Maynard Keynes was fully committed to the idea that a system of capitalism and liberal democracy was workable, but his image of workability was not that of a machine that could be set into operation and then left to run on its own. For Keynes, workability meant a continued application of open-minded intelligence and decency to the diagnosis of new situations and to the modification of institutions to deal with them. This view of society and of the role of economic ideas in society is hard to see amid the complications and confusions of Keynes's theoretical writings.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Maynard Keynes was fully committed to the idea that a system of capitalism and liberal democracy was workable, but his image of workability was not that of a machine that could be set into operation and then left to run on its own. For Keynes, workability meant a continued application of open-minded intelligence and decency to the diagnosis of new situations and to the modification of institutions to deal with them. This view of society and of the role of economic ideas in society is hard to see amid the complications and confusions of Keynes's theoretical writings." in the context of "Robert E. Lucas, Review of Skidelsky's John Maynard Keynes, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 67, No. 4 (Dec., 1995), pp. 914-917" to mean that wisdom is timeless.