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Thrilling as it is for old Lefties to find their hero, economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), making headlines again as Alistair Darling vows to spend his way out of the recession a key Keynes interventionist approach many of us are scrabbling to sound knowledgeable about the moustachioed old fox. Here we offer you a 10-point bluffer's guide:
1. He was bisexual
Yes, yes he was one of the fathers of modern theoretical macroeconomics, but Keynes's sex life was wild. His early romantic relationships were almost all with men - his diary lists 50 gay affairs between the ages of 18 and 33, ranging from Bloomsbury painter Duncan Grant and writer Lytton Strachey to the lift boy at Vauxhall. But he amazed all his friends by falling in love with a 38-year-old Russian ballerina, Lydia Lopokova, and marrying her in 1925. It seems a genuine love match. Robert Skidelsky, Keynes's biographer, says: "Sexual relations certainly developed, and by 1924 Lydia was appreciative of Maynard's 'subtle' sexual technique."
2. His appeal extends to pop music
In 1987 he was immortalised in the Deacon Blue song, Dignity: "I'm telling this story/in a faraway scene/sipping down raki/and reading Maynard Keynes."
3. Keynes is pronounced "cains"
It's one of those tongue-twisters that can catch out the unwary prole (see also "Beauchamp Place") but you need to get the pronunciation right.
4. He had terrible table manners
But then the Bloomsbury set thought the uninhibited Lydia ("his canary-brained ballerina") a slovenly housekeeper. They never quite recovered from seeing her throw a sanitary towel on the fire-grate.
5. DH Lawrence was spooked by him
After seeing Keynes in his pyjamas at Cambridge one morning in 1915, DH Lawrence had dreamed of black beetles and thought he might go mad. "I am sick with the knowledge of the prevalence of evil, as if it were some hideous disease," he warned the Bloomsbury hostess and patron Ottoline Morrell. "I will not have people like this ... Sometimes I think I can't stand England any more."
6. He was an art lover
After the Second World War he was instrumental in establishing the Arts Council and financed the creation of the Arts Theatre, Cambridge. Thanks to a private fortune built up as an investor, he owned one of the largest collections of 20th-century art, including works by Cézanne, Degas, Picasso, Seurat and Modigliani. He was almost wiped out following the stock market crash of 1929 but soon recouped his fortune.
7. He always won an argument
Bertrand Russell called him one of the most intelligent people he had ever known. "Every time I argued with Keynes, I felt that I took my life in my hands and I seldom emerged without feeling something of a fool."
8. The Right loved him
Sir Oswald Mosley was an early Keynesian, as was his friend Adolf Hitler. Keynes himself was passionate about eugenics.
9. He had unusual erotic tastes
Lydia used to cross-dress to try to turn him on. The Bloomsbury set thought her habit of dancing naked in the dawn fields was beyond the pale.
10. He was a workaholic
As an economist, journalist, collector, philosopher and statesman, he died aged 62 of a heart attack, outlived by his 93-year-old father and mother.
Reader views (1)
He also helped set up the Arts Council and made a lot of money playing the stock market as Bursar of King's College - clever old Keynes!
The neoliberal right has always tried to rubbish his ideas by saying that markets always function perfectly on their own. The bitter truth is that they don't and we are now re-learning this Keynesian lesson, much to our cost.
- Robert C, London UK, 21/10/2008 15:29
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