Doug Henwood wrote: > > Michael Perelman wrote: > > >Keynes was not in favor of planning at all. He wanted all microeconomic > >desisions left to the market. He dd want to give more discresion to > >public/private organizations let by elite figures. > > Well yes, Keynes was quite the anti-Bolshevik and anti-Marxist. But > Hayek wouldn't have approved of even elite directive planning of the > sort Keynes favored. It would have been a step on the road to > serfdom. Any activist policy is oppressive and treacherous. Of course > Hayek, on looking at this book I hadn't looked at in 25 years, is > just nuts on the subject of planning: the choice is a "liberal" > society or totalitarianism. To a Hayekian, Keynes, who admired > indiscreetly the early Nazi economic policies, falls in the wicked > camp. > > I'm mystified by what Keynes read in the book. Keynes doesn't seem > like a very reliable reader. > The blurb from Keynes on *The Road to Serfdom* is from his June 28th, 1944 letter to Hayek. He goes on to say in the same letter; "...I should therefore conclude your theme rather differently. I should say that what we want is not no planning, or even less planning, indeed I should say that we certainly want more. But the planning should take place in a community in which as many people as possible, both leaders and followers wholly share your moral position." cited in The Life of J.M. Keynes by Roy Harrod p436. Planning is fine...as long as the aristocrats and ruling class are the ones doing it... Harrod cites Keynes as saying of Hayek's *Prices and Production* "The book, as it stands, seems to me to be one of the most frightful muddles I have ever read.." Harrod p435. By von Misesians, Hayek is sometimes called a social democrat for his support of a National Health Service and other macro measures. The Von Misesians truly hate Schumpeter. I think Keynes was just being a gentleman after the heated polemics when Hayek arrived at the LSE. Sam Pawlett
