or more values of y is something that we must prove to be true, not something that we make true simply because we have assumed it.
Section 1 of Chapter 20 on the Employment Function consists of a set of equations concerning this alleged function.
Keynes assumes that the functional relationship exists, but never attempts to prove it.
There is in fact no good reason whatever to assume that any functional relationship exists between effective demand and the volume of employment.
Everything depends, in fact, upon the interrelationships of wage rates, prices and the money supply.
No matter how low total monetary demand falls, full employment could exist at the appropriate
relationship of wage rates to prices.
No matter how high total monetary demand is pushed, unemployment will exist if an unworkable
General relationship exists between wage rates and prices, but even Keynes does not seem
to take his mathematical explorations very seriously.
At the beginning of section 1, he remarks in a footnote, those who rightly dislike algebra
will lose little by omitting the first section of this chapter, page 280.
Equal Value Theory vs. Monetary Theory
As all the other major questions raised by chapter 20 are also raised by chapter 21 on
the theory of prices, we may proceed to the latter forthwith.
Keynes opens this chapter with a long paragraph that is worth quoting in full.
So long as economists are concerned with what is called the theory of value, they have been
In a custom to teach that prices are governed by the conditions of supply and demand, and,
in particular, changes in marginal cost and the elasticity of short period supply have
played a prominent part.
But when they pass in volume two, or more often in a separate treatise, to the theory
of money and prices, we hear no more of these homely but intelligible concepts, and move
is relevant to a world where prices are governed by the quantity of money, by its income velocity,
by the velocity of circulation relatively to the volume of transactions, by hoarding,
by forced saving, by inflation and deflation, et hoc genus omni, and little or no attempt
is made to relate these vaguer phrases to our former notions of the elasticities of
supply and demand.
If we reflect on what we are being taught and try to rationalize it, in the simpler
discussions, it seems that the elasticity of supply must have become zero, and demand
proportional to the quantity of money, whilst in the more sophisticated we are lost in a
haze where nothing is clear and everything is possible.
We have all of us become used to finding ourselves on the one side of the moon and sometimes
This satire would have had considerably more point if it had been made a generation earlier.
It sounds, indeed, suspiciously like a sly allusion to Keynes's own teacher, Alfred Marshall.
But at the time it appeared, in 1936, it no longer applied, at least to the pioneers of
economic thought.
Newt Wicksell's Lectures on Political Economy, in two volumes, volume 1, General Theory,
volume 2, Money, appeared in an English edition in 1934 and 1935.
They had existed in German since 1901 and 1906.
These lectures made giant strides toward a reconciliation and unification of value theory
and monetary theory.
Ludwig von Mises's Theorie des Geldes und der Umlosmüter, which carried this unification
even further, appeared in its first German edition as early as 1912, and in its second
in 1924.
It had been translated into English as The Theory of Money and Credit in 1934.
In America, Benjamin M. Anderson's The Value of Money, which appeared first in 1917, was
in large part a protest against the tradition and practice of putting general economic theory
and monetary theory in separate compartments.
Anderson's book has appeared in a second edition in 1936.
Was Keynes aware of all this? If so, why did he ignore it, all in the paragraph just quoted?
One dislikes to write of him, as Wicksell wrote of Gustav Kassel, that he ignored those
who had anticipated him because he desired, at all costs, to be esteemed an original and
even path-breaking theorist. But one must choose between this explanation or the explanation
of Sheer Ignorance, and Keynes, even in the general theory, makes references, though largely
disparaging, to the work of both Huycksell and Mises.
But perhaps the dichotomy between general value theory and monetary theory was never
quite as sharp as Keynes's satiric portrait assumes.
Scientific progress in all fields is made by isolating a problem, by studying the effect
of one force or factor at a time.
In the physical sciences, this is done through a method of hypothesis tested by experiment.
In the social sciences, experiment in any meaningful scientific sense is impossible,
and the method of isolating hypotheses must be the chief reliance.
Keynes himself admits this in Chapter 20.
The object of our analysis is to provide ourselves with an organized and orderly method of thinking
out particular problems, and, after we have reached a provisional conclusion by isolating
the complicating factors one by one, we then have to go back on ourselves and allow, as
well as we can, for the probable interaction of the factors amongst themselves.
Page 297
This was the method originated by the Classical Economists, and specifically by Keynes's
Baich-Nord, Ricardo.
They abstracted, among other things, from money, in order to simplify and make manageable
the problem of value.
In a perhaps unfortunate phrase of Mills, they tried to look behind the monetary veil.
Their mistake was not in doing this, but in later forgetting that they had abstracted
from Money, and that their conclusions were therefore oversimplified and more hypothetical
than realistic.
And when they reintroduced money, or discussed monetary problems, they made the further mistake
of forgetting what they had learned when they had abstracted from money.
They failed, in short, to put the two sets of problems together, or rather, their solutions
were merely pasted together, not unified.
monetary economists and general economists worked within separate frames of reference
and both lost by the separation.
Curiously enough, Keynes does much the same thing.
His own effort at unification of monetary theory and general value theory, as well as
of static and dynamic theory, is unsuccessful.
It is unsuccessful because of a number of specific errors, some of them astonishing.
Mises' general method in Chapter 20 of introducing a number of simplifying assumptions in the
theory of value and money and prices, and then reintroducing the possible complications
which will in fact influence events, is correct in principle.
But he is unsuccessful in result, because some of his simplifications and complications
are the wrong simplifications and complications, and because some of his fundamental concepts
are either misleading or false.
In discussing money, for example, he tells us in italics,
The importance of money essentially flows from its being a link between the present
and the future.
Page 293.
And again, money in its significant attributes is, above all, a subtle device for linking
the present to the future.
Page 294.
Now, I should say, on the contrary, that the importance of money flows essentially from
its being a medium of exchange, and that its most significant attribute is that it functions
as the medium of exchange.
In performing this function, it is true money does incidentally serve as a link between
present and future, but so do all sorts of other things.
Money is far from unique in this respect.
It may be doubted whether in economic life it serves even as the chief link between the
present and the future.
That honor should preferably be reserved for the rate of interest, which is not, Keynes's
theory is notwithstanding, a purely monetary phenomenon.
Another link between the present and the future is the system of forward and future prices
on the organized exchanges.
All prices in fact, even present prices of securities and commodities, are links between
the present and the future, because they embody and reflect the anticipations of buyers and
sellers respecting the future.
It is true that such prices happen to be expressed in terms of money, but they would anticipate
the future just as much if they were expressed in terms of each other.
If the price of wheat were expressed in terms of cotton, or of cotton in terms of wheat,
of course, prices expressed in terms of money also reflect anticipations regarding the future
value of the monetary unit itself.
But money, as such, has no unique quality in reflecting anticipations regarding the
future.
It is, in fact, men's anticipations regarding the future, and not the particular material
Real terms in which these anticipations are expressed that constitute the real link between
the present and the future.
Men constantly act with an eye on the future, and their actions and valuations express their
anticipations regarding that future.