Re: Keynes the radical

[Rob Schaap <carob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

G'day Michael,

Whilst I am wholly aware of JMK's insistence that a fight between the
bourgeoisie and the great unwashed would find him firmly on the side of the
former, I still think there's room for a generous reading of all this.  It
seems, for instance, wholly consistent with the writings of, say, the
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, to claim that a person of 'independent
means' (ie one not tied to a boss and the draining work day the latter
extracts) would develop all kinds of personal qualities that simply don't
have the chance to fulfill themselves in a being lashed forever to the yoke.


I think, for instance, Habermas's recounting of the significance of French
salons and British tea houses (the 'bourgeois public sphere') is important
stuff.  There, the nascent bourgeoisie articulated and substantiated the
great (bourgeois) revolutionary age.  Humanity was redefined, and human
culture enriched.  From where I sit (poor historically contingent thing that
I am) progress was made - and in giant leaps.

That JMK and FAK implicitly persisted in some sort of racist classism,
whereby it is not life experience that fashions the human, but the
'nobility' of the parental loins, does not altogether undo the point, I
think.  Marx would have agreed, I reckon, and then politely asked (if he
could manage to control his unpredictable temper) 'what if all humans
enjoyed the positive freedom to fulfill their potential?  Would we not then
have a world even richer in all you value?'.  It would have been hard for
the worthy gents to demur, I submit.  Which is not to say they wouldn't have
- just that even their formidable reasoning (for which they were justly
lauded) might not have been up to covering this instance of narrow and
unreflective bigotry.  They might even have been moved to admit, if
sufficiently in their crystal cups, that their being was determining their
consciousness ...

Cheers,
Rob.

>Hayek, F. A. 1952. "Review of Harrod's Life of J. M. Keynes." Journal of
>Modern History, 24: 2 (June).
>       197: Keynes "had not long before coined the phrase of the
>        "euthanasia of the rentier," and in a deliberate to draw him
>        out I k the next opportunity to stress in conversation the
>        importance which the man of independent means had had in the
>        English political tradition.  Far from contradicting me, this
>        made Keynes launch out into a long eulogy of the role played
>        by the propertied class in which be gave many illustrations
>        of their indispensability the preservation of a decent
>        civilization."
>
>
>--
>Michael Perelman
>Economics Department
>California State University
>Chico, CA 95929
>
>Tel. 530-898-5321
>E-Mail michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>