Frank Ramsey's Socialism
a relatively unknown part of the philosopher, mathematician and economist's legacy
Much of the biographical information in this post is taken from Cheryl Misak’s biography of Frank Ramsey, titled Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers. I highly recommend reading it.
Frank Ramsey is famous for a lot of things. Ramsey’s theorem, simple type theory, subjective probability, Ramsey pricing, the Ramsey rule for optimal commodity taxation, the Ramsey Cass Koopmans model, a proto-theory of counterfactual conditionals and many more. I wonder whether it would be easier to make an exhaustive list of intellectual accomplishments that Ramsey is known for or a list of ones he isn’t known for. The philosopher Donald Davidson coined the term ‘the Ramsey Effect’ to refer to the phenomenon of finding out one’s brilliant and original contribution to human thought was already discovered by Ramsey. But one thing that Ramsey isn’t really remembered for is his socialist beliefs.
Ramsey the Red
As a schoolboy, Ramsey spent his time defending the merits of socialism in formal Winchester College debates. The editors of his school’s student newspaper, The Wykehamist, described him as “evidently an ardent Bolshevik” when reporting on his performance in a debate where he argued against allied intervention following the October Revolution. He engaged in written correspondence with the Glasgow Communist Party and yelled “blacklegs!” at his peers for crossing the picket line during a railway strike. When he won a prize in mathematics, which came with free books of the winner’s choice, he asked for some books by Adam Smith, Karl Marx and Leon Trotsky. Cheryl Misak notes that he found Trotsky’s coverage of the revolution particularly exciting.
But Ramsey was not a Bolshevik or a Marxist. He was not an uncritical cheerleader for the revolutionaries, believing that “we ought to help them do it better”. He was a supporter of guild socialism – an early 20th Century movement in the United Kingdom that advocated for putting industry in the hands of trade and craft guilds. This position was popular among non-Marxian socialists at the time. It’s a view similar to what advocates of workers’ cooperatives support today.
He did not advocate for revolution, instead believing in a gradual transition to socialism. Ramsey felt that such a transition was inevitable, as society increasingly became more educated. Workers would gradually become more militant as they became more educated and the ruling classes would be drawn to the intellectual case for socialism.
An Egalitarian Shift
The kind of socialism that Ramsey was drawn to, along with what drew him to it, seemed to gradually change during his time at Cambridge. He attended meetings of the Cambridge University Socialist Society (CUSS), including a speech by the leading guild socialist G.D.H. Cole. It was around this time that he noticed he was “sceptical about class war theory”. Ramsey presented a paper at the CUSS arguing against Cole’s idea of workers’ self-government. Cole believed that industrial workers should elect their own managers and directors to enact their will, which was a typical Guild Socialist position. Ramsey disagreed with this, arguing that such a system was poorly thought out and that it would be better to have industries run by boards including representatives from the state, the workforce and consumers. He thought these representatives should not be expected to act in accordance with the workers’ popular will. Rather, Ramsey felt that they should be invested with the confidence to act as responsible public servants. This marked a noticeable shift away from guild socialism and towards a position that you often see among ‘funds socialists’, who advocate for state ownership in the form of social wealth funds with mixed representation.
Ramsey became a member of the Cambridge Apostles, a men’s-only discussion group that included the likes of John Maynard Keynes, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and G.E. Moore among their ranks. In 1923, he presented a paper to the Apostles titled Socialism and Equality of Income. The paper itself is short, provocative and light on details, which fit with the unserious tone of Apostles meetings. But it reveals another shift in Ramsey’s evolving socialist beliefs.
The thesis of the paper is that socialism provides the best means of achieving full employment and a relatively equal distribution of income. He also offers some quick rebuttals to common arguments against socialism, including this amusing reply to the claim that private industrialists are more efficient than state bureaucrats:
"The common run of businessmen appear to be very stupid, only obtaining their positions from their parents. That the control of our industries should pass by such nepotism into the hands of fools is a scandal which would not be tolerated in the civil service." - Frank Ramsey, Socialism and Equality of Income
Some of Ramsey’s arguments are not particularly compelling. His responses to common objections drawing on the importance of economic incentives and competition are weak even by the standards of his day. That being said, it is interesting to see Ramsey’s move towards justifying socialism on egalitarian grounds. He retained an interest in workers’ emancipation and alleviating their poor working conditions, but treated this as secondary to achieving full employment and relative equality.
It is also noteworthy that Ramsey did not romanticise industrial action. He argues that socialism is desirable precisely because it would make workers less inclined to go on strike and engage in slowdowns. If everyone had secure jobs and benefitted from greater economic output, then there would be no need to reduce economic output in a fight to protect jobs or improve wages. He also argues that a socialist state would ‘make a more farsighted use of our natural resources such as forests and minerals’.
Family Benefits
Ramsey also reveals an interest in the welfare state, particularly child welfare, in this paper. He notes:
“The principle of making the national income go as far as possible makes reasonable leads towards the maintenance of the children by the State. Evidently the misery of poverty would today be considerably alleviated if incomes were proportioned to the size of the family” - Frank Ramsey, Socialism and Equality of Income
In a later Apostles paper, Sex from the Point of View of Society, he argues that it is wrong to let the male breadwinner family model die without replacing it with a newer, better institution. He suggests that family endowments should be paid to ensure that women are renumerated for raising children and so that they retain financial independence after marriage.
An Underappreciated Legacy
Ramsey did not make particularly original or impactful contributions to socialist thought. Other thinkers at different places and different times came up with similar ideas and developed them further. But Misak suggests that Ramsey’s socialism influenced his more famous works. The landmark paper A Mathematical Theory of Saving attempts to answer the question “How much of its income should a nation save and how much of its income should a nation consume?”, which raises the issue of intergenerational welfare. Ramsey argues that society should not discount the value of the well-being of future generations, even if it makes sense for individuals to discount future lives.