The real Lord Keynes was the editor of a series of interwar elementary guides to economic ideas, which had a common introduction edited by the master. For most of these volumes, the introduction merely stated that economics was not a fixed body of ideas but a way of thinking which the reader should try to apply to problems. But in the last few guides the introduction was changed a great deal. He remarked that economics was in a period of turmoil, which until it was resolved, had virtually destroyed its application to policy. He modestly refrained from saying who was responsible for this turmoil.
現(xiàn)實(shí)中的凱恩斯勛爵(Lord Keynes)曾在兩次世界大戰(zhàn)之間那段時期作過一系列經(jīng)濟(jì)思想入門書籍的編輯，并為這些書籍編寫了共用的序言。就其中大多數(shù)書籍而言，序言部分表達(dá)的意思只有一點(diǎn)：經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)并不是一個固定的思想架構(gòu)，而是一種思維方式，讀者應(yīng)努力運(yùn)用這種思維方式來解決問題。但在最后出版的幾本入門書籍中，序言內(nèi)容發(fā)生了很大的變化。凱恩斯在其中提到，經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)正處在一個混亂的時期，在這一混亂被理清之前，經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)幾乎已不再適合應(yīng)用于政策領(lǐng)域。他相當(dāng)謹(jǐn)慎，沒有說明誰應(yīng)對這一混亂負(fù)責(zé)。