John Maynard Keynes: 2volume 2: The Economist as Savior, 1920-1937

If Keynes were alive today, I am sure he would subscribe to the Mark Twain quote: "Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." Keynes, the economic thinker, does live on. His many critics will be long forgotten before Keynes' ideas disappear. The absurdity of the idea of "self-regulating markets" has been exposed through the latest financial meltdown. Economics, for Keynes, is a "moral science"--not a hard science in the fashion of physics or biology. Economics is a discipline that should be mainly concerned about socio/economic outcomes. Are those outcomes justifiable in terms of economic efficiency and social justice? Are they meritocratic outcomes? Or are they simply outcomes based upon time worn traditions and the greater power of the economically privileged classes? Have we essentially traded past centuries' entitled aristocratic classes with their wealth and power for our modern day version of entitled aristocratic plutocrats? I am of the opinion that his critique of neo-classical economic theory is devastating. His warning about not trying to apply "too much precision" to ideas and concepts that are elusive and dynamic stands the test of time for me. It's too bad that contemporary economics appears to have learned so little from Keynes--or for that matter, from other critics of neo-classical capitalism such as Veblen, etc. Keynes was hardly the bogeyman that many of his reactionary critics have tried to paint him as. He was fundamentally conservative in terms of wanting to preserve capitalism. He felt that the best way to do this was to tame the worst excesses of the business cycle. Control the speculative flights on the upside of the cycles largely by monetary policy. Reduce the suffering of the working classes at the lower ends of the cycle thru fiscal and monetary policies. He wanted to civilize capitalism--not eliminate it. He was quite happy and satisfied as a privileged member of the British upper middle/upper classes. However, he also had sympathy for working class people and truly wanted a better quality of life for British working people in general. He wanted to civilize and housebreak capitalism. Modern day capitalism would be a lot better off if it had followed his prescriptive recommendations. The 3 volume set by Skidelsky is very lengthy, but certainly worth the effort if a person is very interested in life of Keynes. I was less interested in the first volume, but it lays out Keynes' early and formative years. He was a gay, intellectual aesthete in his early years. He fell in love in his middle years with Lydia, a Russian expatriate ballerina. She became his wife and love of his life for his remaining years. He was a brilliant and complicated man. Fiercely loyal and generous. Quite egotistical and insufferable at times. A hopeless snob, yet very endearing to many who came in contact with him. He was also frequently anti-American in his outlook, but that was largely a result of his pas

The second part of Prof. Skidelsky's magnificent biography of J.M. Keynes is nearly totally concentrated on economic issues. Keynes' personal life was perfectly settled after his marriage with a Russian ballerina. He continued to be in contact with the Bloomsbury group, which 'remained subversive by habit, but was anxious to retain their dividends and beauftiful houses'.In fact, this book centres on the question how Keynes came to write the 'General Theory' and its defense of governmental intervention (public investments) in the economic cycle in order to break the capitalistic slump. He proved that in a laisser-faire system an equilibrium could be formed at a far lesser level than 'natural' unemployment: 'There is work to do, there are men to do it. Why not bring them together!'We discover that Malthus was a real influential precursor with his proposition to prop up insufficient demand by public works and that Richard Kahn made a decisive contribution with his multiplyer effect.Prof. Skidelsky characterizes perfectly the 'General Theory' as a complex psychological drama with as main characters the life-denying rentier, the businessman and his fantasies and the victimized working class.Keynes' ultimate nightmare was a world were making money triumphed over making things, which is actually happening. Financial transactions are dwarfing the industrial ones and there are many more investment trusts than industrial companies in the US.The discussions after the publication of the 'General Theory' are fascinating. In fact, the debate is still red hot: inflation/deflation, the influence of the (inter)national banks, savings and (un)employment.This book is not an easy read. I recommend readers to (re)read some parts of the 'General Theory'. But this work is a fascinating tale about the (r)evolution of the ideas of the greatest economist of all times.I have only one minor remark: Ibsen is a Norwegian, not a Swede.

Keynes activities, both as an active participant of the economic life of his country and continent, and as an icon to the cultural life of his epoch and to his many friends and groups of interest, is impressive. To define him is an elusive task: philosopher?, economist?, historian?, linguist?. He was all this and much more, but he was above all a man of a very practical mind and, notwhidstanding his immense philosophical background, deeply attached to the theories of his contemporary G.E.Moore and others, he had the feeling of having a mission to accomplish, given the immense superiority his intellect had over the rest of the mortals. What was to become of Europe after the end of the First World War was foreseen by him in many essays and primarily in his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace. The task which lays ahead for him, and only him, was to warn politicians and thinkers of the impending dangers of the years to come, specially in regard to a lack of theoretical analisys to support the transition from the old economy (classicist in his jargon), which ended with the death of the great Alfred Marshall, and a new one, which he purpoted himself to establish and then save the world. And save the world he did!!! Keynes is one of this towering figures who had the opportunity to mingle himself with daily facts and change them for the better. Amid a lot of controversy and polemic regarding the originality of his ideas, he published his major opus in 1937, which was to be used against the vagaries of rampant unemployment and inflation. His General Theory of Interest , Employment and Money is a sort of tribute he pays to his father , Malthus and G.E.Moore. In the personnal side of his life, if this can be said of Keynes for his personal life was eminently devoted to cultural interests i many areas, the book portrays some important changes in his personal atitudes towards homosexuality (he abandoned) and his new life marrying the russian ballerina Ludmila.

This is vol. 2 of Skidelsky's Keynes biography (any sign of vol. 3?). It is a very enjoyable (and exhaustive) account of the most productive professional years (Bretton Woods aside) of one of the great figures of the 20th century. Keynes was the son of Victorian intellectual academic bougiousie; a star of the public school system; trained in mathematics and economics (student of Marshall); student of philosophy, then a bureaucrat in academia and government, becoming an expert in public finance as a high-ranking Treasury official during WWI; a traveller in artistic circles (later a benefactor), part of the Bloomsbury group (intimate with Duncan Grant, Virginia Woolf, etc. (to differing degrees, of course)); statistician/philosopher (his first major published work was "A Treatise on Probability"); pamphleteer ("Economic Consequences of the Peace," etc.); publisher/editor for both the popular and academic press; institutional investor; currency speculator; husband to a Russian ballet dancer; and most influential economist of the 20th century. Keynes would not be possible today.The one drawback to the Skidelsky book is that it can be slow going. Those with no background in economics should be prepared to skim sections (or work hard). If you're already familiar with the difference between Ricardo and Malthus, and how their thinking carried through Jevons, Marshall, and Marx, and can follow arguments on gold standard vs. floating exchange rates, then you should be able to breeze through.

A great book about a great man. The development of Keynes' thought is handled well, although some more discussion around possible sources of some of his ideas would have been welcome. Several books about his Bloomsbury freinds have emerged recently, and it is interesting to compare perceptions. I'm uncomfortable with Skidelsky's analysis of Keynesian theory which strikes me as too much of a shoe-horning of Keynes into a classical framework, but I'm hardly an expert. All in all a book to be savoured, and an essential item in one's library.