Keynes on Ethnic Homogeneity

9 July 2006 at 3:54 am Nicolai Foss 3 comments

| Nicolai Foss |

Here is John Maynard Keynes speculating on the ideal postwar order in Europe:

A view of the post-war world which I find sympathetic and attractive and fruitful of good consequences is that we encourage small political and cultural units, combined into larger, and more closely knit, economic units. It would be a fine thing to have thirty or forty capital cities in Europe, each the center of a self-governing country entirely free from national minorities (who would be dealt with by migrations where necessary) and the seat of government and parliament and university center, each with their own pride and glory and their own characteristics and excellent gifts. But it would be ruinous to have thirty or forty entirely independent economic and currency uniions” (from Robert Skidelsky. 2000. John Maynard Keynes, Vol. 3., cited in Deepak Lal. 2004. In Praise of Empires, p.59; my emphasis).

Skidelsky notes that “this pleasing picture of a re-medievalised Europe did not survive in later drafts.” Perhaps Keynes got cold feet when he recognized that his proposal would effectively entail ethnic cleansing.

Entry filed under: - Foss -, Institutions.

Latent Variables and Structural Equations Modeling Interesting New Paper by JC Spender

3 Comments Add your own

1. Peter Klein | 10 July 2006 at 8:06 am

Keynes had a number of, shall we say, unconventional social views. And I’m not talking about his sexual orientation. He praised Nazi economic policy in the introduction to the German-language edition of the General Theory. Thoughout the 1930s he offered enthusiastic praise for the social “experiments” going on in Russia and Italy. See here for details.
2. Nicolai Foss | 10 July 2006 at 8:53 am

Peter, That is an interesting article! Apropos, here is how Robert Lucas (in the keynote I have just posted on) interprets The General Theory: “He’s writing in a situation where people are ready to thrown in the towel on capitalism and liberal democracy …. Keynes’ first objective is to say, ‘Look, there’s got to be a way to respond to depressions that’s consistent with capitalist democracy'” (p.24).
3. TGGP | 12 July 2006 at 9:52 am

Ethnic cleansing actually did happen in Europe after World War 2 through population transfers. I don’t think that kind is such a bad thing, as hostile ethnic groups can produce long lasting violence and at times resort to genocide in many cases.