Keynes the Jokester?
Filed Under: Anything Peaceful
Tags: Henry Hazlitt • Keynes • Keynesian economics
I spent much of my recent vacation reading Henry Hazlitt’s chapter-by-chapter demolition of Keynes’s The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936), The Failure of the “New Economics” (1959). I didn’t expect to read the book cover to cover, but after only a few pages I had to keep going. It is that well-written and interesting. I’m now a few pages from the end.The more I read the more I thought: Keynes was surely joking. No one in his position could really be that confused, contradictory, and ignorant of economic logic. It had to be a gag on the economics profession, an emperor-with-no-clothes experiment.Thus I smiled when I got to Hazlitt’s statement in chapter XXV, “Did Keynes Recant?” (p. 398):
Keynes was a brilliant man. Much of what he wrote he wrote in tongue-in-cheek, for the pleasure of paradox, to épater le bourgois [shock the middle class], in the spirit of Wilde, Shaw, and the Bloomsbury circle. Perhaps the whole of the General Theory was intended as a huge (400-page) joke, and Keynes was appalled to find disciples who took it all literally.
If it was a joke, Keynes helped inflict much misery and oppression on innocent people just for a laugh. I guess for the elitist Keynes, the well-being of the masses can’t be allowed to impede his bold and daring lifestyle. It is for people like him that secularists like me wish there was a place of fire and brimstone.At any rate, I highly recommend Hazlitt’s book. Don Boudreaux says that Richard Dawkins’s The Blind Watchmaker proves that any subject, no matter how complex, can be written about clearly and accessibly. I say the same about The Failure of the “New Economics.”Cross-posted at Free Association.
Comment by Wirkman Virkkala on 6 January 2009:
Droll. I read parts of Hazlitt’s book, years ago, when I was trying to come to term with Keynes. I am afraid I just skimmed it though. Is that wrong? After your review, I’m beginning to think the answer might be “yes.”What I did find helpful, way back when, were two books by W.H. Hutt: Keynesianism: Retrospect and Prospect, and A Rehabilitation of Say’s Law. That and Sowell’s book on Say’s Law were most enlightening.Now, it’s years later, and I recently began rereading Hutt’s Keynesianism. It really is a good book, and is filled with some great stories, too. His telling of the tale of Sidney Webb and “the pigs” (the union leaders) is, I think, one of the most telling anecdotes about the 20th century.Now, I’ve done something radical. I’ve started reading Say’s original book. I’m trying to work backward, comparing his discussion with later discussions from economists I’ve read previously, such as Destutt de Tracy, Frederic Bastiat, Arthur Latham Perry, and the American Amasa Walkers. I am trying to understand Say’s Law as it was understood by Say’s disciples. It seems much more interesting and profitable than trying to understand, for the umpteenth time, what Keynes made of it (hash).
Comment by Sheldon Richman on 9 January 2009:
Wirkman, I admire your research project. Keep me posted. The Freeman is always looking for top-notch material. And yes, I definitely recommend that you read Hazlitt’s book.