richard lightner

Jul 85 min read

Critics of John Maynard Keynes Are Wrong

My experiences with Corporate America have been atrocious. The larger the company, the more complex it is; customer service is a sham. And why do all these companies have customer service surveys that tell you your option is important to them when it is clear that it isn’t?

John Maynard Keynes: The Essential Keynes. Editor, Robert Skidelsky. (2015)

John Maynard Keynes was a British political economist whose early 20th-century writings influenced American government policy and political theory during the Great Depression.

“The purpose of promoting the individual was to depose the monarch and the church; the effect-through the new ethical significance attributed to contract - was to buttress property and prescription. But it was not long before the claims of society raised themselves anew against the individual.” (Keynes 79)

“The principle of laissez-faire had arrived to harmonize individualism and socialism, and to make at one Hume’s egoism with the greatest good of the greatest number.” (Keynes 80)

The eighteenth century saw “corruption and incompetence . . . which survived into the nineteenth [century]. The individualism of the political philosopher pointed to laissez-faire. The divine or scientific harmony . . . between private interest and public advantage pointed to laissez-faire. But above all, the ineptitude of public administrators strongly prejudiced the practical man in favour of laissez-faire - a sentiment which has by no means disappeared. Almost everything which the State did in the eighteenth century in excess of its minimum functions was, or seemed, injurious or unsuccessful.

“On the other hand, material progress between 1750 and 1850 came from individual initiative and owed almost nothing to the directive influence of organized society as a whole.” (Keynes 81)

Darwinism shook the “foundations of belief.” This was a change from “the work of the divine” to one that postulated that everything occurred “out of Chance, Chaos, and Old Time. . . . The economists were teaching that wealth, commerce, and machinery were the children of free competition - that free competition had built man.” (Keynes 81)

“I do not know which makes a man more conservative - to know nothing but the present or nothing but the past.” (Keynes 82)

The editor of this book, Robert Skidelsky, writes that “The phrase laissez-faire is not to be found in the worlds of Adam Smith, of Ricardo, or of Malthus. Even the idea is not present in a dogmatic for in any of these authors. Adam Smith, of course, was a Free Trader and an opponent of many eighteenth century restrictions on trade. But his attitude toward the Navigation Acts and the usury laws shows that he was not dogmatic.” (Keynes 84)

In 1850 one writer wrote, “More harm than good is likely to be done . . . by almost any interference of government with men’s money transactions . . . True liberty is that every man should be left free to dispose of his own property, his own time, and strength, and skill, in whatever way he himself may think fit, provided he does no wrong to his neighbours.” (Keynes 85)

Another philosopher believed in the “harmony of those laws of Providence which govern human society.” (Keynes 85)

Economists reacted to this beginning with philosopher John Stuart Mill. One wrote, “Scarcely a single English economist of repute . . . will join in a frontal attack upon Socialism in general . . . nearly every economist, whether of repute or not, is always ready to pick holes in most socialistic proposals.” (Keynes 86)

In 1870, an orthodox economist “was perhaps the first orthodox economist to deliver a frontal attack upon laissez-faire in general. The maxim of laissez-faire, he declared, has no scientific basis whatever, but is at best a mere handy rule of practice.” (Keynes 86)

Keynes used the giraffe as an example, as it can reach the highest leaves. But what about other animals? I saw a political cartoon showing the difference between socialism and capitalism. Socialism showed a person lifting another person up to reach a fruit tree. That person helps up the one who helped him. The capitalist portrayal shows that person sitting on a fence eating fruit and ignoring the man who lifted him up.

Considering the above points of view and the things we have been propagandized ad nauseam for over a century, see Naomi of Klein.

Laissez-faire and Social Darwinism tied together at this time. However, this relationship is not based on fact, “but from an incomplete hypothesis introduced for the sake of complicity. . . .Individuals acting independently for their own advantage will produce the greatest aggregate of wealth, depends on a variety of unreal assumptions to the effect that the processes of production and consumption are in no way organic, that there exists a sufficient foreknowledge of conditions and requirements, and that there are adequate opportunities of obtaining this foreknowledge.” (Keynes 88)

Keynes dismissed “State Socialism” because it did not address contemporary issues.

“The important thing for government is not to do things which individuals are doing already, and to do them a little better or a little worse, but to do those things which at present are not at all.”

“Birth control and the use of contraceptives, marriage laws, the treatment of sexual offences and abnormalities, the economic position of the family - in all these matters the existing state of the law and of orthodoxy is still medieval - altogether out of touch with civilised opinion, and civilised practice and with what individuals, educated and uneducated alike, say to one another in private.” (Keynes 100)

Keynes cites Commons, who refers to their contemporary period as stabilisation where one can find alternatives to Marxism. (Keynes 101) “In this period [according to Professor Commons], there is a diminution of individual liberty, enforced in part by governmental sanctions through concerted action, whether secret, semi-open, or arbitration, of associations, corporations, unions and other collective movements of manufacturers, merchants, labourers, farmers, and bankers.

“The abuses of this epoch in the realms of government are Fascism on the one side and Bolshevism on the other. Socialism offers no middle course.” (Keynes 101)

Keynes described capitalism as the love of money. He described Soviet Communism in 1925 as “both a religion and an economic system.” (Keynes 103)

He heavily criticized the Soviet Union and its worship of Marxist literature, which he found “not only scientifically erroneous but without interest or application for the modern world.” Communism “exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeois and the intelligentsia who, with whatever faults, are the quality in life and surely carry the seeds of all human advancement.” (Keynes 106)

Leninism is “an experimental technique.” (Keynes 108)

The love of money as a possession - as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life - will be recognized for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease.” (Keynes 122)

Keynes criticizes the form of international capitalism that followed World War I. “It is not intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous - and it doesn’t deliver the goods.” (Keynes 126)

“But I have become convinced that the retention of the structure of private enterprise is incompatible with that degree of material well-being to which our technical advancement entitles us.” (Keynes 127)

Life has become a parody. For example, with all our wealth, Keynes writes, we build slums instead of edifying cities. We destroy the wilderness because it has been determined to have no economic value. (Keynes 128)

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Different Points of View over the future of Atomic weapons.

During the Afghan War, President Donald Trump (GAG!) authorized a General to use the Mother of all Bombs, a bomb just shy of the power of an atomic bomb, on his own. Notice that this had no positive affect for the US in the outcome of the war. (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/13/world/asia/moab-mother-of-all-bombs-afghanistan.html)

There is a plethora of information about the development and use of the atomic bomb during World War II. Much of the world was astounded that the US used such a bomb on civilians. Others said, drop more.

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 9, 1945, “served as the symbolic coronation of American global power.” Nevertheless, the use of the atomic bomb in World War II brought international condemnation. At the Tokyo War Crimes Trials of 1946-1948, Justice Pal of India cited the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as war crimes. U.S. President Harry S. Truman responded by publicly saying that the atomic bombs were dropped “in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands of young Americans.” However, President Truman in correspondence with John Foster Dulles that his reasons for dropping the atomic bombs were the attack on Pearl Harbor and the murder of our prisoners of war. “The only language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them.” (Martin Sherwin. “Hiroshima and Modern Memory.” The Nation. October 10, 1981)

“In the summer and fall of 1945, US atomic policy left us troubled and perplexed. Roosevelt, we thought, had been committed to a policy of international understanding and conciliation. . . . Truman’s policy, however, appeared to have the opposite aim: to keep a monopoly of the atomic bomb in U.S. and British hands, and to use it as a strong trump card in tough political bargaining with the Soviet Union.” (Sherwin, Martin. A World Destroyed: the Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance. 1975. xi)

And, well before the bombings FDR and Churchill “rejected steps that might have led to the international control of atomic energy.” (Martin Sherwin. “Hiroshima and Modern Memory.” The Nation. October 10, 1981)

According to nuclear physicist Hans Bethe who worked on the Manhattan Project, “Many of us had been influenced directly or indirectly by Niels Bohr, the great Danish physicist. He argued that only international control of nuclear weapons could save the world from a nuclear arms race, and that such a race would imperil, not enhance the security of the United States and Great Britain. Many other scientists, especially at the University of Chicago Metallurgic Laboratory, at the initiative of Leo Szilard, had come independently to the same conclusion.

Martin Sherwin, George Mason University History professor who specialized in the history of nuclear weapons, wrote that, this interpretation by physicists and historian is wrong. Roosevelt decided, with Churchill, “that the bomb should remain and Anglo-American monopoly.” (Sherwin, Martin. A World Destroyed: the Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance. 1975. xii)

However, this is not mentioned in Hiroshima in America: fifty years of denial, by Robert Jay Lifton and Gregg Mitchell.

KOREA

There are numerous arguments about whether or not the atomic bomb should have been used in Korea, Vietnam, or other existential circumstances.

In late 1950, following their invasion of Korea, Chinese forces surrounded U.S. Marines. “Distraught himself, the chief executive (Truman), told a press conference on November 30 that nuclear bombsight be used against the enemy and seemed to indicate that the decision would be MacArthur’s.” (William Manchester. American Caesar. 608, 610; Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: a History. 2010. p. 30)

The U.S. developed the ability fire an “atomic shot from a cannon.” (Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: a History. 2010. p. 34)

“In mid-May Ike (President Dwight Eisenhower) told the [American] National Security Council that using nukes in Korea would be cheaper than conventional weaponry, and a few days later the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended launching nuclear attacks against China.” (Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: a History. 2010. p. 34)

This is interesting since Eisenhower’s reaction to Hiroshima was, we didn’t have to use that awful thing on them. (Lifton, Robert Jay and Mitchell, Greg. Hiroshima in America: fifty years of denial. 1995. 213)

Operation Hudson Harbor - flying lone B-29 bombers over North Korea to simulate a dropping of an atomic bomb. North Korean leaders must have had “steel nerves” as this simulation was eerily similar to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Operation Hudson Harbor concluded that the use of atomic weapons would not be “useful” as it was difficult to identify “large masses of enemy troops.” (Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: a History. 2010. p. 157-159)

The United Nations/United States forces faced defeat in Korea but Truman looked strong because he “threatened to use the atom bomb against China.” However, this “made peace talks virtually impossible.” (Stone, I.F. The Hidden History of the Korean War. 213)

Major General Emmett (“Rosy”) O’Donnell, commander of the Far East Air Force’s Bomber Command . . . [stated that] “We have never been permitted to bomb what are the real strategic targets, the enemy’s real sources of supply.” He said that the strategic bombing commanded been “designed to deliver the atomic offensive to the heart of the enemy” and indicated very clearly that he thought the bomb should have been used against the Chinese.”” (Stone, I.F. The Hidden History of the Korean War. 245)

RICHARD NIXON

Richard Barnet, former State Department aide, activist and scholar, who founded the Institute for Policy Studies (Wikipedia) warned “of the danger that the United States government might resort to the use of nuclear weapons. Barnet then cites Vice President Richard Nixon speaking to the Executive Club of Chicago on March 17, 1955 as saying,

“The weapons which were used during the Korean War and World War II are obsolete. Our artillery and our tactical Air Force in the Pacific are now equipped with atomic explosives which can and will be used on military targets with precision and effectiveness.

“It is foolish to talk about the possibility that the weapons which might be used in the event war breaks out in the Pacific would be limited to the conventional Korean and World War II types of explosives. Our forces could not fight an effective war in the Pacific with those types of explosives if they wanted to. Tactical atomic explosives are now conventional and will be used against the military targets of any aggressive force.”

Of course, we are not aggressors by threatening China or invading Vietnam.

VIET NAM

1964 American Republican Presidential candidate Senator Goldwater of Arizona was a reserve Air Force General and “suggested that the United States could isolate the Vietcong in South Vietnam any bombing the supply routes connecting China and North Vietnam.” He also proposed using nuclear weapons “to clear the jungles where the Vietcong were presumably hiding. The public reaction to those notions was one of horrified alarm.” (Thomas Powers, The War at Home. 2) It turns out that the United States bombed Southeast Asia the equivalent of many atomic bombs through out the war.

“Although Goldwater was finally persuaded to stop talking about nuclear weapons.”

Although Goldwater’s advocacy of atomic weapons scared people his idea to win the war did not. Johnson portrayed himself as “responsible” as opposed to Goldwater who he implied would get us all killed. (Thomas Powers, The War at Home. 9)

Noted military writer Hanson Baldwin believed that the US should use its overwhelming technological power to counter communism even if that meant nuclear weapons. Of course, only for “defensive purposes.” “If we cannot do this, he says, we had better “call it quits.” (Noam Chomsky, At War with Asia. 52)

General Curtis LeMay advocated the use of nuclear weapons to end the conflict with communism once and for all. “We ought to nuke the chinks. . . . We are swatting flies when we should be going after the manure pile.” (Thomas Powers. The War at Home. 40; Rowland Evans and Robert Novak. Lyndon B. Johnson: the Exercise of Power. 538)

So, there is pretty much agreement that the use of the atom bomb was on the table. The horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki completely ignored.

In 1954 the United States “assuming the Chinese Communists intervene would engage in a “highly selective atomic offensive.” (Pentagon Papers. New York Times. 1971. 46) However, if the “Chinese Communists do not intervene” then the use of atomic weapons would occur if it would aid the US in the war. (Pentagon Papers. New York Times. 1971. 47)

McNaughton drafted a “Proposed Course of Action” to McNamara. In his long list of actions McNaughton noted risks. One was the “escalation to the use of nuclear weapons.” (Pentagon Papers. New York Times. 1971. 442-445, passim)

Presidential assistant for national security, Walt. W. Rostow, wrote a memorandum on May 6, 1967, analyzing U.S. bombing strategy in Viet Nam. One of his conclusions was “we do not want a nuclear confrontation over Viet Nam.” (Pentagon Papers. New York Times. 1971. 585, 588)

Critics of John Maynard Keynes Are Wrong

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