Keynesian Historiography and the Anti-Semitism Question
History of Political Economy, Forthcoming
36 Pages Posted: 1 Jul 2010 Last revised: 6 Jul 2010
Date Written: June 29, 2010
Abstract
Historians’ treatment of John Maynard Keynes’s putative anti-Semitism raises complex historiographic issues. Melvin W. Reder’s (2000) paper, “The Anti-Semitism of some Eminent Economists” considered whether the term “ambivalent anti-Semitism” could be applied variously to John Maynard Keynes, Joseph Schumpeter, and Friedrich Hayek by arguing that those three important economists evinced attitudes or made remarks that today would be characterized as anti-Semitic. I am not concerned here to appraise Reder’s argument about whether the label “anti-Semitic”, “ambivalent” or not, is usefully attached to Keynes. I rather am concerned with the issue of how Keynesian historiography has dealt with the anti-Semitism question. That is, I am concerned with the role that Keynes’s possible anti-Semitism has played in Keynesian scholarship, and how the community of Keynes scholars has treated that allegation.
Keywords: John Maynard Keynes, anti-Semitism, historiography, biography
JEL Classification: B00, B2, B3, Z1
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation