Keynes the Man.pdf - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

56 Keynes, the Manstudents and even to opposing economists. A man who thoughtand acted in terms of power and brutal domination, who reviledthe concept of moral principle, who was an eternal and swornenemy of the bourgeoisie, of creditors, and of the thrifty middleclass, who was a systematic liar, twisting truth to fit his own plan,who was a Fascist and an anti-Semite, Keynes was neverthelessable to cajole opponents and competitors.Even as he cunningly turned his students against his colleagues,he was still able to cozen those same colleagues into intellectualsurrender. Harassing and hammering away unfairly at Pigou,Keynes was yet able, at last and from beyond the grave, to wringan abject recantation from his old colleague. Similarly, he inspiredhis old foe Lionel Robbins to muse absurdly in his diary about thegolden halo around Keynes’s “godlike” head. He was able to convertto Keynesianism several Hayekians and Misesians who shouldhave known—and undoubtedly did know—better: in additionto Abba Lerner, John Hicks, Kenneth Boulding, Nicholas Kaldor,and G.L.S. Shackle in England, there were also Fritz Machlup andGottfried Haberler from Vienna, who landed at Johns Hopkinsand Harvard, respectively.Of all the Misesians of the early 1930s, the only economistcompletely uninfected by the Keynesian doctrine and personalitywas Mises himself. And Mises, in Geneva and then for yearsin New York without a teaching position, was removed from theinfluential academic scene. Even though Hayek remained anti-Keynesian, he too was touched by the Keynesian charisma. Despiteeverything, Hayek was proud to call Keynes a friend and indeedpromoted the legend that Keynes, at the end of his life, was aboutto convert from his own Keynesianism.Hayek’s evidence for Keynes’s alleged last-minute conversionis remarkably slight—based on two events in the final yearsof Keynes’s life. First, in June 1944, upon reading The Road toSerfdom, Keynes, now at the pinnacle of his career as a wartimegovernment planner, wrote a note to Hayek, calling it “a great