John Meynard Keynes: Ideas are Dangerous for Good or Evil
John Meynard Keynes is remembered as an influential economist. However, he was also a philosopher, a fact of which his following famous observation in the final chapter of The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money is a reminder:
‘The power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas… (S)oon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.’
For those who aspire to make a difference, the validity of Mr. Keynes’ observation matters. If his observation is correct, its ideas that drive change, not institutions, and this driver of change is dangerous because it is virtually invisible until it has achieved its objective.
Mr. Keynes’ observation is profound not only because he identified not only the power of ideas but also a key to their success — gradual encroachment.
The Gradual Encroachment of Ideas
Examples that demonstrate that Mr. Keynes is right surround us. For example, banks have taken it upon themselves to be society’s moral guardians. They have decided that it is their responsibility to save the planet and are refusing to finance coal-related activity and now, it seems, gas-related activity.
If the response of the recent federal Coalition government is an indicator, it seems that governments, which are elected by us, are powerless to resist the leaders of banks who are not.
Prior to that Qantas decided that it had a job in addition to flying aeroplanes — to determine what is socially acceptable thought by putting pressure on Australian Rugby Union to sack a football player who would not toe what they considered to be the line of acceptable thought.
Despite notions of freedom of speech, governments were impotent.
Last year an AFL football club in Melbourne decided it was its job to be a sheriff for enforcing codes of socially acceptable thought. It sacked a CEO it had appointed 24 hours before because he was the chairman of a church which promotes views which are politically incorrect.
Christianity and Its Competing Ideas
This event puts Mr. Keynes’ proposition at Christianity’s front door. Stripped to its essence, Christianity markets an idea — there is life after humans depart planet Earth and the way to enter that life is through Jesus Christ.
That idea has dominated the West’s spiritual marketplace. In other parts of the world, Hinduism, Islam or forms of animism have dominated. Apart from Communist countries, atheism has not enjoyed substantial, public support.
Nevertheless, all these ideas are competing with each other. In the West, the recent development which appears to have left major Christian denominations, at least, flat-footed is the increasing influence of agnosticism and atheism. However, if at the heart of materialism is the idea that there is no guarantee of tomorrow, they do not have an excuse.
Christian denominations in the West are experiencing Mr. Keynes’ thesis — the gradual encroachment of a competing idea. Since the 1990s, the Census consistently has reported that the largest-growing category in religious identification has not been Muslims or Buddhist but no religion. That group now constitutes almost 40 per cent of the population.
One person who understood Mr. Keynes’ thesis and adopted it was Antoni Gramsci, arguably Communism’s greatest theoretician and a founder of the Italian Communist Party. Gramschi understood that the key to power was intellectual or ideological control of the establishment and that to achieve that required a strategy that became known as the Long March through the Institutions.
Gramschi died in 1937, but he has arrived — a testament to Keynes’ idea.
Ideas: Why Politics is of Limited Value
What both Keynes and Gramschi demonstrate is that politics has a limited value as a tool in which to engage in battles of ideas. Politics has value if its limits are understood. Political wins buy time but they do not guarantee winning a war.
People attest to this reality when they say that there is not any difference between the major parties, but persist in voting for them in lower houses, even though reluctantly and under protest, and not voting for minor parties or independents in large numbers.
If there were significant differences between the major parties the cultural challenges we face could be determined by politics.
One example demonstrates the point. In 2004, a federal Coalition Government amended the Family Law Act to provide that marriage is the union of a man and a woman for life to the exclusion of all others..
In 2017, a federal Coalition Government facilitated a plebiscite to amend the Family Law Act to repeal that 2004 amendment.
___
Photo by Juan Marin.
Recent Articles:
10 December 2024
12.6 MINS
We need to go back almost 20 years to the time when the inaugural Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued the first dramatic arrest warrant for a sitting head of state. Will it prove a case of three strikes and you are out with respect to global governance?
10 December 2024
5.8 MINS
How much worse things get in Australia, in large measure, depends on the Labor leaders running the nation and most states. Ugly antisemitism seems doomed to simply worsen if they remain in power.
10 December 2024
3.8 MINS
Regrettably and importantly, the assisted dying bill gives no direction as to what the doctor should do if the “lethal” dose does not, in fact, kill the patient. This will certainly happen and it needs to be specified if the bill is to become law.
9 December 2024
4.3 MINS
My stand is against the treatment of Israel by the Australian government and the United Nations. The Australian government would rather reward the terrorism of October 7 and has continually pushed for a two-state solution, when all the terrorists want is a one-state solution.
9 December 2024
6.7 MINS
What is the difference between 9 November 1938 in Germany and 6 December 2024 in Melbourne? Nothing, except some 86 years. In both cases, Jewish synagogues were set alight. The truth is, Jewish people no longer feel safe in this country.
9 December 2024
3.4 MINS
Like the early disciples, may I encourage you to keep your prayers Scripture-based and Scriptural. Declaring God’s Word in prayer will build your own faith and that of those around you, releasing His power into situations that seem completely impossible.
9 December 2024
1.9 MINS
For Todd Carney, a player whose NRL career was as much defined by his talent on the field as his troubles off it, this new chapter offers a story of redemption that resonates deeply with anyone who believes in the power of transformation.