printThe excerpt is from my new WND column, “The Commie Who Controls the Economy From the Grave“:
“Republicans are as devout about Keynes as are [Democrats] Reich and Krugman. Nixon famously declared, ‘We are all Keynesians now.’ But my comment is redundant; Bush has bested the most committed Keynesian. ‘Nixon’s Keynesian conversion … looks positively quaint compared with the fiscal and monetary stimulus’ Bush has initiated, quipped Steven Pearlstein of the Washington Post.”
“How much to hand out; who to hand it to; which handout makes the best use of taxpayer money; do the Big Three submit a business plan with their bailout requisitions, or not—that’s the depth of the ‘philosophical’ to-be-or-not-to-be among Republikeynsians.”
“So who was this man, John Maynard Keynes, who controls the economy from the grave?”
“Keynes was a Fabian socialist strongly opposed to private enterprise. … Fabians departed from communists on the use of force. Whereas the communists believed in ‘attaining power by violence,’ Fabians perfected a form of the Islamic takiya—lying to spread the faith, in their case, state-socialism.”
Read “The Commie Who Controls the Economy From the Grave.” You need to know who Comrade Keynes was!
Update I (Dec. 5): Speaking of Republikeynsians, I heard Tony Blankley, editor of the Washington Times, tell the Obama Headquarters@Hardball, care of Chris Matthews, that the government must spend inordinate amounts of money. Demand has fallen. When consumers stop spending (at last!), urged Blankley, the government must step in and fill the gap; in other words spend like the consumer would have spent had he had the money, but since he can’t spend what he doesn’t have, the government must step in and spend what it doesn’t have.
This glut; this orgy of idiocy, reminds me of a Fellini film, I think it was, where the heroes decide to get together and eat themselves to death. Anyone old enough to remember its name?
This won’t keep the nausea at bay, but I recommend reading “Keynes and the Reds” by historian Ralph Raico. More examples of takiya à la socialism–the myths Keynes’s acolytes have spun around him. His theories ought to have been sufficient to discredit him.
Update II (Dec. 9): In case readers have disobeyed me and failed to read Raico’s “Keynes and the Reds, here is an excerpt:
“…it is commonly held, Keynes was a sincere, indeed, exemplary, believer in the free society. If he differed from the classical liberals in some obvious and important ways, it was simply because he tried to update the essential liberal idea to suit the economic conditions of a new age.”
“But if Keynes was such a model champion of the free society, how can we account for his peculiar comments, in 1933, endorsing, though with reservations, the social “experiments” that were going on at the time in Italy, Germany, and Russia? And what about his strange introduction to the 1936 German translation of the General Theory, where he writes that his approach to economic policy is much better suited to a totalitarian state such as that run by the Nazis than, for instance, to Britain?” …
“A notable feature of Keynes’s praise of the Soviet system is its total lack of any economic analysis. Keynes appears blithely unaware that there might exist a problem of rational economic calculation under socialism, as outlined a year earlier in a volume edited by F. A. Hayek, Collectivist Economic Planning, which featured the seminal 1920 essay by Ludwig von Mises, ‘Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth.'”
“Economists had been debating this question for years. Yet all that concerns Keynes is the excitement of the great experiment, the awe-inspiring scope of the social changes occurring in Soviet Russia under the direction of those ‘disinterested administrators.'”
“This brings to mind Karl Brunner’s comment on Keynes’s notions of social reform: ‘One would hardly guess from the material of the essays that a social scientist, even economist, had written [them]. Any social dreamer of the intelligentsia could have produced them. Crucial questions are never faced or explored.'”
Read the complete essay “Keynes and the Reds, and report back.
Ms Mercer: “Republikeynsians.”
Did you coin this term? Brilliant! I feel certain that many will add it to their political lexicons. (I know I will!)
[A Mercerism indeed.–IM]
Keynes preaches control and creates nothing but chaos. He’s done his work too well for us to survive as we were. Our only hope lies in the fast crumbling nation state. No country will recover intact from our Keynes inspired economic troubles and perhaps something good will come from this.
And I will steal “Republikeynsians” (attribution on request only). It’s brilliant.
[Steal? How nice; attribution is always a must among decent people.–IM]
Ilana hits another home run–bases loaded…
Thank you for exposing the truth behind Keynes’ fraudulent facade of intellectual sophistication. As George Reisman cogently demonstrates–again and again–in his book “Capitalism”, Keynesianism is a parcel of the most primitive and stupid absurdities, presented as deep complexity.
I had no idea that Keynes was a Fabian socialist and Soviet groupie. What a fitting remembrance for a failed thinker and chronic liar.
Thank you for such an accurate (and pervertedly concealed) historical perspective.
Your research is undeniable and needs to be appreciated.
The “paradox” is in the semantics.
Think of it: “Social Security” – Another ruse for confiscatory taxation; very “social” in the “taking” with miniscule prospect of any government-effected “security.”
Virtually every governmental “program” (including our phenomenally expensive state-sponsored “Education” system) is similarly perverted…
Without having even instructed children on how to “balance a checkbook,” an adult citizen contemplating their “golden years” is now expected to run their own “401-K plan.”
Please, Ilana: Continue to dispel the “semantic myths” promulgated by Robert Reich, et al, that
ANYONE else is supposedly more capable and responsible to “take-care-of” an individual, other than the individual him-or-her SELF.
Szasz
When history repeats itself, things are usually ‘the same thing, only different’.
America is following in the footsteps of the Soviet Union. The question in my mind is whether the empire will crumble due to bankruptcy before we are starved into submission as in Stalin’s forced famine of the Ukraine.
Just hoping for the former may not be good enough — certainly the issuer of the currency will not collapse before the citizens are bankrupted and destitute. After all, that torrent of currency buys a lot of weapons and power.
It seems the ultimate victory of Fabian Socialism will be when the majority of the population have been peaceably separated from their careers, their homes, their savings, and their futures, and are loudly demanding that the government take care of them, so that their efforts can be directed to public goals under their supervision.
Can the Fabians starve people into submission by substituting the ruse of paper money for Stalin’s armed troops? Will the 3% of the population that knows about paper money be enough to stop them? When enough people have bartered their weapons for food to keep their children alive, thugs will probably shoulder the lying Fabians aside like so many bleating lambs, no longer necessary in their role as ‘useful idiots’.
The Fabians believe it is possible to get something for nothing, having your economic cake and eating it, too. Their downfall will be when they learn that it isn’t possible to abrogate freedom without bringing dictatorship, as they are destroyed by the very monsters they put into power.
Republikeynsians and the gullible public believe that the wealth-destroying creation of fake money on an unprecedented scale will save us. They are likely to continue believing it until it is too late.
Republikeynsian = Useful Idiot. Brilliant as always Ilana, you never disappoint.
–John Danforth–
At fifty one, I feel I have reached middle age, and a firm understanding of how the world works, and at this point, I no longer wonder why people latch on to things like Keynsian ecconomics, I believe it comes down to the desire to get something for nothing, and our society has reached the point it no longer teaches this is not possible.
I have concluded there are two forms of state: that formed on facts, whose standard is evidence, principle, and absolute truth, in money, in personal dealings, and most especially, in the interactions between citizens, and government. The other form of State is covers all the rest. It has as its purpose, growth, and that alone. It’s primary notable facet is its wholesale use of the principle of “Islamic takiya” to bring about every change desired and to move everything in the direction determined by the “uber-rich” power-brokers.
The only thing that has kept this concept at bay in America, has been the Constitution, and its specificity. The four decades long campaign to disassociate the Constitution from civics in school, and from the public mind/interest has finally broken the connection that has stood between “the people” and “Our” Constitution since its ratification, and the politicians have achieved their goal of convincing “the people” that the nature of people does change, and therefore there can be no long lasting “covenant” that does not become outmoded.
All the Constitution did was codify the standards we called true, and the basis of our law, a rather simple thing to do, and given the manner in which it was assembled, could have lasted our people forever.
All the anti-Constitutionalists want to do is to remove that one impediment to their concept that there is nothing that stands the test of time, and everything goes obsolete. They have been prevented from this by the fact that the Constitution has remained a working document, and defied the description of “failure” from the beginning. We have reached a point where the majority of the people would not know the lie regarding its efficacy today, and therefore accept the socialist mantra that capitalism failed, even though it was in fact, socialism which has failed every time it’s been bailed out by capitalism, which of course, is every time. Economics is no more complicated than a lawnmower engine. If you replace every descriptive word in the conversation, dealing with your customer’s mower engine, with five words, you can convince the customer the mower never did work, and it was all an illusion after all.
John McClain
GySgt, USMC, ret.
Vanceboro, NC
[Magnificently put; poignant too.–IM]
[Steal? How nice; attribution is always a must among decent people.–IM]
Original was meant as a joke. My apologies if it didn’t seem that way.
[I’m hypersensitive about this issue.–IM]
In “The History of the Fabian Society,” by Edward R. Pease (freely available on the Internet) the name of Keynes is never mentioned. [How convenient; takiya in action.–IM] The statement that he was a Fabian socialist needs some corroboration. He was in fact a member of the Liberal Party. Having said so, the Liberal Party in England introduced most of the measures that installed the State on the driving seat. The Labour Party (the so-called socialists) just continued what the Liberal Party had already started. In this case there is no need to refer to socialism in order to find statism. Moreover, so-called capitalists are, in most cases, the strongest promoters/advocates of statism and corporatism.
Gian Piero de Bellis
Richard Nixon: “We are all Keynesians now.”
I have an old Veritas Report newsletter written by Zygmund Dobbs, author of Keynes at Harvard which included this note:
“Was Nixon ignorant of the long range infiltration of our Government by Fabianism? We doubt it. In fact, while he was President we received bulk orders for our books, The Great Deceit and Keynes at Harvard from the White House. And one Senator personally brought The Great Deceit to Nixon’s attention and was told that the book was already among the presidential books that were read.”
(Mr. Dobbs had been one of Nixon’s researchers who helped gather evidence on Alger Hiss back in the late 40s.)
In Reagan: A Life in Letters, Keynes at Harvard is mentioned as being in Mr. Reagan’s library at his ranch. I suspect the book might have meant a bit more to Mr. Reagan (though probably not by much.)
Thanks Ilana, for nailing the root of problem yet again!
[Invaluable information; thank you, J.–IM]
The Center is liberty’s greatest enemy, not for its radicalism, but for its palatability.
[Which center?]
Keynes was also a member of the Bloomsbury Group, which included Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, and other London intellectuals/artists of the time. Strachey with his “Eminent Victorians” satire and Woolf with her “stream of consciouness” prose were rebelling, in some way, against the culture of Victorian England that immediately preceded their generation. Given that Victorian England was highly productive due in large part to private enterprise, it’s not surprising that Keynes’ economic theories would lead nations in the opposite direction.
Among the books I inherited from my father (he was a German and an economist),there is a booklet of about 80 pages entitled “Arbeitsbeschaffung durch produktive Kreditschöpfung” (“Boosting employment by productive credit creation”) which appeared in 1932, edited by the think tank of the Nazi Party. That was 5 years before Keynes’ “General Theory”; the author, one Dr. Heinrich Draeger, quotes only one of Keynes’ earlier publications: “Ein Traktat über Währungsreform” (A Treatise on Monetary Reform). The content of the booklet, as the title indicates, is purest Keynesianism “avant la lettre”. Which shows that the roots of Keynesianism may as well be Nazism as Fabianism.
[Important information—Keynes was approved by Nazi theorists; von Mises NOT, naturally. Can you provide a few Internet links?–IM]
Dear Madam, this is more a private information for you, but you are of course free to publish whatever you like: I’m sorry not to be able to provide internet links. I can only quote the only line in my booklet where Keynes is directly mentioned; it is’nt very much: “It is widely acknowledged in foreign countries that the current economic crisis con be abolished by credit expansion. Proof is e. g. such a renowned publication as the report of the Mac-Millian-Committee, which was strongly influenced by the excellent expert on money and credit, J. M. Keynes, and which postulated to raise the price level up to that of 1928”
Best regards, Herman
Ilana – I do not wish to waste my time reading more works of a socialist fraud like Keynes… however, I was once forced in 11th grade to read another socialist blowhard “intellectual” named Thorstein Veblen. Then, a few years ago, I across one of the greatest essays about these “scientific socialist” blowhards by H. L. Mencken – this one in a Mencken CHRESTOMATHY – which truly takes apart this quack Veblen. Unfortunately the web link that I found,
http://tmh.floonet.net/articles/hlm_veblen.html – is a little hard to navigate compared to the book itself – but worth 10 minutes of reading and laughter. // P.S. – I have such a fetish about intellectual attribution that I left a job and moved away over that issue.
[Great; I have the book, so will look it up. Thanks.–IM]
Ilana,
I just thought you should know that FRB’s replacement has been discovered. Both fiat and FRB are going down. In short, it is a 100% reserve equity-backed money model. Only an honest idiot could think such a thing possible; fortunately one had a lot of free time on his hands. This thing is wonderful beyond belief because it uses the stock market as the backing for appreciating monies that eliminate the boom/bust cycle in the stock market.
After 300 years and tens of millions killed FRB will be tossed on the scrap heap of history. And as is fitting, the Market himself is going to execute its tormentor. I know a poet like you will appreciate that.
Oh, I forgot to mention, it will outperform FRB in everything but the short run as you would guess when the honest compete against the dishonest.