On April 21, 1946, J. M. Keynes succumbed to heart failure. Thus was blotted out a great light that has not yet been replaced. The General Theory, his last doctrinal work-in a sense his economic testament-is above all a theory of employment. That is what gives it its importance. Indeed full employment, that is to say, the absence of any enforced leisure, is not merely the criterion for a healthy state of an economy. It is also and primarily the basis for a satisfactory status of labor and consequently, in a free society, a condition of political and social equilibrium. Actual unemployment and even the mere threat of unemployment are for workers a cause of alienation and demoralization. When labor is in danger of losing jobs, it cannot be completely independent of its employers. It finds itself handicapped in wage negotiations and, as a result, work is rarely remunerated at rates corresponding to its productivity. The dole may provide the unemployed worker with material assistance, but it cannot assuage his feeling of social uselessness. It is because it offered a plausible solution to the distressing problem of unemployment that the General Theory was received with so much interest in 1936. The solution even seemed so simple, and full employment so largely attainable, that several governments did not hesitate to include it among the constitutional rights of their nationals. Nowadays the beneficial influence of the General Theory on employment levels is scarcely questioned, despite the fact that since 1938 it has been overshadowed