As Jeet Heer points out in his excellent article in the American Prospect, the attempt to deconstruct and discredit Keynes’ economic theories by attacking his private life has been going on for a long time:
The accusation was first made by the brilliant Harvard economist Joseph Schumpeter, who in a 1946 obituary complained that Keynes “was childless and his philosophy of life was essentially a short-run philosophy.” The words of Schumpeter—still remembered for his contention that capitalism rests on “creative destruction,” and a conservative who thought intellectuals such as Keynes were undermining the moral foundation of the free market—have been echoed by many other thinkers, including George Will, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Greg Mankiw, Mark Steyn, and V.S. Naipaul. (Himmelfarb argues that Keynes’s famous statement “In the long run we are all dead” has “an obvious connection with his homosexuality,” while Mark Steyn described the economist as a “childless homosexual” and “libertine.” Harvard economist Greg Mankiw also used the word “childless” to describe Keynes, raising the question, what’s wrong with Harvard?)
Afterwords
Both Brad DeLong and The Washington Monthly’s Kathleen Geier do yeoman’s work in showing the massive hypocrisy and stupidity of the Right over the years in attempting to refute Keynes on the basis of the fact that, like most popes, he had no kids.
*Of course I’m kidding. Smith was a brilliant, brilliant writer, and the Wealth of Nations is an incredible read,full of wonderful Eighteenth Century sunshine.
