Must-read: John Maynard Keynes: “A somewhat comprehensive socialization of investment…

Must-Read: John Maynard Keynes (1936): The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money: “It seems unlikely that the influence of banking policy on the rate of interest…

…will be sufficient by itself to determine an optimum rate of investment. I conceive, therefore, that a somewhat comprehensive socialisation of investment will prove the only means of securing an approximation to full employment; though this need not exclude all manner of compromises and of devices by which public authority will co-operate with private initiative. But beyond this no obvious case is made out for a system of State Socialism which would embrace most of the economic life of the community. It is not the ownership of the instruments of production which it is important for the State to assume. If the State is able to determine the aggregate amount of resources devoted to augmenting the instruments and the basic rate of reward to those who own them, it will have accomplished all that is necessary…