SOURCE: "The Keynesian Revolution," in John Maynard Keynes: Life, Ideas, Legacy, The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1990, pp. 25-37.

In the following excerpt, Blaug attempts to explain the phenomenal success of the General Theory and the unprecedented rapidity with which Keynes's theories were adopted by professional economists.

The impact Keynes had on economics with his book The General Theory is what is known as the Keynesian Revolution in economic thought. This Keynesian Revolution is one of the most remarkable episodes in the entire history of economic thought; never before had the economics profession been won over so rapidly and so massively to a new economic theory, and nor has it since. Within the space of about a decade, 1936-46, the vast majority of economists throughout the Western world were converted to the Keynesian way of thinking. Many of those early converts felt themselves impelled to repudiate virtually the entire corpus...