Philip Pilkington: Keynes’ Alleged Totalitarianism – The ‘Malign’ Forward to the German Edition of the General Theory

By Philip Pilkington, a writer and journalist based in Dublin, Ireland. You can follow him on Twitter at @pilkingtonphil

In 1936 Keynes wrote a forward to the German edition of his General Theory. Since then it has, as far as I can see, been ignored by his defenders and held up by his most virulent detractors (notably, Austrian School ideologue Henry Hazlitt). Detractors point to what they perceive to be a damning indictment of Keynes’ system in the form of the following quote:

The theory of aggregated production, which is the point of the following book, nevertheless can be much easier adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state than the theory of production and distribution of a given production put forth under conditions of free competition and a large degree of laissez-faire.