Keynes Viewed Marshallian Economics as a Tool for Guiding the Capitalist Economy toward the Post-Scarcity Millennium

In creating his sociopolitical vision, Keynes drew mainly upon the ethical philosophy of G. E. Moore, the political philosophy of Edmund Burke, and the economics of Alfred Marshall. From Marshall, Keynes also adopted the millennialist theoretical framework which the former constructed as a prop for his "preaching of mid-Victorian morality, seasoned by Benthamism."

I trace the development of Keynes's millennialist theory of social evolution, upon which, I argue, his sociopolitical vision is based. I also suggest that, during the decade of the 1920s, in which this development mainly occurred, Keynes viewed Marshallian economics as a tool for guiding a dynamic and useful but unsteady and unethical capitalist economy toward the impending post-scarcity millennium and that his Treatise on Money was intended as a handbook for just this purpose.

--Joseph T. Salerno, "The Development of Keynes's Economics: From Marshall to Millennialism," Review of Austrian Economics 6, no. 1 (1992): 6.