tom walker wrote:
I understand what Keynes's point was and I don't
disagree with it. As far as it went it was a critique
-- whether deliberate or not -- of the Kantian view of
historical progress as a regulative ideal. I agree
with such a critique, probably more than Keynes would
have intended and would extend the critique by adding
a disclaimer against what is vulgarly known as the
short-term -- a "now" that anxiously and impotently
awaits the future.
I'm not sure I understand this.
As in Marx, the philosophy of history implicit in Keynes's idea of
"economic possibilities for our grandchildren" incorporates ideas also
found in Kant (e.g. in "An Idea for a Universal History with a
Cosmopolitan Purpose"). One of these is the idea of an "ideal social
republic" though Keynes's concrete conception of this involves a view
of "reason" and of rational ethics different from Kant's. Another is
the idea of irrational "passions" as means facilitating the development
of conditions required for the actualization of this ideal. Keynes
doesn't, however, attribute the role played by these passions to the
working of providence. Though Keynes himself doesn't directly address
the question, his ontological premises are inconsistent with Kant's
conception of space and time.
Like Marx, Keynes claims the "good" life that defines the ideal social
republic requires developed capabilities. It isn't just "free time."
These capabilities express "rationality," though in a sense radically
different from the concept of "rationality" dominant in economics or in
the approach of those who use "poetic" to mean a source of insight that
isn't "rational."
Fully free activity is an end-in-itself ("praxis" in Aristotle's
sense); it isn't instrumental. It's this idea of it that's involved in
Keynes's claim that in the longer run future we will be free
"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 day virtuously and well, the delightful
people who are capable to taking direct enjoyment in things, the lilies
of the field who toil not, neither do they spin." (vol. X, pp. 330-1)
This is also Marx:
"free time, disposable time, is wealth itself, partly for the enjoyment
of the product, partly for free activity which - unlike labour - is not
determined by a compelling extraneous purpose which must be fulfilled"
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-
value/ch21.htm>
Keynes has added to the idea that the good life requires highly
developed capabilities the psychoanalytic claim that there are "insane
and irrational springs of wickedness in most men" that act as a barrier
to this development and are extremely difficult to overcome. This is
another factor making progress very slow and difficult.
As in Marx, however, the move to a better world is conceived as a move
to greater rationality including greater rationality of "interests."
"Up to a point individual saving can allow an advantageous way of
postponing consumption. But beyond that point it is for the community
as a whole both an absurdity and a disaster. The natural evolution
should be towards a decent level of consumption for every one; and,
when that is high enough, towards the occupation of our energies in the
non-economic interests of our lives. Thus we need to be slowly
reconstructing our social system with these ends in view." (vol. XXI,
pp. 393-4)
I wasn't addressing Benjamin's ideas.
Ted
