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John Maynard Keynes #1
John Maynard Keynes, Vol. 1: Hopes Betrayed, 1883-1920
"Hopes Betrayed" establishes Keynes' historical setting and explains what turned him into a radical economist. He gives an analysis of the economist's sustained assault on conventional wisdom, and shows how Keynes' story is not just that of a revolution in economic theory, but also part of the story of the evolution of modern government. Other books by Robert Skidelsky include "Politicians and the Slump", "The End of the Keynesian Era" and "Oswald Mosley".
480 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1983
About the author
Robert Skidelsky
62 books125 followersLord Skidelsky is Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick. His three volume biography of the economist John Maynard Keynes (1983, 1992, 2000) received numerous prizes, including the Lionel Gelber Prize for International Relations and the Council on Foreign Relations Prize for International Relations. He is the author of the The World After Communism (1995) (American edition called The Road from Serfdom). He was made a life peer in 1991, and was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 1994. He is chairman of the Govenors of Brighton College
Robert Skidelsky was born on 25 April 1939 in Harbin, Manchuria. His parents were British subjects, but of Russian ancestry. His father worked for the family firm, L. S. Skidelsky, which leased the Mulin coalmine from the Chinese government. When war broke out between Britain and Japan in December 1941, he and his parents were interned first in Manchuria then Japan, but released in exchange for Japanese internees in England.
From 1953 to 1958, he was a boarder at Brighton College (of which he is now chairman of the board of governors). He went on to read history at Jesus College, Oxford, and from 1961 to 1969, he was successively research student, senior student, and research fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. In 1967, he published his first book, Politicians and the Slump, Labour Government of 1929-31, based on his D.Phil dissertation. The book explores the ways in which British politicians handled the Great Depression.
During a two year research fellowship at the British Academy, he began work in his biography of Sir Oswald Mosley (published in 1975) and published English Progressive Schools (1969). In 1970, he became an Associate Professor at the School of Advanced International Studies, John Hopkins University. But the controversy surrounding the publication of his biography of Sir Oswald Mosley - in which he was felt to have let Mosley off too lightly - led John Hopkins University to refuse him tenure. Oxford University also proved unwilling to give him a permanent post.
In 1978, he was appointed Professor of International Studies at the University of Warwick, where he has since remained, though joining the Economics Department as Professor Political Economy in 1990. He is currently Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University.
The first volume of his biography of John Maynard Keynes, Hopes Betrayed, 1883-1920, was published in 1983. The second volume, The Economist as Saviour, 1920-1937 (1992) won the Wolfson Prize for History. The third volume, Fighting for Britain, 1937-1946 (2000) won the Duff Cooper Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography, the Lionel Gelber Prize for International Relations and the Arthur Ross Council on Foreign Relations Prize for International Relations.
Since 2003, he has been a non-executive director of the mutual fund manager, Janus Capital and Rusnano Capital; from 2008-10 he sat on the board of Sistema JSC. He is a director of the Moscow School of Political Studies and was the founder and executive secretary of the UK/Russia Round Table. Since 2002, he has been chairman of the Centre for Global Studies. In 2010, he joined the Advisory Board of the Institute of New Economic Thinking.
He writes a monthly column for Project Syndicate, "Against the Current", which is syndicated in newspapers all over the world. His account of the current economic crisis, Keynes: The Return of the Master, was published by Penguin Allen Lane in September 2009. A short history of twentieth-century Britain was published by Random House in the volume A World by Itself: A History of the British Isles edited by Jonathan Clark in January 2010. He is now in the process of writing How Much is Enough? The Economics of the Good Life jointly with his son Edward Skidelsky.
Robert Skidelsky was born on 25 April 1939 in Harbin, Manchuria. His parents were British subjects, but of Russian ancestry. His father worked for the family firm, L. S. Skidelsky, which leased the Mulin coalmine from the Chinese government. When war broke out between Britain and Japan in December 1941, he and his parents were interned first in Manchuria then Japan, but released in exchange for Japanese internees in England.
From 1953 to 1958, he was a boarder at Brighton College (of which he is now chairman of the board of governors). He went on to read history at Jesus College, Oxford, and from 1961 to 1969, he was successively research student, senior student, and research fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. In 1967, he published his first book, Politicians and the Slump, Labour Government of 1929-31, based on his D.Phil dissertation. The book explores the ways in which British politicians handled the Great Depression.
During a two year research fellowship at the British Academy, he began work in his biography of Sir Oswald Mosley (published in 1975) and published English Progressive Schools (1969). In 1970, he became an Associate Professor at the School of Advanced International Studies, John Hopkins University. But the controversy surrounding the publication of his biography of Sir Oswald Mosley - in which he was felt to have let Mosley off too lightly - led John Hopkins University to refuse him tenure. Oxford University also proved unwilling to give him a permanent post.
In 1978, he was appointed Professor of International Studies at the University of Warwick, where he has since remained, though joining the Economics Department as Professor Political Economy in 1990. He is currently Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University.
The first volume of his biography of John Maynard Keynes, Hopes Betrayed, 1883-1920, was published in 1983. The second volume, The Economist as Saviour, 1920-1937 (1992) won the Wolfson Prize for History. The third volume, Fighting for Britain, 1937-1946 (2000) won the Duff Cooper Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography, the Lionel Gelber Prize for International Relations and the Arthur Ross Council on Foreign Relations Prize for International Relations.
Since 2003, he has been a non-executive director of the mutual fund manager, Janus Capital and Rusnano Capital; from 2008-10 he sat on the board of Sistema JSC. He is a director of the Moscow School of Political Studies and was the founder and executive secretary of the UK/Russia Round Table. Since 2002, he has been chairman of the Centre for Global Studies. In 2010, he joined the Advisory Board of the Institute of New Economic Thinking.
He writes a monthly column for Project Syndicate, "Against the Current", which is syndicated in newspapers all over the world. His account of the current economic crisis, Keynes: The Return of the Master, was published by Penguin Allen Lane in September 2009. A short history of twentieth-century Britain was published by Random House in the volume A World by Itself: A History of the British Isles edited by Jonathan Clark in January 2010. He is now in the process of writing How Much is Enough? The Economics of the Good Life jointly with his son Edward Skidelsky.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
February 2, 2023
On August 2, 1914, John Maynard Keynes received a letter from Basil Blackett, a Treasury official whom Keynes had met during their time on a royal commission studying Indian finance. With war breaking out across Europe, Blackett wanted to discuss the burgeoning financial crisis this was causing and what the British government could do in response. Little did Keynes know when he went to London the following day that he would spend the next five years at the heart of the British war effort, culminating in May 1919 with his resignation out of frustration with the punitive financial settlement of the Versailles Treaty. From this frustration would come his jeremiad The Economic Consequences of the Peace, the work which transformed Keynes from a rising young Cambridge don into the globally-recognized economist whose ideas would transform the world.
This period forms the climax of the first volume of Robert Skidelsky’s magisterial biography of Keynes. It’s a fitting point at which to conclude his account of Keynes’s early life, as it allows him to focus the reader’s attention on his intellectual development and his many budding interests. From them we get a chance to discover who Keynes was before he became famously attached to the ideas that bear his name – ideas which often overshadow his prominent friendships and manifold activities in a variety of areas outside of economics.
Much of who Keynes became can be attributed to his parents. His father, John Neville Keynes, was an economist whose anxieties over the pressures of academia led him to pursue a career in university administration. Though Neville was content with this undemanding life, his wife Florence had greater ambitions, which she redirected towards her children. Skidelsky sees both parents living vicariously through young Maynard’s achievements, as he excelled academically at an early age. In addition to winning prizes and distinctions at both Eton and Oxford, Keynes also absorbed its ethos of public service and a set of philosophical beliefs that he would hold throughout his life. Skidelsky’s description of Keynes’s intellectual development is one of the greatest strengths of this book, as he shows convincingly how Keynes’s views were very much a product of the late-Victorian decline in religion, which created a vacuum that for Keynes was filled by the utilitarian values of G. E. Moore and Alfred Marshall.
After graduation and a brief stint as a civil servant in the India Office, Keynes returned to Cambridge as a lecturer in economics. Named the editor of the Economic Journal in 1909, he published his first book, on Indian currency and finance, two years later. Yet Keynes still found time for an active social life, becoming a member of the Bloomsbury Group that formed in London during this period. Skidelsky is also frank about Keynes’s homosexuality, and he charts his romantic relationships with some of its members, most notably Lytton Strachey and Duncan Grant. Though he enjoyed “adventures” with others, Keynes regarded Grant as the great love of his life, and the two spent much time together in the years leading up to the war.
The First World War jolted Keynes’s life in a number of respects. Though not especially political, he was a Liberal by virtue of his belief in free trade and shared the view that a long conflict was economically impossible. When events proved him wrong, he became involved in the Treasury’s efforts to ensure that the British had the funds necessary to wage their war and hoped for a negotiated end to the fighting. David Lloyd George soon emerged as the bane of Keynes’s existence, who with his determination for victory and disdain for expert economic and financial advice embodied everything he despised in a politician. This was exacerbated by the outcome of the Paris Peace Conference, and shaped Keynes’ narrative in his book about the negotiations, in which he portrayed the prime minister as an unscrupulous figure who by playing to the popular demand for a punitive settlement ensured that the talks would produce one that was unworkable.
Skidelsky’s book is a triumph of the biographer’s art. In it he skillfully weaves the various strands of his subject’s life together, so as to provide a well-rounded portrait of a truly fascinating person. In this, he often positions himself directly against Roy Harrod’s classic The Life of John Maynard Keynes, which by downplaying Keynes’s homosexuality and sanitizing some of his statements provided an incomplete picture of the man. Skidelsky’s book more than redresses this, offering not just an account of Keynes’s life, but the background against which it developed. It is a magnificent work, one that is indispensable reading for anyone interested in learning about the development of the twentieth century’s foremost economist.
This period forms the climax of the first volume of Robert Skidelsky’s magisterial biography of Keynes. It’s a fitting point at which to conclude his account of Keynes’s early life, as it allows him to focus the reader’s attention on his intellectual development and his many budding interests. From them we get a chance to discover who Keynes was before he became famously attached to the ideas that bear his name – ideas which often overshadow his prominent friendships and manifold activities in a variety of areas outside of economics.
Much of who Keynes became can be attributed to his parents. His father, John Neville Keynes, was an economist whose anxieties over the pressures of academia led him to pursue a career in university administration. Though Neville was content with this undemanding life, his wife Florence had greater ambitions, which she redirected towards her children. Skidelsky sees both parents living vicariously through young Maynard’s achievements, as he excelled academically at an early age. In addition to winning prizes and distinctions at both Eton and Oxford, Keynes also absorbed its ethos of public service and a set of philosophical beliefs that he would hold throughout his life. Skidelsky’s description of Keynes’s intellectual development is one of the greatest strengths of this book, as he shows convincingly how Keynes’s views were very much a product of the late-Victorian decline in religion, which created a vacuum that for Keynes was filled by the utilitarian values of G. E. Moore and Alfred Marshall.
After graduation and a brief stint as a civil servant in the India Office, Keynes returned to Cambridge as a lecturer in economics. Named the editor of the Economic Journal in 1909, he published his first book, on Indian currency and finance, two years later. Yet Keynes still found time for an active social life, becoming a member of the Bloomsbury Group that formed in London during this period. Skidelsky is also frank about Keynes’s homosexuality, and he charts his romantic relationships with some of its members, most notably Lytton Strachey and Duncan Grant. Though he enjoyed “adventures” with others, Keynes regarded Grant as the great love of his life, and the two spent much time together in the years leading up to the war.
The First World War jolted Keynes’s life in a number of respects. Though not especially political, he was a Liberal by virtue of his belief in free trade and shared the view that a long conflict was economically impossible. When events proved him wrong, he became involved in the Treasury’s efforts to ensure that the British had the funds necessary to wage their war and hoped for a negotiated end to the fighting. David Lloyd George soon emerged as the bane of Keynes’s existence, who with his determination for victory and disdain for expert economic and financial advice embodied everything he despised in a politician. This was exacerbated by the outcome of the Paris Peace Conference, and shaped Keynes’ narrative in his book about the negotiations, in which he portrayed the prime minister as an unscrupulous figure who by playing to the popular demand for a punitive settlement ensured that the talks would produce one that was unworkable.
Skidelsky’s book is a triumph of the biographer’s art. In it he skillfully weaves the various strands of his subject’s life together, so as to provide a well-rounded portrait of a truly fascinating person. In this, he often positions himself directly against Roy Harrod’s classic The Life of John Maynard Keynes, which by downplaying Keynes’s homosexuality and sanitizing some of his statements provided an incomplete picture of the man. Skidelsky’s book more than redresses this, offering not just an account of Keynes’s life, but the background against which it developed. It is a magnificent work, one that is indispensable reading for anyone interested in learning about the development of the twentieth century’s foremost economist.
January 8, 2009
This is simply the best biography I've ever read.
Keynes was a fascinating person, immensely gifted and energetic, but what makes his life worth reading about is the conflict—-which he never resolved--between the Cambridge life and the London life. This was not a matter of being exhausted by practical work, for which he had a talent equal to his intellect. Instead he genuinely believed that a contemplative life among friends was ethically better; so the tension was, as Skidelsky puts it, between being good and doing good. In both worlds he traveled in exclusive circles, was witty, cutting, and insightful, and, as he put it, "oozed letters."
But there are boring biographies of Keynes, too. However complex Keynes might be, it is Skidelsky who brings him to life. He is an enormously skillful biographer. His introduction is well worth reading: he freely admits he cannot really "explain" the public Keynes by the private, nor is there any reason to expect a coherent person to emerge under biographical scrutiny. The best he can do, he says, is to find and create "patterns" in his subject's life that intuitively make sense to us. He is both telling a story and explaining.
The book's research is overwhelming. This is social, cultural, and intellectual history in the best sense. Any doubt that Keynes was the product of "Cambridge civilization" disintegrates. If the first part of the book seems to focus on Keynes's life in the rarefied airs of Eton and Cambridge, this is because he spent his life in those airs. But the implications of what happens in that first part, where Keynes builds his ethical apparatus, really appear only in the latter half, when he confronts his crucial role in the world war. The book, like Keynes, tacks between chapters on intellectual activity and ones on practical affairs; but also like Keynes, the two are never separable.
Finally, Skidelsky is a terrific writer. He is clever, funny, lyrical, and critical. Some passages are literature. Others are poignant. The book ends as Keynes becomes, with "The Economic Consequences of the Peace," an international star. But that book came out of Keynes's fury and sadness, and thanks to Skidelsky we feel it too.
Keynes was a fascinating person, immensely gifted and energetic, but what makes his life worth reading about is the conflict—-which he never resolved--between the Cambridge life and the London life. This was not a matter of being exhausted by practical work, for which he had a talent equal to his intellect. Instead he genuinely believed that a contemplative life among friends was ethically better; so the tension was, as Skidelsky puts it, between being good and doing good. In both worlds he traveled in exclusive circles, was witty, cutting, and insightful, and, as he put it, "oozed letters."
But there are boring biographies of Keynes, too. However complex Keynes might be, it is Skidelsky who brings him to life. He is an enormously skillful biographer. His introduction is well worth reading: he freely admits he cannot really "explain" the public Keynes by the private, nor is there any reason to expect a coherent person to emerge under biographical scrutiny. The best he can do, he says, is to find and create "patterns" in his subject's life that intuitively make sense to us. He is both telling a story and explaining.
The book's research is overwhelming. This is social, cultural, and intellectual history in the best sense. Any doubt that Keynes was the product of "Cambridge civilization" disintegrates. If the first part of the book seems to focus on Keynes's life in the rarefied airs of Eton and Cambridge, this is because he spent his life in those airs. But the implications of what happens in that first part, where Keynes builds his ethical apparatus, really appear only in the latter half, when he confronts his crucial role in the world war. The book, like Keynes, tacks between chapters on intellectual activity and ones on practical affairs; but also like Keynes, the two are never separable.
Finally, Skidelsky is a terrific writer. He is clever, funny, lyrical, and critical. Some passages are literature. Others are poignant. The book ends as Keynes becomes, with "The Economic Consequences of the Peace," an international star. But that book came out of Keynes's fury and sadness, and thanks to Skidelsky we feel it too.
January 5, 2014
In a sense this sprawling, majestic, and uncompromising book can be seen as a direct rejoinder to Roy Harrod's 1951 biography. When Harrod wrote, the Keynesian revolution was still in its infancy, and as one of its most fervent acolytes he hoped to draw Keynes in the most flattering light. Harrod excised unkind remarks (like the one where the young then-philosopher mentioned he would like to "swindle the investing public"), denied that he tried to become a conscientious objector while still working for the Treasury during World War I, and, most of all, in that less accepting time, avoided discussing Keynes's homosexuality.
This volume, the first of three in Skidelsky's much lauded trilogy, looks at all of that and more. It is often an unflattering portrait, one that pictures Keynes warts and all, but it is done with undeniable love and respect. Skidelsky, as almost anyone who encounters Keynes, is enthralled by his genius and his insight, but he does not hesitate to show a man often selfish, snobbish, and immature.
Keynes was once described by his friend Lytton Strachey as a "safety bicycle with genitals." For the Cambridge artistic set from which he emerged, and from which emerged the infamous Bloomsbury set, he was always a bit of an outlier, more involved with career and mathematics than the others, but it was his frank and open sexuality that brought him some measure of acceptance among the bohemians. In this book that sexuality can often seem voracious. He joked about practicing the "Higher Sodomy" among friends, and about raping young undergraduates at Cambridge, and in his letters to everyone except his parents inevitability discussed the beauty or lack of it of the men surrounding him at the time. For a man often sickly and varying, it was one constant.
More importantly, perhaps, Skidelsky shows that Keynes always considered himself first and foremost an artist and philosopher. The son of a Cambridge don, he became infatuated with the philosophical social group "the Apostles" at King's College, who were themselves infatuated with the refined, artistic utilitarianism of the philosopher G.E. Moore. In college this focus meant Keynes only took 8 weeks of economics, but after graduating and failing to earn a fellowship, he took the offer of Alfred Marshall, the originator of neo-classic economics, to teach the subject, and from there was catapulted into the Treasury, and, finally, international fame after World War I, when he published his book "The Economic Consequences of the Peace." All the while he struggled to finish his book on the philosophy of probabilities. His career as an economist came almost by happenstance.
Thus Keynes never sat comfortably in any one world, but those different worlds make for a fascinating read. From Bertrand Russell to Virginia Woolf to Prime Ministers Herbert Asquith and David Lloyd George, Keynes's friendships spanned the spectrum. This book contains them all. It is a wonderful artistic, philosophic, and economic journey through England on the cusp of the war, told through the story of one supremely complex man whose thought would later shape his country and the world. I can't wait for the second volume.
January 8, 2009
Fascinating, authoritative study of the leading thinker of his age and perhaps our own as well by an irresistibly able and entertaining writer.
March 19, 2017
Lord Skidelsky's masterful biography is one of the best biographies ever written (based on Vol. 1 alone). Of course, for anybody interested in J.M. Keynes, the Cambridge Apostles, the Bloomsbury Group, the secret love life of homosexuals, or the economic management of the 1st World War, this books is an absolute treat. Exquisitely researched, the amount of private documents in display is astonishing, and the whole thing is edited together in an entertaining and illuminating way.
My favourite bits include: 1) The private love/friend letters between J.M. Keynes, Lytton Strachey and Duncan Grant, which are full of passion, tragedy, secrecy, elitism and humour. 2) The concise summary of Keynes' early works on Probability, philosophy and the Versailles Peace Treaty. 3) The story of the importance of G.E. Moore in defining the mood and world view of the Cambridge Apostles. 4) The ample recourse to private documents in revealing secret details of closeted homosexuals. 5) The brutal but gentlemanly decimation of Skidelsky's predecessor, the biographer Roy Harrod.
Lacking in neither substance nor style, peppered with bawdy anecdotes and private correspondences of historical importance, I cannot recommend this impeccable book enough.
My favourite bits include: 1) The private love/friend letters between J.M. Keynes, Lytton Strachey and Duncan Grant, which are full of passion, tragedy, secrecy, elitism and humour. 2) The concise summary of Keynes' early works on Probability, philosophy and the Versailles Peace Treaty. 3) The story of the importance of G.E. Moore in defining the mood and world view of the Cambridge Apostles. 4) The ample recourse to private documents in revealing secret details of closeted homosexuals. 5) The brutal but gentlemanly decimation of Skidelsky's predecessor, the biographer Roy Harrod.
Lacking in neither substance nor style, peppered with bawdy anecdotes and private correspondences of historical importance, I cannot recommend this impeccable book enough.
December 15, 2012
Bought 2 volumes not even realizing there are 3 - and left it speaking for itself on the shelf for a couple of years. Then my curiosity about "keynesian economics' grew to the point I started vol1.
Large hard cover biographies can be daunting and this is like so many where one I started reading the flow and quality of writing makes the book feather light and turning a page is unnoticeable.
The author presents Keynes, his family, friends, intimates, the Apostles, Cambridge all as though we watch from the side - not in a cheap big brother style but with a sense of the time and of change.
Most engaging is the exploration of a period like the years at Cambridge and just when the subject is exhausted we move on.
Large hard cover biographies can be daunting and this is like so many where one I started reading the flow and quality of writing makes the book feather light and turning a page is unnoticeable.
The author presents Keynes, his family, friends, intimates, the Apostles, Cambridge all as though we watch from the side - not in a cheap big brother style but with a sense of the time and of change.
Most engaging is the exploration of a period like the years at Cambridge and just when the subject is exhausted we move on.
May 27, 2014
This book and it’s companions are a grand and well written biography of a man who was at the center of Britain’s political, artistic and academic life for half a century. He predicted the second world war, worked with Churchilll and was eventually elected to the House of Lords. He was intimate and queer with the painters and writers of the Bloomsbury group, then married a woman from Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. As for the academy, he went to Eton and Cambridge before becoming one of them most important economists of out time. Reading these books is like having a ringside seat to the circus-like first half of the 20th century. The three volumes are a long, but exciting show.
August 24, 2013
John Maynard Keynes - We all know that he was the British economist who initiated the school of economic thought - Neo-Keynesian Economics, which dominated economic thinking of the Western world from 1940s to 1970s, and that Keynes and the Neo-Keynesian theory helped forged the Bretton Woods System. Although from 1970s to 2000s, refined "laissez faire" took control over the main stream of economic theories, the credit crisis in 2008 signaled the return to Neo-Keynesian era. In the moment of reasserting values of Keynesian theory and knowing the significance of its past, it's more interesting than ever to look back to the person who started it all.
Heros were often made by the tides of history (时势造英雄). It seems to me that this saying undoubtedly applied to Keynes. The two world wars and the great depression gave keynes a front-row seat where he utilized his keen observation and masterful mind to find truth out of the chaos and produce the prototype of his later formidable economic theories. When WWI was ended, he vigorously opposed the Versailles Peace Comference, because he believed that the heavy reparations on German would lead to unintended consequence that German would cease to pay her debts and start to seek revenge. The rise of Hilter subsequently proved Keynes' prediction was correct.
The rationale behind Keynes' favor of government's economic internvention argubly resulted from his observation of some defects of the Capitalistic system, such as mass unemployment during the great depression. But Keynes' deep belief and loyalty in Capitalism prevented him from becoming a liberal or even a communist who prefered complete replacement of the system with a new one, instead he went on a road to repair it. In this case, government intervention was thought to be the cure.
But why government has to be the cure in the face of depression? Well, let's see if Keynes' answer to this question can be explained in the ensuing paragraphs. At the great depressions we have witnessed in recent history, center of all problems was univocally the deflationary gap. It essentially means that industrial output of consumer goods exceeds public purchasing power. The former is affected by investment, whereas the later is income minus savings. When industries invest, the output surges; when the public is worried about future, their savings increases; when unemployment rises, public's income decreases; and when public savings increase, banks tend to have more fund available for investment. Therefore, there are logically circling connections between investment, output, income and savings. If the following scenario occurs: overinvestment, public increased saving, public decreased income appear at the same time, then the output will increase and the purchase power wil decrease. There will be a point when uprising output exceed the declining purchasing power, and the gap between purchasing power and output is the deflationary gap. Generally, the larger the gap is, the greater the economic problem would be.
In Keynes' view, when the deflationary gap occurs, as we have already known there is not enough public spending to consume goods, especially from poor people, the rich people should spend their money to prevent corporate bankrupcy and save economy. But the rich, the ones representing capitalist class, didn't spent. Keynes was disappointed by their unwillingness to help at the time of crisis and recognized that as natural defect of the capitalistic system. Like Marx, Keynes thus concluded that the modern capitalism had an unstable nature, and the stablizer had to the government, since the rich and the foreigners didn't help and there was no one else left to ask for help. In other words, if the deflationary gap takes place and exccessive output can not find any buyers, then government has to step in and consume the exccessive goods and services.
However, one critic of Keynesian economic theory is worth consideration. In the book "Keynes at Harvard", author stated that "Even sound economists do not realize that Keynes' obscurity is deliberate. Some believe he had a confused mind, and attack his theories from that point of view. They do not come to grips with the true state of affairs, namely, that Keynesism is not an economic theory. It is a weapon of political conspiracy." One often hiddened consequence of mass government spendning is the strengthening of elite and aristocratic class, since they tend to be the beneficiary of government contracts. In this aspect, Keynesism does have scheming political consequences.
In addition to Keynes' theories, the book also depicted the story of Keynes' life. Not surprisingly, Keynes revealed his enthusiasm and interest in economy and started to invest when he was young. He made his first profit by speculating in the stock market while in King's College, Cambridge. He then joined the Coverzaione Society at Cambridge, a loose association of Anglo-Saxon intellectuals. These intellecturals were no ordinary college scholars, but masters in their fields: Freud, Proust, Cezanne, Chekhov, Dostoevsky and Picasso. The connection with great thinkers later helped Keynes to obtain non-ordinary achievements in his field.
In personal life, Keynes married a Russian ballet dancer, lydia Lopokova, whose non-intellectual aspects probably attracted Keynes. Despite of objections from family and friends and the huge difference between them, their marriage amounted to a great marital success.
Lastly, John Keynes was not only a talented economist but also a successful investor. For investment style, he was not a fundamentalist like Buffett, who focused on individual businesses, but a insightful trader like Soros, who utilized his knowledge to gain a edge in the market. By 1936, Keynes' speculation in stock market had made equivalent of 21 million dollars in today's money. His investment philosophy largely lied in his penetrating intelligence as he once said "It is the one sphere of life and activity where victory, security and success is always to the minority and never to the majority. When you fidn anyone agreeing with you, change your mind. When I can persuade the Board of my Insurance Company to buy a share, that, I am learning from experience, is the right moment for selling it."
Now, you have been kindly advised. :)
Heros were often made by the tides of history (时势造英雄). It seems to me that this saying undoubtedly applied to Keynes. The two world wars and the great depression gave keynes a front-row seat where he utilized his keen observation and masterful mind to find truth out of the chaos and produce the prototype of his later formidable economic theories. When WWI was ended, he vigorously opposed the Versailles Peace Comference, because he believed that the heavy reparations on German would lead to unintended consequence that German would cease to pay her debts and start to seek revenge. The rise of Hilter subsequently proved Keynes' prediction was correct.
The rationale behind Keynes' favor of government's economic internvention argubly resulted from his observation of some defects of the Capitalistic system, such as mass unemployment during the great depression. But Keynes' deep belief and loyalty in Capitalism prevented him from becoming a liberal or even a communist who prefered complete replacement of the system with a new one, instead he went on a road to repair it. In this case, government intervention was thought to be the cure.
But why government has to be the cure in the face of depression? Well, let's see if Keynes' answer to this question can be explained in the ensuing paragraphs. At the great depressions we have witnessed in recent history, center of all problems was univocally the deflationary gap. It essentially means that industrial output of consumer goods exceeds public purchasing power. The former is affected by investment, whereas the later is income minus savings. When industries invest, the output surges; when the public is worried about future, their savings increases; when unemployment rises, public's income decreases; and when public savings increase, banks tend to have more fund available for investment. Therefore, there are logically circling connections between investment, output, income and savings. If the following scenario occurs: overinvestment, public increased saving, public decreased income appear at the same time, then the output will increase and the purchase power wil decrease. There will be a point when uprising output exceed the declining purchasing power, and the gap between purchasing power and output is the deflationary gap. Generally, the larger the gap is, the greater the economic problem would be.
In Keynes' view, when the deflationary gap occurs, as we have already known there is not enough public spending to consume goods, especially from poor people, the rich people should spend their money to prevent corporate bankrupcy and save economy. But the rich, the ones representing capitalist class, didn't spent. Keynes was disappointed by their unwillingness to help at the time of crisis and recognized that as natural defect of the capitalistic system. Like Marx, Keynes thus concluded that the modern capitalism had an unstable nature, and the stablizer had to the government, since the rich and the foreigners didn't help and there was no one else left to ask for help. In other words, if the deflationary gap takes place and exccessive output can not find any buyers, then government has to step in and consume the exccessive goods and services.
However, one critic of Keynesian economic theory is worth consideration. In the book "Keynes at Harvard", author stated that "Even sound economists do not realize that Keynes' obscurity is deliberate. Some believe he had a confused mind, and attack his theories from that point of view. They do not come to grips with the true state of affairs, namely, that Keynesism is not an economic theory. It is a weapon of political conspiracy." One often hiddened consequence of mass government spendning is the strengthening of elite and aristocratic class, since they tend to be the beneficiary of government contracts. In this aspect, Keynesism does have scheming political consequences.
In addition to Keynes' theories, the book also depicted the story of Keynes' life. Not surprisingly, Keynes revealed his enthusiasm and interest in economy and started to invest when he was young. He made his first profit by speculating in the stock market while in King's College, Cambridge. He then joined the Coverzaione Society at Cambridge, a loose association of Anglo-Saxon intellectuals. These intellecturals were no ordinary college scholars, but masters in their fields: Freud, Proust, Cezanne, Chekhov, Dostoevsky and Picasso. The connection with great thinkers later helped Keynes to obtain non-ordinary achievements in his field.
In personal life, Keynes married a Russian ballet dancer, lydia Lopokova, whose non-intellectual aspects probably attracted Keynes. Despite of objections from family and friends and the huge difference between them, their marriage amounted to a great marital success.
Lastly, John Keynes was not only a talented economist but also a successful investor. For investment style, he was not a fundamentalist like Buffett, who focused on individual businesses, but a insightful trader like Soros, who utilized his knowledge to gain a edge in the market. By 1936, Keynes' speculation in stock market had made equivalent of 21 million dollars in today's money. His investment philosophy largely lied in his penetrating intelligence as he once said "It is the one sphere of life and activity where victory, security and success is always to the minority and never to the majority. When you fidn anyone agreeing with you, change your mind. When I can persuade the Board of my Insurance Company to buy a share, that, I am learning from experience, is the right moment for selling it."
Now, you have been kindly advised. :)
January 8, 2017
Erittäin hyvä ja luettava kirja. Alkukuvaus Etonista, Cambridgestä, Bloomsburyn piiristä ja yleisestä tämän keskimääräistä paremmin voivan luokan elämästä on kuin Austenia lukisi. Toisaalta sijoittaa hyvin Keynesiin aikaansa (taloustiede oli vasta syntymässä ja muodostumassa yliopistoon, yliopistot itsessään olivat juuri uudistamassa itseään pois uskonnon varjoista [ennen Marhsaliahan suurin osa taloustietelijöistä ei ollut akatemiasta], uskonto oli menettänyt merkityksen ja uutta pohjaa moraalille haettiin [G.E Moore Keynesin aikalaisena ja tuttuna tässä merkittävä]. Keynesin piirissä myös käsitys politiikan vähäarvoisuudesta verrattuna suurempiin asioihin. Keynes oli myös ilmeisen terävä jo nuorena, voitti melkein kaikki palkinnot eri kouluista, mitä oli voitettavissa.
Ja Keynesiä siis opiskeli virallisesti vain yhden lukukauden (vuodessa näitä kolme) taloustiedettä elämässään!
1. maailmansota, valtiovarainministeriössä siihen osallistuminen ja rauhanneuvottelut vasta herättivät ja veivät Keynesin enemmän osaksi "käytännöllisiä" yhteiskunnallisia asioita. Economic consequences -kirja on myös tulkittavissa Keynesin tilintekona sotaan ja hänen vastutukseensa sitä kohtaan, mitä ei pystynyt sodan aikana virkamiehenä tekemään.
Ja Keynesiä siis opiskeli virallisesti vain yhden lukukauden (vuodessa näitä kolme) taloustiedettä elämässään!
1. maailmansota, valtiovarainministeriössä siihen osallistuminen ja rauhanneuvottelut vasta herättivät ja veivät Keynesin enemmän osaksi "käytännöllisiä" yhteiskunnallisia asioita. Economic consequences -kirja on myös tulkittavissa Keynesin tilintekona sotaan ja hänen vastutukseensa sitä kohtaan, mitä ei pystynyt sodan aikana virkamiehenä tekemään.
November 15, 2021
Full of detail to a fault, which was great for the parts of the book I was most interested in (turn of the century Cambridge philosophical and economic culture), but tiresome at many other points. I was surprised by how little formal economic training Keynes had. Much of his education came on the job teaching; even more while working on affairs of state. His sensitive, sporadic range of interests, evident need to base his worldview on moral philosophical principles, and internal schism between the world of the arts and more analytical pursuits (as well as academia versus action) all resonated with me. Yet, for all that feeling of resemblance, I remain utterly baffled by what Keynes (and the rest of the Apostles) found so appealing about Moore's philosophy. Maybe I need to revisit Moore; maybe I am fundamentally unable to traverse into their cultural universe.
Skidelsky is a wonderful writer, but I wish he had spent a bit more time explaining some of the economic issues discussed. For all Keynes appeal and drama, there still is something distinctly less captivating about his persona than that of politicians and artists (greater "personalities") whose biographies I've read. I'll likely read part 2 of this at some point, but not in the immediate future.
Skidelsky is a wonderful writer, but I wish he had spent a bit more time explaining some of the economic issues discussed. For all Keynes appeal and drama, there still is something distinctly less captivating about his persona than that of politicians and artists (greater "personalities") whose biographies I've read. I'll likely read part 2 of this at some point, but not in the immediate future.
April 30, 2018
One of the best biographies I've ever read; a remarkable combination of erudition, trivia and psychological insight coalesce into an eminently readable narrative of Keynes' life, thought and times. Skidelsky's skill is only surpassed by his subject.
November 26, 2007
The first volume of Skidelsky’s three volume telling of the life of the man who is arguably the 20th century’s most famous economist. This volume covers birth and all that crap, and then the very juicy years of JMK at Cambridge. Besides his economic work Keynes was a pretty interesting, and fucked up individual. He was an unrepentant racist, at least for a time a self identified homosexual, and an endlessly curious man who thought he was smarter than everyone else in the room (and on many occasions, including the peace negations at Versailles, probably was). He was close with Virginia Wolff and that crowd in these days, though he and they would distance from each other in the coming years, as JMK’s political success made him less attractive to the literati. There’s a one volume abridgment of Skidlesky’s work, and if you’re interested in Keynes, I imagine that one is more than enough to satiate you curiosity, but if not, I think this volume, which covers more Keynes development as a contradictory, often dislikable and totally fascinating individual is the better of the two volumes I read.
February 26, 2021
The formative years in the life of one of the great economists of the twentieth century. However, Keynes was more than an economist as his life, thought, and work extended through Bloomsbury, Britain, and beyond. A noted critic, observer, and participant both in society and the world of politics.
August 5, 2015
Too much emphasis on the tiny details of his student/school life. Two stars for the first half of the book, four stars for the back half where all the details are about something substantive. Definitely an old-fashioned bio, with the good and bad that implies.
March 31, 2023
Clearly the most comprehensive biography of the most important economist of the 20th century, in volume 1 Skidelsky explores Keynes's early childhood and family life.
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