And yet he had predecessors and his message--which insofar as I understand it, I believe to be fatally wrong, but obviously in a persuasive way--is one many patrons would wish to see someone or other champion. So I assume if he did not exist he would be invented, and the reason he is so influential is that he represented a view point giving a fair-seeming cover to policies many powerful and influential individuals wanted to see justified, so when he made his appearance the opportunities for him to be a patron within the field were open because of strong influences "deferring" to his judgement outside the field.
Much as I would like to see a world without the fashionable rise of the various economic theories his were among, I can't think of that as a realistic POD; more like ASB, and the intrusive kind with ongoing mind control. Some sort of neoconservative backlash to wartime and postwar Keynesianism seems inevitable to me; the question is whether progressives are intellectually and politically robust enough to challenge them.