Geoff Mann's theory of Keynes's theory of civilization

In the Long Run We Are All Dead: Keynesianism, Political Economy, and Revolution (PDF, 362 pages) by Geoff Mann, 2017.

A Google Search search for "Keynes"  "civilization" turns up more than two million results, including this in the number one spot:

I am stopped dead by the words "Keynes's theory of civilization". 

Keynes's theory of civilization? You'd think I'd have heard of it before now!

I think somebody made it up. Somebody put the words in Keynes's mouth. Hey, I could be wrong about this. We will see.

Google Search turns up a handful of results for the phrase "As Keynes's theory of civilization makes clear". One of the results is a blurb page for the Geoff Mann book In the Long Run We Are All Dead. The blurb says in part "Keynesians are not and never have been out to save capitalism, but rather to save civilization from itself." But it is not Keynes saying this. And even if it actually is a "Keynesian" idea, that doesn't mean it has anything to do with Keynes.
// But wait: Could saving civilization from itself be an obscure reference to the four words, "Civilization dies by suicide"?? Hmm. Nah. To save civilization we have to save capitalism, Carroll Quigley would say. Or we have to come up with a better "instrument of expansion" right quick. 

But Carroll Quigley is not Keynes. And I've tried to find Keynes talking about civilization and its troubles. And yeah, I found a few statements. But it's always like pulling teeth. I always feel like I'm putting words in Keynes's mouth. This is why I distrust Geoff Mann when he puts civilization there.

One of the search results is a Google Book of the Geoff Mann book. It turns up this snippet:

A sentence and a half, without context, and with no hint of a source or reference to where Keynes might have offered such a theory.

Two of the results link to a D&D chat page at forums.somethingawful.com. A quote from the Geoff Mann book, by ronya, who says Mann is "trying his best to steelman contemporary liberalism". I had to look up "steelman".

And one result links to a PDF of the Geoff Mann book.

So all this search effort was not a total waste. At least I learned a new word.

 

Rummaging, I remember having looked before for something by Geoff Mann that I could read and make sense of. Without success, as I recall. I find nothing on this blog about Mann, before today.

Nothing on Mann on this blog. Nothing on the old blog. And nothing posted on my Test & Development blog, though I have some notes and such saved as drafts.

I have the hardest time making sense of what Mann says. Could be because he's very smart; some reviews suggest this. But if he was that smart, he should be smart enough to explain it simply. I have the Einstein quote in my Blog Themes folder: "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." I struggle with that all the time.

116 occurrences of the word "civilization" in the Geoff Mann book. The first occurs in a paragraph on page 10:

If Keynesianism returned with the most recent crisis, it is not because of Keynes’s theory of effective demand or his employment function, but because climate change, war and accelerating inequality seem to have put what many think of a “civilization” on the ropes.

And right there, Geoff Mann puts the words in Keynes's mouth. He says "many [people] think" civilization is on the ropes. Those people, Mann says, turned to Keynesian economic policy in response to the financial crisis. But this is not "Keynes's theory of civilization."

The monetary and fiscal policy response to the financial crisis of 2008 was kneejerk Keynesianism. What it showed is that a guy who has been dead since 1946 still understands the economy better than do our policymakers and the people they turn to for advice.

I reject Mann's assumption that the financial crisis was just one of many problems (including "climate change, war and accelerating inequality") that "seem to have put what many think of a 'civilization' on the ropes." I see bad economic policy as the one problem and the cause of all the problems Mann lists. What Mann offers is a list of results of the "bad policy" problem.

And I reject what looks like Mann's implicit dismissal of the idea that 'civilization' is not "on the ropes".

And why does he put the word civilization in quotes? Is he trying to deny that the word applies?

One sentence. I can't get through one sentence that Geoff Mann writes without having a dozen problems with it. Here, let me shorten his sentence:

If [something happened, it is] because climate change, war and accelerating inequality seem to have put what many think of a “civilization” on the ropes.

And shorter:

[C]limate change, war and accelerating inequality seem to have put what many think of a “civilization” on the ropes.

Do you see it?

... put what many think of a “civilization” on the ropes.

Something is wrong. Maybe he dropped the letter "s". Maybe Geoff Mann meant to write

... put what many think of as “civilization” on the ropes.

Maybe he did drop the "s". I dunno. But how am I supposed to understand what he means to say if he says it with typos that obscure the meaning? Moreover, this sentence of his seems to be central to the argument of his book (though it is early yet for me to be drawing that conclusion). How am I supposed to read and understand a guy who makes his key sentences unintelligible?

I can think of other ways to repair his sentence. But I cannot repair his sentence, as I do not know what he meant to say, because he didn't say it in a grammatically correct sentence. "For want of a nail" and all that.

 

Mann's paragraph continues:

Robespierre—or Hitler (Keynes understood them as two sides of the same populist coin)—might be right around the corner.

That sentence is offered as further evidence of civilization-on-the-ropes. I'm not sure of the timing, but Geoff Mann's book has a copyright date of 2017, which is the year of Donald Trump's inauguration. That is, at the very least, an odd coincidence.

Mann:

The panic that gripped Europe and North America following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in fall 2008 was partly motivated by rich people’s frantic effort to stay rich, but it was also motivated by lots of not-that-rich people’s fears that we were at some tipping point in the social order.

Decline of civilization, again. Again, the concern of many people who are not Keynes. So even if Mann is right about the concern, he is not right to attribute it to Keynes, who has been dead since 1946 (in case I didn't make that clear before).

Those people, were not, primarily, trying to save capitalism, they were trying to stave off a calamity caused by capitalism, in the hope that something better will come along. That is what Keynesianism is, and always has been, all about.

Mann makes assumptions about what people were hoping, and what people were fearing. He treats his assumptions as fact. And he attributes these, as facts, to Keynes and to Keynesianism. This is some bold bullshit, far as I'm concerned.

Mann finishes his paragraph:

This book is a (mostly) sympathetic critique of that sensibility, which I cannot help but see everywhere I look, perhaps because I have yet been unable, despite my best efforts, to escape it completely myself.

So, maybe these thoughts and hopes and fears that Geoff Mann attributes to Keynes, to Keynesians, and to "many" people are actually thoughts and hopes and fears that pester Mann, despite his best efforts to escape it completely.

Okay. So Mann says people think The End Is Near. He even thinks so himself. Why try to escape it?

Own it. Don't try to convince us that you have almost completely escaped it. Don't attribute it to other people. And, above all else, don't say it is all Keynes's idea unless you damn well show Keynes, himself, saying it.

I don't understand this Geoff Mann at all.