Misunderstanding the Clash Between Keynes, Hayek

Robert Skidelsky, whose biography of John Maynard Keynes is unlikely ever to be surpassed, judged that his subject never needed a Jehovah, because he had never experienced despair. Skidelsky was speaking of religion and morals, a department where Keynes was a typical Bloomsbury hedonist. In economics, to find a system with no deity, it is necessary to consult not Keynes but his archrival, Friedrich Hayek. There most certainly was a Jehovah in Keynes's economic system; he saw him every morning when he shaved.Americans sometimes fail to grasp the full extent of Keynes's egotism, which underlay all his theories of government by economic experts, because we assume that all aristocrats are like that. They are not. The Cambridge Apostles were notorious for their arrogance throughout Edwardian England, from Westminster Palace to the pages of Punch, and his fellow Apostles considered Keynes exceptionally arrogant even by their standards. Bertrand Russell, who may be considered an authority on the subject, marveled at Keynes's self-regard.