The Economic Consequences of the PeaceKeynes, John Maynard
History
The Economic Consequences of the Peace
Keynes, John Maynard
Economic history -- 1918-1945; Treaty of Versailles (1919 June 28); World War, 1914-1918 -- Economic aspects
In the latter stages of the war all the belligerent governments
practised, from necessity or incompetence, what a Bolshevist might have
done from design. Even now, when the war is over, most of them continue
out of weakness the same malpractices. But further, the Governments of
Europe, being many of them at this moment reckless in their methods as
well as weak, seek to direct on to a class known as "profiteers" the
popular indignation against the more obvious consequences of their
vicious methods. These "profiteers" are, broadly speaking, the
entrepreneur class of capitalists, that is to say, the active and
constructive element in the whole capitalist society, who in a period of
rapidly rising prices cannot help but get rich quick whether they wish
it or desire it or not. If prices are continually rising, every trader
who has purchased for stock or owns property and plant inevitably makes
profits. By directing hatred against this class, therefore, the European
Governments are carrying a step further the fatal process which the
subtle mind of Lenin had consciously conceived. The profiteers are a
consequence and not a cause of rising prices. By combining a popular
hatred of the class of entrepreneurs with the blow already given to
social security by the violent and arbitrary disturbance of contract and
of the established equilibrium of wealth which is the inevitable result
of inflation, these Governments are fast rendering impossible a
continuance of the social and economic order of the nineteenth century.
But they have no plan for replacing it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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