Tag Archives: Skidelsky

Each era gets its own version of Keynes. The post-war era got the sanitized biography by his disciple and friend Roy Harrod. It emphasized the somewhat late Victorian values of what he called the presuppositions of Harvey Road, Keynes’ birth place at Cambridge, representing the ethical principles that he received from his parents. Not only it avoided any discussion of Keynes' sexuality, that was verboten at that time, and not just because Keynes’ mother was still alive, but also it was well...

The review was just published in American Affairs. The Past and Future of Political Economy by James K. Galbraith In this remarkable work, Robert Skidelsky—historian, biographer, and tribune of Keynesian ideas in the House of Lords—unites his experience, knowledge, and talents in a sweeping account of money and power. His topic is not money and power in the familiar (one might say Trumpish) sense of the use of one to obtain the other. Rather, he presents an intellectual history of the...

Robert Skidelsky talks about Keynes’ life from his three volume biography, the last volume of which is John Maynard Keynes: Fighting for Freedom, 1937–1946 (vol. 3; London, 2000). Skidelsky here, however, muddles up some of his economic theory and seems to identify neoclassical synthesis Keynesianism with Keynes’ economics.[embedded content]