Re: Gary Trudeau, Iraq and Nader

[Ted Winslow <egwinslow@xxxxxxxxxx>]

The essays of Keynes I mentioned are on the web.

Here is the final part of "The End of Laissez Faire."

> These reflections have been directed towards possible improvements in 
> the technique of modern capitalism by the agency of collective action. 
> There is nothing in them which is seriously incompatible with what 
> seems to me to be the essential characteristic of capitalism, namely 
> the dependence upon an intense appeal to the money-making and 
> money-loving instincts of individuals as the main motive force of the 
> economic machine. Nor must I, so near to my end, stray towards other 
> fields. Nevertheless, I may do well to remind you, in conclusion, that 
> the fiercest contests and the most deeply felt divisions of opinion 
> are likely to be waged in the coming years not round technical 
> questions, where the arguments on either side are mainly economic, but 
> round those which, for want of better words, may be called 
> psychological or, perhaps, moral.
>  In Europe, or at least in some parts of Europe - but not, I think, in 
> the United States of America - there is a latent reaction, somewhat 
> widespread, against basing society to the extent that we do upon 
> fostering, encouraging, and protecting the money-motives of 
> individuals. A preference for arranging our affairs in such a way as 
> to appeal to the money-motive as little as possible, rather than as 
> much as possible, need not be entirely a priori, but may be based on 
> the comparison of experiences. Different persons, according to their 
> choice of profession, find the money-motive playing a large or a small 
> part in their daily lives, and historians can tell us about other 
> phases of social organisation in which this motive has played a much 
> smaller part than it does now. Most religions and most philosophies 
> deprecate, to say the least of it, a way of life mainly influenced by 
> considerations of personal money profit. On the other hand, most men 
> today reject ascetic notions and do not doubt the real advantages of 
> wealth. Moreover, it seems obvious to them that one cannot do without 
> the money-motive, and that, apart from certain admitted abuses, it 
> does its job well. In the result the average man averts his attention 
> from the problem, and has no clear idea what he really thinks and 
> feels about the whole confounded matter.
> Confusion of thought and feeling leads to confusion of speech. Many 
> people, who are really objecting to capitalism as a way of life, argue 
> as though they were objecting to it on the ground of its inefficiency 
> in attaining its own objects. Contrariwise, devotees of capitalism are 
> often unduly conservative, and reject reforms in its technique, which 
> might really strengthen and preserve it, for fear that they may prove 
> to be first steps away from capitalism itself. Nevertheless, a time 
> may be coming when we shall get clearer than at present as to when we 
> are talking about capitalism as an efficient or inefficient technique, 
> and when we are talking about it as desirable or objectionable in 
> itself. For my part I think that capitalism, wisely managed, can 
> probably be made more efficient for attaining economic ends than any 
> alternative system yet in sight, but that in itself it is in many ways 
> extremely objectionable. Our problem is to work out a social 
> organisation which shall be as efficient as possible without offending 
> our notions of a satisfactory way of life.
> The next step forward must come, not from political agitation or 
> premature experiments, but from thought. We need by an effort of the 
> mind to elucidate our own feelings. At present our sympathy and our 
> judgement are liable to be on different sides, which is a painful and 
> paralysing state of mind. In the field of action reformers will not be 
> successful until they can steadily pursue a clear and definite object 
> with their intellects and their feelings in tune. There is no party in 
> the world at present which appears to me to be pursuing right aims by 
> right methods. Material poverty provides the incentive to change 
> precisely in situations where there is very little margin for 
> experiments. Material prosperity removes the incentive just when it 
> might be safe to take a chance. Europe lacks the means, America the 
> will, to make a move. We need a new set of convictions which spring 
> naturally from a candid examination of our own inner feelings in 
> relation to the outside facts.
> <http://www.panarchy.org/keynes/laissezfaire.1926.html>

Here is a passage expanding on this from "Economic Possibilities for 
our Grandchildren."

> I feel sure that with a little more experience we shall use the 
> newâfound bounty of nature quite differently from the way in which the 
> rich use it toâday, and will map out for ourselves a plan of life 
> quite otherwise than theirs.
>
> For many ages to come the old Adam will be so strong in us that 
> everybody will need to do some work if he is to be contented. We shall 
> do more things for ourselves than is usual with the rich toâday, only 
> too glad to have small duties and tasks and routines. But beyond this, 
> we shall endeavour to spread the bread thin on the butterâto make what 
> work there is still to be done to be as widely shared as possible. 
> Threeâhour shifts or a fifteenâhour week may put off the problem for a 
> great while. For three hours a day is quite enough to satisfy the old 
> Adam in most of us!
>
> There are changes in other spheres too which we must expect to come. 
> When the accumulaÂtion of wealth is no longer of high social 
> imÂportance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We 
> shall be able to rid ourÂselves of many of the pseudoâmoral principles 
> which have hagâridden us for two hundred years, by which we have 
> exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the 
> position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to 
> assess the moneyâmotive at its true value. The love of money as a 
> possession âas distinguished from the love of money as a means to the 
> enjoyments and realities of life âwill be recognised for what it is, a 
> someÂwhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semiÂcriminal, 
> semiâpathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to 
> the specialists in mental disease. All kinds of social customs and 
> economic practices, affecting the distribuÂtion of wealth and of 
> economic rewards and penalties, which we now maintain at all costs, 
> however distasteful and unjust they may be in themselves, because they 
> are tremendously useful in promoting the accumulation of capital, we 
> shall then be free, at last, to discard.
>
> Of course there will still be many people with intense, unsatisfied 
> purposiveness who will blindly pursue wealthâunless they can find some 
> plausible substitute. But the rest of us will no longer be under any 
> obligation to applaud and encourage them. For we shall inquire more 
> curiously than is safe toâday into the true character of this 
> "purposiveness" with which in varying degrees Nature has endowed 
> almost all of us. For purposiveness means that we are more concerned 
> with the remote future results of our actions than with their own 
> quality or their immediate effects on our own environment. The 
> "purposive" man is always trying to secure a spurious and delusive 
> immortality for his acts by pushing his interest in them forward into 
> time. He does not love his cat, but his cat's kittens; nor, in truth, 
> the kittens, but only the kittens' kittens, and so on forward forever 
> to the end of catâdom. For him jam is not jam unless it is a case of 
> jam toâmorrow and never jam toâday. Thus by pushing his jam always 
> forward into the future, he strives to secure for his act of boiling 
> it an immortality.
>
> Let me remind you of the Professor in Sylvie and Bruno :
>
> "Only the tailor, sir, with your little bill," said a meek voce 
> outside the door.
>
> "Ah, well, I can soon settle his business," the Professor said to the 
> children, "if you'll just wait a minute. How much is it, this year, my 
> man?" The tailor had come in while he was speaking.
>
> "Well, it's been aâdoubling so many years, you see," the tailor 
> replied, a little grufy, "and I think I'd like the money now. It's two 
> thousand pound, it is!"
>
> "Oh, that's nothing!" the Professor carelessly remarked, feeling in 
> his pocket, as if he always carried at least that amount about with 
> him. "But wouldn't you like to wait just another year and make it four 
> thousand? Just think how rich you'd be! Why, you might be a king, if 
> you liked!"
>
> "I don't know as I'd care about being a king," the man said 
> thoughtfully. "But it dew sound a powerful sight o' money! Well, I 
> think I'll waitâ"
>
> "Of course you will!" said the Professor. "There's good sense in you, 
> I see. Goodâday to you, my man!"
>
> "Will you ever have to pay him that four thousand pounds?" Sylvie 
> asked as the door closed on the departing creditor.
>
> "Never, my child!" the Professor replied emphatically. "He'll go on 
> doubling it till he dies. You see, it's always worth while waiting 
> another year to get twice as much money!"
>
> Perhaps it is not an accident that the race which did most to bring 
> the promise of immortality into the heart and essence of our religions 
> has also done most for the principle of compound interest and 
> particularly loves this most purposive of human institutions.
>
> I see us free, therefore, to return to some of the most sure and 
> certain principles of religion and traditional virtueâthat avarice is 
> a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misdemeanour, and the love of 
> money is detestable, that those walk most truly in the paths of virtue 
> and sane wisdom who take least thought for the morrow. We shall once 
> more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful. We 
> shall honour those who can teach us how to pluck the hour and the day 
> virtuously and well, the delightful people who are capable of taking 
> direct enjoyment in things, the lilies of the field who toil not, 
> neither do they spin.
> <http://k.web.umkc.edu/kaboubf/econ/Readings/EP-Keynes-1930.htm>

Ted