The very idea of laissezfaire, Keynes believed, was a perversion of the views expressed by its purported advocates. “The phrase laissezfaire is not to be found in the works of Adam Smith, of Ricardo, or of Malthus,” he reminded his audience. “Even the idea is not present in a dogmatic form in any of these authors.” Rather, it represented “what the popularisers and the vulgarisers said.” Those who sought to relay economic ideas to the untutored masses deliberately reduced them to abstract tenets that appealed to those with a limited capacity to understand. Having absorbed those shrunken lessons, the public had come to “regard the simplifi ed hypothesis as health, and the further complications as disease.”

Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, loc. 11