Keynes and
his Battles, Gilles Dostaler,
Edward Elgar, Cheltenham (UK ) and Northampton
(USA ),
2007, vi; 374pp
Toshiaki Hirai
I. Introduction
So far we have no
economist who surpassed Keynes in terms of profound influences in various fields.
The phenomenon in economics and social philosophy known as the “Keynesian
Revolution” is the most important among his influences. And yet it occupies no
more than a part of his achievements.
As a youth he contributed to the development
of philosophy and logic under the influences of G.E. Moore and Russell. He was
an intellectual leader of the Liberal Party. He was a central figure of the
Bloomsbury Group. He was a splendid and inexhaustible debater, among which
impeachment against the Versailles Treaty is well known. He worked as an
enthusiastic patron of the artistic activities. He was engaged in managing
insurance companies. He was responsible for the financial management of King’s
College. He worked as designer of the world order after the Second World War. Surprisingly
enough, many of these activities were simultaneously made. His interest was extended
indefinitely and his brain incredibly fast worked with vigorous blood flowing
through vessel.
The book
brilliantly analyzes and describes Keynes as a human being by shedding light on
these multiple activities, and tries to explain Keynes’s life in terms of
persistence and continuity rather than inconsistency and discontinuity. The
reviewer will discuss only a few below from many topics which were very
interestin (the main chapters runs as follows: Ch.2 Ethics; Ch.3 Knowledge;
Ch.4 Politics; Ch.5 War and Peace; Ch.6 Money; Ch.7 Labour; Ch.8 Gold; Ch.9
Art).
II. The Apostles and the Bloomsbury Group
The apostles and the Bloomsbury Group
made profound influence on Keynes’s way of thinking and living on several
points.
Firstly, he
and his friends such as Lytton Strachey, Leonard Woolf, was greatly enchanted
by Moore ’s
Ethics. This can be discerned in two aspects. One concerns Keynes’s ethics. The
other concerns Keynes’s work on probability. It started by criticizing Ch.5, “Ethics
in relation to conduct” of Moore’s Principia
Ethica, was submitted as fellow dissertation of King’s College, and was finally
published in 1921 as A Treatise on
Probability. The author puts emphasis on uncertainty as unmeasurable. (he
is right, and yet the reviewer thinks that Keynes defines probability as a
degree of rational belief between the propositions, which should be objective,
and tries to prove induction in terms of pure logic).
Secondly,
Keynes was greatly involved in the Bloomsbury Group. The group was a creator of
new culture in, among others, literature and painting. It shared Moore ’s “religion” and were
anti-utilitarians and were critical of women’s discrimination. It was a group
in which apostles’ s mind was integrated with artistic value judgment of the
Post-Impressionism and new literature movement. The members were, in essence,
individualistic liberalists in the sense that they highly rated human relation
and beauty, while neglecting the social conventions. This seems to have
contributed to the (miraculous) maintenance of friendship among them throughout
their lives notwithstanding the occurrence of complicated human and love
relations. In the book are these complicated relations vividly described.
III. Political Stance
Since his youth Keynes showed great interest in
politics, as is shown by his stance, for example, of the Boer War.
When
the (First World ) war occurred, Keynes was
asked to join the Treasury. He accepted the offer, in spite of the fact that at
that time he was making great efforts for the publication of the Probability with help of Russell and
Broad. He broke off this work, which resulted in postponing the publication until
eight years later.
This
war was to change the world considerably. It was no exception to Keynes – the
tension with the rest of the Bloomsbury group, his ability and confidence as
high official in leading the UK
in international finance, the tough fight with the USA
in negotiation, the deep disappointment with the development of the Paris Peace
Conference, his proposal for reconstructing Europe
such as the “Grand Scheme”.
In the
1920s Keynes was greatly involved in the Liberal Party through the management
of the Nation and Athenaeum, the
Liberal Summer School and so forth. He advocated the New Liberalism – the
mid-way house between the Liberalism and Socialism. However, his political
activities made a convoluted tour, reflecting the then political situation of
the UK .
He belonged to the Asquith camp, but later came to approach the Lloyd-George
one. After the fatal defeat of the Liberal Party, Keynes moved toward the
Labour Party. It should be noted that his socio-philosophical and economic
influences manifested themselves among the young politicians such as Dalton and Gaitskell of
the Labour Party, although he finally became a Liberal Party member of the House
of Lords.
In the book these activities and the complicated political changes of
Keynes are brilliantly portrayed.
IV. Economics
In the reviewer’s view The General Theory sees the market
economy as possessing two contrasting aspects: (i) stability, certainty and
simplicity; (ii) instability, uncertainty and complexity. His fundamental
perception of the market economy can be summarized: “The market society is
stable in the sense that it can remain in ‘underemployment equilibrium’, but if
it goes beyond certain constraints, it becomes unstable”.
In the book reviewed aspect (i) is stressed, while aspect
(ii) is rather overlooked. The author argues that aspect (i) can be traced back
to the Probability. If The General Theory had lacked in aspect
(i), it would not have won such a success. Moreover, Keynes showed aspect (ii)
whenever he advocated economic policy.
The reviewer
wish that this book would have dealt with Keynes’s colleauges such as Robertson
and Hawtrey as economist as well as social philosopher, for Robertson and
Hawtrey were not classified by Keynes as “classical economists”.
Again, the
book is very readable, and a great contribution to understanding Keynes as a human
being endowed with such incredible talents.
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