지은이: Susan Howson
자료: Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Volume 31, Issue 03, 2009년 9월, pp 257-280.
※ 발췌(excerpts):
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Enter Hayek. On 27 January 1931 the door of Robbins's office at LSE “open[ed] to admit the tall, powerful, reserved figure which announced itself quietly and firmly as ‘Hayek’” (Robbins 1971, p. 127). He had been invited in the spring of 1930 to give four public lectures in the University of London Advanced Lectures in Economics series during the 1930-1 academic year; for the following year Robbins invited Keynes (who declined because he was too busy). Hayek liked to claim that Robbins, “an almost unique … English professor who could read German literature … pounced on my subject: This is the thing we need at the moment, to fight Keynes” (Hayek 1994, p. 77). But Hayek had in fact received and accepted his invitation from Beveridge before Robbins had his row with Keynes. Hayek himself, however, was very keen to fight Keynes, whose Treatise on Money had by now been published. He heard Keynes's (1931a) radio broadcast on the problem of unemployment shortly before he traveled to England. He preceded his visit to London with one to Cambridge, where he stayed with Dennis Robertson at Trinity and gave a lecture to the Marshall Society and also attended Keynes's Monday Club the night before he went to London. Richard Kahn, who was present at the Marshall Society meeting, attributes the “breach” between LSE and Cambridge economists to Hayek not to Robbins (Kahn 1984, pp. 180–2).
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Lerner then spent six months in Cambridge in 1934-5, when he became a Keynesian, later (1934, p. viii) thanking Joan and Richard “for the great pains they took in getting me to overcome my prejudices against Mr Keynes's great advancement of economic understanding.”31 Kaldor's conversion came a year later, when he went to the United States on a Rockefeller Travelling Fellowship in 1935/6 and there read the General Theory just after it was published. He came back to the School a Keynesian. His acrimonious debates with Hayek in LSE seminars are remembered by many participants. He also began to publish on Keynesian macroeconomic topics.32
When the General Theory was published in February 1936 Keynes sent copies to some 80 professional economists including Hayek and Robbins. When they thanked him, they both said they would read it soon. Robbins said he would read it in the Easter vacation. Hayek told Keynes on 2 February that he had started reading it but had not got very far.
I have immediately started reading it, but as you will expect, have not yet got very far. I fully agree about the importance of the problem which you outline at the beginning [i.e. the determination of the actual level of employment], but I cannot agree that it has always been as completely neglected as you suggest.
I have also glanced at the central later sections of whose main argument I had some idea from the expositions of Bryce and Mrs Robinson. I am still puzzled by the treatment of the saving-investment relationship, of liquidity preference and some other points. But probably all that will be cleared up when I have worked through the whole systematically. But if my present doubts remain I shall probably ask your hospitality for some notes on particular points in the E.J. [of which Keynes was editor].33
[33] Robbins to Keynes, 6 February 1936, Keynes Papers EJ/13, King's College Cambridge; Hayek to Keynes, 2 February 1936, reproduced in Keynes (1979, pp. 207–8). Bryce had given an evangelical presentation of Keynes's ideas to Hayek's graduate seminar at LSE in the spring of 1935. Hayek had generously allowed the discussion to last over four weeks. Bryce also told Keynes: “I might add that their chief difficulties were with the definitions of income and investment, with the concept of the propensity to spend, and with the way in which equilibrium would establish itself again after, say, an increase in the quantity of money. On the whole, however, they seemed able to understand it and were quite interested” (Bryce to Keynes, 3 July 1935, and Bryce, “An introduction to a monetary theory of employment,” Keynes 1979, pp. 131–50). Robinson's article, “A parable of savings and investment,” had been published in Economica (1933).Two weeks later, however, he admitted to Gottfried Haberler that he was “hopelessly stuck” in chapter 6 (The definition of income, saving and investment).
A month later Hayek wrote to Haberler again, telling him he was going to Austria next week and Robbins was leaving tomorrow for a long lecturing and skiing trip to Finland and Scandinavia. The next day an article by Haberler on the multiplier arrived for Economica. Robbins on the point of departure handed it to Hayek who returned it to Haberler as there were “difficulties” with Economica. The editors had asked Pigou to review the General Theory, his review had come in and was very critical, and in these circumstances they wanted to avoid anything that could give the impression of a planned campaign against Keynes. He himself had for that reason determined to submit a note to the Economic Journal which Keynes could not very well refuse. He recommended Haberler to send his note to the EJ too. “I hope you will really understand our difficulties” he went on, “The chance exists just now to isolate Keynes and to bring to a stand a common front of other Cambridge and London [economists]. These possibilities we would not jeopardize by putting Economica in the forefront of the attack. Pigou's article will cause enough sensation.”34
[34] Hayek to Haberler, 15 February, 14 and 15 March 1936, translated by and quoted in Howson (2001, pp. 371–2).Hayek did not in fact submit a note or article on the General Theory to the EJ. He decided instead to get on with his own book, which I have already mentioned. He did, however, comment to Haberler when he had finished reading the General Theory. He was “awfully annoyed,” especially because “through his formulation he discredits many important ideas, which now lie in the air, among many people, and it will make it hard to try to persuade them without tackling all the other nonsense.”35
[35] Hayek to Haberler, 3 May 1936, translated by and quoted in Howson (2001, p. 372). Haberler sent his note to Keynes, who admitted the awkward position he was in as editor, and Haberler published it in the Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie instead (Keynes 1979, pp. 248–54; Haberler 1936).
Robbins's trip took up almost all of the Easter vacation. I do not know whether he found the time to read the General Theory then nor what he thought of it when he did. In the summer term he was, like Hayek, concentrating a book of his own (Robbins 1937). In his teaching in the next three years (1936/7 to 1938/9) his Principles of Economic Analysis lectures concentrated on microeconomics, and although he included Hicks's 1937 article, “Mr. Keynes and the Classics,” at the end of his Principles reading list for 1938-9, he left macroeconomics to Hayek and their younger colleagues, especially Durbin and Kaldor. Durbin's first reaction to the General Theory had been rather different from Hayek's—in spite of the fact that his recently published second book, The Problem of Credit Policy, had used Hayekian analysis. In April 1936 he told Keynes “how very much” he had enjoyed it: “I have read almost nothing else since it came out and I have immensely enjoyed my labours. I find myself in profound disagreement with the political notes in the last chapter [‘Concluding notes on the social philosophy towards which the general theory might lead’] and I do not understand which monetary policy you are advocating for the cure of the trade cycle—but the main argument of the book has been most stimulating to me.”3
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