Keynes resurrected? Saving civilization, again and again

Abstract

The resurrection of Keynes and Keynesianism in the wake of the recent financial crisis is widely assumed to index the similarities between the present conjuncture and the Great Depression. But Keynesian reason—an analytical approach to the contradictions at the core of liberal capitalist civil society—is much older and has animated ‘progressive’ liberal and Left thought since Hegel reflected on the consequences of the French Revolution. What drives this persistent knee-jerk Keynesianism, and why has it become so central to progressive and Left politics in capitalist societies? This article argues that the key to understanding both Keynes and the persistent appeal of Keynesianism lies in a widely shared, and increasingly unshakeable, fear of disorder, populist reaction, and distrust of mass politics, sentiments shared by both liberals and ‘progressives’. In these conditions, what appears to be at risk is not so much the current order as order itself, and the capacity to imagine a political trajectory outside the bounds of existing structures is so constrained as to make those very structures seem like the only means of escape. The constant renewal of Keynesianism, by radicals and liberals, is today built in to both liberal and Left thinking, a product of two centuries of political thought in the face of existential threats to the very notion of ‘civilization’.