Keynes at Harvard: Economic Deception as a Political Credo

by Liberty and Power

Readers may be interested to learn that perhaps the best-known statement of the proposition that the economics of John Maynard Keynes is properly understood with reference to his homosexuality is Keynes at Harvard: Economic Deception as a Political Credo (Veritas Foundation, New York, 1960). (Keynes was in fact bisexual over the course of his life.) Authorship was credited to Zygmund Dobbs in the revised edition published by Veritas Foundation in 1962 and in the revised and enlarged edition from Probe Research, West Sayville, N.Y., in 1969. I remember looking at a copy in a John Birch Society bookstore during my first visit to the United States in the summer of 1972 and since then I have come across several copies in book stores and book sales. It was printed in large quantities and it’s not difficult to find.

So who was Zygmund Dobbs? I understand that Dobbs was the pseudonym of Archibald Bulloch Roosevelt (1894-1979), Teddy and Edith Roosevelt’s fourth child and third son, a second cousin of FDR, and sometime member of the John Birch Society. Go here and here to read more about Archibald Roosevelt. He was the only U.S. soldier in history to have been fully disabled from two wars (the First and Second World Wars) and one of the few non-alcoholics to sit on the Board of Alcoholics Anonymous. (His elder brother Kermit (1889-1943) was an alcoholic who committed suicide.)

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Steven Salfelder - 12/25/2008

I would also like to see this republished. So who owns the rights?

peary perry - 10/28/2008

have just read "Keynes at Harvard"...wjho owns the copyright for this and would they consider re-publishing/ We would like to discuss this possibility.....pperry@austin.rr.com

David Arthur Noebel - 3/29/2008

Yes, I would like to get in contact with Zygmund Dobbs daughter. Her father was the Research Director of The Great Deceit: Social Pseudo-Sciences and I would like to see this work reprinted. In light of Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism, The Great Deceit would make an excellent historical reference point. If anyone knows how I can contact her please let me know...

Mark Brady - 12/19/2007

Thank you for your interesting post, which I found all the more interesting because of your reference to the late Professor Olin Glenn Saxon of the economics department at Yale University.

I am aware of his work at Yale through a family connection. My daughter, who is now a sophomore at Princeton, is the great granddaughter of Professor Saxon.

FRANK DOBBS - 12/18/2007

My father, Zygmund Dobbs, was a well-read autodidact of high intelligence who started out as a radical Trotskyite who was active in the UAW. Being the rare radical from a working class background, he joined those who were disillusioned with radicalism and devoted his life to fighting the illusions of the left.

After a picaresque life spent in union organizing, intelligence work, politics and much else, he settled down into doing research on Fabian Socialism for many years.

Keynes at Harvard was written at the suggestion of a Yale Economics professor, Olin Glenn Saxon. Professor Saxon felt that certain truths about Keynes, and others, could only be written by an outsider.

The work was sponsored by the Veritas Foundation, which was an organization of disaffected conservative Harvard alumni ('Veritas' being Harvard's motto.)

Fascinating as the questions concerning Keynes' sexual orientation no doubt must be (and my Dad was nothing if not a thorough researcher), the interesting issue the book raises is Keyenes' Fabianism, and how it was Fabian policy to conceal their socialist intentions and excellent relations with Russian communists. This is not a small matter. When one listens to the Democratic presidential candidates today, they are, knowingly or ignorantly, all espousing latter day Fabianism.

Someone who worked for me in the late 70's and who had an MBA and PhD from Chicago, said Keynes at Harvard had been required reading at Chicago business school.

Mark Brady - 2/24/2007

On March 3, 2005, I received an email from Stephanie Dobbs, the daughter of Zygmund Dobbs. She stated that her father, and not Archibald Roosevelt, wrote the book Keynes at Harvard. I intended to post a correction (honestly!) but let the matter slip. Prompted by your post, I am now happy to do so.

Laura Gifford - 2/23/2007

The proposition that Dobbs was actually Archie Roosevelt is a fascinating one (and certainly renders his effusive thanks to Roosevelt in the opening pages self-serving!): what evidence can you provide for this argument? I have found evidence of a Zygmund Dobbs who was a resident of Suffolk Co., NY and a member of the NY State Assembly. The edition of _Keynes at Harvard_ I read, however, gave no biographical information for Dobbs, and as a historian studying anti-communist literature of the 1950s and 1960s, additional information regarding his identity and background would be very helpful.