JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES (1883-1946)

Throughout the greater part of his adult life, Keynes was associated with King's College, Cambridge. But his career was not that of a cloistered academic. Upon completion of his undergraduate studies in 1905, he joined the Civil Service and was assigned to the India Office.

His first published works in economics - dealing with monetary questions in India - were a by-product of this experience. For a brief period before the First World War, he returned to Cambridge to take up a college fellowship, but shortly thereafter he was called back to public duties as an adviser to the Treasury. In this capacity he accompanied the British delegation to the Paris Peace Conference. He resigned this post in June 1919, in protest against terms of settlement with Germany that he regarded as vindictive, immoral, and impracticable. His outspoken attack on the work of the conference in a book entitled The Economic Consequences of the Peace made him both an international figure and persona non grata in British official circles for nearly two decades.

Between the wars Keynes divided his time between studies in economics and editorship of the journal of the Royal Economic Society, participation in public debates on the leading issues of the day, and the administration of the financial affairs of his Cambridge college. His early theoretical works were concerned with monetary and financial problems. His competence in these matters was by no means confined to theoretical analysis. Both his college's resources and his personal estate were considerably enriched by his skill in portfolio management. When he wrote of the significance of speculative activity (as he did in the General Theory), he knew whereof he spoke.

In 1940 Keynes re-entered public service as a principal economic adviser to the government. During the darkest days his main preoccupation was with the mobilization of the British economy in support of the war effort.

In this task the tools of national income analysis he had forged proved to be invaluable. Later his attention shifted to post-war reconstruction

of the international economy. The establishment of two institutions - the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development - owes much to his inspiration and to his powers of persuasion as a negotiator.

Even the most abbreviated sketch of Keynes's life would do the man less than justice should it fail to mention another facet of his interests. A distinguished bibliophile and patron of the arts himself, he was anxious that the arts should be adequately supported and that they should be accessible to a wide audience. His initiative was instrumental in the creation of the Arts Council.

As a literary craftsman, Keynes was also an artist in his own right. The quality of his prose is alone sufficient to assure him a unique place in the economists' hall of fame. This skill has been recognized by no less competent a critic than T. S. Eliot, who wrote of him: 'In one art, certainly, he had no reason to defer to any opinion: in expository prose he had the essential style of the clear mind which thinks structurally and respects the meaning of words.'l This quality of the man is reflected in a toast he once offered to his fellow economists, whom he described as 'the trustees, not of civilization, but of the possibility of civilization'.2

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Source: Barber William J.. A history of economic thought. Penguin,1967. — 153 p. 1967

JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES (1883-1946)

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