A man of his time
Sir: It is true, as Professor Johnson argues, that Keynes was a man of his own time and did not discuss many problems which have become topical in the last twenty years. He took the British Empire for granted; in class terms, he identified himself as a member of the 'educated bourgeoisie'; he studied the population problem at a period when the demographers were predicting a drastic fall in numbers. All the same, Keynes was the architect of the World Bank and entertained what have turned out to be illusory hopes of the good that it would do to the developing world.
Professor Johnson goes on to pick some verbal quarrels with Keynes's so-called disciples. Gunnar Myrdal, in Asian Drama (1968), showed that the concept of 'disguised unemployment' cannot properly be applied to Indian agriculture, and he points out that 1 (who invented the term in another context) never used it in the fallacious sense.
As for Harrod's 'warranted rate of growth' (which Professor Johnson gets upside down), Keynes himself was somewhat dubious about it but it certainly does not imply that bricks and steel can bring about development without 'an accumulation of education and knowledge.' However, the concept of 'human capital' which yields a rate of interest to the individual in whom training is invested seems to be somewhat far-fetched.
The positive views that Professor Johnson is maintaining are not easy to make out, but it appears that he approves of large fortunes being made by successful businessmen in North America but disapproves. 0f growing inequality within the developlq countries. So what does he want them to do. (Professor) Joan Robinson
62 Grange Road, Cambridge
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