Keynes, the Man英文文献.pdf

Keynes, the Man By Murray N. Rothbard Originally published in Dissent on Keynes: A Critical Appraisal of Keynesian Economics, Edited by Mark Skousen. New York: Praeger (1992). Pp. 171–198. Online edition Copyright © 2003 The Ludwig von Mises Institute Keynes, the Man by Murray N. Rothbard John Maynard Keynes, the man—his character, his writings, and his actions throughout life—was composed of three guiding and interacting elements. The first was his overweening egotism, which assured him that he could handle all intellectual problems quickly and accurately and led him to scorn any general principles that might curb his unbridled ego. The second was his strong sense that he was born into, and destined to be a leader of, Great Britain’s ruling elite. Both of these traits led Keynes to deal with people as well as nations from a self- perceived position of power and dominance. The third element was his deep hatred and contempt for the values and virtues of the bourgeoisie, for conventional morality, for savings and thrift, and for the basic institutions of family life. BORN TO THE PURPLE Keynes was born under special circumstances, an heir to the ruling circles not only of Britain but of the British economics profession as well. His fathe r, John Neville Keynes, was a close friend and former student of Alfred Marshall, Cambridge professor and unchallenged lion of British economics for half a century. Neville Keynes had disappointed Marshall by failing to live up to his early scholarly promise, producing only a bland treatise on the methodology of economics, a subject disdained as profoundly “un-English” (J. N. Keynes [1891] 1955). The classic refuge for a failed academic has long been university admin- istration, and so Neville happily buried himself in the controllership and other powerful positions in Cambridge University admini