The General Theory 4.0’ research programme: restoring Keynes’s generality claims today

In this paper, I propose a new research programme, the ‘General Theory (GT) 4.0’, aimed at restoring Keynes’ generality claims vis-à-vis contemporary mainstream macroeconomics, which regards the GT as an obsolete stage in the evolution of the discipline. One reason why Keynes lost the generality battle is that he formulated his claims with Pigou in mind as his main opponent, rather than general equilibrium. This is due to the fact that Keynes failed to grasp the significance of this approach for the new field of macroeconomics and thus saw no compelling reason to justify his departure from it and respond to the critiques raised against the GT by important theorists such as Leontief and Schumpeter. Based on the new ‘Ulysses’s journey home’ metaphor, my research programme seeks to remedy this state of affairs by reformulating Keynes’s generality claims with general equilibrium as the main opponent in mind, rather than Pigou.