Essays in Persuasion

Essays in Persuasion are a collection of articles and public letters published by Keynes in the 1920s and 30s. They treat mostly of economic subjects, beginning with the Versailles reparations and moving on to monetary manners, especially the return to gold, though the last fifth of the book is dedicated to political discussion (Keynes's view of Communism, the Liberal Party, hopes for a new culture in a future world of abundance...). They are a pleasure to read, spelled out with elegance and common sense and filled with humorous quips and witticisms. This compendium is for anyone who doesn't have the skills or patience to read Keynes's General Theory. It lays out the essentials of Keynesian economic thinking, in particular on inflation and unemployment, while in passing making clear a number of economic terms and issues - for example how the gold standard worked and why, and the difference with the gold `exchange' standard, something that had completely escaped me. The Essays do require a minimal understanding of economic factors (interest and exchange rates, state and trade budgets, and how they relate), but they are not technical in style and are told in plain words; Keynes's public, after all, was the average newsreader or politician. A basic historical baggage also helps: why reparations were a difficult issue, the American loans, deflation and the incipient depression; here a good introduction is perhaps lacking. Nevertheless, this is accessible to all with this minimum culture, and it is both excellent economic education and mental exercise. Finally, Keynes was a humanist, as the Essays show. He was the antithesis of the dry and unfeeling economist, and this makes for a refreshing and uplifting work. He was also human: one senses the anxiety rising as he recommended a tariff in 1931, or the misplaced relief at Britain's abandonment of the gold standard (a devaluation, with a similar effects to tariffs). And his modern relevance does not need underlining, with boom and bust and urgent monetary issues back to the fore.

It is eye-opening to read original essays by John Maynard Keynes, a person whose economic philosophy was criticized for many years, but it turns out that philosophy is applicable to today's economic problems. He writes with a casual style, so not hard to understand.

To the interested layperson John Mayanrd Keynes is known as a villain/genius responsible for the theory of governmental deficit spending in a time of economic crises. This book in a concise and understandable manner, without recourse to ponderous mathematical formulas, makes a very convincing case for the necessity of governmental intervention. When people are unwilling to spend and are hoarding cash, it is up to government to inject money into the system by means of expansionary monetary policy, either it is public works in the most dramatic case or reduced interest rates, intended to stimulate investment in a more commonplace scenario. Fiscal prudence or austerity will not lift the economy out of the slump, for a very simple reason; if everyone is saving and no one is buying, then no one is able to sell and economy is pushed further into a recession. Villilfied by countless conservatives as an endorsement of governmental intervention and subsequent domination of the people, the ideas proposed in the book are accepted by such respected institutions as the Federal Reserve and merit attention of a person, who would like to claim general economic awareness. Apart from the the discussion on public spending, there are highly informative essays on German hyperinflation of the 1920s, ruminations on Gold standard and much more; all presented with great clarity and humor, that few if any economists have mangaged to imitate.

Writing during the nineteen twenties and thirties, when the specter of socialism didn't yet haunt the Anglo-Saxon ruling elites, Keynes didn't feel his duty to sing eulogies to the free market; on the contrary, he felt his duty as an economist to propose ways through which modern society could supersede the "centrality of the money motive". The essays devoted to problems of politics in this collection, specially "A short view of Russia", "Economic perspectives for our grandchildren" and "Am I a Liberal?" are among the best things written from the liberal-conservative viewpoint on the ideological choices of our age. A must-read.

John Maynard Keynes at his most beguiling. A series of essays that have not lost their power despite the passage of 70 years or so. As a prose stylist Maynard Keynes could equal his friends Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster, and he does so in this volume. Perhaps the apogee of essay writing of the Oxford/Cambridge type, this volume has a charm that is absent from his longer works (General Theory, Tract on Monetary Reform, even the Economic Consequences of the Peace). For those people interested in hard edged macro theory, read elsewhere. For admirers of logic and clarity and the British tradition of enlightened common sense, Eureka! You have found it in this book.