WEBVTT NOTE Keynes the Man: Hero or Villain? 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.560 First of all, I want to launch a preemptive strike against any critics 2 00:00:05.560 --> 00:00:10.960 by, I might accuse this talk of being ad hominem. 3 00:00:10.960 --> 00:00:14.160 First place, the ad hominem fallacy is that you attack, 4 00:00:14.160 --> 00:00:18.880 instead of attacking the doctrine of the person, you attack the person. 5 00:00:18.880 --> 00:00:22.520 And that's fallacious, because that doesn't refute the argument. 6 00:00:22.520 --> 00:00:25.800 I've never been in favor of that, I've always been in favor of refuting the doctrine, 7 00:00:25.800 --> 00:00:28.680 then going on to attack the person. 8 00:00:28.680 --> 00:00:33.680 That's not an Helmandian fallacy. 9 00:00:33.680 --> 00:00:39.680 Also, what I'm going to talk about, the person of Keynes I think is related directly to his ideas. 10 00:00:39.680 --> 00:00:46.680 And so I think it's also important historically what sort of person he was and how that did relate to his ideas. 11 00:00:46.680 --> 00:00:52.680 Okay, first I'm going to start by saying that Keynes' favorite political philosopher might surprise many of you. 12 00:00:52.680 --> 00:00:59.080 So who it was? It was Edmund Burke. An interesting question, why was Edmund Burke? 13 00:00:59.080 --> 00:01:05.480 Here's somebody who was Edmund Burke, the darling of conservatives or neoconservatives or whatever. 14 00:01:05.480 --> 00:01:11.080 And here's Keynes, who was certainly not conservative in that sense, one would think. 15 00:01:11.080 --> 00:01:16.680 He was a little bit more democratic than Burke. Of course, Burke was an 18th century, 16 00:01:16.680 --> 00:01:21.880 working in the 18th century political system, which was hardly democratic, so if you're more democratic 17 00:01:21.880 --> 00:01:30.380 and Berk doesn't say much. He was also thought that Berk left out some of the great political ideas or great ideologies that statesmen should pursue. 18 00:01:30.380 --> 00:01:44.880 But the three basic reasons why he liked Berk a lot, precisely by the way the three basic reasons why I dislike Berk, first place, he liked the fact that Berk was opposed to abstract principles. 19 00:01:44.880 --> 00:01:46.720 Keynes always hated principles all of his life. 20 00:01:46.720 --> 00:01:50.600 He said, one time he said in a speech or a testimony, 21 00:01:50.600 --> 00:01:54.600 I'm afraid of principle, per se, that is. 22 00:01:54.600 --> 00:01:55.560 And he was against principles, 23 00:01:55.560 --> 00:01:58.080 he particularly was against individual rights. 24 00:01:58.080 --> 00:01:59.800 And of course, Burke was against individual rights. 25 00:01:59.800 --> 00:02:05.720 Burke believed in expediency against abstract or natural rights. 26 00:02:05.720 --> 00:02:09.080 And this is one of the great reasons why Keynes liked them. 27 00:02:09.080 --> 00:02:10.680 Now there are certain Burke's theorists who claim 28 00:02:10.680 --> 00:02:13.680 that Burke really did believe in individual rights. 29 00:02:13.680 --> 00:02:14.520 I don't agree with them, 30 00:02:14.520 --> 00:02:17.360 But the point is, I'm talking about why Keynes liked Burke. 31 00:02:19.360 --> 00:02:21.720 So Keynes liked Burke, one, because he was against principles 32 00:02:21.720 --> 00:02:25.920 and particularly against abstract individual rights. 33 00:02:25.920 --> 00:02:30.040 Two, he liked Burke because Burke was in favor 34 00:02:30.040 --> 00:02:33.780 of focusing on present goods 35 00:02:33.780 --> 00:02:36.600 and ignoring future benefits, future goals. 36 00:02:36.600 --> 00:02:37.920 In other words, Burke's conservatism, 37 00:02:37.920 --> 00:02:39.120 the fact that Burke didn't like the idea 38 00:02:39.120 --> 00:02:41.000 of any kind of change or radical change 39 00:02:41.000 --> 00:02:43.320 because he worried about future consequences, 40 00:02:43.320 --> 00:02:50.820 which we wouldn't know, this is a short-term position of course. This fits in with Keynes' admiration for the short run and hatred of the long run. 41 00:02:50.820 --> 00:03:02.320 So Keynes' idea that in the long run we're all dead fits in with a Birkin idea that you should concentrate on current, present questions or present costs and not worry about, not consider future benefits too much. 42 00:03:02.320 --> 00:03:12.820 So in other words, essentially, Burke's political philosophy was a high time preference philosophy as was Keynes' whole outlook, which is very much a favorite, present benefits, 43 00:03:12.820 --> 00:03:16.660 and its present goods as against future. 44 00:03:16.660 --> 00:03:18.140 As Keynes put it, quote, 45 00:03:18.140 --> 00:03:21.500 it is the paramount duty of governments 46 00:03:21.500 --> 00:03:24.180 and of politicians to secure the well-being of the community 47 00:03:24.180 --> 00:03:26.460 under the case in the present 48 00:03:26.460 --> 00:03:30.100 and not to run risks over much for the future. 49 00:03:30.100 --> 00:03:32.060 So the present orientation fits into the same 50 00:03:32.060 --> 00:03:36.220 as Keynes's short-run orientation. 51 00:03:36.220 --> 00:03:39.660 Thirdly, he admired the fact that Burke believed and ruled 52 00:03:39.660 --> 00:03:45.760 by an organic, organically arrived at elite, a ruling class, a ruling elite of a British 53 00:03:45.760 --> 00:03:47.060 establishment big shots. 54 00:03:47.060 --> 00:03:52.060 Of course, since Keynes was a British establishment big shot, this fit in beautifully with Keynes's 55 00:03:52.060 --> 00:03:53.060 world outlook. 56 00:03:53.060 --> 00:03:58.460 As Keynes, to quote Keynes, the machine itself, I mean the British state, the machine itself 57 00:03:58.460 --> 00:04:04.700 he believed, I'm quoting from Skidelsky on Keynes, the machine itself he believed to 58 00:04:04.700 --> 00:04:09.180 be sound enough if only the ability and integrity of those in charge of it could be assured 59 00:04:09.180 --> 00:04:14.580 That's the key, and somebody said that this week, this weekend, that who cares about, 60 00:04:14.580 --> 00:04:18.020 I mean, the state is great, who cares about, you shouldn't have restrictions on government 61 00:04:18.020 --> 00:04:19.020 rule. 62 00:04:19.020 --> 00:04:21.940 The state is great provided that we know the people in charge of it are great guys, people 63 00:04:21.940 --> 00:04:26.420 of integrity and ability, etc., etc., which of course means that organically arrived that 64 00:04:26.420 --> 00:04:30.980 British ruling elite, i.e. himself. 65 00:04:30.980 --> 00:04:40.500 Okay, so these three things I think Mark Keynes threw out his life, short run, attack on principles 66 00:04:40.500 --> 00:04:46.340 and individual rights and belief in the ruling elite with himself among it. 67 00:04:46.340 --> 00:04:52.460 Okay, Keynes starts off, first of all his whole life was born with a silver spoon in 68 00:04:52.460 --> 00:04:57.900 his mouth so to speak, his father was a big shot at Cambridge, John Neville Keynes was 69 00:04:57.900 --> 00:05:01.140 He was a controller at Cambridge for many years. 70 00:05:01.140 --> 00:05:05.220 He was also very important for Keynes's development and career. 71 00:05:05.220 --> 00:05:08.940 His father was a close friend of Alfred Marshall. 72 00:05:08.940 --> 00:05:11.380 And also, Marshall had certain obligations. 73 00:05:11.380 --> 00:05:15.900 He felt he had certain obligations to Keynes, namely the Neville. 74 00:05:15.900 --> 00:05:19.140 Because apparently, Neville was a close friend of Keynes, 75 00:05:19.140 --> 00:05:22.580 a promising scholar, but never accomplished much. 76 00:05:22.580 --> 00:05:24.060 The scholarly output was almost nil. 77 00:05:24.060 --> 00:05:25.820 He wrote a book on methodology, which 78 00:05:25.820 --> 00:05:29.820 which was sort of a pedestrian book of methodology and it didn't write anything else. 79 00:05:29.820 --> 00:05:34.820 And as well if it happens in academia, if you can't write anything, you go into academic administration. 80 00:05:34.820 --> 00:05:39.820 So he became a controller, financial controller of Cambridge. 81 00:05:39.820 --> 00:05:46.820 So Marshall always felt that, and Marshall was not in his own right, I'm not going to go into that, but anyway, 82 00:05:46.820 --> 00:05:51.820 Marshall always felt that he had a certain extra obligation to Neville that he didn't have to other people 83 00:05:51.820 --> 00:06:21.820 And so this obligation went on, was placed on young Maynard. And so when Maynard got out of Cambridge and after he was a clerk in the office for a while, Marshall was going to retire, make sure that before he retired that Keynes got a post as a lecturer in economics at his old college, Keynes College, Cambridge. And half of the salary was paid by Cambridge, the other half was paid by his father. 84 00:06:21.820 --> 00:06:27.540 John Neville. So this is how Keynes started off in academia. By the way, Keynes only had 85 00:06:27.540 --> 00:06:32.340 one term in economics when he started lecturing in economics. He had only taken one course 86 00:06:32.340 --> 00:06:37.020 in martial. This apparently was not unusual at the time in British academia. It was still 87 00:06:37.020 --> 00:06:43.300 kind of peculiar. However, he knew very little economics to begin with. He had martial. He 88 00:06:43.300 --> 00:06:48.620 read martial's principles. He learned on the job, so to speak, on the job training. And 89 00:06:48.620 --> 00:06:51.220 When he read Marshall's Principles, he had Marshall's oral tradition, in other words, 90 00:06:51.220 --> 00:06:55.340 his evidence before royal commissions and his unpublished papers, and that's essentially 91 00:06:55.340 --> 00:06:58.500 it. 92 00:06:58.500 --> 00:07:03.180 A key thing about Keynes also, which has come out in recent years, he was a member and leader 93 00:07:03.180 --> 00:07:09.660 of the Secret Society of the Apostles, the Cambridge Apostles, a very powerful in-group 94 00:07:09.660 --> 00:07:10.660 at Cambridge. 95 00:07:10.660 --> 00:07:13.140 And the thing is, it wasn't just a college fraternity group. 96 00:07:13.140 --> 00:07:15.900 It met for the rest of Keynes' life. 97 00:07:15.900 --> 00:07:23.660 In other words, they have continual meetings until Keynes died to go back to Cambridge and have meetings and sessions, et cetera, et cetera. 98 00:07:23.660 --> 00:07:32.900 And his first characteristic that comes out with Keynes, Keynes' attitudes and the apostles and everywhere else, 99 00:07:32.900 --> 00:07:39.900 is in the first place, Keynes' constant emphasis on personal power and domination, 100 00:07:39.900 --> 00:07:45.500 up to brutal domination of his fellow people who are, for instance, involved. 101 00:07:45.500 --> 00:07:49.180 In other words, power and dominance were the key to his personal relationships. 102 00:07:51.180 --> 00:08:03.740 The second of all, he was very interested in philosophy. Philosophy ruled his life and the philosophy which he adopted was the philosophy of G.E. Moore. 103 00:08:03.740 --> 00:08:11.900 David Gordon has mentioned this before, but I'm now interested not so much in Moore himself, but in Keynes' interpretation of Moore and Keynes' reaction to it. 104 00:08:11.900 --> 00:08:16.900 Moore is also a Cambridge Apostle and we're all close friends in this group. 105 00:08:16.900 --> 00:08:26.900 And the philosophy which seemed to dominate Keynes was a bitter attack on bourgeois morality. 106 00:08:26.900 --> 00:08:29.900 This seems to be the key to Keynes' life and thought. 107 00:08:29.900 --> 00:08:34.900 An attack on any kind of conventional or middle class of bourgeois morality, 108 00:08:34.900 --> 00:08:38.900 both in personal matters, sexual matters and in ideological matters. 109 00:08:38.900 --> 00:08:48.900 So, it's an attack on heterosexuality's inferior, attack on thrift, attack on bourgeois family life and the whole business. 110 00:08:48.900 --> 00:08:56.900 And Schumpeter sort of alludes to this in a sort of subtle fashion by constantly talking about Keynes' childless vision. 111 00:08:56.900 --> 00:09:04.900 And so Keynes' emphasis is on the short-run hedonism and such as being a key to life. 112 00:09:04.900 --> 00:09:08.660 Life. So the attack on thrift starts from the very beginning and it's a tack and it 113 00:09:08.660 --> 00:09:13.660 recombinates in his call for the euthanasia of the Ranthier class, the mercy killing of 114 00:09:13.660 --> 00:09:20.500 the creditor class, which shows the epitome of bourgeois life, the thrifty creditor and 115 00:09:20.500 --> 00:09:21.500 thrifty saver. 116 00:09:21.500 --> 00:09:28.420 Okay, his interpretation of G.E. Moore, they keep referring, they will know more than I 117 00:09:28.420 --> 00:09:33.420 do about this, they keep referring to Moore as a pure, more tremendous personal charisma 118 00:09:33.420 --> 00:09:38.420 with Keynes and everybody else, and he keeps referring to it as the purity of his intellect. 119 00:09:38.420 --> 00:09:41.420 In fact, he was pure, sort of like a living embodiment of pure intellect. 120 00:09:41.420 --> 00:09:45.420 He had no small talk, he would make sort of crazed statements. 121 00:09:45.420 --> 00:09:48.420 To me, he sounds like a nutty poser, but what do I know? 122 00:09:48.420 --> 00:09:51.420 It wasn't, he's not my type of guy. 123 00:09:51.420 --> 00:09:56.420 At any rate, he seemed to impress everybody else at King's College, Cambridge. 124 00:09:56.420 --> 00:10:01.420 And when Moore wrote the Procipia Ethica in 1903, 125 00:10:01.420 --> 00:10:05.980 Keynes said in retrospect and said at the time, so we have two checks here, in other words, 126 00:10:05.980 --> 00:10:09.300 he said, this is the great revelation, a recording from Keynes, 127 00:10:09.300 --> 00:10:14.020 the book was exciting, exhilarating, the beginning of a new renaissance, the opening of a new heaven on earth. 128 00:10:14.020 --> 00:10:17.820 Talking about Keynes' millennialism, that's an interesting phrase here. 129 00:10:17.820 --> 00:10:24.780 That's what he said in retrospect about 30 years later when he was talking about Rokipi Ethica. 130 00:10:24.780 --> 00:10:28.660 At the time he said it was stupendous and trancing, the greatest book on the subject, 131 00:10:28.660 --> 00:10:32.180 Wondrous and Original, A True Theory of Ethics. 132 00:10:35.380 --> 00:10:38.980 It seems to be that the true theory of ethics basically wasn't, 133 00:10:38.980 --> 00:10:41.220 at least the way Keynes interpreted it, 134 00:10:41.220 --> 00:10:45.940 was a rejection of bourgeois morality and rejection of any kind of general rules. 135 00:10:45.940 --> 00:10:48.900 Keynes hated most of all in life as general rules 136 00:10:48.900 --> 00:10:52.100 and ethical rules or any sort of, any other sort of rules and 137 00:10:52.100 --> 00:10:58.660 Therefore, an emphasis on personal whim, personal caprice, personal will. 138 00:10:58.660 --> 00:11:02.020 I think it fits in with Keynes's entire will to power. 139 00:11:02.020 --> 00:11:05.060 And he felt that any general rules were limiting, 140 00:11:05.060 --> 00:11:09.620 limited the freedom to power on the part of the individual. 141 00:11:09.620 --> 00:11:16.900 So the shift of personal ethics, personal friendship, personal love, personal beauty, 142 00:11:16.900 --> 00:11:19.220 contemplation of beauty and things of that sort, 143 00:11:19.220 --> 00:11:21.460 is against obeying any sort of general rules. 144 00:11:22.100 --> 00:11:38.100 Moore, by the way, this sort of interesting reflection of the Moore's attack on bourgeois morality or any kind of moral principle. 145 00:11:38.100 --> 00:11:47.100 One of his famous statements was, from Moore, quote, we should spread skepticism until at last everyone knows we can know absolutely nothing. 146 00:11:47.100 --> 00:11:52.100 That sounds self-contradictory to me, by the way. 147 00:11:52.100 --> 00:11:59.100 And again, he stressed the perfect love and friendship as being a key, the only thing we can bank on, the only thing, the only goals in life. 148 00:11:59.100 --> 00:12:05.100 Here's the way Keynes looked back on it, on the Moore circle, years later. 149 00:12:05.100 --> 00:12:10.100 He said, we entirely repudiated a personal liability on us to obey general rules. 150 00:12:10.100 --> 00:12:13.100 This was a very important part of our faith. 151 00:12:13.100 --> 00:12:19.500 were their faiths, violently and aggressively held, and for the outer world was our most obvious and dangerous characteristic. 152 00:12:19.500 --> 00:12:24.100 We repudiated entirely customary morals, conventions, and traditional wisdom. 153 00:12:24.100 --> 00:12:33.100 We were, that is to say, in the strict sense of the term, immoralists, and at the age of 55 in the eve of World War II, 154 00:12:33.100 --> 00:12:36.340 Keynes said that the Moorite creed is still, quote, 155 00:12:36.340 --> 00:12:37.660 my religion under the surface. 156 00:12:37.660 --> 00:12:43.420 I remain and always will remain an immoralist, unquote. 157 00:12:43.420 --> 00:12:46.380 And Keynes also wrote that one of the greatest advantages 158 00:12:46.380 --> 00:12:51.380 of Moor's theory is it made morals unnecessary. 159 00:12:51.380 --> 00:12:54.140 There's some interesting comments on the Moorite circle, 160 00:12:54.140 --> 00:12:55.260 including Keynes at the time. 161 00:12:55.260 --> 00:12:58.380 Beatrice Webb, talking about Moor and the Moor people, 162 00:12:58.380 --> 00:12:59.860 of course, she knew them very well, 163 00:12:59.860 --> 00:13:01.940 she said the whole doctrine, the whole ethical doctrine 164 00:13:01.940 --> 00:13:10.940 They Pursued was, quote, nothing but a metaphysical justification for doing what you like, doing what you like, and what other people disapprove of, unquote. 165 00:13:10.940 --> 00:13:20.940 Also a very keen insight, I think, of the Moore circle, Bertrand Russell was also an apostle, Cambridge apostle, and knew these people very well. 166 00:13:20.940 --> 00:13:25.940 And what he said is that Keynes and the other group, Keynes, Strachey and the other Moore people, quote, 167 00:13:25.940 --> 00:13:33.860 aim rather at a life of retirement among fine shades and nuanced and nice feelings, 168 00:13:33.860 --> 00:13:44.980 and conceived of the good as consisting of the passionate mutual admirations of a clique of the elite." 169 00:13:44.980 --> 00:13:50.980 I think it's a beautiful summation of Morite doctrine and Morite practice at the time. 170 00:13:50.980 --> 00:13:55.860 The passionate mutual admirations of a clique of the elite. Of course, they were the clique of the elite. 171 00:13:55.860 --> 00:14:04.060 One interesting thing is, apparently, Keynes also said that one chapter in Moore's Prokipa Ethica, which they ignored, 172 00:14:04.060 --> 00:14:08.180 was his, I think, 10th ultimate chapter called Ethics in Relation to Conduct, 173 00:14:08.180 --> 00:14:12.340 when Moore tries to set up general rules, and this is, of course, they disregarded. 174 00:14:12.340 --> 00:14:22.380 So, now another fascinating thing in the Skudelsky book about Keynes is, apparently, as David mentioned, 175 00:14:22.380 --> 00:14:29.380 The first, from 1904 to 1914, I believe it is, 176 00:14:29.380 --> 00:14:32.780 Keynes' whole leisure time was devoted to his treatise on probability, 177 00:14:32.780 --> 00:14:34.780 thinking about probability and writing the book. 178 00:14:34.780 --> 00:14:38.580 The book was published in 1921 but was written before the war. 179 00:14:38.580 --> 00:14:42.980 So, and apparently the reason why he arrived at this was, 180 00:14:42.980 --> 00:14:44.780 he was trying to destroy general rules. 181 00:14:44.780 --> 00:14:47.980 In other words, basically he was trying to destroy the idea of general rules of conduct 182 00:14:47.980 --> 00:14:52.620 and general causal rules in general. 183 00:14:52.620 --> 00:14:57.260 So Moore had apparently fallen back on a frequentist theory of probability. 184 00:14:57.260 --> 00:15:02.540 In other words, he fell back on a probabilistic causal doctrine 185 00:15:02.540 --> 00:15:06.780 where you say, well, at least something is probable and therefore you go on that basis. 186 00:15:06.780 --> 00:15:13.740 So Keynes being against the idea of a realistic cause and effect in the real world, 187 00:15:13.740 --> 00:15:17.100 came to the conclusion, no, now we have to eliminate the frequentist theory 188 00:15:17.100 --> 00:15:19.740 because at least that's too realistic. 189 00:15:19.740 --> 00:15:23.020 We have to claim the probability theory is purely logical and a priori. 190 00:15:23.020 --> 00:15:26.140 So we have an a priori logic, which then has no relation to the real world. 191 00:15:26.140 --> 00:15:29.820 There's no relation to individual instances. 192 00:15:29.820 --> 00:15:39.100 So even if, for example, let's say the probability of a two-spot on a dice is one-sixth, 193 00:15:39.100 --> 00:15:44.220 on a die is one-sixth, you have to say there's nothing to do with individual dice throwing. 194 00:15:44.220 --> 00:15:50.220 So this cuts any relationship, so the probability is pure logical a priorism, has nothing to do with the real world. 195 00:15:50.220 --> 00:15:55.220 This eliminates any threat, the real world might be governed in some sense by general rules. 196 00:15:55.220 --> 00:16:02.220 So in other words, this whole treatise on probabilities is essentially part of a more right attack on general principles, general rules. 197 00:16:08.220 --> 00:16:13.220 By the way, Richard von Mises, Ludwig von Mises' brother, was the great developer of the Frequent Mysteries of Probability. 198 00:16:13.220 --> 00:16:20.220 And Ludwig took it over in Human Action. He apparently disliked his brother Intensely, but did not really admit it. 199 00:16:20.220 --> 00:16:25.220 But I think that's pretty clear. 200 00:16:25.220 --> 00:16:33.220 Okay, having done this, and by the way, another thing about Haynes' personal and ideological cultural life is, 201 00:16:33.220 --> 00:16:38.220 he gets involved in the 19-teens in that period, and also in the 1920s in the Bloomsbury set. 202 00:16:38.220 --> 00:16:41.220 I think David mentioned this yesterday, or somebody else. 203 00:16:41.220 --> 00:16:46.220 Now, what I said was also, Virginia Woolf and Leonard Woolf and Vanessa Bell and all these people, 204 00:16:46.220 --> 00:16:51.220 was mostly King's College and other Cambridge people, almost all of them, the males, of course, were Cambridge people, 205 00:16:51.220 --> 00:16:56.220 and even the females were going to, I think, Pemberton College in Cambridge. 206 00:16:56.220 --> 00:17:00.220 And their whole life and their whole writings were essentially attacks on bourgeois morality. 207 00:17:00.220 --> 00:17:02.220 It was the whole point of the whole business. 208 00:17:02.220 --> 00:17:10.220 And so it all fits into the King's person and lifestyle and ideology. 209 00:17:10.220 --> 00:17:40.220 In 1913, he gets his first, he's become, he's been on the, I should say, first place, he was in the, worked in the India office before he gets back to Cambridge, Keynes, in 19, he graduates in 1906 and he goes into the India office as a clerk and goes back in 1908, gets his position, partially paid for by his father, and he becomes an India currency and finance expert and a typical, this by the way, of course, is typical of British attitude toward India in general. 210 00:17:40.220 --> 00:17:49.220 and all of his work in the Indy office, he had never expressed the slightest interest whatsoever in the Indians and the British imperialism, Indian colonialism, anything of that sort. 211 00:17:49.220 --> 00:17:54.220 The idea of British rule as a natural development, you just assumed it. 212 00:17:54.220 --> 00:17:59.220 He also showed no interest whatsoever in ever visiting India as an Indy expert. 213 00:17:59.220 --> 00:18:09.220 This is by the way typical also of James Mill and John Stuart Mill, both Indy experts, both rulers of the East India Company, never had any intention whatsoever of visiting India. 214 00:18:09.220 --> 00:18:11.220 in India, what was important to visit it. 215 00:18:11.220 --> 00:18:17.220 At any rate, as Joseph Salerno said, he was from the very beginning against the gold standard 216 00:18:17.220 --> 00:18:21.220 in favor of managed credit and expansionary credit. 217 00:18:21.220 --> 00:18:25.220 In 1913 he gets his first big government post 218 00:18:25.220 --> 00:18:29.220 on the Royal Commission on Indian Finance and Currency 219 00:18:29.220 --> 00:18:37.220 and he's put in there by his friend Edwin Montague, who was his patron and mentor way back in college. 220 00:18:37.220 --> 00:18:44.220 And he writes his defense of the gold exchange standard as a reaction to the great Montague silver scandal at the time. 221 00:18:44.220 --> 00:18:50.220 Montague and his relatives and friends and a whole bunch of other people were involved in a big scandal. 222 00:18:50.220 --> 00:18:56.220 And he defended the scandal and tried to defend them as an honorable, honest citizen of the separate. 223 00:18:56.220 --> 00:19:02.220 At any rate, and this Indian currency is part of that move, 224 00:19:02.220 --> 00:19:07.220 And of course, he calls for the gradual elimination of the gold standard, as Joe said. 225 00:19:07.220 --> 00:19:11.220 There's an interesting phrase here in his book. He's in his book, Indian Finance and Currency. 226 00:19:11.220 --> 00:19:17.220 He says, gold is, quote, a relic of a time when governments were less trustworthy in these matters than they are now. 227 00:19:17.220 --> 00:19:25.220 In other words, what you need is good people, trustworthy people to run the thing, and then you don't have to have a gold standard. 228 00:19:25.220 --> 00:19:30.220 Trustworthy people, of course, meaning the English ruling elite, that is, including himself. 229 00:19:30.220 --> 00:19:34.220 This of course then we get in the general theory that gold was a barbarous relic. 230 00:19:38.220 --> 00:19:51.220 He also called in a book for a central bank in India, bussings of a central bank, and again he wanted a discretionary monetary policy which would not be limited by general rules. 231 00:19:51.220 --> 00:19:54.220 It was a key thing, a theme in Keynesian doctrine. 232 00:19:54.220 --> 00:20:08.220 And as a result of this, he gets to know Sir Basil Blackwell, the secretary of the Royal Commission, and indeed, I guess, when World War I comes, he immediately gets a key post in the Treasury, and goes on to make a fame and fortune. 233 00:20:08.220 --> 00:20:27.220 Okay, next theme I think I want to stress in Keynesian doctrine, in Keynesian life and doctrine, is his personal arrogance, incredibly arrogant, which goes along with his will to power, and including in his arrogance is his willingness to have a systemic use of lies and deceit in order to gain his ends. 234 00:20:27.220 --> 00:20:37.220 One of the things, by the way, which had been noted at the time and now, is this quick change of viewpoint. 235 00:20:37.220 --> 00:20:41.220 He was a passionate free trader for a long time, then he suddenly becomes a passionate protectionist, 236 00:20:41.220 --> 00:20:46.220 then he shifts back to passion of free trade, and he was attacked in the English press in the early 1930s 237 00:20:46.220 --> 00:20:52.220 for being an economic acrobat, India rubber man, and a boneless man for this swift change of position. 238 00:20:52.220 --> 00:20:56.220 First of all, in all these positions, he was in favor of government management, 239 00:20:56.220 --> 00:21:03.220 And second of all, of course, the book of power to him is much more important than these rules, which can be shifted at will. 240 00:21:03.220 --> 00:21:08.220 In fact, he went so far as to attack truth and politics in general. 241 00:21:08.220 --> 00:21:11.220 There's a quote from Keynes, 242 00:21:11.220 --> 00:21:18.220 A preference for truth or for sincerity as a method may be a prejudice based on some aesthetic or personal standard, 243 00:21:18.220 --> 00:21:22.220 inconsistent in politics with the general, with the practical good. 244 00:21:22.220 --> 00:21:34.220 So people's liking of truth is just some sort of queer aesthetic and obviously comes back to bourgeois morality which should be tossed over by statesmen who want to engage in public welfare. 245 00:21:34.220 --> 00:21:44.220 Also there's a hint there that Keynes was in favor of exaggeration and lies while he was out of power. When he gets into power he wants to be more prudent. 246 00:21:44.220 --> 00:21:52.220 He says at one point, words ought to be a little wild, but after he gets into power, quote, there should be no more poetic license. 247 00:21:58.220 --> 00:22:09.220 Harry Johnson points out in his book on Keynes that Keynes was always convinced on any issue whatsoever, whatever it happens to be, that no one was doing anything about it, regardless of how serious the problem was. 248 00:22:09.220 --> 00:22:15.220 No one else was doing anything about it. If they were, they were wrong. Only Keynes was right, and he conceivable question. 249 00:22:15.220 --> 00:22:22.220 So Keynes was right on every question, not because he had general consistent principles, because we've seen he hasn't, but because he was right. 250 00:22:22.220 --> 00:22:26.220 He was the superior, elite person with the will to power. 251 00:22:32.220 --> 00:22:38.220 He believed apparently, I'll just call Keynes an egomaniac. He believed he could conquer any problem quickly. 252 00:22:38.220 --> 00:22:58.220 He told Hayek at the end of his life that if his disciples went too far with inflation and public debt, he could always change things around, he'd just snap his fingers and everything would shift. 253 00:22:58.220 --> 00:23:03.220 Unfortunately, Hayek died and left us with his long run. 254 00:23:03.220 --> 00:23:16.340 We're now living in the Keynesian long run, he's happily dead. 255 00:23:16.340 --> 00:23:21.260 To me the most typical thing about Keynes' intellectual arrogance and intellectual irresponsibility 256 00:23:21.260 --> 00:23:27.140 was the way he reviewed Mises' Money and Credit when it came out in German. 257 00:23:27.140 --> 00:23:32.020 He was an editor of the Economic Journal for many years and as an editor he reviewed in 258 00:23:32.020 --> 00:23:36.140 in a short book note and but he said about the book was something like that 259 00:23:36.140 --> 00:23:39.980 very short he said well this is very it's a useful book the authors of the 260 00:23:39.980 --> 00:23:43.020 highest highest enlightened view something like that which I don't know 261 00:23:43.020 --> 00:23:46.060 quite what that means any with highest enlightened views but the book is a 262 00:23:46.060 --> 00:23:49.460 disappointing because there's nothing original in it that's why he summed it 263 00:23:49.460 --> 00:23:52.700 up and whatever you think of Mises Theory of Money and Credit was blazingly 264 00:23:52.700 --> 00:23:58.580 original one thing you can't say about it was just the old trite stuff so and he 265 00:23:58.580 --> 00:24:04.240 So Bryson treats us on money 20 years later in a footnote that, well, you know, he doesn't 266 00:24:04.240 --> 00:24:05.240 really know German. 267 00:24:05.240 --> 00:24:09.220 He knows German fairly well, but he only knows German enough to understand ideas that he 268 00:24:09.220 --> 00:24:10.220 already knows. 269 00:24:10.220 --> 00:24:14.540 He can't understand any new ideas in German. 270 00:24:14.540 --> 00:24:20.140 I want you to kind of play for a moment the chutzpah, the unmitigated goal of somebody 271 00:24:20.140 --> 00:24:23.540 who admits that he doesn't know German well enough to understand any new ideas and then 272 00:24:23.540 --> 00:24:25.540 I mean, attack Mises for not having any new ideas. 273 00:24:25.540 --> 00:24:34.540 I mean, only Keynes can do that. 274 00:24:34.540 --> 00:24:41.540 Okay, also, I think his, certainly his strategy in the general theory was that of a chronic liar. 275 00:24:41.540 --> 00:24:43.540 I think there's no other way you can put it. 276 00:24:43.540 --> 00:24:45.540 For example, he says in the general theory, and he talks about the history of thought, 277 00:24:45.540 --> 00:24:47.540 which he does quite a bit in there, 278 00:24:47.540 --> 00:24:51.540 that nobody before him even worried about unemployment, much less thought about it. 279 00:24:51.540 --> 00:24:57.540 He was the only one, he, John Maynard Keynes, the only one ever to think about unemployment and worry about it, think about the solution. 280 00:24:57.540 --> 00:25:03.540 He lived in a time, of course, that everybody before him he called classical economists, the sneer. 281 00:25:03.540 --> 00:25:11.540 He lived in a time when Hayek and Hayek's doctrines had become important precisely because it had tackled the unemployment problem, whether you read with it or not. 282 00:25:11.540 --> 00:25:18.540 He knew that Austria, he knew about Austria in theory, at least tackling unemployment problem, he knew about the Pigou and so forth talking about unemployment, 283 00:25:18.540 --> 00:25:21.540 And he had the goal to claim he was the first one ever thinking about it. 284 00:25:21.540 --> 00:25:26.540 And unfortunately, most economists since Keynes are not steeped in the history of economic thought. 285 00:25:26.540 --> 00:25:28.540 It's not one of the great strengths of the profession. 286 00:25:28.540 --> 00:25:33.540 It died out almost because as the economists began to think of economics as like physics, 287 00:25:33.540 --> 00:25:37.540 if you're a physicist, you don't really bother dealing with 18th century physics. 288 00:25:37.540 --> 00:25:39.540 And so he got away with it. 289 00:25:39.540 --> 00:25:43.540 He managed to persuade most of the profession and nobody before Keynes worried about unemployment 290 00:25:43.540 --> 00:25:48.540 The theory has only been around any solution to offer, any theory to offer about it. 291 00:25:48.540 --> 00:25:54.540 That, I think, is the most flagrant case of an obvious lie. There's no way you can get around that. 292 00:25:54.540 --> 00:26:02.540 And he also lied about Say's law. 293 00:26:02.540 --> 00:26:08.540 And again, everybody takes this as gospel. Everybody defines Say's law, cites it as being, 294 00:26:08.540 --> 00:26:13.540 Supply creates its own demand. That is not Say's law. First of all, Say, of course, never even said anything like it. 295 00:26:13.540 --> 00:26:20.540 But the point is that Say's law, as Hutt points out, is that the supply of X constitutes a demand for Y, Z, etc. 296 00:26:20.540 --> 00:26:27.540 It's not that the supply of peaches creates a demand for peaches. The supply of peaches creates a demand for other products. 297 00:26:27.540 --> 00:26:35.540 A peach seller will then buy other things. So by misstating Say's law and making it seem like a loony law, you then, of course, can easily refute it. 298 00:26:35.540 --> 00:26:37.540 The Strongman Tactic 299 00:26:37.540 --> 00:26:42.540 And unfortunately, most historians of economic thought have taken this as gospel. 300 00:26:42.540 --> 00:26:47.540 Gee, Say's law says, the only thing they've done since Keynes is to put it in the math. 301 00:26:47.540 --> 00:26:50.540 Put Say's law in the math. Say's did not use any mathematics. 302 00:26:50.540 --> 00:26:55.540 Say was a very sound on the mathematical economics question. 303 00:26:55.540 --> 00:27:01.540 He also said that while this might not have lied about this, he might have been honestly in error about Malthus. 304 00:27:01.540 --> 00:27:11.540 Malthus was a pre-Keynesian, it's true, he was worried about underconsumption, but he was only a pre-Keynesian for about three years, after the Napoleonic Wars and the recession, after that. 305 00:27:11.540 --> 00:27:19.540 After that he bounced back and robbed the underconsumption stuff, so anyway, you can give him a possible lie out of that, but you can't prove it. 306 00:27:31.540 --> 00:27:49.380 Okay, now we get to Keynes' personal style, in addition to his systemic lying in the seat, 307 00:27:49.380 --> 00:27:50.380 etc. 308 00:27:50.380 --> 00:27:52.180 His personal style is kind of very interesting. 309 00:27:52.180 --> 00:27:57.500 Basically, as the Johnsons point out, he flattered his students outrageously. 310 00:27:57.500 --> 00:28:01.420 If you were a student, he'd say any dumb thing you said, he'd say, yes, there's a great point 311 00:28:01.420 --> 00:28:10.420 There's a very charming and flattering of students, thereby gathering their loyalty and it was vicious to any of his colleagues and public. 312 00:28:10.420 --> 00:28:16.420 In other words, he denounced, he showed up his colleagues being stupid in front of their common students. 313 00:28:16.420 --> 00:28:28.420 Probably the most vicious single thing he's done, I'm not an expert on how vicious he was, but at least to me, one of the most single vicious things that Keynes did was the way he treated his old buddy, Dennis Robertson, D.H. Robertson, 314 00:28:28.420 --> 00:28:34.220 was a former student and colleague at Cambridge, was a much better economist than Keynes. 315 00:28:34.220 --> 00:28:37.520 But one of the things about Robertson was he was extremely and painfully shy, 316 00:28:37.520 --> 00:28:41.820 even in a period of very shy academics, of eccentrics and all that. 317 00:28:41.820 --> 00:28:46.420 He stood out, almost pathologically shy. 318 00:28:46.420 --> 00:28:49.320 For example, Robertson would write out all of his lectures. 319 00:28:49.320 --> 00:28:50.720 That was often done in those days. 320 00:28:50.720 --> 00:28:52.120 He'd write every word out. 321 00:28:52.120 --> 00:28:54.120 He refused to take any questions whatsoever. 322 00:28:54.120 --> 00:28:57.620 He wouldn't talk to anybody, the key thing for Robertson. 323 00:28:57.620 --> 00:29:03.260 And then, in those days, the inter-Cambridge mail system was extremely efficient. 324 00:29:03.260 --> 00:29:05.540 There'd be like three mail services a day. 325 00:29:05.540 --> 00:29:07.540 So a lot of people wrote notes to each other, 326 00:29:07.540 --> 00:29:09.940 but his secretary was right next to him. 327 00:29:09.940 --> 00:29:12.660 He'd never speak to a secretary, just write a message to her, 328 00:29:12.660 --> 00:29:14.420 leave it on her desk. 329 00:29:14.420 --> 00:29:16.380 So this poor guy, and a very sweet guy, 330 00:29:16.380 --> 00:29:21.980 obviously filled with gentle quotes from Alice in Wonderland, things like that. 331 00:29:21.980 --> 00:29:25.700 And so Keynes, of course, knowing this, exploiting Robertson's weakness, 332 00:29:25.700 --> 00:29:36.700 and set his students and intellectual thugs on Robertson to harass him, denounce him, heckle him and so forth, it's just horrible, it's a systematic torture for Robertson. 333 00:29:36.700 --> 00:29:42.700 Joan Robertson is one of the people involved in this escapade. 334 00:29:42.700 --> 00:29:53.700 So I think that sort of sums up in many ways Keynes' character, brutality and sadism of his character. 335 00:29:53.700 --> 00:29:58.700 Okay, one of the things I want to point out about the general theory, I don't think it's been pointed out enough. 336 00:29:58.700 --> 00:30:03.700 He really has a certain sociology, an economic sociology and general theory. 337 00:30:03.700 --> 00:30:06.700 It's been sort of alluded to here this weekend. 338 00:30:06.700 --> 00:30:12.700 He sets up three social classes, basically, the key to his general theory, the three social classes and classes in society. 339 00:30:12.700 --> 00:30:21.700 One is the consumers. Consumers are a nice guy, their consumer spending is important, but they're dumb, they're robots, they're passive, determined robots. 340 00:30:21.700 --> 00:30:25.700 and they're... they're... they're... they're con... 341 00:30:25.700 --> 00:30:31.700 they might be lovable in a way, but they're stupid and passive and robots. 342 00:30:31.700 --> 00:30:36.700 Then you have the investors, that's the second category, second social category. 343 00:30:36.700 --> 00:30:42.700 Investors are not robots, they have free will. They're dynamic, they have free will, they're interesting people and so forth, 344 00:30:42.700 --> 00:30:49.700 but they're irrational, they're crazy, they're loonies, they're creatures of mood, they're optimists and pessimists, 345 00:30:49.700 --> 00:30:56.700 The National Income and Output 346 00:31:19.700 --> 00:31:25.580 and not determined by anything, and governments, in contrast to being erratic and moody, as 347 00:31:25.580 --> 00:31:30.420 the investors are, are rational, they're supremely rational, especially, of course, if they're 348 00:31:30.420 --> 00:31:37.540 guided by top economists like Keynes, the philosopher or king, or the philosopher guiding the king. 349 00:31:37.540 --> 00:31:43.420 And so the philosopher or king can step in and correct the moods of the investors. The 350 00:31:43.420 --> 00:31:46.700 investors wake up one morning, they're too pessimistic, they don't invest enough, the 351 00:31:46.700 --> 00:31:55.700 The government steps in and spends. If the investors are too little, too manic, and they invest too much, the government steps in and taxes them, or us. 352 00:31:55.700 --> 00:32:03.700 And so the government is the wise governor, or balancing machine in the system, since they're wise and supremely rational. 353 00:32:03.700 --> 00:32:09.700 By the way, that's the reason why government spending in the Keynesian National Income Statistics is always considered similar to investment. 354 00:32:09.700 --> 00:32:14.700 It's honorary investment. Whatever the government does is investing because they have free will. 355 00:32:14.700 --> 00:32:21.340 Well, and so a contrast of consumers or a robotically determined. So once one points 356 00:32:21.340 --> 00:32:27.140 this out, I don't think we have to gauge too much to see the fallacy of this, of this assumption. 357 00:32:27.140 --> 00:32:43.900 Okay, we now get to Keynes's political philosophy, which I'm going to do too much so far, and it 358 00:32:43.900 --> 00:32:47.640 It hasn't been stressed enough, I think, in the literature. 359 00:32:47.640 --> 00:32:50.600 For one thing, there's the famous, one key to Keynes' 360 00:32:50.600 --> 00:32:55.880 local philosophy is Keynes' foreword to his German edition. 361 00:32:55.880 --> 00:32:57.340 This is not even mentioned by Harrod. 362 00:32:57.340 --> 00:32:58.420 I don't know if Skadelsky would mention it. 363 00:32:58.420 --> 00:33:01.120 I think Skadelsky is a very good historian so far. 364 00:33:01.120 --> 00:33:02.940 But Harrod's allegedly definitive life of Keynes 365 00:33:02.940 --> 00:33:04.940 is not a single mention of the fact 366 00:33:04.940 --> 00:33:08.600 that shortly after the book, General Theory came out in 1936, 367 00:33:08.600 --> 00:33:10.500 Keynes wrote a foreword for the German edition, 368 00:33:10.500 --> 00:33:12.380 which came out in late 36. 369 00:33:12.380 --> 00:33:42.380 came out very quickly after the English edition, and he writes this forward which has only been translated by obscure subversives in the United States like Henry Hazliff and Jim Morton, and I mean it's in German for those who want to check the translation, anyway he says in there, he's talking now about the German regime as of 1936, in the words of the Nazi regime, he says, quote, the theory of aggregate production, which is the point of the following book, The General Theory, 370 00:33:42.380 --> 00:33:53.380 Nevertheless can be much easier adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state than the theory of production and distribution of a given production put forth under conditions of free competition and a large degree of laissez-faire. 371 00:33:53.380 --> 00:34:06.380 This is one of the reasons I call my theory a general theory. In other words, the theory is general for one reason, because it's better suited to a totalitarian state if it can put it into effect into a rotten free competitive society. 372 00:34:06.380 --> 00:34:15.380 So he looked at the Nazi regime and thought, this is great. It's beautifully suited to put Keynesian doctrine into effect, which indeed it was. 373 00:34:15.380 --> 00:34:28.380 In addition to that, in 1930, Keynes was extremely interested in Sir Oswald Mosley's fascist national economic plan, which he proposed in 1930. 374 00:34:28.380 --> 00:34:35.380 Sir Oswald Mosley set up the so-called New Party, the fascist party in the early 30s. 375 00:34:35.380 --> 00:34:40.380 Skidelsky, by the way, was not just a correct mark on this. He's not a lifelong student of Keynes. 376 00:34:40.380 --> 00:34:43.380 Before he wrote the biography of Keynes, he wrote the biography of Mosley. 377 00:34:43.380 --> 00:34:47.380 So he's particularly suited to understand the Mosley-Keynes connection. 378 00:34:47.380 --> 00:34:52.380 At any rate, so much was in favor of fascism in the early 30s. 379 00:34:52.380 --> 00:34:56.380 Virginia Woolf wrote to an old friend of hers in a letter and said, 380 00:34:56.380 --> 00:35:01.380 gee, she's afraid that Keynes might start converting her to a form of fascism. 381 00:35:01.380 --> 00:35:04.380 She felt in danger of her soul at that point. 382 00:35:04.380 --> 00:35:32.380 As for communism, King was more ambivalent. On one hand, he admired the young intellectual communists of the late 1930s because they reminded him of a typical non-conformist English gentleman who made the Reformation, fought the Great Rebellion in the 17th century, won us our civil and religious liberties, and humanized the working classes last century. 383 00:35:32.380 --> 00:35:37.180 That's an interview with a new statesman in 1939, kind of an odd way of looking at the communist party. 384 00:35:37.180 --> 00:35:44.380 On the other hand, he criticized the communists for the other side of the Reformation Great Rebellion coin, 385 00:35:44.380 --> 00:35:47.380 because they were Puritans, because they believed in bourgeois morality, 386 00:35:47.380 --> 00:35:51.380 not that too many people were more Puritan than an orthodox Stalinist type. 387 00:35:51.380 --> 00:35:55.380 So Keynes's anti-Puritanism then comes out, he says, 388 00:35:55.380 --> 00:36:01.380 he's attacking the Cambridge undergraduates who go to Russia in the 1930s and like it. 389 00:36:01.380 --> 00:36:04.700 He says, are Cambridge undergraduates disillusioned when they go to Russia, when they find it, quote, 390 00:36:04.700 --> 00:36:07.700 wretchfully uncomfortable? Of course not. That's what they're looking for. 391 00:36:07.700 --> 00:36:10.380 In other words, he's attacking communism because it's too puritanical. 392 00:36:10.380 --> 00:36:15.700 It makes people, it emphasizes austerity and lack of hedonism. 393 00:36:15.700 --> 00:36:19.900 Of course, his moral philosophy is basically hedonistic. 394 00:36:19.900 --> 00:36:24.660 And they're anti-hedonistic. They want people to shape up and rule that. 395 00:36:24.660 --> 00:36:27.740 And that's what he doesn't like. 396 00:36:27.740 --> 00:36:31.220 Another thing he doesn't like about communism, in addition to being puritanical, 397 00:36:31.220 --> 00:36:35.780 Is this proletarian? I think somebody mentioned this yesterday. 398 00:36:35.780 --> 00:36:39.460 How can I adopt such a creed, which, preferring the mud to the fish, 399 00:36:39.460 --> 00:36:43.780 exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia, 400 00:36:43.780 --> 00:36:47.540 who are the quality in life and surely carry the seeds of all human advancement? 401 00:36:47.540 --> 00:36:51.300 There I think we have a key. Who is this grubby proletariat? 402 00:36:51.300 --> 00:36:54.020 I mean, he's interested in the bourgeoisie and the intellectual means the power elite. 403 00:36:54.020 --> 00:36:58.740 That means him. I mean, he said somewhere, I think somebody mentioned this yesterday, 404 00:36:58.740 --> 00:37:01.220 When you get down to the class struggle between the bourgeois and the proletariat, 405 00:37:01.220 --> 00:37:03.140 he's a bourgeois, why should he join the proletariat? 406 00:37:03.140 --> 00:37:05.220 Oh, it's a useful, you know, it's an interesting point. 407 00:37:05.780 --> 00:37:06.500 Why, indeed. 408 00:37:07.940 --> 00:37:13.220 So, for all these reasons, he was much more attracted to fascism than he was to the communists. 409 00:37:16.900 --> 00:37:20.660 Okay, to get to, to get to Keynes the person, 410 00:37:23.140 --> 00:37:24.500 to sum up Keynes the person, 411 00:37:24.500 --> 00:37:30.160 and the, there's one attitude, I'll talk about one attitude and then I'll talk about my own, I guess. 412 00:37:30.160 --> 00:37:34.260 One is Lionel Robbins' attitude, Lionel Robbins converted to Keynesianism. 413 00:37:34.260 --> 00:37:37.900 Although a new book by O'Brien on Robbins claims he didn't really convert or he shifted back, 414 00:37:37.900 --> 00:37:42.640 but anyway, certainly he did convert in many ways in his autobiography. 415 00:37:42.640 --> 00:37:47.300 He writes about, he writes about Keynes personally, okay, and this is not, this is not irony, 416 00:37:47.300 --> 00:37:50.500 I want to point out to you, this is not being satiric here, this is straight stuff. 417 00:37:50.500 --> 00:37:58.020 This is Robbins talking about Keynes as he appeared at a pre-Bretton Woods conference, a draft conference in Atlantic City in June 1944. 418 00:37:58.020 --> 00:37:59.700 He's writing about Keynes, quote, 419 00:37:59.700 --> 00:38:03.540 Keynes was in his most lucid and persuasive mood and the effect was irresistible. 420 00:38:03.540 --> 00:38:06.580 Keynes must be one of the most remarkable men in the world, excuse me, 421 00:38:06.580 --> 00:38:08.980 one of the most remarkable men that have ever lived. 422 00:38:08.980 --> 00:38:11.020 The quick logic, the wide vision, 423 00:38:11.020 --> 00:38:13.780 above all the incomparable sense of the fitness of words, 424 00:38:13.780 --> 00:38:18.100 all combined to make something several degrees beyond the limit of ordinary human achievement. 425 00:38:20.500 --> 00:38:35.500 Only Churchill, he has, has a comparable stature, and then he says that Keynes uses the classical style of our life and language is true, but it's shot through with something which is not traditional, a unique unearthly quality of which one can only say that it's pure genius. 426 00:38:35.500 --> 00:38:41.500 The Americans sat in trance as the godlike visitor sang and the golden light played all around. 427 00:38:41.500 --> 00:38:47.500 The godlike visitor sang and the golden light played all around. That's Robinson's view of Keynes. 428 00:38:47.500 --> 00:38:52.500 Before I get to my own view, I just missed something here. I'm going to backtrack a second. 429 00:38:52.500 --> 00:39:01.500 He's also appalled the excesses of communism, and he says, he wrote about communist rule, 430 00:39:01.500 --> 00:39:07.500 in part, perhaps, it, the Soviet rule, is the fruit of some beastliness on the Russian nature, 431 00:39:07.500 --> 00:39:12.500 or on the Russian and Jewish natures, when as now they are allied together. 432 00:39:12.500 --> 00:39:19.960 Also he said he had doubts about communism. He had doubts that quote Russian communism unquote would quote make Jews less avaricious unquote 433 00:39:21.560 --> 00:39:27.720 Okay, so that's that's the godlike figure to Robin. He's the godlike figure with a golden light playing all around the halo 434 00:39:28.020 --> 00:39:30.020 I've got a slightly different assessment 435 00:39:35.380 --> 00:39:37.380 Sum up Keynes 436 00:39:37.580 --> 00:39:41.460 arrogant sadistic power powers besotted bully 437 00:39:42.500 --> 00:40:12.500 A deliberate and systemic liar, intellectually irresponsible, an opponent of principle, in favor of short-term hedonism, a nihilistic opponent of bourgeois morality in all of its areas, a hater of thrift, and saving somebody who wanted to liquidate the creditor class, exterminate the creditor class, an imperialist, an anti-Semite and a fascist. Outside of that I guess he was a great guy. 438 00:40:12.500 --> 00:40:14.500 Thank you very much.