tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6651042409002115956.post6174494084318569793..comments2012-08-20T18:38:01.160-07:00Comments on Cognitive Footprint: The Moral Culture of Fiscal Austerity (Or, Capitalism's Double Bind)Mark Silvermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10592719612824811080noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6651042409002115956.post-63377939795586076952010-08-01T23:00:47.511-07:002010-08-01T23:00:47.511-07:00Dan & Josh
Thanks so much for these replies. ...Dan & Josh<br />Thanks so much for these replies. (I'm still too much the luddite. I thought I had this set up to notify me when there were comments. Guess not.)<br /><br />Dan, the motivation behind this particular piece was not, I do not think, just anti-Government. It paints a picture of spending as failure of restraint, indulgence -- a moral and, indeed, religious failure (although if you look at my second post, I think you'll see that that South Park episode makes that social commentary really, really well -- i.e., that people react to "spending" with moral outrage. I think it highlights that cultural fact better than this piece does)<br />Thus, it seeks to tie what it perceives as Keynes' own penchant for self-indulgence, and his inability to defer present pleasure for future value, to his economic theory. And it does so quoting the passage that Josh pointed out here. <br />Although, what is interesting, Josh, is that, unsurprisingly, it does not show the passage in full context. The author takes Keynes' remarks about "purposiveness" as someone who is dismissive the notion of caring about the future, and instead interested only in his own immediate pleasure. In full context, that does not appear to be what he is saying. He seems to be saying that "purposiveness" is only a veneer -- a way of forgetting about the needs of people in the here and now. Further, as the last paragraph makes clear, it is part of an attack on a moral culture that makes the desire to hold money somehow virtuous. It is not that he is saying that spending is virtuous. Rather, it is that he is saying that the love of money is vice (and, as he points out, this is in many ways a more 'traditional' form of morality). <br /><br />This post was rather rambling (as is this comment.) There were lots of threads that I will have to pick up on. But one challenge here is the to the notion, to which I subscribe, that there are no great economic thinkers who are not, in some measure, motivated by some social and moral vision. I say it is a "challenge," because, evidently, if one wants to subscribe to the view that "the facts do not speak for themselves" (as the author says) then one might have the ability to pick apart someones biography (such as Keynes) and find someone who is concerned only with people meeting their immediate pleasures -- rather than the Keynes who had a vision of a society in which material means were secured for all, and, as such, we would become liberated to realize the greater and better parts of ourselves (this is the sentiment reflected, I think, Dan, in the passage you linked to -- or at least the continuation of it, as I recall. But I'll really have to check my recollection on that.) <br /><br />That is, if one takes the purported "post-modern" view, that "the facts" are always seen through a prism of a set of values, then one has to be aware that different people can detect a completely different value schema in the same individual or set of texts. (Again, so, where I find in Keynes a concern for material needs being met, so that human beings can truly begin to evolve, this author saw someone who cared not one whit for the future, nor even for anyone else. One simply must take care, then, it seems, if one is going to try to be aware of what the "pre-cognitive [moral] vision" that motivates and economic theory. It's an interpretative practice. As such, it is easily prone to error -- or, more specifically, to projection. The parallel to psychoanalytic practice should be clear.) <br /><br /> Incidentally, is my reading of Keynes' moral vision (as described above -- i.e., material needs ought to be met so that the real work of human evolution can begin) too Marxist? Am I ascribing too much of Marx' sentiment to Keynes?Mark Silvermanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10592719612824811080noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6651042409002115956.post-41535199136968048762010-07-28T09:58:38.459-07:002010-07-28T09:58:38.459-07:00Now reading the linked essay, I see they quote a b...Now reading the linked essay, I see they quote a bit from this same passage. They also quote Schumpeter's dismissal of Keynes' thinking as fundamentally that of a childless man. They don't however quote Keynes' response, late in life, to the question if he had any regrets. Just one, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=vIxtW9cw-DQC&pg=PA253" rel="nofollow">he said</a>: he wished he had drunk more champagne.<br /><br />(The uncited quotes about Bloomsbury are from the essay "My Early Beliefs"; the full text seems to available from <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=c62MaaE8PZMC&pg=PA82" rel="nofollow">Google Books</a>.JW Masonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10664452827447313845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6651042409002115956.post-59337216920226120312010-07-28T09:30:34.962-07:002010-07-28T09:30:34.962-07:00Keynes clearly thought that a preference for curre...Keynes clearly thought that a preference for current consumption over provision for the future was not just more favorable to full employment, but morally superior as well. From "Economic Possibilities":<br /><br />When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. ... The love of money as a possession ... will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semicriminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease. ...<br /><br />We shall inquire more curiously than is safe to-day into the true character of this “purposiveness” ... [which] means that we are more concerned with the remote future results of our actions than with their own quality or their immediate effects on our own environment. The “purposive” man is always trying to secure a spurious and delusive immortality for his acts by pushing his interest in them forward into time. He does not love his cat, but his cat’s kittens; nor, in truth, the kittens, but only the kittens’ kittens, and so on forward forever to the end of cat-dom. ...<br /><br />I see us free, therefore, to return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue-that avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misdemeanour, and the love of money is detestable, that those walk most truly in the paths of virtue and sane wisdom who take least thought for the morrow. We shall once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful. We shall honour those who can teach us how to pluck the hour and the day virtuously and well, the delightful people who are capable of taking direct enjoyment in things, the lilies of the field who toil not, neither do they spin.JW Masonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10664452827447313845noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6651042409002115956.post-51115066522854618782010-07-27T17:20:08.832-07:002010-07-27T17:20:08.832-07:00By the way, I wrote a two-part commentary on "...By the way, I wrote a two-part commentary on "Economic possibilities for our grandchildren" here:<br /><br />http://imagininghistory.blogspot.com/2010/05/bastardized-keynes-or-keynes.html<br /><br />http://imagininghistory.blogspot.com/2010/05/bastardized-keynes-or-keynes-continued.htmlDaniel MacDonaldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07546752099879983120noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6651042409002115956.post-77915167503170387492010-07-27T17:18:21.923-07:002010-07-27T17:18:21.923-07:00I agree that this is a very curious article. I hav...I agree that this is a very curious article. I have two small points.<br /><br />-First, I think it always pays to go to our resident Keynes expert and ask him whether Keynes has any writings on morality. I can't think of anything directly related. However, this "delayed gratification" thing may not be entirely correct, or at least, there's more to the picture. Don't forget Keynes' "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren". Despite the two or three heart attacks I had while reading it, it does give some insight on Keynes' thoughts about the long run. <br /><br />-A lot of these attacks strike me as just anti-Government. I mean, surely Keynes was against saving -- but his main point was that unless we're at full employment, savings won't be able to adjust to investment in order to maintain full employment. So, investment drives the whole economy. Arguing against that, as I said, just seems to me like they are affirming the classical model. Might explain a lot of their inconsistent logic, but I don't know, I didn't read the article, just going off of what you said :)Daniel MacDonaldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07546752099879983120noreply@blogger.com