Keynes in His Own Words
Originally published in December 2010. A trend in thinking and outlook can be found in
the
selected quotations provided below, which are followed by comments in double
parentheses. The actual practice of Keynes reveals
he is a
finance capitalist and theoretician for
imperialism and the
preservation of monopoly right and the right of
imperialism to
rule globally over the working class and oppressed
peoples with
impunity.
Direct experience has taught the working class
that during the
20th century, an avowed anti-communist such as
Keynes could not
make a positive contribution in the realm of
politics and social
policy. Someone unwilling to unite with
communists, someone full
of contempt and hatred for the working class could
not make a
positive contribution in political, social and
cultural life. In
the case of Keynes, he was not merely unwilling to
unite with the
communists, his mission became their defeat. He
became the
darling of the Labour Party whose mission was to
make sure the
British working class would remain under the
thrall of a ruling
class determined to preserve its spheres of
interest and
influence and defeat the road of the October
Revolution.
Hardened articulated stands of racism towards
others, hatred
for communism and the working class would preclude
individuals
like Keynes from making a contribution towards the
people's
well-being and general interests of society.
Anti-communism and
racism are stands of an egocentric who puts
personal prejudices
and desires, and the narrow interests of the rich
and privileged
and the status quo ahead of the rights of all,
their collectives
and the general interests of society, especially
the necessity
for change.
The quotations selected from Keynes' published
material mostly
deal with his political views. Often singular
quotes are not
enough to see a trend but in the case of Keynes,
his anti-
communism, contempt for workers and opposition to
people's active
and conscious participation in government, and his
open racism
towards non-Europeans considered inferior and
certain Europeans
are more than evident.
Readers should remember that Keynes wrote at a
time when class
divisions were extremely sharp both in Britain and
internationally with the creation of a workers'
socialist
homeland in Russia in 1917, the great stirring and
revolt of the
peoples of the colonies, the prolonged economic
crisis of the
1930s and the creation of the international United
Front Against
Fascism. Keynes consistently served the British
Empire and
imperialism during this tumultuous time and was
well rewarded for
his service to the ruling class.
After WWI and the Socialist Revolution and
creation of first
Soviet Russia and then the Soviet Union as a
homeland of the
international proletariat, imperialism centred in
Europe, the
United States and Japan demanded new arrangements
to keep the
working class oppressed, the Soviet Union
encircled and isolated,
the colonies subdued, and the monopoly capitalist
class in power
with their monopolies defended and free to expand
their empires.
The situation was unlike anything the capitalist
class had faced
before.
One trend that emerged favoured fascism with its
one-nation
politics, open suppression of the working class
movement, public
spending to militarize the society and pursue
empire-building in
an aggressive and expansionist way, challenge the
dominant
imperialist powers and re-divide the world.
Another trend was social-democracy taken up as
the variant of
liberalism to line workers up behind their own
ruling capitalist
class through public spending on big state
projects and war
preparations to defend the colonies they already
possessed and
pressure weaker or rising imperialist powers such
as Germany and
Japan to respect the status quo regarding the
division of the
world.
On the economic front, these struggles for new
arrangements
intersected in similar policies of using the
public treasury to
fund stimulus measures to defend big business from
the ravages of
the economic crisis. All the imperialist countries
began to use
public funds to save big business and their
monopolies such as
the stimulus measures of Franklin Delano Roosevelt
of the United
States, which included the Tennessee Valley
Authority, rehashed
in 2009-2010 with the Bush/Obama bailouts of the
big financial
enterprises, auto and other monopolies.
In 1930s Germany, stimulus measures using public
funds were
incorporated into the program of the national
socialists of
Hitler's Nazi Party to defend particular German
monopolies such
as Krupp and Siemens AG, build big state projects
and rearm the
country using both public funds and funds borrowed
from U.S.
finance capital.
The economic theories of Keynes dealing with
public spending
during a downturn in the business cycle were
convenient and gave
a stamp of intellectual approval for those
dominant imperialist
states charting a liberal course and also the
rising imperialist
states charting a fascist aggressive course. It is
not surprising
that intellectuals of the capitalist elite such as
Keynes would
find favour in both imperialist camps because the
reality of
monopoly capitalism is that state policies are not
based on
principles but the pragmatic needs of the moment.
In the pre- and post-World War Two period,
monopoly capitalist
states were either openly fascist or liberal
conciliators with
fascism according to their immediate
self-interest. One glaring
example occurred during WWII involving the U.S.,
Britain and the
other imperialist states that were at that time
allied with the
Soviet Union in the world war to defeat the
aggressive
imperialist axis led by Germany and Japan. Right
at the height of
the war in 1944, they forged the Bretton-Woods
fascist
international monetary agreement as a cornerstone
of their plans
to impose U.S. imperialism as the sole superpower
and use their
united financial and military power to continue
the colonial
system with new arrangements after Germany and
Japan were
defeated.
An important aspect of Bretton-Woods was to
tighten the
encirclement of their ally the Soviet Union to
weaken and
eventually destroy the workers' homeland. Keynes
was a leading
architect of this new international financial
arrangement of
finance capital, which created both the
International Monetary
Fund and the forerunner of the World Bank and
legalized usury as
a form to force tribute from the developing and
weaker capitalist
countries.
Quotations of Keynes
Views on communism, the working class and
Marx's
Capital
These quotations are selected from articles in
the New
Statesman (Republished in the booklet A
Short View of
Russia by Hogarth Press in 1925 and in Essays
in Persuasion (1931).)
Like other new
religions, Leninism derives its power not from
the multitude but from a small minority of
enthusiastic converts,
whose zeal and intolerance make each one the equal
in strength of
a hundred indifferentists.
((Such a silly notion. "A small minority of
enthusiastic
converts" would not have been able to overthrow an
imperialist
power such as Russia if the multitude of workers
and peasants had
not been prepared subjectively and
organizationally to engage in
heroic revolutionary struggle to defeat their
oppressors. Keynes
is merely expressing his contempt for the people,
who in his mind
are incapable of embarking on a conscious path of
revolutionary
struggle to move society forward to a
human-centred alternative
to capitalism. He hates anyone with a different
outlook to his.
For him the working class perspective on
economics, politics and
culture in general must be dogmatic and intolerant
because it is
so diametrically opposed to his capitalist
outlook, which in his
mind is sanctified by his long English lineage and
tradition and
is therefore the only true and normal thinking.))
How can I accept a
doctrine which sets up as its bible, above
and beyond criticism, an obsolete text-book which
I know to be
not only scientifically erroneous but without
interest or
application for the modern world? How can I adopt
a creed which,
preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish
proletariat
above the bourgeois and the intelligentsia who,
whatever their
faults, are the quality in life and surely carry
the seeds of all
human advancement? Even if we need a religion, how
can we find it
in the turbid rubbish of the red bookshop? It is
hard for an
educated, decent, intelligent son of Western
Europe to find his
ideals here, unless he has first suffered some
strange and horrid
process of conversion which has changed all his
values.
((It is the "boorish proletariat" that is the
rising aspect of
the great contradiction of the capitalist world.
Keynes is
terrified that the negation of the "boorish
proletariat, the mud
and its turbid rubbish" is about to be negated
even in sweet
England and he will lose his power, wealth and
privilege to those
-- he can barely bring himself to say the word
without using an
obscenity -- those workers who create the wealth
that supports
his lavish intellectual lifestyle serving the
monopolies and the
British Empire.))
Keynes gives the following racist and
anti-Semitic
"explanation" of the character of members of the
Soviet
Union:
In part, no doubt,
[their character] is the fruit of Red
Revolution. In part, perhaps, it is the fruit of
some beastliness
in the Russian nature -- or in the Russian and
Jewish natures
when, as now, they are allied together.
((The combining of Bolshevism and Judaism as
underlining
features of those "beasts" who would destroy
European
civilization was a common theme among Hitlerite
fascists of the
day. Keynes goes a step further into racism
considering the
threat to European civilization comes from a
combining of "some
beastliness in the Russian nature" with Judaism.
This propaganda
amongst the British intelligentsia was part of the
pressure on
German imperialism to launch an assault on the
Soviet Union,
which it eventually did in 1941.
British intellectuals such as Keynes have never
accepted
responsibility for preparing European public
opinion to encourage
and even hail the German Nazis for launching their
murderous war
on the peoples of the Soviet Union, which resulted
in
unprecedented destruction and death. Their only
regret is that
the invasion did not happen before the 1939 Treaty
of
Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of
Soviet Socialist
Republics, which was a factor in delaying the
attack until
1941.
The habit of Keynes not to argue issues out but
simply to
launch abuse and ascribe to adversaries one's own
habits is
characteristic of a fascist outlook and the
lowering of political
culture under monopoly capitalism, as distinct
from the interest
in advancing science during the 19th century. It
is the return to
medieval obscurantism and absolutism under the
cloak of being the
most advanced and erudite.))
Leninism is a
combination of two things which Europeans have
kept for some centuries in different compartments
of the soul --
religion and business. We are shocked because the
religion is
new, and contemptuous because the business, being
subordinated to
the religion instead of the other way round, is
highly
inefficient.
((Besides the contemptuous disregard for what
constitutes
Leninism, how does Keynes reconcile the fact that
the Roman
Catholic Church was for centuries the largest
landholder and
participant in European business and crusader for
spoils abroad?
The Protestant Reformation played an integral role
in preparing
the subjective conditions for the victory of
capitalism over
medieval property relations.
Leninism unmasked the hypocrisy of the Church,
especially in
Russia where it had worked hand in glove with the
most diabolical
exploiters and medieval tyrants.))
Continuing his critique of revolutionary Russia
Keynes
writes:
Comfort and habits let
us be ready to forego, but I am not
ready for a creed which does not care how much it
destroys the
liberty and security of daily life, which uses
deliberately the
weapons of persecution, destruction and
international strife. How
can I admire a policy which finds a characteristic
expression in
spending millions to suborn spies in every family
and group at
home, and to stir up trouble abroad?
((Interesting comment given that striving to
become rich and
free from the drudgery of ordinary work is the
creed of the
bourgeoisie. And how have owners of capital kept
the working
class oppressed if not through bribery of working
class leaders
using superprofits from exploitation in the
oppressed countries.
Ideological subversion is the backbone of
suppressing proletarian
revolution in Britain and all other monopoly
capitalist
countries. Keynes himself is an excellent example
of a
well-prepared indoctrinated agent of the owners of
capital
emerging from the middle strata.
The hypocrisy of Keynes is boundless. British
spying is
lionized even in films and the popular culture but
the working
class spreading its views through its own
propaganda organs and
discussions in ordinary families is "to suborn
spies in every
family and group at home." And to express social
solidarity
abroad for the rights of the peoples fighting
against the British
and U.S. Empires is characterized as "stirring up
trouble
abroad."
What Baron Keynes refers to as "stirring up
trouble abroad" is
proletarian internationalism and the working class
does not shy
away from doing its duty to support all those who
are striving to
free themselves from imperialist oppression and to
move their
societies forward to the emancipation of the
working class.
The infiltration of capitalist spies and agents
into the
peoples' movements, the specialty of the czarist
police, has been
institutionalized not only by the CIA, Homeland
Security, MI5,
MI6 and CSIS but also with non-governmental
agencies (NGOs) and
certain labour organizations and charities that
openly block the
people from taking up politics and organizing to
solve problems
in their own interests and to resolve the
contradictions facing
their societies, especially their exploitation by
the imperialist
empires.))
I can be influenced by
what seems to me to be justice and
good sense; but the class war will find me on the
side of the
educated bourgeoisie.
((Workers and their allies should remember this
"confession"
when they hear or read his name. "Justice and good
sense" and
principles are soon "suborned" by pragmatic
policies of the
"educated bourgeoisie" fighting the "class war"
against the
"boorish proletariat."))
Support for Eugenics
Keynes was an active proponent of eugenics,
having served as
Director of the British Eugenics Society from 1937
to 1944. As
late as 1946, before his death, Keynes declared
eugenics to be
"the most important, significant and, I would add,
genuine branch
of sociology which exists." (From
"Opening remarks: The
Galton Lecture (1946)," Eugenics Review, 38(1),
39-40.)
((This was not a stand from idle curiosity or
ignorance. It
was active participation in the movement for
European fascism.
During the period prior to WWII, support for
eugenics meant
support in particular for Nazism. Eugenics was
presented as "the
study and practice of selective breeding applied
to humans," with
the supposed aim of improving the species as
opposed to moving
society forward by changing the social conditions
and resolving
class contradictions.
Eugenics is a form of one-nation politics. The
ruling elite
make a determination of all those considered
acceptable to
constitute a nation of themselves based on ethnic,
religious,
political, physical and intellectual criteria. All
outside the
criteria are excluded and even exterminated as
became the policy
of Nazi Germany and today requires that all those
who do not
swear allegiance to the "values" declared
American, Canadian,
British, civilized, etc., are subjected to civil
death which is
to say that no civil rights apply to them.
During the 1930s, eugenics was most closely
associated with
the German Nazis and their political program to
cleanse Germany
of all those people considered undesirable. All
"imperfect human
beings" such as communists, Jews, Roma, Slavs,
Gays, people with
physical or mental imperfections and those
upholding values or
possessing a conscience in contradiction with
Hitler's Nazi Party
were to be deported or exterminated. British
liberal
intellectuals and others through their
conciliation with fascist
ideology such as racism, anti-communism and
eugenics have to be
held to account for the role they played in
preparing subjective
conditions for mass murder in the concentration
camps, the war
crimes committed by the German military abroad and
other Nazi
atrocities.))
Quotation from "The End of Laissez-faire"
(1926)
Marxian Socialism must
always remain a portent to the
historians of Opinion -- how a doctrine so
illogical and so dull
can have exercised so powerful and enduring an
influence over the
minds of men, and, through them, the events of
history.
((The working class has not developed its
ideology to
entertain the British intellectual elite. The
ideology is meant
to guide the working class in constituting the
nation to vest
sovereignty in the people and open the path
towards the complete
emancipation of the working class and elimination
of class
society.))
Quotations from "Essays In Biography" (1933)
I have sought with
some touches of detail to bring out the
solidarity and historical continuity of the High
Intelligentsia
of England, who have built up the foundations of
our thought in
the two and a half centuries, since Locke, in his
Essay
Concerning Human Understanding, wrote the
first modern
English book. I relate below the amazing progeny
of Sir George
Villiers. There is also a pride of sentiment to
claim spiritual
kinship with the Locke Connection and that long
English line,
intellectually and humanly linked with one
another, to which the
names in my second section belong. If not the
wisest, yet the
most truthful of men. If not the most personable,
yet the
queerest and sweetest. If not the most practical,
yet of the
purest public conscience. If not of high artistic
genius, yet the
most solid and sincere accomplishment within many
of the fields
which are ranged by the human mind.
((This quote praising dead Englishmen Locke,
Villiers and
others in the long English line is inexplicably
followed by a
snipe at communists for venerating their heroes,
leaders and
ideologues.))
All the political
parties alike have their origins in past
ideas and not in new ideas -- and none more
conspicuously so than
the Marxists.
((How can origins be found in new ideas? The
point is to
develop ideas which are consistent with the
present conditions,
which requires concrete analysis of concrete
conditions. Modern
personalities do not reject their origins found in
the struggles
and theories of the working class wherever the
people have made a
contribution including the ancient thought
material of past
civilizations. Modern personalities are not so
arrogant to
declare they arrived at the present without a past
found in the
struggles and thought material of people that have
come before
them and advanced human civilization to what it is
today. The
point however is not to dwell on the past and
ancient thought
material in the sense of turning it into dogma or
an icon but to
change the social conditions of the present and
give rise to new
thought material.
This is what Lenin did in creating the Leninist
political
party of a new type, which was qualitatively
different from the
working class organizations created by Karl Marx
and Frederick
Engels during the 19th century. And this is what
Hardial Bains
and others did within the conditions of the
betrayal of the
Leninist path set by the October Revolution. And
so it is with
CPC(M-L) and other revolutionary communist parties
that
constantly renew themselves to meet the challenges
of the
contemporary conditions that are themselves
constantly in a state
of change, development and motion.))
Quotation from "The General Theory of
Employment, Interest
and Money" (1935)
Gesell's chiefwork is
written in cool and scientific terms,
although it is run through by a more passionate
and charged
devotion to social justice than many think fit for
a scholar. I
believe that the future will learn more from the
spirit of Gesell
than from that of Marx.
((Wikipedia has this note on Silvio Gesell
(1862-1930)
so admired by Keynes: "Gesell founded his economic
thoughts on
the self-interest of people as a natural, healthy
motive to act,
which allows the individual to follow the
satisfaction of his/her
needs and to be productive. The economic system
must do justice
to this pre-condition, otherwise this system would
undoubtedly
fail. This is why Gesell called his proposed
economic system
'natural.' This stance put him in clear opposition
to Karl Marx,
who called for a change in social conditions.))
Taking selfishness
into account, Gesell called for free, fair
business competition with equal chances for all.
This included
the removal of all legal and inherited privileges.
((This admiration of Keynes for Gesell reflects
the
contradiction of economists of the era of early
monopoly
capitalism who still had one foot in the previous
period. This
contradiction is resolved with neo-liberalism,
which marks the
full-blown adherence to monopoly right over public
right and the
smashing of any illusions people may still have
that a return to
pre-monopoly capitalism is possible or even
desirable.))
Quotation from John Kenneth Galbraith, "The
Age of
Uncertainty"
Keynes never sought to
change the world out of any sense of
personal dissatisfaction or discontent. Marx swore
that the
bourgeoisie would suffer for his poverty and his
carbuncles.
Keynes experienced neither poverty or boils. For
him the world
was excellent. (Chapter
7, pg.198)
((For a Marxist, of which Marx was the first but
certainly not
the last, the world exists objectively and
subjectively as it
presents itself, no more no less. Marxists,
similar to
non-Marxists, are born into a world that is not of
their making.
Marxists accept the world as it is, analyze its
contradictions
and set about with others to organize to change
it.
Any dissatisfaction and discontent the working
class may feel
arises in part from a sense of helplessness. As
soon as workers
refuse to be victims or spectators to their own
mistreatment and
class oppression and unite and organize with
others from their
class to change the social conditions the
dissatisfaction and
discontent they may have felt is overwhelmed by
the spirit of
social solidarity and the knowledge that the
workers and their
allies are organizing and marching forward to
solve the problems
in the real world, the problems that are at the
root of their
dissatisfaction and discontent. Social solidarity
is the result
of unity in action for the same cause. It inspires
even the most
oppressed to be courageous in the face of their
difficulties.
Modern personalities, views the problems which
exist with
affection in spite of the "carbuncles," because
they can be
tackled with a program of one's own making. Having
such a program
is, in turn, the affirmation of the human
factor/social
consciousness, of life itself.))
Wikipedia writes: "The Bloomsbury Group or
Bloomsbury
Set was a group of writers, intellectuals and
artists who held
informal discussions in Bloomsbury (central
London) throughout
the 20th century... Their work deeply influenced
literature,
aesthetics, criticism, and economics as well as
modern attitudes
towards feminism, pacifism, and sexuality. Its
best known members
were Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E.M.
Forster, and
Lytton Strachey."
Keynes is quoted by Quentin Bell in his Virginia
Woolf, A
Biography (Hogarth
Press, 1972, p. 177). The biographer Bell
relates an anecdote of Virginia Woolf, Keynes and
T.S. Eliot
discussing religion at a dinner party, in the
context of their
struggle against Victorian era morality.
At the end of the said
dinner party a disturbance reminded
Keynes 'of his theme,' and he remarked that 'the
youth had no
religion save Communism and this was worse than
nothing.' Marxism
'was founded upon nothing better than a
misunderstanding of
Ricardo,' and given time, he, Keynes, 'would deal
thoroughly with
the Marxists' and other economists, to solve the
economic
problems their theories threatened to cause.
((The economic problems the Marxists threatened to
cause are
those of the actual producers reaffirming their
right to control
the direction of the economy. They are quite
capable of finding
their own path forward through the difficulties
their affirmation
of themselves as the actual producers may cause.
This means in
part, the rejection of the thesis of Keynes and
other
capital-centered intellectuals that workers are a
cost of
production; it means demanding first claim on the
social product
of the actual producers and the satisfaction of
the claims of
society through the government before those of
owners of capital
and their minions are met; it means gradually
eliminating the
claims of owners of capital altogether. Workers
gladly accept the
challenge of overcoming difficulties these
measures may bring.
Attempts to haunt them with the ghost of Keynes
will not derail
them.))
Note
A short biography of John Maynard Keynes
(1883-1946) is available in Wikipedia where
some details
of his class origin, upbringing and public life in
service of the
British Empire are given.
This article was published in
Volume 50 Number 34 - September 12,
2020
Article Link:
Keynes in His Own Words
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
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