John Maynard Keynes by Robert Skidelsky
Kavanagh, Peter
CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD John Maynard Keynes Hopes Betrayed: 1883-1920 Robert Skidelsky Viking,$23,496pp. John Maynard Keynes The Economist as Saviour. 1920-1937 Robert Skidelsky Viking, $25,...
...Most good biographies make us wrestle anew with how our everyday thinking has been reduced to cliches, to a kind of shorthand that robs us of the complexity of ideas and the complexity of life...
...John Maynard Keynes was an aesthete, a scholar, a deeply artistic individual who seemed destined for a life of bohemian as well as academic success...
...As Skidelsky rightly observes, it was because Keynes was more than an economist that he was so great...
...1920-1937 Robert Skidelsky Viking, $25, 768 pp...
...34.95, 576 pp...
...For Keynes, the economic power of the state was an instrument of last resort, a means to restore or correct the deficiencies of the private economy...
...Peter Kavanagh It's called the "dismal science" for a reason...
...Keynes had one overarching goal: Maintain an economic system that would at least allow people to struggle with their own individual search for the good...
...His effort matches the genius of his subject...
...As a discipline concerned with human beings engaged in the most fundamental as well as sophisticated of exchanges and transactions, economics can be a tool for understanding society as a whole...
...John Maynard Keynes Fighting for Britain: 1937-1946 Robert Skidelsky Viking...
...Keynes tried to re-animate that kind of thinking...
...At the same time, lacking the precision of the physical sciences and open to endless interpretation, economics is easily recruited as a weapon in a broader war of values and veiled interests...
...Skidelsky does that...
...The purpose of an economy was outside itself: It was to serve the larger progress of society...
...A lover of beauty, bisexual at a time when it was illegal, a friend of eccentrics and geniuses, he ended up the near-perfect figure to think through the wholesale transition in values, both political and economic, that marked the shift from the Victorian to the modern age...
...Broadcasting Corporation...
...One small example demonstrates this point clearly...
...In an especially tumultuous time, he searched for a responsible way to maintain the bare essentials of civilization...
...Lord Robert Skidelsky has documented the life and times of Keynes in a three-volume biography, the last volume of which was released late last year...
...For Keynes prosperity was always a tool used to pursue other goals...
...The reader comes away from this work knowing at least one thing with certainty: The ideological debate that swirls around Keynesian thought these days is simplistic, inadequate, and a disservice to very serious and important questions...
...And most frustrating for many, according to Skidelsky, Keynes was a man who had no problem changing his mind...
...For example, mass unemployment was more than just a cyclical occurrence...
...He was brilliant, demanding, talented, and determined...
...Skidelsky devoted a good part of the past quarter-century to answering that question, and the answer might be boiled down to this: Keynes wasn't just an economist...
...In the 1800s the link between morals and commerce was clear, if not always effective...
...He was a moral philosopher who wrestled throughout his life with the link, if any, between public and private duty...
...It's intriguing to think, and Skidelsky does make the reader think throughout the biography, about how odd these questions seem to many people in this day of triumphant capitalism...
...Keynes was not an easy person to have around...
...Keynes's project could be described as an effort at "re-moralizing the capitalist system...
...When Keynes argued for unorthodox means and tools to combat the horrendous unemployment of the Great Depression, it was partly because he knew that he was fighting a greater evil than low productivity and loss of purchasing power...
...Skidelsky paints on a vast canvas spanning Victorian, Edwardian, and post- World War I England, and this trilogy immerses the reader in continuing education of the finest sort...
...Whether it's been a mirror of the times, a prognosticator (with a decidedly mixed track record), or a thinly veiled ideological force masquerading as a simple statement of fact, economics has always been as contentious as the sociopolitical battles that underpin it...
...Happily, the facility of Skidel-sky's prose makes the task a delight...
...Keynes had a life bursting at the seams with intrigue and accomplishment, and his multifaceted social, intellectual, and political connections are enough to please the historical-minded as well as the the celebrity gossip...
...This is a biography that defies and exceeds all expectations...
...Towering over most of the twentieth century was arguably the oddest of economic giants...
...If something was broke, fix it...
...Over the last hundred years, economics has struggled with a conflicting, contradictory, and maddening set of assumptions, demands, and presumptions...
...He often made fun of more "academic economists," chiding them for ignoring the impact-or lack of impact-of their ideas on the real world...
...What was the connection between being good, living a good life, and society at large...
...Today the goal of much of our private and public lives seems to be mere prosperity...
...For example, there is an on-going, almost theological dispute about the original intent of the founding economic thinkers and theorists...
...What made this man, this walking, talking mass of paradox and seeming contradiction, almost the perfect avatar for his age and a thinker whose ideas remain pertinent today...
...Keynes was famous for abandoning his own theories or, rather, seeing his theories in the light of practical politics...
...According to many of his contemporaries, Keynes's greatness was best revealed by how he responded to the difficulties of the moment...
...Living through World War I, the Depression, and the rise of totalitarian fascism and communism, Keynes pursued that aim in a world where markets, societies, and economies were roiling and self-destructive...
...In the end, you are left pining for a contemporary economist who could entertain questions about meaning, who knows the difference between mathematics and morality, and who thinks we all should be able to pursue the good...
...Think about the twenty-year battle, which began with the Reagan-Thatcher revolutions, over the soul and thought of Adam Smith and you understand why controlling the past secures the present...
...For most of us the prospect of tackling this mammoth biography is intimidating...
...There were many ways the system could unravel, and it was the duty of those in political authority to use the means at hand to make sure it didn't happen...
...Freedom didn't make the good inevitable, but its absence made the good impossible...
...Its three volumes contain almost two thousand pages, which include detailed explorations of economic theory and a cast of characters in the hundreds...
...Sadly, Keynes's ideas are often reduced today, by those on both the left and the right, to the slogan that deficits don't matter...
...He thought about society in a manner that was fueled by philosophy, literature, art, and a firm understanding that the good in life was possible when the economy allowed people freedom...
...What drives this detailed and thorough exploration of Keynes's life and thought is to a certain extent a simple question...
...The extent to which he succeeded remains something of a miracle...
...it was a threat to society's very existence...
...As an economist, he is perhaps best known as an advocate of government spending to spur economic activity...
...Peter Kavanagh is senior producer with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation...
Vol. 129 • March 2002 • No. 6
