John Maynard Keynes Part One: The Establishment Radical

Origin Story

Ian Dunt and Dorian Lynskey discuss perhaps the most extraordinary individual they have encountered so far: John Maynard Keynes. The most significant economist since Adam Smith rewrote our understanding of the relationship between the state and the market. But Keynes was also a philosopher, a statesman, an aesthete and a hell of a writer: a one-man advertisement for the virtues of refusing to stay in your lane.

In part one Dorian and Ian track Keynes’ remarkable life in the fifty years leading up to his game changing “general theory” in the 1930s. They talk about his gilded youth at Eton and Cambridge, his complicated friendship with the Bloomsbury Group, his sensational journalism, his rivalries with classical economists, and his rise to wealth and influence. But for all his achievements, his policy prescriptions were usually ignored, from the Treaty of Versailles to the Great Depression. His failures made him Mister Told-you-so. Why was Keynes such a remarkable figure and why wouldn’t politicians listen to him? Was he an arch-centrist in an age of extremes? Along the way we meet Virginia Woolf, Winston Churchill, Bertrand Russell, Oswald Mosley and zingers galore. Next week: the rise and fall (and rise again) of Keynesianism.

Reading list for both episodes

Books:

Roger E. Backhouse and Bradley W. Bateman — Capitalist Revolutionary: John Maynard Keynes, 2011

Bradley W. Bateman, Toshiaki Hirai and Maria Cristina Marcuzzo, eds. — The Return to Keynes, 2010

Zach Carter — The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes, 2020

Peter Clarke — Keynes: The Twentieth Century’s Most Influential Economist, 2010

Roy Harrod — The Life of John Maynard Keynes, 1951

John Maynard Keynes — The Essential Keynes, 2015

Robert Skidelsky — John Maynard Keynes 1883-1946: Economist, Philosopher, Statesman, 2004

Nicholas Wapshott — Keynes Hayek: The Clash That Defined Modern Economics, 2011

Online:

John Maynard Keynes, ‘Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren’, 1930

https://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/archive/keynes_persuasion/Economic_Possibilities_for_our_Grandchildren.htm

We Are All Keynesians Now, Time, 1965

https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,842353,00.html

Tides of History podcast with Zach Carter

https://podcasts.apple.com/bg/podcast/john-maynard-keynes-and-his-legacies-interview-with/id1257202425?i=1000476041925

Written and presented by Dorian Lynskey and Ian Dunt. Audio production by Simon Williams. Music by Jade Bailey. Logo art by Mischa Welsh. Lead Producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. Origin Story is a Podmasters production.

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