Abstract: Keynes’s approach to inter-war economic and political problems was as a liberal thinker seeking a middle way between laissez-faire and Marxian socialism, as an economist increasingly dissatisfied with existing theory in the face of massive and enduring unemployment, and as an idealist exponent of a rule of law in international politics. This chapter surveys Keynes’s inter-war writings, especially from 1922, on international monetary issues and investment abroad; international trade; population pressure; economic threats to domestic order; ‘the middle way’; the mature liberal institutionalism of The General Theory; and international political issues, reflecting his idealism. It traces Keynes’s thinking especially through such works asA Tract on Monetary Reform(1923), his 1920s pamphlets on liberalism and other issues,A Treatise on Money(1930), early 1930s writings on the Depression and protection including his 1933 article on national self-sufficiency, andThe General Theory(1936).

Keywords: liberalism, socialism, laissez-faire, international monetary relations, investment, international trade, Marxism, capitalism,