Inside Out: Keynes’s Use of the Public Sphere

John Maynard Keynes is well known for his work in government and academia, but much less is made of his flourishing career in journalism, where he sought to influence events and ideas as an outsider. However, his version of the insider-outsider distinction was not the conventional one, for it involved recognizing inner circles within the elite discourse of politicians and journalists as well as between those circles and the public. This essay uses this framework, involving attempts to communicate across different boundaries, to view his well-known series of works on monetary economics against the lesser-known background of his entry into journalism, through the Manchester Guardian and its commercial supplements and his attempts to create a platform for Liberal views in the weekly press.