Mathematician, Statesman, Philosopher

“The Burke essay is especially valuable, Skidelsky explains, as it illustrates Keynes’s lifelong emphasis on “the doctrine of prudence,” which had “a profound effect” both on his theory of economic policy and of statesmanship. “Burke ever held, and held rightly,” the young Keynes wrote, that “our power of prediction is so slight, and our knowledge of remote consequences so uncertain, that it is seldom wise to sacrifice a present benefit for a doubtful advantage in the future.” This early piece (along with an excerpt from Keynes’s early book A Treatise on Probability) hint at his future epiphany regarding the difference between risk (making a bet knowing the true odds) and uncertainty (making one’s best guesses in an environment characterized by unknowables), that would inform The General Theory.”

“Summarily dismissing laissez-faire capitalism in 1933, Keynes wrote: “It is not intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous — and it doesn’t deliver the goods. […] But when we wonder what to put in its place, we are extremely perplexed.” Certainly Marxism, in either theory or practice, held no appeal. Unlike many interwar intellectuals, Keynes had a profound aversion to communism, long before Stalin’s horrors became apparent.”

“Arrangements like the Gold Standard (and the European Monetary Union) create a process of adjustment that “is compulsory for the debtor and voluntary for the creditor” and thus “throw the burden of adjustment” on “the weaker and […] the smaller,” that is, “on the countries least able to support it, making the poor poorer.” This is not only unjust and inefficient; it also threatens to be “disruptive of the social order.””

“The Marshall memorial also includes Keynes’s description of what a “master-economist” must be: “a mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher […] he must study the present in light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man’s nature or his institutions must lie entirely outside his regard.” Alas, this is another battle that has been lost. Most contemporary economics training stops abruptly at mathematician, to our collective impoverishment.”