One page at JSTOR: Economics and "The Possibility of Civilization": Four Judgments by Dwight E. Robinson, from The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 67, No. 1 (Feb., 1953)
Robinson gets right to the point:
On a ceremonial occasion marking an important and advanced milestone in his career, John Maynard Keynes delivered himself as follows:
"I give you the toast of the Royal Economic Society, of economics and economists, who are the trustees not of civilization, but of the possibility of civilization."
The Keynes quote is footnoted:
R. F. Harrod, The Life of John Maynard Keynes (New York: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1951), pp. 193-94.
That's all I needed. Keynes makes the connection between the economy and civilization. That's what I wanted to see.
Keynes said economists are the trustees of the possibility of civilization. In other words, economics and economists do not create civilization, but they make it possible -- or impossible, when policy goes bad.
1 comment:
Oddly, I don't find Keynes's toast in Geoff Mann's book In the Long Run We Are All Dead.
I find the word "toast" only once: Hegel "drank a toast to [the French Revolution] every year on July 14" (on page 111 of 362).
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