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    Keynes: The Twentieth Century's Most Influential Economist
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    Keynes: The Twentieth Century's Most Influential Economist
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    Keynes: The Twentieth Century's Most Influential Economist
    Ebook239 pages4 hours

    Keynes: The Twentieth Century's Most Influential Economist

    By Peter Clarke

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    The definitive biography of John Maynard Keynes, the most significant economic thinker of the world's most consequential century

    'A wonderfully lucid exposition of complicated ideas ... required reading'     Guardian

    'Clarke's prose sparkles, and his book is the place to begin if you want to understand the economist's personality and charisma' New York Times

    In the midst of our current economic crisis, we peer anxiously into an uncertain future and try to put things in perspective by looking to the past. One name above all keeps on cropping up: John Maynard Keynes, who first came to public attention on both sides of the Atlantic in the early 1920s, when the depression in Britain engaged his attention, with the argument that unemployment needed a radical remedy.

    And then came the great meltdown of 2008, which caused the ideas of the economist to be rediscovered and rehabilitated.


    Engaging and authoritative, Keynes explores the often misunderstood man in the context of his own life and times, and explores the significance of his groundbreaking ideas today.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateAug 2, 2010
    ISBN9781408813652
    Unavailable
    Keynes: The Twentieth Century's Most Influential Economist
    Author

    Peter Clarke

    Peter Clarke is a retired Associate Professor at the University of Lausanne, and a neuroscientist. An associate editor of the journal Science and Belief, he is a member of the advisory board of the Faraday Institute.

    Read more from Peter Clarke

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    Reviews for Keynes

    3.5/5

    14 ratings14 reviews

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    • 2/5
      I received this book for free as part of LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program.This is a fun little book, and by little, I mean just long enough to cover the life of John Maynard Keynes, while still clocking in under 200 pages, not counting endnotes and bibliography. I find the life of Keynes fascinating, and I genuinely learned things by reading this biography. For example, Keynes' literary friends in his Bloomsbury circle were genuinely mystified that he chose to marry a ballerina. Also, he and his wife wanted kids, but suffered from infertility.Yet, I'm not sure I can really recommend this book. I've had this book for eight years, and I've read it three times trying to review it. I think the problem is the material is not quite chronological, and not quite topical, but rather a kind of stream-of-consciousness combination of the two. It makes it really hard to form a coherent picture of the life and times of Maynard Keynes, which is the only reason I want to read a book like this. I took to making notes in the margin to document what year an event happened, so I could reconstruct a timeline of events that are close in time but spread across chapters.If you just want a fun read with a few facts sprinkled in, then this probably won't bother you. On the other hand, if you like to place things in perspective, then this book makes that unnecessarily hard.
    • 3/5
      A brief biography of Keynes. Not terribly familiar with him or economic theory and reading this seemed a decent way to remedy that. If you are looking for something in depth or very academic this may not be the book for you. However, it is written for an adult audience and the author doesn't mind spending time on some of the technical issues Keynes had to deal with.
    • 2/5
      I won this off goodreads, which just goes to prove that those get a free book competitions actually give out free books. That said, this was pretty blah. Clarke's a very nice writer, so it's easy to read. But that's about the best I can say- the biographical stuff was fine, but there was very little about the Fall or Return of this Influential Economist. And the book doesn't really explain why he was so influential until the last chapter... and even then doesn't do a very good job. Was his major innovation really convincing people that investment could lead to savings rather than the other way round? Really? The *General Theory* gets all of two pages. I'm sure there are better biographies; I hope to hell there are better intellectual biographies. But it's short enough to read in an afternoon, and I'm encouraged enough that I'd want to read other things written by Peter Clarke which require a little less explanation of complicated ideas, i.e., his history of 20th century Britain.
    • 4/5
      A very excellent short life of Keynes, written accessibly.
    • 3/5
      This was a good introductory work on someone I've been hearing a lot about in the news, but didn't know much about. As a non-economist, I was able to understand why Keynes was (and is) so important. The author seems to be a fan of his subject, but didn't descend into hero-worship.
    • 4/5
      This biograhpy of John Maynard Keynes is a timely look at one of the most influential economists. Arguably, with the Chicago school in decline following the current recession and the abandonment or reconsideration of much of the Chicago school's thought, Keynes is the most respected economist of the modern age. Certainly, he is the source of much of the current thought on the need for government spending to restart economic growth.The biographical portions of the book are the most interesting. Keynes led an interesting life both in academia and government. Clarke also gives us a sense of the remarkable circle of friends that Keynes enjoyed.The explanation of Keynes's thought was less helpful. Clarke demonstrates aptly that Keynes said and wrote enough contradictory statements on economic theory to provide ammunition for arguments about who is the true Keynesian for decades. Thus, there is little in the way of a coherent course of action.Clarke's book does an admirable job of detailing this giant of economic thought but ultimately fails to provide the reader with an understanding of what lessons we should have learned from him.
    • 3/5
      NIcely written short introduction to Keynes, with brief but interesting glimpses at his life and career (both academic and in policy/government). For those who already have a background on Keynes, this may be a bit lightweight, both on detail and analysis, but for the uninitiated, a good place to start.
    • 4/5
      This is a fairly short book about Keynes, one of the most infleuntial economists. Peter Clarke includes a helpful index, endnotes and a bibliography. What I liked about the bibliography was that he placed an asterick on books that he recommends to the reader for further information. For people looking for more information, this was a great addition. The author also does provide some visual aids which I always like, especially with biographies because you can meet the man you are learning about.Although this book does provide some helpful information about Keynes that I didn't know before, it still felt too short. Almost like a long introduction. This book, would be a great introduction to Keynes and for people who just need an overview of the man and the times he lived in. For people who are needing deep research, this book would not be for you. However, taking a gander at the bibliography may help those readers some.Overall, this was a good book, just could have been a bit longer with more information/detail.
    • 3/5
      After having read The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, and The Economic Consequences of the Peace, I got very little from Peter Clarke's book, Because of the recent economic turmoil, and the collapse of the myth of self regulating capitalism, Clarke has produced a short summary of the policy of government intervention and stimulus to avert or cure depression. The book seemed to me to be rather an introductory essay: a bit on his life, and kudos for his achievements. (The discussion of his sexuality was quite unnecessary in my opinion). As an unreconstructed Keynesian, who has battled the Milton Friedman monetarists for years, I am happy to see Keynes getting some of his due. However, the fears in America of socialism and government intervention do not bode well for our escape from the current economic downturn. I think it would take another Keynes, and a Franklin Roosevelt combined, to set us on a better course. The disparities in income, and the current hardships being suffered by the recently laid off or foreclosed upon, do not seem to penetrate the hard hearts of the beiievers in laissez-faire capitalism. The future looks bleak to me.
    • 4/5
      FWIW and from a non-economist's point of view. What attracts me to Keynes and this particular book about him is the ideas put forth of a kind of on the ground situational and pragmatic way of running an economy as opposed to the theoretical purist way of thinking of self correcting market based capitalism. As well my tendency is to look at corporations particularly multi-national ones with a great deal of suspicion. More or less this was a fact finding thing for me--though I'm fairly certain that the fact gathering from it is incomplete (which is not necessarily a criticism of the book but more my own unfamiliarity with technicalities of the field altogether). Keynes ideas distinct from say Friedman/Rand at least seem to argue for some kind of balance in wealth disparity which I consider necessary for a healthy society. Differences and distinctions aside individuals shouldn't become so wealthy that they become unreachable within the societies they've engendered from--and to go further that I believe firmly that any individual's right to amass wealth should not supersede the rights of the majority of people to make a living that allows them to buy a home and to raise a family. Keynes seemed to be going down the road of a broad society wide prosperity which is worth being commended for. As for particular lessons that may be applied today in these depressed times--he believed acting pragmatically to forestall ill effects was important--that not acting at all and allowing things to run their course only made things worse. He believed taxes and spending projects on public works programs was a way of jumpstarting an economy back on the road to recovery. He believed that there was a time to set theory aside for action and that theory in any case is often blunted by situations and side effects peculiar to any give time and by nature are dependent on optimum conditions--have no way or device for calculating the chaotic ups and downs of life lived. He believed that government could have a positive impact on a people's economic lives and that programs such as public works were one way to do it. He believed the more people working the better off the society was--and I agree with all that.As far as the book goes I had a bit of difficulty. I don't think Mr. Clarke was really all that technical as far as the subject matter goes but still for a novice on the subject such as myself it was still more than technical enough. The other thing was his British version of English at times had me reconstructing his sentences to try to get at what he was saying. In that respect I was glad that it was of fairly short length--180 pages--maybe not enough for someone else but plenty for me. I would recommend it though. The fact is I can be very opinionated about things I haven't really studied on all that much and so it was a little bit of fuel for the fire.
    • 4/5
      Pretty good. This grew out of an essay/op-ed in the 8 Jan 2009 FT. Provides a good brief look at the fascinating life and harrowing times of JMKeynes, with a bit on his reputation. A few factoids and quotes:- the return to the gold standard was one of the precipitating causes of the General Strike. - "So unlike me! I, perhaps, am too ready to take pleasure in feeling that my mind is changed; you too ready to take pain." (JMK to Denis Robertson)- "The whole of mathematics is a truism and truisms help to clear one's mind." (JMK was a math major.)
    • 3/5
      This is a book that i received from ER. I know very little about economics and this book suited me well as an intro to keynesian theory. It was especially interesting considering the current economic times. I suspect this book would be a bit simplistic for someone well-versed in economics, but it read well for me.
    • 3/5
      For readers with little or no prior knowledge of macroeconomics or John Maynard Keynes, this is not a bad place to start. British historian Peter Clarke has written an extended essay (at 180 pages, closer in style and content to a New Yorker profile than to a full-scale biography) that assesses the historical and contemporary significance of Keynes, his life, and his economic ideas. The writing is accessible and non-technical. Clarke's audience is educated readers who have heard of Keynes, particularly in the context of the current economic crisis, and wonder why this long-dead economist continues to be talked about.I think Clarke succeeds in explaining Keynes's significance, but it's necessary to read the entire book to get the full picture. Clarke's introduction and first two chapters focus largely on the man, rather than his ideas. There's nothing wrong with that; Keynes was a fascinating individual. A cultural and intellectual giant in British society in the first half of the 20th century, he was a core member of the Bloomsbury crowd that included Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Lytton Stratchey and others; a philanthropist who used his earnings as a writer and financial speculator to support the arts; and a popular intellectual whose comments on public policy could not easily be ignored by governments in Britain (or even the United States) between the wars. It's in the second half of the book (chapters three and four and an epilogue) that Clarke addresses the economic ideas and theories that made Keynes famous and influential. The going gets tougher here, but Clarke is dedicated to making Keynes's ideas as clear and understandable as Keynes did himself. The economic problem of the day, and the focus of Keynes's economic policy recommendations, was the high and persistent unemployment that plagued Britain throughout the interwar period. Clarke ranges across the body of Keynes's published work, rather than just “The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money” (1936), his most influential book, to trace the evolution of Keynes's thought. Breaking with the laissez-faire economic orthodoxy of his day, which offered no solutions for unemployment, Keynes and his students developed a new, comprehensive model of the economy (creating the field that came to be known as macroeconomics) and demonstrated that the markets are not, in every case, self-correcting. Responding to severe shocks, markets eventually will find an equilibrium between supply and demand, but that equilibrium may be at a high level of unemployment. Increasing aggregate spending (investment and consumption) can reduce unemployment, but businesses and individuals, lacking confidence in the future growth of the economy, may choose instead to hold on to their money. Even reducing nominal interest rates to zero may not be enough to re-energize spending. Keynes, therefore, postulated a role for government, to stimulate spending through fiscal policy. His preference was investment in public works, though he did not rule out the usefulness of tax cuts and other measures to increase consumption. Keynes's view that government can play a role in correcting market failures was heavily criticized in his day but ultimately became the new economic orthodoxy. In the first instance, his ideas received their warmest welcome in the United States, where a number of New Deal programs used federal spending to create jobs and stimulate investment. Roosevelt was not a Keynesian; his economic ideas, such as they were, were more in line with classical laissez-faire theories. But as Keynes recognized after meeting Roosevelt in 1934, the president's finely-honed political instincts told him that something must be done to address the country's severe economic problems, and he was willing to experiment and to adopt whatever policies worked to put people back to work. This appealed to Keynes, who also was not adverse to changing his mind and striking off in a new theoretical direction if a better solution to real problems was to be found there. Clarke suggests that this was perhaps one of Keynes's great strengths, though it opened him up to charges of inconsistency by his critics. Since the severe inflation of the 1970s and the rise of Milton Friedman and various forms of laissez-faire economics, Keynesian ideas have lost considerable credibility with the (American) public. But there was little debate among economists and policy-makers in 2008-2009 about what to do when economies around the world were on the verge of catastrophe. Remembering what happened in the Great Depression, governments stepped in promptly to prevent the collapse of the financial system and keep credit moving. Subsequently, stimulus measures were enacted, as Keynes proposed, to raise aggregate spending, create jobs, and restore macroeconomic stability at a “normal” level of unemployment. As a result, unemployment reached the serious level of 10 percent, but got nowhere near the 25 percent rate the United States suffered at the height of the Great Depression. And the financial system did not collapse, as it did in 1933, raising hopes that the economy will not fall as far and as hard this time. The legacy of Keynes's economic analysis and policy prescriptions had more than a little to do with that.Clarke only briefly touches on the implications of Keynes for modern economic policy. For more on that, and for a more in-depth examination of Keynes's economic theories in a brief form, see the new book by Keynes's major biographer, Robert Skidelsky, “Keynes: The Return of the Master” (2009). Of course, for a REALLY in-depth look at Keynes's life and work, see Skidelsky's monumental three-volume biography: “John Maynard Keynes: Hopes Betrayed, 1883-1920”; “John Maynard Keynes: The Economist as Saviour, 1920-1937”; and “John Maynard Keynes: Fighting for Freedom, 1937-1946” (1,658 pages in all).
    • 4/5
      The recent financial near meltdown has rehabilitated the reputation of John Maynard Keynes, says Peter Clarke. Keynes was the man, after all, who long ago said that, “When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill done,” a forecast that surely seemed prescient by October 2008. The crisis produced a fiscal stimulus – the one I am thinking of is the rush of a few publishers to quickly issue new books about Keynes. I read Clarke’s because the publisher provided me a free examination copy through a LibraryThing lottery. It is less than 200 pages in the body and is definitely a good selection for readers that wish to catch-up on Keynes but do not have either the time or the stamina for Robert Skidelsky’s full three-volume biography (published between 1994 and 2001). Another possible new-issue choice, which I did not read, is Skidelsky’s own single-volume Keynes: The Return of the Master. Clarke is a former Professor of Modern British History at Cambridge who has written two previous books about the Keynesian revolution in economics. In this new volume he covers many essentials, including an overview of Keynes’ shifting reputation from 1920 to the present, biographical highlights, Keynes’ economic policy ideas, and core elements of his economic theory. In an epilogue he considers how Keynes’ insights have been put into practice (or not) in both Britain and America and how we can still benefit from his thinking. Keynes once remarked that an effective economist must also be a “mathematician, historian, statesman, [and] philosopher” and “must understand symbols and speak in words.” He describes himself. He was a notable public figure from the appearance of his The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919) until his death (1946), a skilled writer and arguer for his positions, often a representative of his country in international economic negotiations. He was a central figure in the Bloomsbury group, broadly engaged in the arts and generous in his support. In the end he was a highly successful investor, though his fortunes fluctuated wildly at times. Clarke gives special emphasis to how Keynes’ ideas developed from 1929 through the 1936 publication of his magnum opus, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. He recounts in some detail Keynes’ participation and influence on the Committee on Finance and Industry (1929-1931), a group appointed by the British government to provide policy guidance to deal with the depression. Beginning in 1931, Keynes also participated with a discussion group at Cambridge known as the “Circus,” including both established and younger economists. Out of these experiences several of his core ideas took shape and matured. Clarke covers several of Keynes’ key concepts in lay terms that will appeal to most readers (no need for mathematics). He claims “the seed of the Keynesian revolution in economic theory” is the recognition that thrift (savings) does not determine enterprise (investment), but rather enterprise determines thrift; savings is not the dog, but the tail. He provides clear explanations of Keynes’ ideas about the stickiness of wages, multiplier effects, the limits of monetary policy, infrastructure spending, budget deficits, and the role of expectations in shaping economic outcomes, for example.Clarke believes there is no “timeless Keynes,” that his thinking shifted in reaction to the times in which he lived. The one constant was “a lifelong commitment to the strategy of institutional reform through reasoned argument.” For a work such as this that seeks to summarize the contributions of a distinguished thinker, it is probably a compliment rather than a criticism to say that one would like to have heard more on certain subjects. Two teasers in particular caught my attention, where Clarke surfaces some interesting assertions but does not develop them in any depth. In America, Clarke suggests, Keynesianism became identified with budget strategies to stimulate consumption, whereas Keynes’ emphasis was on investment. Clarke notes, too, that there is an “oddly Keynesian twist” to the “supply side” notion of Reagan era economists that tax cuts would be more than recouped because of the economic growth they would supposedly stimulate.Clarke’s dedication page is inscribed, “In the long run, for my grandchildren,” an obvious reference (and refutation?) to Keynes often quoted remark that “in the long run we are all dead.” Less well-known is Keynes’ 1930 essay "The Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren," which Clarke touches on just briefly here. In it Keynes envisions that higher productivity could mean either more consumption or more leisure for everyone. He preferred the latter, speculating that by 2030 the English would work only 15 hours per week because their material needs would be satisfied and they would see the love of money as "one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities." To the dismay of many, this is one forecast where he is likely to be well off the mark.