Principles and Heresies

I yield to no one in my admiration for the wide-ranging intelligence, the trenchant wit, and the intellectual courage of Ernest Van Den Haag. But when he proposes to conservatives [“Must Conservatives Repudiate Keynes?” national review, June 4] that they should embrace the economic doctrine of Lord Keynes as potentially consonant with their purposes, as a mere means, “politically neutral,” I must take exception.

As has been demonstrated again and again in the critiques of Keynes- ism so brilliantly and meticulously developed by Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, and others, there can be no question as to the central theme of Lord Keynes’ doctrine: it is that “we” (read, “the state”; the same “we” Professor Van Den Haag, following Keynes, invokes) can achieve a better society than can individual persons in their individual capacities as producers and consumers, bringing their individual wants and profferings (their demands and their supplies) into relation with each other through the functioning of a free-market system.

FS

About the Author

Frank S. Meyer

Frank S. Meyer was a senior editor of National Review.

I yield to no one in my admiration for the wide-ranging intelligence, the trenchant wit, and the intellectual courage of Ernest Van Den Haag. But when he proposes to conservatives [“Must Conservatives Repudiate Keynes?” national review, June 4] that they should embrace the economic doctrine of Lord Keynes as potentially consonant with their purposes, as a mere means, “politically neutral,” I must take exception.

As has been demonstrated again and again in the critiques of Keynes- ism so brilliantly and meticulously developed by Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, and others, there can be no question as to the central theme of Lord Keynes’ doctrine: it is that “we” (read, “the state”; the same “we” Professor Van Den Haag, following Keynes, invokes) can achieve a better society than can individual persons in their individual capacities as producers and consumers, bringing their individual wants and profferings (their demands and their supplies) into relation with each other through the functioning of a free-market system.