Thanksgiving Is Ruined

The Personal is Political. The Political is Personal.

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January 22, 2008
 
alas, whereto has gone that faded promise of euth?


There is, however, a second, much more fundamental inference from our argument which has a bearing on the future of inequalities of wealth.

. . .

Now, though this state of affairs would be quite compatible with some measure of individualism, yet 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.

. . .

I see, therefore, the rentier aspect of capitalism as a transitional phase which will disappear when it has done its work. And with the disappearance of its rentier aspect much else in it besides will suffer a sea-change.

It will be, moreover, a great advantage of the order of events which I am advocating, that the euthanasia of the rentier, of the functionless investor, will be nothing sudden, merely a gradual but prolonged continuance of what we have seen recently in Great Britain, and will need no revolution.


from Keynes' The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, chapter 24, "Concluding Notes on the Social Philosophy towards which the General Theory might Lead"


(1936)