Keynes, the Man

A good short biography of John Maynard Keynes. Although he is known mostly for his economic ideas, he was not an economist by trade. If not for his bourgeois upbringing it is doubtful anyone would have heard of him, as it is we are still paying for his economic ideas. Highly recommended…SLT

A disappointing and shallow piece of work.The author comes across as most spiteful and jealous of Keynes, and seeks to dismiss Keynes' achievements by attacking him as a person. The reader gets the impression that the bitterness is all somehow highly personal, perhaps the author is upset about something? But for those who have read other accounts or biographies of Keynes, they will note that some quotes are unfairly given out of context by the author by e.g. truncating preceding sections or the background context to paint a dubious picture.Furthermore, the author has clearly not been able to understand the main contributions of Keynes' ideas to the world, or the fact that his policy recommendations did have significant influence on the key world leaders at the most turbulent times (including FDR, Lloyd George, Churchill), the kind of policy influence that was unheard of for an academic at the time (and arguably since). Keynes' ideas were therefore instrumental to the building of global peace and stability after the two most devastating wars the world had ever seen. It is easy for us ex-post to take this kind of economic stability and growth which followed WWII for granted, but whether or not one calls himself a Keynesian, one has to be able to objectively recognise that the economic stability that followed 1945 owes a great deal to Keynes' groundbreaking ideas on how to manage an economy ("macroeconomics") and the superhuman efforts and commitment he gave to the cause.

Esperaba que hubiera más contenido importante. Igual creo que está bien para quien quiere echar un vistazo inicial a las actividades concretas de Keynes.

A lire pour bien cerner la personnalité d'un individu qui aura donné un alibi aux hommes de l'Etat pour maintenir la société civile en état de sujétion.

Fantastic read gripping. Completely obliterates and expose Lord Keynes.

Rothbard rips the myth surrounding Keynes.Not only was his theory wrong, but as Rothbard shows in this book, Keynes was quite evil.

A spiteful account. The author only picks the controversial aspects of the life of a great imperfect man who earned t he respect of Rothbard's great hero, Hayek. I found the book unworthy of recommendation

Murray N. Rothbard pretty much destroys not only the ideas that Keynes stood for, but his intellectual influences and even proves that Keynes was a lying, manipulative, corrupted energy within the intellectual sphere. Take for instance, the passage where Rothbard points out the fact that Keynes reviewed Ludwig Von Mises',"The Theory of Money and Credit" as being unoriginal without being able to read the language it was printed in. If one of our economists had pulled this stunt today and it came out later, he would be thoroughly discredited, but this gets no notice from mainstream intellectuals who think Keynes actually understood economics.After reading this book, I strongly recommend reading, "The Failure of the 'New' Economics" by Henry Hazlitt, which is a systematic line-by-line deconstruction of Keynes' General Theory.Despite being systematically discredited, we can't seem to put Keynes in his grave where he belongs. Hopefully we will be able to when the entire system implodes under Keynesian watch.

An examination of Murray Rothbard's comments on Keynes's logical approach to probability in this book reveals that either Rothbard does not have any idea about what he is talking about or that he is simply making things up .It doesn't matter whether it is the former or the latter.Either position is good grounds for eliminating M Rothbard from serious consideration as an economist or philosopher.M Rothbard was basically a pundit ,polemicist ,and pamphleteer.Consider his following claims:"In a notable contribution, Skidelsky demonstrates that Keynes's first important scholarly book, A Treatise on Probability (1921), was not unrelated to the rest of his concerns. It grew out of his attempt to copper rivet his rejection of Moore's proposed general rules of morality. The beginnings of the Treatise came in a paper, which Keynes read to the Apostles in January 1904, on Moore's spurned chapter, "Ethics in Relation to Conduct." Refuting Moore on probability occupied Keynes's scholarly thoughts from the beginning of 1904 until 1914, when the manuscript of the Treatise was completed.He concluded that Moore was able to impose general rules upon concrete actions by employing an empirical or "frequentist" theory of probability, that is, through observation of empirical frequencies we could have certain knowledge of the probabilities of classes of events. To destroy any possibility of applying general rules to particular cases, Keynes's Treatise championed the classical a priori theory of probability, where probability fractions are deduced purely by logic and have nothing to do with empirical reality. Skidelsky makes the point well:"Keynes's argument, then, can be interpreted as an attempt to free the individual to pursue the good ... by means of egotistic actions, since he is not required to have certain knowledge of the probable consequences of his actions in order to act rationally. It is part, in other words, of his continuing campaign against Christian morality. This would have been appreciated by his audience, although the connection is not obvious to the modern reader. More generally, Keynes links rationality to expediency. The circumstances of an action become the most important consideration in judgments of probable rightness.... By limiting the possibility of certain knowledge Keynes increased the scope for intuitive judgment." (Skidelsky 1983: 153-54)We cannot get into the intricacies of probability theory here. Suffice it to say that Keynes's a priori theory was demolished by Richard von Mises (1951) in his 1920s work, Probability, Statistics, and Truth. Mises demonstrated that the probability fraction can be meaningfully used only when it embodies an empirically derived law of entities which are homogeneous, random, and indefinitely repeatable.This means, of course, that probability theory can only be applied to events which, in human life, are confined to those like the lottery or the roulette wheel. (For a comparison of Keynes and Richard von Mises, see D.A. Gillies [1973: pp. 1-34].) Incidentally, Richard von Mises's probability theory was adopted by his brother Ludwig, although they agreed on little else (L. von Mises [1949] 1966: pp. 106-15).Originally published in Dissent on Keynes: A Critical Appraisal of Keynesian Economics, edited by Mark Skousen. New York: Praeger (1992). Pp. 171-198."Rothbard has made at least 10 errors in the space of 5 short paragraphs.The first 4 errors occur in Rothbard's claim that " Keynes's Treatise championed the classical a priori theory of probability, where probability fractions are deduced purely by logic and have nothing to do with empirical reality."First,Keynes's logical theory of probabiity is based on George Boole's 1854 The Laws of Thought.It has nothing to do with the Classical theory of Laplace,whose Principle of Non Sufficient Reason Keynes decimated in the A Treatise on Probability in chapter 4.Second ,all of Keynes's probabilities are conditional .Third,the hypothesis,h, is always related to empirical evidence,e.Thus , a probability is always of the form P(h/e).Fourth,the claim that the " probability fractions are deduced purely by logic and have nothing to do with empirical reality" is simply bizarre as Keynes's probabilitiies ,in general, are intervals and are not sharp or point probabilities(fractions)except in the limiting case where the weight of the evidence,w,= or approaches 1.The condition that w=1 or approaches 1 only occurs in the physical and biological sciences.Fifth,the probability relation is not deduced.It is perceived/intuited by the decision maker based on similarity ,intuition ,analogy and pattern recognition.Sixth,it is not true that Keynes's approach to probability was part " ... of his continuing campaign against Christian morality ".It was part of Keynes's campaign against the hypocrisy of Victorian Morality,which was a far cry from being Christian.Seventh,Keynes never linked "... rationality to expediency. The circumstances of an action become the most important consideration in judgments of probable rightness ". Keynes argued that all of the evidence,not merely statistical frequencies, had to be considered.This would mean that unique and infrequent circumstances would have to be taken into account in making a judgment of the probable amount of goodness.Eighth,the claim that "... Keynes's a priori theory was demolished by Richard von Mises (1951) in his 1920's work, Probability, Statistics, and Truth", is simply a very bad joke that reveals the ignorance of Rothbard .Richard von Mises incorrectly identifies Keynes as a subjectivist and committed the fatal error of overlookingKeynes's requirement that all probabilities must have a weight of the evidence, w,that is > 0.There is no probability if w=0.Richard von Mises's claim that Keynes specified probabilities for the case where w=0,total ignorance, means that henever read the book that he claimed to be discussing.Nineth,Rothbard's claim that "Mises demonstrated that the probability fraction can be meaningfully used only when it embodies an empirically derived law of entities which are homogeneous, random, and indefinitely repeatable." had already been done by Keynes in chapters 8 and 33 of the TP many ,many years before Richard von Mises wrote his book in 1929. Keynes would have added the terms "uniform" and "stable", as he did in his debatewith Tinbergen in 1939-40 in the Economic Journal.Keynes doesn't work with probability fractions:he works with intervals as lower and upper bounds.The fraction only exists in the special case where w=1. Tenth ,the claim that "probability theory can only be applied to events which, in human life, are confined to those like the lottery or the roulette wheel." is only correct if one is using mathematical probability.Keynes considered interval bounded probability as being the main way in which people use probability. Mathematical probability is a very special limiting case that only occurs in the physical ,natural and life sciences.Finally,the claim that "For a comparison of Keynes and Richard von Mises, see D.A. Gillies [1973: pp. 1-34]... " makes no sense because Gillies never discusses Keynes 's interval estimate approach to probability.In fact, Gillies does not even understand why the role of an interval estimate is primary in Keynes's work.Rothbard's assessment of Keynes's work on probability and decision making is based on severe mathematical and logical limitations,ineptness,illiteracy and innumeracy on his part.The GT is an application of the TP approach to macroeconomics and microeconomics.Rothbard's discussion of the GT contains dozens of errors similar in nature to the errors exposed above.I would recommend this book only if the reader is doing a Master's or Doctoral dissertation on how not to write a book on "Keynes the Man".This book proves that Rothbard had no idea about what Keynes's theory was .It is very similar to his error filled discussions of Adam Smith in an earlier 1994 book.