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, … - John Maynard Keynes

By this means the government may secretly and unobserved, confiscate the wealth of the people, and not one man in a million will detect the theft.

By a continuing process of inflation governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens . . . The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and it does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose

By a continuing process of inflation, government 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. . . . As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.

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.

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.

The decadent international but individualistic capitalism in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war is not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not beautiful. It is not just. It is not virtuous. And it doesn't deliver the goods. In short we dislike it, and we are beginning to despise it. But when we wonder what to put in its place, we are extremely perplexed.

Ideje ekonomista i političkih filozofa, i kad su u pravu i kad nisu, imajući veći uticaj nego što se obično smatra. U stvari, svetom malo šta drugo vlada. Praktični ljudi, koji smatraju da ne podležu intelektualnim uticajima, obično su robovi nekog preminulog ekonomiste. Ludaci na vlasti, koji čuju glasove oko sebe, mogu da zahvale za svoje ludilo nekom akademskom skribomanu od pre nekoliko godina.

His peculiar gift was the power of holding continuously in his mind a purely mental problem until he had seen it through.