Lionel Robbins converted to semi-Keynesian views under wartime collaboration with Keynes

Evidence

As he confronted this hostile professional and po liti cal environment, Lionel Robbins began to reassess his line of analysis. Working alongside Keynes during the war, he moderated and in some cases reversed the uncompromising stances he had adopted earlier in his career. “Up to a point,” Hayek later recalled, “Robbins was won over by Keynes to semi- Keynesian views.” Robbins made his conversion offi cial in a series of talks delivered in Cambridge in the spring of 1947. In three lectures he expressed some support for progressive taxation of the wealthy and redistribution of income to the poor, an expansive interpretation of public goods, and a vigorous regulatory authority. Most astonishingly, he acknowledged the “profound limitations” of the privateenterprise system “as an instrument for maintaining reasonable constancy of aggregate demand.” It was the job of public policy, he asserted, to redress these limitations. In later years Robbins would argue that he always accepted a vigorous role for the government, and that his writings from the early 1930s simply failed to make that suffi ciently clear. In his 1947 lectures, however, he acknowledged that his understanding of the government’s role in managing demand was the product of a “change of point of view.” — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 83

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Robbins deliberately imported Hayek as an intellectual counterweight to Keynes — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free…, 65; LSE’s leading liberal drafted the wartime framework that became Keynesian management — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 376; Robbins recanted his earlier Great Depression extremism — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 414 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Robbins recanted his earlier Great Depression extremism #corroborates (0.90) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 414
• LSE’s leading liberal drafted the wartime framework that became Keynesian management #expands (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 376
• Robbins saw wartime price controls as vindicating markets, not discrediting them #contradicts (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 412
• Robbins deliberately imported Hayek as an intellectual counterweight to Keynes #qualifies (0.75) — Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, 65