Book Review
Keynes and his Battles, Gilles Dostaler,
Edward Elgar, Cheltenham (UK) and Northampton (USA), 2007, vi; 374pp
Toshiaki Hirai (Sophia University)
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.
