Studies in Economic Nationalism by Michael A. Heilperin

Author:Michael A. Heilperin [Heilperin, Michael A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-933550-83-1
Publisher: The Ludwig von Mises Institute
Published: 2010-11-06T16:00:00+00:00

VI

Our main theme in this inquiry is the connection between economic nationalism and collectivism. Was Keynes, then, a liberal or a collectivist? This question calls for careful consideration.

As everybody familiar with his work will readily concede, Keynes was not the kind of man on whom it would be easy to pin a label. We find troughout Keynes’ writings a great many statements upholding a liberal outlook on life and on individual prerogatives and liberties. It would be easy to compose an impressive anthology of such statements in which practically every single major work of Keynes would be represented. Keynes considered himself to be a liberal and yet even in his writings on the subject of liberalism he expresses views which only a collectivist could hold. In an earlier book, The Trade of Nations, I myself described Keynes as having been “fundamentally a liberal”. 44 Since then I have re-read and pondered over practically everything Keynes has written. It is my conclusion now that Keynes never took a clear-cut stand in the controversy between liberalism and collectivism. He never found it necessary to make a choice. He seems not to have been impressed by anything contradictory between sets of divergent views which he would almost simultaneously express and which would strike almost anyone else as inconsistent. There is, however, one criterion that could be usefully applied in this connection. It is this: what are his actual policy recommendations? And here the general impression is that Keynes was fascinated by collectivism, even while he would say kind and beautiful things about liberalism and even though he was a foe of totalitarianism. Although Keynes very frequently expressed sentiments favourable to individual liberty and to political freedom, his policy recommendations invariably go the other way. If he was a liberal, then he was that extraordinary kind of liberal whose practical recommendations consistently promote collectivism.

I have already commented on the clearly collectivist implications of Keynes’ essay on “National Self-Sufficiency”. But let us go further back. In 1926 Keynes wrote a small book entitled The End of Laissez-Faire, a part of which he included in his Essays in Persuasion published in 1931. From this I quote the following: 45

I believe that some co-ordinated act of intelligent judgment is required as to the scale on which it is desirable that the community as a whole should save, the scale on which these savings should go abroad in the form of foreign investments, and whether the present organisation of the investment market distributes savings along the most nationally productive channels. I do not think that these matters should be left entirely to the chances of private judgment and private profits, as they are at present.

Now, this is a collectivist recommendation, involving the determination by the state of matters which, in a liberal society, are left to individual decisions. In his General Theory, Keynes takes up this idea in much greater detail. “I expect to see the State”, he says, “taking an ever greater responsibility for directly organizing investment”;

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