A Disgusting Morbidity

When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession – as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life – will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists on mental disease. All kinds of social customs and economic practices, affecting the distribution 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 accumulation of capital, we shall be free, at last, to discard.

Would it surprise you to know that was written by Keynes in 1930?

2 thoughts on “A Disgusting Morbidity

    • Yes, but in time so is everyone.

      What has become known as Keynesianism seems a rather benign form of capitalism, with its safety nets and aspirations of full employment, when compared with its bastard cousins of neoliberalism and neoconservatism.

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