John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron
Keynes [1883–1946]
English economist
Keynes was one of the great mathematicians
and thinkers of the 20th century. Much that is now called
Keynesianism or neo-Keynesianism would meet with Keynes’
disapproval, for Keynes was an enemy of inflation because he understood inflation for what it is: dishonesty
and the debauchery of money. But Keynes was also a great
pragmatist, not some mere academic theorist.
- Thus inflation is unjust and deflation is inexpedient.
Of the two perhaps deflation is, if we rule out exaggerated
inflations such as that of Germany, the worse; because
it is worse, in an impoverished world, to provoke unemployment
than to disappoint the rentier. But it is necessary
that we should weigh one evil against the other. It
is easier to agree that both are evils to be shunned.[...].
[Essays
in Persuasion, p. 75 - Social consequences
of the changes in the value of money, 1923]
- The important thing for
Government is not to do things which individuals are
doing already, and to do them a little better or a little
worse; but to do those things which at present are not
done at all.
[The
End of Laissez-Faire, 1926, part 4]
- Taxation may be so high as to defeat its object ... given sufficient
time to gather the fruits, a reduction of taxation will run a better
chance, than an increase, of balancing the budget. [1933, The means to prosperity in [Essays
in Persuasion, p.338]
- Marxian Socialism must always remain a portent to
the historians of Opinion - how a doctrine so illogical
and so dull can have exercised so powerful and enduring
an influence over the minds of men, and, through them,
the events of history.
[The
End of Laissez-Faire, 1926]
- Lenin was right. There is no subtler, no surer
means of overturning the existing basis of society than
to debauch the currency. The process engages all the
hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction,
and does it in a manner which not one man in a million
is able to diagnose.
[The
Economic Consequences of the Peace,1919, ch. 6]
This is, of course, the point. This is the objective
of Marxists/Socialists - to so disrupt society that
they can take over.
- I work for a Government I despise for ends I think
criminal.
[Letter to Duncan Grant,
15 December 1917]
- Just as the Conservative Party will always have its
diehard wing, so the Labour Party will always be flanked
by the party of catastrophe - Jacobins, Communists,
Bolshevists, whatever you choose to call them. This
is the party which hates or despises existing institutions
and believes that great good will result merely from
overthrowing them - or at least that to overthrow them
is the necessary preliminary to any great good. This
party can only flourish in an atmosphere of social oppression
or as a reaction against the Rule of Die-Hard. In Great
Britain it is, in its extreme form, numerically very
weak. Nevertheless its philosophy in a diluted form
permeated, in my opinion, the whole Labour Party. However
moderate its leaders may be at heart, the Labour Party
will always depend for electoral success on making some
slight appeal to the widespread passions and jealousies
which find their full development in the party of catastrophe.
I believe that this secret sympathy with the policy
of catastrophe is the worm which gnaws at the seaworthiness
of any constructive vessel which the Labour Party may
launch. The passions of malignity, jealousy, hatred
of those who have wealth and power (even in their own
body), ill consort with the ideals to build up a true
social republic. Yet it is necessary for a successful
Labour leader to be, or at least to appear, a little
savage. It is not enough that he should love his fellow-men;
he must hate them too.
[Am I a Liberal, 1925 in Essays in Persuasion,
p.299-300]
- Suppose that by the working of natural laws individuals
pursuing their own interests with enlightenment in conditions
of freedom always tend to promote the general interest
at the same time!
[The
End of Laissez-Faire, 1926, p.274]
- On Munich:
“Neither the Prime Minister nor Herr Hitler ever intended for one
moment that the play-acting should devolve into reality.”
[October, 1938]
Keynes was a pragmatist, an elitist
and a humanist.
- If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes,
bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which
are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish,
and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles
of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again
(the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering
for leases of the note-bearing territory) there need
be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions,
the real income of the community, and its capital wealth
also, would probably become a good deal greater than
it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to
build houses and the like; but as there are political
and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above
would be better than nothing.
[General Theory, 1936, bk. 3]
- Capitalism, wisely managed, can probably be made more
efficient for attaining economic ends than any alternative
system yet in sight, but that in itself it is in many
ways extremely objectionable.
[The
End of Laissez-Faire, 1926, p.294]
Laffer includes an excellent quote from John Maynard Keynes:
- When, on the contrary, I show, a little elaborately,
as in the ensuing chapter, that to create wealth will
increase the national income and that a large proportion
of any increase in the national income will accrue to
an Exchequer, amongst whose largest outgoings is the
payment of incomes to those who are unemployed and whose
receipts are a proportion of the incomes of those who
are occupied, I hope the reader will feel, whether or
not he thinks himself competent to criticize the argument
in detail, that the answer is just what he would expect—that
it agrees with the instinctive promptings of his common
sense.
Nor should the argument seem strange that taxation may
be so high as to defeat its object, and that, given
sufficient time to gather the fruits, a reduction of
taxation will run a better chance than an increase of
balancing the budget. For to take the opposite view
today is to resemble a manufacturer who, running at
a loss, decides to raise his price, and when his declining
sales increase the loss, wrapping himself in the rectitude
of plain arithmetic, decides that prudence requires
him to raise the price still more—and who, when
at last his account is balanced with nought on both
sides, is still found righteously declaring that it
would have been the act of a gambler to reduce the price
when you were already making a loss.
[1933 Essay: The Means to Prosperity,
section I: The nature of the problem, p338, The
Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, Macmillan
Cambridge University Press, 1972]
- Possibly the Liberal Party cannot serve the state
in any better way than by supplying Conservative government
with cabinets, and Labour governments with ideas.
[The
End of Laissez-Faire,1926, p 310]
- I have done worst in the only two subjects of which I possessed a
solid knowledge – Mathematics and Economics. I scored more marks for
English History than for Mathematics – is it credible? For Economics I
got a relatively low percentage and was eight or ninth in order of
merit – whereas I knew the whole of both papers in a really elaborate
way. On the other hand, in Political Science, to which I devoted less
than a fortnight in all, I was easily first of everybody. I was also
first in Logic and Psychology and in Essay. [1906]
He was later to say: "I evidently knew more about Economics than my
examiners."
related material
Yet
another article misunderstands Keynes - confusing money and work
bibliography |
| Keynes,
John Maynard |
Essays
in Persuasion
Keynes is one of the
great masters of the twentieth century. He's often
misrepresented under the heading of Keynesianism,
for which see a useful review referenced in the EMU
document. Keynes has a clear-headed understanding
of both money and politics, and understands the difference;
this is rare indeed. Keynes is a pragmatist par
excellence. Any person wishing to gain a down-to-earth
grasp of the political implications of economic factors,
would be well advised to read into this collection
of essays any time that they start to become confused
by theory detached from reality. Keynes may even increase
your sanity. |
First published in 1931
(pbk, 1991, W W Norton & Co, 0393001903)
$14.95 [amazon.com / £9.40 [amazon.co.uk] {advert} |
|
The Economic Consequences of
the Peace |
First published 1919
2001, Simon Publications, 1931541132, pbk
to special order £19.95 [amazon.co.uk] {advert} / $35.95 [amazon.com] {advert} |
|
The End of laissez-faire in
Essays
in Persuasion, the Collected Writings of
John Maynard Keynes [IV Politics] |
First published 1926
1991, W W Norton & Co, 0393001903
pbk, $10.47 [amazon.com] {advert} / £9.09 [amazon.co.uk] {advert} |
|
General Theory
(The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes:
Vol.7: the ‘General Theory’ of
Employment, Interest and Money) |
First published 1936
1997, Prometheus Books, 1573921394, pbk
£11.00 [amazon.co.uk] {advert} / $11.20 [amazon.com] {advert} |
|
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