Keynes the Man.pdf - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

42 Keynes, the Manthis attitude, as something which I would willingly see forgotten”(Robbins 1971, p. 154). Robbins’s diary entries on Keynes duringWorld War II can only be considered an absurdly rapturous personalview. Here is Robbins at a June 1944 pre–Bretton Woodsdraft conference in Atlantic City:Keynes was in his most lucid and persuasive mood: and theeffect was irresistible… . Keynes must be one of the mostremarkable men that have ever lived—the quick logic, the widevision, above all the incomparable sense of the fitness of words,all combine to make something several degrees beyond thelimit of ordinary human achievement. (Ibid., p. 193)Only Churchill, Robbins goes on to say, is of comparable stature.But Keynes is greater, for heuses the classical style of our life and language, it is true, butit is shot through with something which is not traditional, aunique unearthly quality of which one can only say that it’spure genius. The Americans sat entranced as the godlike visitorsang and the golden light played all around. (Ibid., pp. 208–12 cf. Hession 1984, p. 342)This sort of fawning can only mean that Keynes possessedsome sort of strong personal magnetism to which Robbins wassusceptible. 10Central to Keynes’s strategy in putting The General Theory overwere two claims: first, that he was revolutionizing economic theory,and second, that he was the first economist—aside from a few“underworld” characters, such as Silvio Gesell—to concentrate onthe problem of unemployment. All previous economists, whom helumped together as “classical,” he said, assumed full employment10Robbin’s biographer, D.P. O’Brien, labors hard to maintain that, despite what headmits is Robbins’s “elaborate” and “exaggerated contrition,” Robbins never really, deepdown, converted to Keynesianism. But O’Brien is unconvincing, even after he tries toshow how Robbins waffled on some issues. Moreover, O’Brien admits that Robbinsdropped his Misesian macro approach, and he fails to mention Robbins’s astonishingtreatment of Keynes as “godlike” (O’Brien 1988, pp. 14–16, 117–20).