----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- In a recent posting, Roger Sandilands took issue with the following statement: "Re Melvin Reder's discussion in his HOPE article of Keynes's alleged anti-semitism, J Barklay Rosser writes: > The evidence on Keynes has long and quite >publicly been known. I am unaware of anybody >seriously attempting to defend Keynes on this issue, >other than to note his actions to help out certain Jewish >scholars. He was indeed capable not merely of making >lots of nasty and public anti-Semitic remarks, which he >did, but it even affected his interactions at the policy >level on occasion... " Roger Sandilands deals in particular with the negotiations at Bretton Woods. There is another - and much earlier - interesting episode in Keynes' life which should be made better known in order to guard against such sweping statements as the one just cited. This episode is Keynes' early engagement for the Zionist cause. Anand Chandavarkar, "Was Keynes Anti-Semitic?" in: Economic and Political Weekly, May 6, 2000, p.1622 makes the following observations in this context: (this article from which the following quotes are taken was kindly made available to me by Paul Streeten) "Zionist Philo-Semite One of the more remarkable ironies of the by now voluminous Keynesian scholarship is the fact that while his anti- semitism, based largely on his obiter dicta, has been widely noticed, Keynes's support for Zionism has been completely ignored both in his Collected Writings and Activities and in the biographies by Harrod, Skidelsky and Hession as well as in the numerous symposia on virtually every aspect of Keynes. It is hardly known that Keynes was the only non-Jewish member of a high-powered advisory committee under the chairmanship of Herbert Samuel which prepared the preliminary draft report for presentation of the Zionist case for a Jewish national home in Palestine, for the Peace Conference in Paris on February 23, 1919. The other members of the committee were Lionel Abrahams of the India Office and James de Rothschild. Equally remarkable is the fact that although Keynes's membership of this important committee is noted in the autobiography of Chaim Weizmann, the architect and first president of lsrael [Weizmann 1949:243], it is not recorded in the standard histories of Jews and Zionism [e g, Laqueur 1972; Johnson 1987]. Keynes's acceptance of the membership of a highpowered Zionist committee, which prepared the ground for the Balfour Declaration is prima facie testimony of his sympathy for the Zionist cause, long before it became fashionable with the advent of institutionalised persecution of Jews in Germany and Austria. .... But it must have posed an acute quandary and taken a lot of intel1ectual and emotional conviction, for Keynes to participate in the preparation of the Zionist case, considering that "the fiercest opponent of the Zionist" in the British cabinet was none other than his prime benefactor Edwin Montagu, the secretary of state for India." Further down on the same page, Anand Chandavarkar comes nearer to the time of J Barklay Rosser's remark but again reaches quite a different judgement: "Much later in the 1930s, at the height of the Nazi persecution of Jews. Keynes, formulating a positive peace programme (The New Statesman and Nation, March 25, 1938) said: "there should be an offer to Germany to make organised arrangements for all German and Austrian Jews who wish to emigrate and be naturalised elsewhere [CW XX VIII 1982:100]. This was a specific constructive proposal for Jewish relief in contrast to the equivocal stand of the British government on this issue. As noted by the editors of his Collected Writings, "Keynes was one of the most active in succouring the Jewish refugees." [CW X 1972:382]. With the outbreak of the second world war, Keynes intervened actively with the home secretary and other concerned officials to obtain the release of interned Jewish refugee economists, Piero Sraffa, Erwin Rothbarth, Hans Singer, and Edward Rosenbaum [CW XXII 1976:190]" On the basis of these statements, I think one can hardly subscribe to J Barclay Rosser's above quoted statement. Keynes did not just "help out certain Jewish scholars" but put considerable effort in alleviating the lot of persecuted jews in general. I think he deserves a more generous judgement than the quoted one. Gerhard Michael Ambrosi ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]