Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Bullshit or Not: John Maynard Keynes Edition

Grooving on the history of economics, so let's put another wonderful quotation out there and see what you folks think.

This one is from John Maynard Keynes, the wittiest of the great economists. I have several favorite Keynsianisms, but my all time favorite was his response he made to a question about how his revolution in macroeconomics was going, "We are making progress one funeral at a time."

But the quotation I want to put up today can be found quoted in Heilbroner's masterful The Worldly Philosophers

:"How can I accept the [Communistic] doctrine which sets up as its bible, above and beyond criticism, an obsolete textbook which I know not only to be scientifically erroneous but without interest or application to the modern world? How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia, who with all their faults, are the quality of life and surely carry the seeds of all human achievement?"
Elitist twaddle or legitimate criticism?

Bullshit or not? As usual, feel free to leave a one word response or a dissertation.