 |
| John Maynard Keynes |
During a recent interview with Tyler Cowen, Zachary Carter, author of The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes played down the idea that Keynes was a serious eugenicist.
In a Twitter stream, Phil Magness set the record straight:
This is a pretty astounding euphemization of Keynes's involvement in eugenics from @zachdcarter in today's interview with @tylercowen.https://t.co/dxtuPLwSHn pic.twitter.com/MZibkrNYDz
— Phil Magness (@PhilWMagness) December 2, 2020
Keynes was publicly ambiguous about questions of eugenic sterilization, but also made several prominent nods to it in his essays, e.g. this line from "The End of Laissez Faire" pic.twitter.com/87mwHinTIu
— Phil Magness (@PhilWMagness) December 2, 2020
He was also more direct in other places, such as this unpublished speech from a eugenics organization dinner meeting in 1927 pic.twitter.com/81fp4HJq3R
— Phil Magness (@PhilWMagness) December 2, 2020
Transcription: "I believe that for the future the problem of population will emerge in the much greater problem of heredity and Eugenics. Mankind has taken into his own hands & out of the hands of nature the task and the duty of moulding his body and his soul to a pattern."
— Phil Magness (@PhilWMagness) December 2, 2020
And the edited-out line is the give-away for what Keynes was getting at "Quality must become the preoccupation"
— Phil Magness (@PhilWMagness) December 2, 2020
Carter is also wrong when he suggests that birth control was the primary motive for Keynes. Here's Keynes writing to Margaret Sanger in 1936, saying they should deemphasize birth control since pop growth had stabilized & focus instead on eugenics (meaning hereditary "quality"). pic.twitter.com/Da3m4oKMMN
— Phil Magness (@PhilWMagness) December 2, 2020
And the eugenics movement was actually very well defined by the 1920s-40s, which was the peak period of Keynes's involvement. Here he is on the masthead of the British Eugenics Society from 1945, which published an entire journal on the subject. pic.twitter.com/O4uBgZJdbj
— Phil Magness (@PhilWMagness) December 2, 2020
The notion that Keynes's interest in heredity was just about things like eye color, as @zachdcarter claims, is also wrong. Keynes had a thoroughgoing eugenic vision for society that closely overlapped with his friend and contemporary H.G. Wells.
— Phil Magness (@PhilWMagness) December 2, 2020
I documented the shared Keynes-Wells eugenic philosophy in this article with @JamesRHarrigan, which came out earlier this year.https://t.co/jusD3U8l3k
— Phil Magness (@PhilWMagness) December 2, 2020
Carter's claim that Keynes "doesn't do much" in his capacity at the British Eugenics Society is also misleading. Keynes was in declining health at the time he was VP and avoided day-to-day stuff, but he also made two notable speeches at its annual Galton dinner in 1937 and 1946.
— Phil Magness (@PhilWMagness) December 2, 2020
The second speech in 1946 took place only a few weeks before Keynes's death and included this notorious expression of enthusiasm for eugenics. Keep in mind that this is after WWII, which significantly damaged the scientific standing of eugenics for obvious reasons. pic.twitter.com/uKU8pG3HJi
— Phil Magness (@PhilWMagness) December 2, 2020
Unfortunately, Carter's biography is deficient on this entire subject. In addition to mostly sidestepping the issue, he frequently assumes the role of Keynes's advocate when discussing the uglier dimensions of his beliefs. Ditto here with his anti-Semitism https://t.co/Zc80MQNpLx
— Phil Magness (@PhilWMagness) December 2, 2020
So credit to @tylercowen for pressing Carter on this subject. But in reading Carter's responses, it's painfully clear that he has not done his homework in considering Keynes's eugenic beliefs and their relation to his larger system of thought.
— Phil Magness (@PhilWMagness) December 2, 2020
One more addendum: Keynes, in his capacity as editor of the Economic Journal, actively recruited and published several articles promoting eugenic theory.
— Phil Magness (@PhilWMagness) December 2, 2020
1928 example from Norman Himes, a prominent figure in the American eugenics movement.https://t.co/uEfyDZwUWj pic.twitter.com/0JBroyEzCt
As a further note, here is Keynes writing about Jews in a paper while a student at Eton entitled: “The Difference between East and West: Will they ever disappear? (COLLECTED WORKS 1900:20).:
[Jews] have in them deep-rooted instincts that are antagonistic and therefore repulsive to the European, and their presence among us is a living example of the insurmountable difficulties that exist in merging race characteristics, in making cats love dogs …
It is not agreeable to see civilization so under the ugly thumbs of its impure Jews who have all the money and the power and brains.
-RW
I have an old college buddy who is an adjunct professor at the University of Arizona, who adores Keynes and Keynesianism, and all its contaminating, down-wind spores like Krugman, Samuelson, and so on---I will have great fun forwarding this to him. Thank you for that, RW.
ReplyDelete