Post-Capitalism without Communism: J. M. Keynes
Marx was far from alone in claiming that capitalism creates the conditions for a society beyond it. Indeed, he was joined by the most influential economist of the twentieth century: John Maynard Keynes.
Keynes was by no means a radical, let alone a revolutionary. And yet in 1930, in the aftermath of the Wall Street crash and the start of what would become the Great Depression, he penned the most optimistic tract of his age, Letter on the Economic Possibilities of Our Grandchildren.
In this short, self-assured essay Keynes outlined a new society which he viewed as not only desirable, but inevitable. Like Marx in the Grundrisse he believed such a shift would prefigure a world unrecognisable from his own, yet also express its fullest development:
I draw the conclusion that, assuming no important wars and no important increase in population, the economic problem may be solved, or be at least within sight of solution, within a hundred years. This means that the economic problem is not – if we look into the future – the permanent problem of the human race … thus for the first time since his creation man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem – how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well.
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chaos under heaven