Table Of ContentJOHN MAYNARD KEYNES
Also by Piero V. Mini
KEYNES, BLOOMSBURY AND THE GENERAL THEORY
PIDLOSOPHY AND ECONOMICS: The Origins
and Development of Economic Theory
John Maynard Keynes
A Study in the Psychology
of Original Work
Piero V. Mini
M
St. Martin's Press
© Piero V. Mini 1994
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1994 978-0-333-58584-9
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ISBN 978-0-312-12137-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mini, Piero V., 1936--
John Maynard Keynes : a study in the psychology of original work I
Piero V. Mini.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-12137-2
I. Keynes, John Maynard, 1883-1946. 2. Keynesian economics.
I. Title.
HBI03.K47M53 1994
330. 15'6--dc20 93-48289
CIP
To the memory of M.M.
Zeus: You, Aegisthus, have, like me, a passion for order.
Aegisthus: For order? That is so. It was for order that I wooed Clytemnestra, for
order that I killed my King; I wish that order should prevail, and that it would pre
vail through me. I have lived without love, without hope, even without lust. But I
have kept order in my kingdom. That has been my ruling passion; a godlike
passion, but how terrible!
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Flies, 1943
Albert and the blond beasts make up the world between them. If either cast the
other out, life is diminished in its force.
John Maynard Keynes, 'Einstein', 1933
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction
I Essentialism and Existentialism: My Early Beliefs 14
2 Probability: The First 'Struggle of Escape' 32
3 The War Years: 'Education Through Violence' 47
4 New Uncertainties: Public Opinion and Diplomacy 72
5 Speculation: Education by the Financial Markets 84
6 The Twenties: Economic and Methodological Heresies 94
7 The Macmillan Committee and the Treatise 107
8 Platonic Forms 120
9 Classical Economics as Platonic Forms 134
I 0 Existentialism and Keynes 148
II Existentialism in The General Theory 164
I2 The Second World War: Opportunity and Threat 183
I3 Was Keynes an Economist? 214
Appendix 1: A Classical Statement of the Multiplier 227
Appendix II: Fitzgibbons on 'Animal Spirits' 229
Notes 231
Select Bibliography 248
Index 252
vii
Acknowledgements
Permission to quote has been obtained from: Universidade Cat6lica Portuguesa,
publisher of Economia, where the material of Appendix I appeared in May 1989;
Macmillan Publishers and St. Martin's Press, for the diagram appearing on p. 177
from Vol. VIII of The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes.
For preparing the typescript I wish to thank Ms Jackie David and her able assist
ants. For putting it into shape for the printer and for catching many oversights it is
a pleasure to thank Ms Anne Rafique.
viii
Introduction
This book is not a biography of Keynes. Like my previous one, 1 it is an effort to
understand Keynes's major economic work through the beliefs he expressed in his
other writings. These are viewed as being influenced by his personality and philo
sophy of life. Basically, this is a book on the methodology used by Keynes, a
methodology determined by his general philosophical beliefs, and determining the
unique nature of his economic theories. To schematise our standpoint: events, edu
cation, experiences, psychology determine a philosophy of life. Philosophy of life
determines methodology. And methodology determines theories.
Keynes's Collected Writings are the main source of our work. The biographies, gen
erally speaking, are somewhat vitiated by the rationalism of the writer. Economists
especially (as against cultural historians) bring to the study of Keynes the same ration
alism that characterises their theoretical work. A rationalist is one who believes in the
superiority of the mind (working along logico-mathematicallines) in unearthing the
truth, mind being infinitely superior in this respect to experience, to feelings and to
passionate involvement. The bafflement that writers about Keynes often feel in his
presence is an indication that they have not grasped his nature. The philosopher
Braithwaite, for instance, who had known Keynes since 1919 and had thought him a
'humane utilitarian,' was shocked by My Early Beliefs with its rejection of the whole
utilitarian ethic and of the notion that human nature is reasonable. Not only is human
nature not reasonable, Keynes wrote, but life is richer for its being so!
Then there is the case of the new preface to the German translation (September
1936) of The General Theory in which Keynes claims that his theory of output 'is
more easily adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state' (with its stronger
leadership) than is the classical theory based on laissez-faire. 2 Keynesian scholars
are shocked: a sorrowful Moggridge notes that 'Keynes displayed remarkable
insensitivity, indeed indifference, to a regime that put its political opponents into
concentration camps and passed the anti-semitic Nuremburg laws'. Keynes, he
says, did not have to provide a preface for the German edition, and if he feit that he
had to, he did not have to go 'as far as he did'. 'It is all shameful-and puzzling.'3
Keynes's remarks about the economic method pioneered by Tinbergen also
have puzzled and wounded many economists and with good reason for Keynes
indicts econometrics as 'black magic', 'alchemy', 'all hocus', 'a nightmare', while
its practitioners are 'charlatans'.
Then there is Keynes's interest in genetics: while talking about the need for a
national policy to control population (in England), he added that in the future the
community as a whole will have to pay attention to its 'innate qualities' as well as
to the mere size of the population, a remark repeated to a German audience in
Berlin in 1926.4
