Keynes And Canada: Now

With real interest in the arts, government, and international relations, he became perhaps the most important economist of the twentieth century, even though he died relatively young (63) in 1946. A great deal of blather is written about his economic theories as being faulty and disproved in the face of the economic theories of people like Friedrich Hayek, Joseph Schumpeter, and Milton Friedman. The blather is simply time wasted. That’s because economists divide into two camps: those who argue, build models, make up equations, and propagandize in support of unrestrained capitalism; and those who don’t. Schumpeter’s huge and brilliant (?) contribution to economic theory, for instance, was that (a) capitalism has nothing to do with imperialism, (b) capitalists are anti-imperialists, (c) and capitalism prevents war and assures peace. Such is the grandeur of much economic thought in our time. As one might expect, the USA took up Schumpeter as a brilliant genius of economic thought. Keynes rejected such cave-man theorizing. He was original simply because he looked round him and said: “What does capitalism really do? Don’t offer me classical theory as an answer. If classical theory about what interest is and how it relates to savings and production is nonsense, then call it nonsense. Find out what the real interaction of savings, investment, employment, production, and overall output is.” As he worked on the problems – over a long time – he quietly came to realize that avarice, inhumanity, power-hunger, and predatory self-interest are factors that must be dealt with and restrained if a capitalist system is to survive, to be healthy, and to avoid becoming a corporate totalitarian system. John Maynard Keynes “believed” in capitalism, but capitalism that required careful supervision. He believed international banking arrangements had to be made to force big, rich states and corporations to respect small countries and the global workforce. Moving through and out of the Second World War, he was able to put his ideas in the forefront of thought as the United Nations was being built, Europe was beginning reconstruction, and Britain was dragging itself out of debt and destruction. Keynes, was, it is true, a patriotic Briton, but there was no time that he sacrificed his vision of a better world to selfish British interests. He “leaned British”, but his bias wasn’t destructive as the US bias most certainly was. US aid to European reconstruction – the great and “selfless” Marshall Plan – was undertaken (a) to destroy the Left in Europe and (b) to guarantee US markets. US aims and ends in the “Bretton Woods agreements” on world trade, banking, and monetary policy were pretty clear as early as 1944. Since then they have become transparently clear. The World bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and all the so-called Free Trade and APEC-style agreements made since are structures to legitimize and enable US looting of the planet through the instrumentalities of large, private, publicly irresponsible corporations. What has all that to do with Canada? To begin, Keynes liked and respected the Canadians he met. They worked well together, partly because (as history has shown) Canadians shared his vision of a juster, fairer, post-Second World War as a distinct possibility. But the US juggernaut that destroyed Keynes’ vision of a just world has worked incessantly to erase it in Canada and to marginalize Canadians who support it. The Stephen Harper team, the writers for the National Post and Maclean’s magazine, the Gordon Campbell team and the largest part of his cabinet in B.C., for instance, are mostly sawdust-headed clones of the U.S. vision for the world: avaricious, brutal, unimaginative, unenlightened, and ideologically totalitarian. There is every likelihood that if the Keynes vision had not been trampled underfoot by the US forces lionizing Hayek, Schumpeter, and Friedman, we would not have had the rape of Africa or the inferno of the Middle East. We would not have a South America limping on crutches, its only hope resting upon the necessary revolutionary vision of Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, and Fidel Castro. We would very likely have a different Canada – a very different Canada. We now have increasing economic, military, and social annexation to the USA, operated through the leadership of people who look, more and more, like Banana Republic thugs. We have a national police force, the RCMP (and lesser police forces) that look more and more like mafiosa partners in a Grade “B” US film. Our military leadership is made up, more and more, of high officers who are parodies of the worst blood-thirsty US stereotypes. And our economy – its stored wealth – is being literally given to US forces for US use. Had the Keynes/Canadian post-war vision carried the day, we would have a self-respecting, largely independent country, contributing much more than we do to the needy of the world. We would work out solutions to internal problems by using Canadian wealth, Canadians expertise, Canadian ideas. We would have a population with large, generous, global visions. We would, just for instance, have a nationally owned pharmaceuticals industry developing medicines at a tenth of the cost of what our health care system now pays to the vulture private corporate pharmaceuticals industry. We would have the same creative and rewarding relation to public housing, banking, energy, and transportation. Instead, we are in the grip (increasingly) of naked corporate greed – private corporations for whom human life means nothing. If we cannot produce a new John Maynard Keynes in the near future, we will have to produce a Canadian Hugo Chavez. [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on March 28, 2007]