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Abstract
The subject of this essay is formed from three classic pieces of writing: The End of
Laissez-Faire by John Maynard Keynes, The End of History? by Francis Fukuyama, and
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. All three essays were concerned
with the evolution of ideas, with Keynes and Fukuyama additionally arguing for the
centrality of ideas and consciousness in determining material outcomes and government
policy. I wish to argue that neither Kuhn’s nor Fukuyama’s “revolutionary” account fits the
bill for the path of change in the ideas of political economy. Rather, despite the title of his
essay, the gradual and multilayered process described in Keynes’s account of the
emergence and then questioning of laissez-faire is a better guide to the likely path of the
evolution of this key doctrine of political economy in the coming decades.