6 Introduction such as public economics. Undoubtedly, such a long time span might render any inquiry such as ours quite perilous. Accordingly, the first stumbling block to be avoided all along this study is anachronism. Moreover, Friedman did not battle with Keynes himself, but with his heirs. Here, our investigation runs the risk of being distorted by the presence of the Keynesians, or at least by the proponents of the income-expenditure Keynesian sub-current. Accordingly, the second rock on which an undertaking such as ours might come to grief is ventriloquism. As for the first reef, as time obviously elapsed between Keynes’ first advocacy to Friedman’s last plea, we need to be particularly cautious in taking into account the specific historical circumstances of such or such a plea. As far as Keynes is concerned, we will concentrate our investigation each time it will be possible to the time of and after the General Theory. As for Friedman, our way to solve this difficulty will be to put as far as possible his critique of Keynesianism aside, and to concentrate on his own original analyses. Finally, we will adopt for both authors consistency as a working hypothesis. Indeed, as for all great authors we will consider that Keynes and Friedman meant exactly what they wrote when scrutinising their texts and that, despite local amendments, their thoughts should be considered as consistent bulks.
1.2 Synopsis If one plans to compare Keynes and Friedman on the issue of the proper way to enforce stability of macroeconomic systems, there is a prerequisite to be fulfilled, that is to put the Keynesians of the neo-classical synthesis off-stage. Chapter 2 deals with these preliminaries. Indeed, Friedman was definitely not a contemporary of Keynes. He did not battle with Keynes himself, but with his heirs, especially with those of the (Walrasian) neo-classical synthesis. The scope, scale and intensity of the quarrel varied as time elapsed. He is even said to have shown more flexibility towards Keynes in comparison to the Keynesians. This chapter aims to clarify the issues of the debate at stake, on both the theoretical and the methodological level, by specifying the context and especially by attempting to disentangle Friedman’s critique towards the Keynesians from his own original arguments. We will see that Friedman’s critiques of functional finance, of inflationary gap analysis as well as the Keynesian consumption function hardly apply to Keynes. Besides, since our main concern refers to political economy, the so-called ‘Keynesian’ Phillips curve will be at the core of our investigation in this chapter. The main issue of this chapter is to assess the relevance of Friedman’s assault on the Phillips curve for the economics of Keynes himself. Again, we will see that Keynes’ construct stands quite immune to Friedman’s critique, whether in respect to the call for short-term devices, inflationary remedies to unemployment or the employment-wages dynamics underlying the ‘Phillips curve exercises’. Chapter 3 probes into Keynes and Friedman’s respective views on institutions, either private, ‘semi-public’ or public. We know well that neither Keynes nor Friedman were directly and explicitly interested in institutions as such. Yet,
