Magpie — A Keynes for Every Occasion

My two cents: Keynes was conservative in the Burkean sense of holding that the competent should rule, rather than being a populist. 

As Keynes himself explained, “the class war will find me on the side of the educated bourgeoisie.” He expressed contempt for the British Labor Party, calling its members, “sectaries of an outworn creed mumbling moss-grown demi-semi Fabian Marxism.” He also termed it an “immense destructive force” that responded to “anti-communist rubbish with anti-capitalist rubbish.” Bruce Bartlett

 Keynes was certainly not a socialist in the economic sense of favoring either a command economy, or even dirigisme. 

Culturally, Keynes was the son of Cambridge don and also taught at Cambridge. He was also Bloomsbury bohemian, a member of one of the most notable in-groups of the time, in which he shared a place with Virginia Wolff in rising to international fame. So there is no doubt but that he was influenced by the British class structure in which he occupied a enviable place. Keynes was certainly not the bomb-thower the contemporary right makes him out as.

Keynes was pro-social without being a socialist. This distinction is conveniently blurred by the right, which attempt to argue based on the fallacy of false choice, or excluded middle. He was a liberal in the sense of holding that freedom is a primary social, political, and economic value, and that economic liberalism needs to be balanced against social liberalism. Therefore, he advocated a full employment policy, using government to address socially adverse effects of unregulated private ownership of capital and competitive markets given institutional arrangements that favor concentration of income and wealth in a monetary production economy — which neoclassical economics ignores, leading to social, political and economic dysfunction. Keynes was not merely theorizing. He was addressing pressing issues of his day.

So one could say that Keynes was a conservatively liberal, or liberally conservative. This is probably why we are having this discussion. Keynes is difficult to categorize, which is not surprising in that his views were highly nuanced. "Liberal" and "conservative" don't have precise meaning, so it depends on how they are used. Liberals can reasonably claim that Keynes was liberal, and conservatives that he was conservative because Keynes exhibit both characteristics in different contexts. But, I think that the best way to address this is to conclude that Keynes was not primarily motivated by ideology. He resisted being too closely associated with politics, fearing that this would limit his ability as an economist to influence policy based on his analysis. He never became a political figure and refused to run for office when invited on several occasions. However, he was politically engaged as member of the Liberal Party. So he certainly was not a Tory. 

If progressivism is defined as advocating reform of the existing system to make it more egalitarian, Keynes fits that profile. But this was in response to conditions that Keynes realized were at the root of global problems. He was not an ideological progressive but a practical one. So it is probably more correct to call him a reformer in his time than a progressive in the contemporary ideological sense.

Keynes through that economic incentive had economic utility as a motivator, but that there were socially and politically "diminishing returns" to resulting income and wealth concentration that had not only adverse social and political consequences but also economic ones. He advised limits on rentierism and financial hoarding, and using public investment to offset any adverse effects of enough accumulation to provide capitalist incentive. These reforms triumphed over the Treasury view and liquidationism in the US, for instance, and became a foundation for New Deal policy.

He was a reformer in his time, the period between WWI and WWII, since he was opposing powerful vested interests that he viewed as creating a social, political and economic condition that was unsustainable. Keynes sought to navigate between the Scylla of economic liberalism and the Charybdis of communism.

In the final analysis, Keynes was a pragmatist philosophically. He believed that what works to achieve a balance of social, political, and economic liberalism to produce social harmony, political liberty, and distributed prosperity economically is the proper course to take rather than any ideological one that doesn't take reality into sufficient account and therefore cannot work sustainably or result in harmony. 

This doesn't imply that Keynes didn't subscribe to any ideology. Most reflective people come to conclusions about their views. But Keynes subordinated this to what he considered most important at that time, when the world was literal falling apart and needed good policy advice from a standpoint that could claim to be based on sound objective analysis.

And since Keynes, "Keynesian" and "Keynesianism" have come to meaning many things for different people, furthering confusing the matter of what Keynes meant and stood for.

See Robert Skidelsky, Keynes and Social Democracy today.

Magpie's Asymmetric Warfare
A Keynes for Every Occasion.
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