Economics and Liquidity in John Maynard Keynes’Politics and Italo Svevo’s La Coscienza di Zeno It may sound like a paradox, but it is obvious that peace engendered hatred with the opening of frontiers to a competitor’s goods and labour. (“London After the War,” Italo Svevo’s London Writings) If heterosexual loves were usually requited and monogamous, millions of men would be forcibly either homosexual or celibate. ( The Macroeconomics of Sexuality 1 ) “Why should anybody steal a watch when they can steal a bicycle?” Hark to his cold inexorable logic. (The Third Policeman 2 ) He saw debtors and creditors being born everywhere, even when two peo- ple were trading blows or when they kissed. (Zeno’s Conscience 3 ) Order of Priorities: Sex, Drugs, and Money, in Keynes’ “Politics” (1931) In his General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936), Keynes likens the value of stocks to that of pretty faces; Svevo, in La coscienza di Zeno (1923), makes a similar analogy the other way round. This essay will attempt to flesh out, among other things, what is at stake in this rather striking coincidence. 4 My thesis is that such an apparently whimsical equation between economics and erotics (or more generally human rela- tions—substitute “people” for “pretty faces”) on which the great British economist and great Italian writer coincide is not merely a figurative bon mot, but of the greatest literal importance as regards the relationship between economics and “literature,” and indeed “the humanities” and “social sci- ences” in general—not to mention love or good looks. The Greek myth of Gyges, inventor of both money and writing, long ago suggested that they both must have something at least indirectly to do with eroticized concealments and thefts, since Gyges became invisible to see the king’s wife naked, then stole her (killing the king), just before inventing them. Moreover, he was asked by the king himself to hide in this way—to verify her beauty: like the value of money, this beauty—even for the king— depended on someone else’s valuation. As Keynes famously updated, com- plicated, and democratized the situation: picking a stock to buy is like some- one picking “not those faces which he himself finds prettiest, but those which he thinks likeliest to catch the fancy of the other competitors, all of WESTERN HUMANITIES REVIEW 87 JOHN VIGNAUX SMYTH WHA31.2011:FALL2004-1 6/15/11 1:54 PM Page 87