Capitalist Revolutionary: John Maynard Keynes

by Roger E. Backhouse

The Great Recession of 2008 restored John Maynard Keynes to prominence. After decades when the Keynesian revolution seemed to have been forgotten, the great British theorist was suddenly everywhere. The New York Times asked, “What would Keynes have done?” The Financial Times wrote of “the undeniable shift to Keynes.” Le Monde pronounced the economic collapse Keynes’s “revenge.” Two years later, following bank bailouts and Tea Party fundamentalism, Keynesian principles once again seemed misguided or irrelevant to a public focused on ballooning budget deficits. In this readable account, Backhouse and Bateman elaborate the misinformation and caricature that have led to Keynes’s repeated resurrection and interment since his death in 1946.

Keynes’s engagement with social and moral philosophy and his membership in the Bloomsbury Group of artists and writers helped to shape his manner of theorizing. Though trained as a mathematician, he designed models based on how specific kinds of people (such as investors and consumers) actually behave—an approach that runs counter to the idealized agents favored by economists at the end of the century.

Keynes wanted to create a revolution in the way the world thought about economic problems, but he was more open-minded about capitalism than is commonly believed. He saw capitalism as essential to a society’s well-being but also morally flawed, and he sought a corrective for its main defect: the failure to stabilize investment. Keynes’s nuanced views, the authors suggest, offer an alternative to the polarized rhetoric often evoked by the word “capitalism” in today’s political debates.

Genres: Economics, Biography, Nonfiction

208 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 15, 2011

Reviews

[Tibor Kozjak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sort of an intellectual and a moral portrait of Keynes then a proper biography. Some economic stuff is not very well explained here (luckily, I read Heilbroner's chapter on Keynes in The Worldly Philosophers few months ago, and I listened to Origin Story two part episode that mentions this book as a source ) and I had a feeling reading it that there was some repetition near the end - especially about Keynes leaving policy proposals based on his model described in The General Theory to other economists. The book itself is not long and there is definitely some padding here and there. All in all it made me want to read more about the man and his monumental idea.

[Marcos Fuerte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great tale of the original famous economist John Maynard Keynes

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very solid. I'm not sure the non-economist will quite pick up on what exactly is going on, I think the basic message of what Keynes thought the basic problem of capitalism was and what he thought the problem with critiques of capitalism was. It is also an interesting story of how he came around in his view of how investor expectations are formed (the so-called "animal spirits"), which evidently is Professor Bateman's domain.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book that goes beyond the Keynes that has been idolised and explained his actual ideas. Whilst sometimes the authors disagree with established narratives he remains a fascinating character. He can be interpreted in many ways which is part of what Keynes is trying to say. The main takeaway: capitalism is essential but flawed and no single theory can incorporate all of capitalism

[Glen Demers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Less a biography and more of an overview of Keynes theories. Backhouse goes into great detail about the forces that shaped Keynes thought process when he was writing his General Theory and how modern economists have caricatured his views to fit into a neat formula - very un-Keynesian!

[Catherine Meza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily comprehensible overview of the contradictory facets of John Maynard Keynes. Keynes as a moral philosopher was my favorite chapter.