John Maynard Keynes
National Self-Sufficiency, 1933:
It was Keynes who started to fight the official calcula¬tors. In the 19th century "the whole conduct of life was made into a sort of parody of an accountant's nightmare. Instead of using their vastly increased material and technical resources to build a wonder-city, they built slums." Slums 'paid', the wonder-city "would, in the imbecile idiom of the financial fashion, have 'mortgaged the future'." (Coll. Writings 1982 vol.21 p. 241)
Even today, "the same rule of self-destructive financial calculations governs every walk of life. We destroy the beauty of the countryside because the unappropriated splendours of nature have no economic value. We are capable of shutting off the sun and the stars because they do not pay a dividend. (...) For with what we have spent on the dole in England since the War we could have made our cities the greatest works of man in the world." (p. 242) A bit further on the splendid phrase: "But once we allow ourselves to be disobedient to the test of an accoun¬tant's profit, we have begun to change our civilisation." (p. 243)
"The point is that there is no prospect for the next generation of a uniformity of economic systems throughout the world, such as existed, broadly speaking, during the 19th century; that we all need to be as free as possible of interference from econo¬mic changes elsewhere, in order to make our own favourite experiments towards the ideal social republic of the future; and that a deliberate movement towards greater national self-sufficiency and economic isolation will make our task easier, in so far it can be accomplished without excessive economic cost."
"The divorce between ownership and the real responsibility of management is serious within a country when, as a result of joint-stock enterprise, ownership is broken up between innume¬rable individuals who buy their interest today and sell it tomorrow and lack altogether both knowledge and responsibility towards what they momentari¬ly own." (p. 236)
Applied internationally, Keynes explains, it can even become intolerable, and he then comes to his well-known statement: "I sympathize, therefore, with those who would minimize, rather than with those who would maximize, economic entanglement between nations. Ideas, knowledge, art, hospitality, travel - these are the things which should of their nature be international. But let goods be homespun whenever it is reaso¬nably and conve¬niently possible;
and, above all, let finance be primari¬ly national." (p. 236)
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Keynes is well known for his ideas about stimulating public spending in times of recession. Seldom put in the picture (the dominating picture!*) is his opposition to the cumulative oppressive power of money in capitalism. "[For] a little reflection will show what enormous social changes would result from a gradual disappearance of a rate of return on accumulated wealth. (…) it would mean the euthanasia of the rentier, and, consequently, the euthanasia of the cumulative oppressive power of the capitalist to exploit the scarcity-value of capital. Interest today rewards no genuine sacrifice, (since) there are no intrinsic reasons for the scarcity of capital. (…) this may be the most sensible way of gradually getting rid of many of the objectionable features of capitalism." (General Theory, mijn uitgave: Macmillan 1973, p. 221, 376, 221. Dus door mij vermengd! Kan/mag dat wel?)
"Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise beco¬mes the bubble on a whirlpool of specula¬tion. " (GT)
* The dominating picture or opinion is the one pushed by the leading class and their flunkeys.
« The difficulty lies not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones which ramify into every corner of our minds. » (GT, end of Preface. Minus enkele tussenwoorden.)
