Keynes: The Return of the Master
ISBN:9781586488277 read summary

August 9, 2010


This book is one that speaks directly to the burning economic question of the moment, and the next few years: is it the size of the federal deficit and debt which are the problem, or the inadequate government spending and the shortfall in private demand/investment that has taken the nation, and Europe, to the brink of a double-dip recession - or worse, as Paul Krugman has indicated in his column from June 28th, "The Third Depression?" Once again, it is a citizen of Great Britain, Robert Skidelsky, Keynes' biographer, and a member of the House of Lords, who has supplied the public with a bold assertion, "Why, Sixty Years After His Death, John Maynard Keynes is the Most Important Economic Thinker for America," the statement on the front cover of his book Keynes, Return of the Master, published in 2009. This is the "popular," if not populist version of Skidelsky's acclaimed three volume biography of Keynes, an ultra brief version which nonetheless, reads like a long essay, not Cliff notes.

Yet, despite its brevity, this is a book not just about Keynes the economist, but also Keynes the philosopher, and the place of Keynesianism in the history of economic thought, relevant now to the "intellectual failure of economics," which Skidelsky believes is "the root cause of the present crisis." The organization of the book tells the story, with Part I covering the crisis and what the author believes went wrong, and the present dismal state of economics. Part Two is a brief history of "The Rise and Fall of Keynesian Economics," which is perhaps most interesting for its discussion of the distortions which Keynes underwent at the hands of both liberals and conservatives in the U.S. in the period 1945-1975 and even later. That's because the American Right, although it would deny it, has developed its own form of ersatz "Keynesianism": tax cuts and increased defense spending. And Part III, "The Return of Keynes," gives us, in keeping with what has become Skidelsky's own take on economics, Keynes' view of the "ethics of capitalism," and a chapter on his politics, and finally, what he believes is most relevant for our situation today.

Keynes: Hijacked by the Left and the Right
Readers will be surprised to learn that Keynes was not an advocate for running continual budget deficits, and took seriously the given preoccupation of conservatives with the state of "business confidence." Keynes was a remarkable thinker, defying neat categories, despite the deep varnish laid upon him as a man of the left and of massive government intervention - a view which most of the Right has far too simplistically promoted. Yet if conservative Bruce Bartlett tried to correct some of that in his August 14, 2009 piece in [...], "Keynes Was Really a Conservative," at [...], Skidelsky paints the far more nuanced picture of him: neither socialist nor uncritical capitalist, an atheist with deep ethical convictions and a "religious" sense about means and ends in life; an early free trader who became, in the 1930's, a critic of the free trade world of 1914; a withering critic of the gold standard of the 1920's and early 1930's whose functionally equivalent idea was defeated by the U.S. at Bretton Woods in 1944 i.e., his attempt create a mechanism to deal with exactly the problem facing the international trading system today, the great imbalances generated by a glut of savings by trade surplus nations; a some-time speculator like George Soros, who none-the-less wrote to explain the difference between risk taking, a proper activity for capitalists, and uncertainty, the appreciation of what is unknowable and beyond the risk models of even the most advanced mathematical formulators: "Uncertainty pervades Keynes' picture of economic life. It explains why people hold savings in liquid forms, why investment is volatile, and why the rate of interest doesn't adjust saving and investment."(Page 83.)

In his chapter on Keynes' politics, Skidelsky portrays him steering a course through the ideological minefields of his - and our day - and, surprisingly, please witness the appearance of conservative economist Friedrich von Hayek, with whom Keynes corresponded and "shared epistemological positions" - but with whom he disagreed on the dangers of "planning:"

Keynes certainly did not believe that government knew, or could know, more than `society.' But he did believe that it was in a position to take precautions against the consequences of uncertainty which private individuals or even informal social arrangements could not do. The `conventions' which society erects to guard against uncertainty break down in moments of great stress. Hence a full-employment policy was not the thin end of the wedge to serfdom, but a prudent precaution against a situation developing which would destroy the values which he and Hayek jointly shared....We know enough to have a rational belief that `moderate planning' will be an improvement on laissez-faire; we have no basis for saying that it will inevitably lead to serfdom or slavery further down the line. (Page 162.)

Keynes, Labor and the Crises of Capitalism
It is hard not to think about the similarities between the complex, nuanced Keynes and the political biography of his biographer, Lord Skidelsky, and to put them both in the context of the 1930's, measured against our own times. Skidelsky has moved from the Labor Party to the now evaporated Social Democrats, and then to the Conservative Party in the early 1990's, from whence he has departed to become a "cross bencher." His essay, The Crisis of Capitalism: Keynes vs. Marx, from February of 2010, offers a strong clue to providing a compass heading for this migration, and the difference between the two eras, 60 years apart. It sounds like the 1970's fiasco of Labor in Britain left a lasting impression, and found resonance in the life of Keynes: "Trade Unions, in Great Britain at least, threatened to become the prevailing power. Labor Government programmes in the early 1970's envisaged an economy run by the government and the trade unions, with only a minor role for private business. Thatcherism was the political reaction to this."

Impression indeed; there is no mention of Trade Unions, or Labor, in the Index of Keynes, Return of the Master. And Keynes, according Bartlett's piece in Forbes, was very tough on the Trade Unions' brand of Fabian Marxism. Yet if Keynes was not fond of the trade unions and Skidelsky himself thinks that they overstepped the limits of a mixed, yet still quite capitalist British society in the 1970's, it is clear that he feels that in turn, "Globalization" has now carried the war against labor too far, just as John Grey does:

Globalization was the business response to the declining rate of profits which Marx predicted. It was seen as the master key to overall improvement in the position of the business class. It increased corporate profits, reduced prices of consumer goods, and made possible a huge influx of outside money into the western banking system. But, most important, it was used as a bludgeon to frighten workers and to emasculate their economic and political powers. (The Crisis of Capitalism: Keynes vs. Marx, at [...])

In Search of the `Harmonious Society'
It's a glimpse into an economic world whose operating principles have eroded, if not consumed, the broader civic society in which it rests. That is what John Grey meant when he wrote that "Markets are made to serve man, not man the market." Keynes saw that the capitalism of the 1930's was going to destroy middle class society, and the working class as well, if more stabilizing and equitable arrangements were not made, and Skidelsky writes in a similar vein of capitalism's troubles today, with adjustments for a less extreme situation - for now, at least. Yet the economics profession of our day, as in the 1920's and 1930's, has no broader vision of where it is going or what constitutes the good life, other than to urge that society continue to give the business world all the particulars it has been asking for since the mid-1970's, once the emergency repairs and regulations of 2009-2010 have finished their stabilization task. On the next to the last page of Keynes, The Return of the Master, we are given a glimpse of the world that the great economist-philosopher was hoping for, "that of the `harmonious society.'" Social harmony will be built upon "full employment at home by means of investment and income redistribution..." which would "take the pressure off foreign trade, slow down the pace of globalization, and ease the social tensions arising from it. A Clearing Union for international payments would bring to an end global macroeconomic imbalances, automatically creating a more plural world." (Pages 190-191."

From the perspective of the summer of 2010, the "harmonious society," has a cruel, sardonic edge to it, thanks to the state of American politics, which is not the way Keynes intended it. Instead, a "Society without solidarity," might be closer to the reality of our situation. Far from having too much power, as British labor did in the 1970's, American labor has seen its legislative priorities put in the freezer, if not deep-sixed. There is no "balance of forces" in society that can enact a comprehensive reform program to cure the economic troubles of our day, and despite increased conversation and agenda sharing at the international level, we are no where close to achieving Keynes' "Clearing Union," and a new Bretton Woods arrangement for the world's dangerous and unstable international economy. Nations can't agree on the shape of banking reform or even the propriety of a Financial Transactions Tax - which ought to be the lowest common denominators, given the catastrophe of the private financial casino and its creation of a good share of the public deficits here and in Europe. Today "Keynesianism" is waved about by the Right as if it were the equivalent of the bloody flag of full blown governmental socialism and "interventionism", intervention of a scope that is only allowable for nation building far, far from home, like that undertaken by Paul Bremer in Iraq, in the fall of 2003 (speaking of social engineering).


Public Choice theory, another school of thought which leans to the Right, is covered by Skidelsky in Chapter Five, which asks whether the Keynesian Revolution was a success or failure. He gets to Public Choice Theory right after a heading for the New Classical Synthesis, which he earlier covered with brief, illuminating little portraits of the rational expectations hypothesis (REH), real business cycle theory (RBC) and the efficient financial market theory (EFMT), which "together...lie at the heart of contemporary economics." We might also observe that together they add up to a world view that says markets can pretty much take care of themselves once up and running, so that government can put the idea of major interventions back on the shelf labeled the 1920's, along with public jobs programs. Skidelsky says that public choice theory is actually a "theory of `government failure." It shares with rational expectations a "methodology of modeling public policies as the solution to individual maximization problems." That takes us back, way back, to the 18th century "inspiration of economics, which juxtaposed the efficiency of markets with the failures of government." (Pages 110-111.)


Keynes, Capitalism and the Good Life
This strategy on the Right to deprive the American people of even the possibility of a neutral government serving the public interest is very important. It seems as if it is designed to take away, if not destroy, hope itself - a hope that it denies exists beyond that generated by the all powerful private marketplace. And that is why we are going to close with a couple of thoughts about a passage from Lord Skidelsky's book, from Chapter 6, "Keynes and the Ethics of Capitalism." It is an answer to the contemporary Right's confusion of capitalism as an end, not a means, and its related problem of mistaking one 19th and 20th century interpretation of Christianity with a much older tradition - and understanding.

What if any ethical value, Keynes often asked, was to be attached to a life of `moneymaking and bridge'? Business life was at best only good as a means, but even as a means Keynes ranked it below public service, which at least was concerned with the public good. This was because business life overturned the correct hierarchy of values, teaching society to value `love of money' above love of goodness. Keynes's characterization - and condemnation - of capitalism as based on `love of money' echoes the biblical statement `the love of money is the root of all evils' (I Timothy 6:10). (Pages 141-142).

Now if Keynes were writing during the formal Social Gospel era in the United States, at the turn of the century, he might have let matters rest right there. But he wasn't; he was writing, in 1930, what Skidelsky calls a "futuristic" essay, Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, just at the time when the psychological insights of modern life were beginning to penetrate scholarship of all sorts. So that "love of money" from the Bible becomes "the engine of capitalism...driven by a neurosis which he called `love of money.'" Keynes was looking forward to the day when the compulsions of capitalism and its Protestant Ethic, would ease off, resting on the great abundance they had helped create: "With the economic problem solved, mankind would face its permanent problem, how to live `wisely, agreeably, and well,' by which Keynes meant that people would be able to shed their pathological `purposefulness' and `love of money' and trade even higher incomes for more leisure and enjoyment of life." (Page 144.)

Well... it's 2010 now, and with the dominance of neoliberalism, we're still living with the neuroses and the pathological purposefulness of capitalism - and how. The mechanisms of abundance are even more impressive today than they were in the 1920's and 1930's, yet the "wisely, agreeably and well" hopes sound entirely utopian, as pensions and savings evaporate and the concept of a career, and even that of a job, are now formally obsolete. But the need for incomes from the employment from those careers is looming larger than ever, in one of the greatest contradictions ever to face capitalism.

Meanwhile, over at Goldman Sachs, we can tell you how Lloyd Blankfein and his firm face the contradictions. Subjecting most of their employees to daunting work schedules and relentless personal evaluations, the idea is to make their millions by an early age, and then to pursue Keynes' triad, mixing in charitable and governmental work amidst all that leisure. Although Blankfein called it doing God's work, in some ways, one could also call it a parody of what Keynes meant, because in fact the Wall Street syndrome has contributed the added irony, and cruelty, of demolishing Keynes' dreams for much of the rest of society.

The choices facing American society are becoming clearer and clearer. We are either going to work out our own good, modern version of social democracy leaning towards Keynes' fondest hopes, or we are going to plunge into an new era of ugly Social Darwinism, one that will make the first one look enchanting.


William R. Neil
Rockville, MD
August, 2010

The modern recession casts doubt on many long-held economic beliefs, in particular, the validity of free markets. Unable to agree on causes or remedies, economists look on as politicians try various kinds of stimulus spending and corporate bailouts. Pundits call forth the ghost of John Maynard Keynes, often incorrectly labeled as a has-been socialist and tax-and-spend liberal. But Robert Skidelsky, Keynes' biographer and a noted expert on the economist and his work, reveals how Keynes' pre-World War II experiences shaped an economic worldview that still holds lessons for the 21st century. This scholarly book assumes that the reader has more than a nodding acquaintance with modern economic theory and philosophy, yet Skidelsky also injects literary references and sparks of wit that enliven the sometimes-challenging text. getAbstract suggests this abbreviated, but solid, look at Keynes to students of economic and political history, and to anyone who is trying to make sense of how the 2008 crisis happened and how to move forward.

Robert Skidelsky is a British historian, who wrote a three volume biography of John Maynard Keynes, the mid-20th century British economist whose work provided the foundation for modern liberal economic thought. We all know how important Keynes was. Very few of us, however, actually understand what he said. This book admirably bridges this gap, by providing a lucid, clear and simple explanation of Keynes' ideas, and how they contrast with the ideas of other economists.

Keynes was a great heretic. The orthodoxy, which he spent his life fighting, was that a free market economy has a natural balance, based upon the laws of supply and demand. Depressions, and periods of great inflation, are, by this theory, impossible. They cannot happen unless the government or some other powerful force is interfering in the market.

Keynes disagreed. He felt that the modern economy has no natural tendency toward full employment. He felt that the economy could, of often did, settle into a semi-permanent slump.

The key issue, to Keynes, was demand. If people cannot or will not buy the products of the economy, then a great deal of unemployment results. Demand, according to Keynes, has two components: consumption, which is fairly steady, and investment, which is volatile. When money is saved, says Keynes, it might be invested and thus produce demand. On the other hand, savings might not be invested. It might be hoarded. This would reduce demand and cause a downturn. This, according to Keynes, is what caused the Great Depression. This, according to Skidelsky, is what caused the recent downturn.

Why does investment go up and down? Because the future is uncertain, says Keynes. Investors are periodically filled with fear, and they stop investing. When investors investing, demand plummets and the economy goes into depression. When this happens, says Keynes, the government has to artificially create demand, by deficit spending. Yes, it is irrational for the government to spend money it does not have. This irrationality is needed, however, said Keynes, to balance out the irrationality of investors refusing to invest money which they do have.

That is Keynes' theory, in a nutshell. Because of the volatility of investment, if demand is to be kept on an even keel, the government must take up the slack when private investment lags. The idea is not fundamentally very complex, but it is often misunderstood, because Keynes' own writing, while brillant and witty, is often rather obscure. Skidelsky has a gift for writing clear and simple English, and he lucidly explains Keynes' thought.

Was Keynes right? In my view, Keynes had a number of interesting insights, but his system was mistaken and his policy ideas, while sometimes useful in the short-term, were dangerous. Skidelsky thinks we need to return to Keynes. I think, on the contrary, that the present crisis was caused by listening too much to Keynes. Keynes wanted the government to artificially stimulate the economy to produce a permanent boom. That is precisely what Allan Greenspan just did, albiet using monetary rather than fiscal policy.

I have always wanted to know more about KEYNES especially after the explosion of the current global financial crises. This book gives the reader the required background about KEYNES and why is he now considered the most influential economic thinker that ever lived.

Not surprisingly the recent world financial crisis has spawned a surge of books. Robert Skidelsky's book is more insightful than most. He is Professor Emeritus of political economy at the University of Warwick, England, and has previously written a three-volume biography of Keynes.

His book views the crisis through the spectacles of Keynesian economics. It manifests the author's considerable erudition in history of economics, and shows much refreshingly independent thought. Skidelsky's expressed agenda is the reform of economics and the teaching of economics.

Skidelsky maintains that economics has given a poor account of origins of the recent financial crisis, because there is something essentially incompatible between the economist's view of individual rationality and the systemic financial collapse. His chief argument is that underlying the escalating succession of recent financial crises there is a failure of economics to take uncertainty seriously and to cover up this neglect by means of sophisticated mathematics and statistics including econometrics.

Contrary to rationality in which all risks can be correctly priced such that financial markets are optimally self-regulating, economic choices are governed by conventional rather than rational expectations. Conventional expectations involve irreducible uncertainty with its "black swans" - bubbles inflated by positive feedback followed by collapse.

Skidelsky never references Nobel laureate economist and political scientist Herbert Simon. But his view of Keynes is in certain respects suggestive of Simon's thesis of bounded rationality. Like Simon, Skidelsky rejects the now discredited rational-expectations and efficient-market theses of the "New Classical" economics, which he says is also assumed by the "New Keynesians", who are not faithful to Keynes' thought. For more on Simon see his book Models of Bounded Rationality and his "Economic Rationality" in his book Sciences of the Artificial, where Simon discusses price bubbles.

Also google my web site, History of Twentieth-Century Philosophy of Science, and see especially BOOK VIII, pp. 52-54.