Introduction
In 1997 Ralph Raico published an article titled “Keynes and the Reds.” Raico’s article highlighted John Maynard Keynes’s review of a 1936 book by the British socialists Sidney and Beatrice Webb called Soviet Communism. In his review, Keynes discusses Joseph Stalin’s USSR and concludes: “The result is impressive.” For Raico, a historian in the classical liberal tradition, this statement contradicts the conventional idea that Keynes was a model liberal.
Unfortunately, Keynes’s defenders still portray him as a model liberal. For example, Robert Skidelsky claims, “Keynes was a lifelong liberal” and “He was not a socialist.”1 Roger Backhouse and Bradley Bateman insist: “He was a classical liberal in his politics, being as attached to individual freedom as

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