Re: Keynes quote

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Alan G Isaac" <aisaac@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <pkt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, July 08, 2002 12:04 PM
Subject: Re: Keynes quote


> On Mon, 08 Jul 2002 11:47:08 -0500 "William B. Ryan"
<william_b_ryan@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > A text search from my electronic version of *The Consequences*
returns
> > this:
>
> > "Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy
> > the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a
> > continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate,
> > secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of
their
> > citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they
> > confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes
many,
> > it actually enriches some."
>
> > Keynes is attributing the thought to Lenin, not himself.
>
> Thanks for the reference.
> But keep going!  He continues:
> " Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer
> means of overturning the existing basis of society than to
> debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces
> of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a
> manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."
>
> Alan

================

According to Jonathan Kirshner's "Currency and Coercion; The
Political Economy of International Monetary Power" the quote is
attributed to Lenin by Schumpeter in C,S&D but S provides no
reference. Kirshner then states that S may have been thinking of K
and his statement in "The Economic Consequences of the Peace."

Ian