An Introvert as Public Intellectual
John Maynard Keynes – “Maynard” to his friends – wielded tremendous world influence through the brilliance and values he honed in the insulated clubs of his youth.
Though remembered today as a vastly influential economist, John Maynard Keynes (1883 - 1946) was a wide-ranging intellectual. His impact had less to do with technical insights and much more with his prodigious verbal skills, a solid foundation of ethics and aesthetics, and willingness to engage the general public of his day. Although he advised governments, hobnobbed with famous artists and scientists and gave some large lectures, his introverted personality showed up in a preference for written expression, behind-the-scenes roles and a social life centered on close friends. Two tight-knit groups, the Apostles at Cambridge and the Bloomsbury Group in London, helped him sharpen his talents and remained lifelong philosophical and literary reference points for him.
Born into a middle-class family of academics, Keynes grew up as a studious reader who would rather stay in, tinkering with mathematics, than play sports with other boys. Excelling at Eton, a school that launched the ruling class of England, he won a scholarship to Cambridge University, where he was tapped to join an elite intellectual club called the Apostles. Its dozen or so members met one evening a week, with one person presenting a paper on some philosophical, cultural or political topic, followed by a no-holds-barred discussion. Most of the Apostles were rapt admirers of the philosopher G.E. Moore, who argued that two of the highest goods in life were friendship and appreciation of beauty.
Many of Keynes’s contemporaries in the Apostles became core members of what became known as the Bloomsbury Group, hosted by sisters Virginia and Vanessa Stephen. Literary Virginia married writer/publisher Leonard Woolf, an Apostle, and artistic Vanessa married Clive Bell, also an Apostle and later famous as an art critic. Other Bloomsbury intimates included novelist E.M. Forster, biographer Lytton Strachey, painter Duncan Grant, and Maynard Keynes, with figures like philosopher/activist Bertrand Russell and poet T.S. Eliot on the periphery. As with meetings of the Apostles, these friends often read papers to each other to refine their ideas. No topic was off limits among Bloomsbury folks. They valued wit grounded in incisive insights and moral values. Keynes thrived in this atmosphere.
At the end of World War I, Keynes became part of the delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference, tasked with establishing the economic terms for Germany and the other defeated powers. During the talks, Keynes came to believe that the reparations demanded of Germany were far too harsh and would set the stage for economic chaos, political instability and moral injustice. Returning to England in despair, he wrote up his observations and conclusions in a blockbuster book. The Economic Consequences of the Peace sold briskly and was immediately translated into 12 languages.
The Economic Consequences of the Peace contained blistering portraits of the world leaders at the conference, including Georges Clemenceau of France and US president Woodrow Wilson, as well as of the power dynamics among the leaders. Note that Keynes’s biting descriptions and commentary weren’t presented as gossip but in the service of a moral and political critique. From the following brief excerpts, you can see the fruits of Keynes’s years of interchange with his clever friends in the Apostles and Bloomsbury.
About Clemenceau he wrote pages and pages in this vein:
“He spoke seldom, leaving the initial statement of the French case to his ministers or officials; he closed his eyes often and sat back in his chair with an impassive face of parchment, his gray-gloved hands clasped in from of him. A short sentence, decisive or cynical, was generally sufficient, a question… or a display of obstinacy reinforced by a few words in a piquantly delivered English.
“He was a foremost believer in the view of German psychology that the German understands and can understand nothing but intimidation, that he is without generosity or remorse in negotiation, that there is no advantage he will not take of you, and no extent to which he will not demean himself for profit, that he is without honor, pride, or mercy. Therefore you must never negotiate with a German or conciliate him; you must dictate to him. On no other terms will he respect you, or will you prevent him from cheating you.”
About the dynamics between British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and President Wilson, he wrote:
“To see the British Prime Minister watching the company, with six or seven senses not available to ordinary men, judging character, motive, and subconscious impulse, perceiving what each was thinking and even what each was going to say next, and compounding with telepathic instinct the argument or appeal best suited to the vanity, weakness or self-interest of his immediate auditor, was to realize that the poor President [Wilson] would be playing blind man’s buff in that party. Never could a man have stepped into the parlor a more perfect and predestined victim to the finished accomplishments of the Prime Minister. The Old World was tough in wickedness anyhow; the Old World’s heart of stone might blunt the sharpest blade of the bravest knight-errant. But this blind-and-deaf Don Quixote was entering a cavern where the swift and glittering blade was in the hands of the adversary.”
The Economic Consequences of the Peace made Keynes wealthy, famous and in-demand in some government circles. In its wake, he wrote prolifically, often an article a week, including for the liberal newspaper the Manchester Guardian and some general-interest magazines. Far from his biting prose making him a pariah, governmental figures and committees called upon him for advice and insight more and more, until his vision of government management of the economy became widely accepted in Europe and the US. Besides all that, he made time to collect art and rare books, marry a well-known Russian ballerina (despite longstanding entanglements with men) and lounge around at the country houses of old friends.
Although the field of economics today bristles with equations, Keynes generally argued with facts, logic, psychology and humanism rather than with mathematics. While his activities on the world stage sometimes raised the eyebrows of his Bloomsbury friends, by and large they understood that like them, Keynes was doing his moral and practical best with the talents he had. Hardworking and optimistic, like an elemental introvert he stepped into the limelight judiciously and retreated to the quiet of his study or the company of people who knew him very well.