Once again, someone writing on htis site completely misinterprets the introduction to the German edition of The General Theory.

He did not say that either his description of demand deficient existing economies, or his positive program was more applicable to a totalitarian country. He said that his analysis (the theory of output in general) , despite being made to describe Anglo-Saxon nations, is more easily adapted to the conditions in Germany than the (the way a given output is distributed, and what its components are) “orthodox” theories which have been made for laissez faire Anglo Saxon countries are.

Here is the whole paragraph with a slightly different translation (this better translation, by Bertram Schefold from German back to English, is also more consistent with the English original Keynes wrote (which was then translated into German).

“I confess that much of the following book is illustrated and expounded mainly with reference to the conditions existing in the Anglo-Saxon countries.

Nevertheless the theory of output as a whole, which is what the following book purports to provide, is much more easily adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state, than is the theory of the production and distribution of a given output produced under conditions of free competition and a large measure of laissez-faire. This is one of the reasons which justify calling my theory a General Theory. Since it is based on less narrow assumptions than the orthodox theory, it is also more easily adapted to a large area of different circumstances. Although I have thus worked it out having the conditions in the Anglo Saxon countries in view- where a great deal of laissez faire still prevails- it yet remains applicable to situations in which national leadership is more pronounced”

There is no surviving English original of the part of the text from This is one… on (It is simply omitted from the version of hte German preface in the Collected Works, which is based on Keynes’ original letter). The amendment Keynes sent to the publisher has been lost, and the editors in a letter commented that they couldn’t include Keynes’ whole amendment and instead included a “combination” of the amendment and the orginal version (see Bertram Schefold “The General Theory for a totalitarian state? a note on Keynes’ preface to the German edition of 1936″ Cambridge Journal of Economics 1980 175-6). Still, it is clear that Keynes was merely saying (rightly or wrongly) that theories of total output are more applicable to a multitude of conditions than more specific theories of distribution of a given output.

By pure coincidence, I just finished The Vampire Economy, and it is at least as fascinating as this article (and just as applicable to America today as the article says). Copies of this out-of-print book ARE available CHEAPLY from Internet suppliers of out-of-print books.

A footnote in this book led me to a book that just preceded it that is just about the equivalent on Japan, a country quite as fascist as Germany, Italy, and the US, but not usually mentioned in the same breath, so different were the outward aspects of its situation. The book is Japan’s Feet of Clay (1937), in which author Freda Utley argued that Japan had an economy just as poorly suited to waging a prolonged war as Reimann said Germany had.

This book is, if anything, BETTER than Reimann’s (much more data in it, and interpretation fully as good, even though Utley was a communist at the time). Like Reimann’s and so many other neglected works of genius, this book, too, is cheaply and plentifully available over that Internet.