Keynes’ view of TRTS was, I think, probably best expressed in his 1944 letter to Fred, where he noted his exceptions to state intervention, concluding that “as soon as you admit that the extremes are not possible, and that a line has to be drawn, you are, on your own argument, done for.” The couplet “done for”, incidentally, could not possibly have been chosen lightly, since Maynard never ever forgot that these were the very two words that D H Lawrence used to dismiss him and his friends in 1914; two (very hurtful) words about which he wrote a full essay in 1938.

Keynes also thought Hayek’s interpretation of The General Theory was nit picking rather than a genuine attempt to appreciate where he was coming from and he said so.

What is your point in referring to it?

JMK would not have enjoyed the blogosphere.

I’m not trying to argue that Keynes and Hayek were very similar. Obviously they are not. I did suggest that Keynes was in deeply moved agreement with certain conservative/liberal aspects of Hayek’s thinking. He said so himself.

Remember also that at around this time – in the 50s I think – Hayek was pretty relaxed about tax rates and more interested in avoiding state ownership. He reckoned Sweden which had high taxes even then was OK. This changed as time wore on.

What do you fancy Keynes had in mind with the comment you quote?

Nicholas, there are many ways of reading Keynes, so many that it is almost impossible not to be selective. That’s the trouble with ordinary people trying to measure giants. I don’t really subscribe to your usage of ideology, a usage which in my book would just mean someone’s general political philosophical predisposition (as distinct from ‘ideology’ – which is a more complex term: you, for instance, sometimes strike me as having something of a technocratic-economistic ideology). I don’t understand what your ‘thought’ means, unless it is merely that political similarities can be more important than differences, to which I would say ‘maybe, huh? and so what?’

With time, I would, as I have elsewhere, argue at length and with extensive references that there were very deep and profound differences between Keynes and Hayek in many crucial respects; but instead, I will be content to thank you for your essay, and leave you with another JMK:

I am sure that I am less conservative in my inclination than the average Labour voter; I fancy that I have played in my mind with the possibilities of greater social changes than come within the present philosophies of, let us say, Mr Sidney Webb, Mr Thomas, or Mr Wheatley. The republic of my imagination lies on the extreme left of celestial space.

You will not expect me to accept quite all the economic dicta in it. But morally and philosophically I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it; and not only in agreement with it, but in a deeply moved agreement.

As I understand it, Hayek’s most important arguments for classical liberalism don’t rest on philosophical theory but on economic theory. It all comes back to the calculation debate. Keynes seems to be saying that he and Hayek are both political liberals but they disagree about the practical results of state planning. This isn’t a minor point of disagreement.

To say that Keynes was"a generous man" only strengthens my point. He plays up the points where he agrees with Hayek’s work and plays down the points where he disagrees. A less generous man might have cut to the chase.

Here’s what Hayek had to say.

Don’t tantalise us so. What WAS Keynes’ General Theory and why was it “fundamentally wrong”?

Where is there a reckord of Keynes’ being so deliberate as to barb his comments in the way you’ve intimated he has? Keynes was direct and indeed rather gung ho in his criticisms – of Hayek and of others. So what’s wrong with taking them at their face value?

As Skidelski brings out, Keynes was a conservative – as well as being a liberal and a social democrat. Like us all perhaps in differing degrees. He was also a generous man, and so generous with his praise. It was in his conservatism and liberalism that he felt in strongly moved agreement with Hayek’s Road to Serfdom.

He thought Hayek’s economic explanations of the Great Depression were idiotic, as their one time adherent Lionel Robbins ultimately did. Mitlon Friedman also agreed with this interprettation. Keynes also thought Hayek’s interpretation of The General Theory was nit picking rather than a genuine attempt to appreciate where he was coming from and he said so.

CS, I don’t really get your point that you find it ‘odd’ that I quoted Keynes in support of Hayek when (it may be the case) that Keynes expressed himself more frequently in opposition to Hayek. I was trying to bring out a way in which his perspective and Hayek’s were quite close – because for me that’s one of the central values of Keynes. Not as some champion of the left but as a giant of a man who made a giant effort at synthesis. Today political syntheses’ tend to take place more at the level of spin than anything else.

Here’s a thought – when you’re finding ideology to be losing its power the connections you make between ideological camps will be more imoprtant than all the nit picking that goes on within and between them.

Morally and philosophically I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it; and not only in agreement with it, but in deeply moved agreement.

Now that’s a cutting compliment from another economist. Keynes seems to be saying that Hayek’s heart was in the right place but that his economic analysis is askew. I wouldn’t be surprised if Keynes had been in deeply moved agreement with his grocer on moral and philosophical issues.

Surely the most important economic argument Hayek made was about the consequences of state planning. But this is exactly where Keynes disagreed. In his letter to Hayek he wrote:

I should therefore conclude your theme rather differently. I should say that what we want is not no planning, ore even less planning, indeed I should say that we almost certainly want more. But the planning should take place in a community in which as many people as possible, both leaders and followers, wholly share your moral position. Moderate planning will be safe if those carrying it out are rightly oriented in their own minds and hearts to the moral issue.

Nicholas, you say that:

Keynes, saw himself as practicing economics very much in the tradition of Adam Smith – as a ‘moral science’ that strove to deliver the ‘good life’ for society at large whilst minimising demands on the goodness of the players in the economic drama.

I wonder about how much Keynes minimised the demands on the goodness of political leaders.

Naturally I’m in deeply moved agreement with you on the moral and philosophical issues.

What were you going to say about Friedman? That he, like many others, was struck by Keynes’s extravagant praise for Hayek’s book, given the depth of their substantive disagreements? (In JQ’s recent thread on Orwell, the libertarians were claiming Orwell for their team on the basis of his comments on The Road to Serfdom., which are similarly brief and generous. It seems they draw the line at Keynes, though.)