The guiding spirit of the Keynesian Revolution is that full employment is a goal which
can be pursued not by following the free market rules, but by reshaping them by means of
public intervention. This message was widely accepted for thirty years as from the end of the
Second World War by all the advanced countries which actively engaged in full employment
and welfare policies, and subsequently abandoned with the neo-liberal Restoration which saw
the dogmas of individualism and de-regulation prevailing. In reclaiming the topical importance
of the General Theory, we should take into consideration the changed circumstances of today’s
world when compared to those of twenty – let alone eighty – years ago, although there are
notable similarities between the Great Depression of the 1930s – Keynes’s world – and our
contemporary crisis. However, his prescription for a better society is still relevant: it lies in
setting rules and limitations in the market arena, not letting individual self-interest prevail, and
putting some governing bodies in charge of filling the gap when deficient aggregate demand
occurs, so that the acquisition of material goods and the fruition of the enjoyments of life be
not a privilege of the few but the conquest of civilization
