John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)
Selected Readings
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III. The Psychology of Society
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Europe was so organised socially and economically as to secure the maximum accumulation of
capital. While there was some continuous improvement in the daily conditions of life of the mass of the
population, Society was so framed as to throw a great part of the increased income into the control of
the class least likely to consume it. The new rich of the nineteenth century were not brought up to large
expenditures, and preferred the power which investment gave them to the pleasures of immediate
consumption. In fact, it was precisely the inequality of the distribution of wealth which made possible
those vast accumulations of fixed wealth and of capital improvements which distinguished that age
from all others. Herein lay, in fact, the main justification of the capitalist system. If the rich had spent
their new wealth on their own enjoyments, the world would long ago have found such a régime
intolerable. But like bees they saved and accumulated, not less to the advantage of the whole
community because they themselves held narrower ends in prospect.
The immense accumulations of fixed capital which, to the great benefit of mankind, were built
up during the half century before the war, could never have come about in a Society where wealth was
divided equitably. The railways of the world, which that age built as a monument to posterity, were, not
less than the pyramids of Egypt, the work of labour which was not free to consume in immediate
enjoyment the full equivalent of its efforts.
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Thus this remarkable system depended for its growth on a double bluff or deception. On the
one hand the labouring classes accepted from ignorance or powerlessness, or were compelled,
persuaded, or cajoled by custom, convention, authority, and the well-established order of Society into
accepting, a situation in which they could call their own very little of the cake that they and Nature and
the capitalists were co-operating to produce. And on the other hand the capitalist classes were allowed
to call the best part of the cake theirs and were theoretically free to consume it, on the tacit underlying
condition that they consumed very little of it in practice. The duty of “saving” became nine-tenths of
virtue and the growth of the cake the object of true religion. There grew round the non-consumption
of the cake all those instincts of puritanism which in other ages has withdrawn itself from the world
and has neglected the arts of production as well as those of enjoyment. And so the cake increased; but
to what end was not clearly contemplated. Individuals would be exhorted not so much to abstain as to
defer, and to cultivate the pleasures of security and anticipation. Saving was for old age or for your
children; but this was only in theory, – the virtue of the cake was that it was never to be consumed,
neither by you nor by your children after you.
4
In writing thus I do not necessarily disparage the practices of that generation. In the
unconscious recesses of its being Society knew what it was about. The cake was really very small in
proportion to the appetites of consumption, and no one, if it were shared all round, would be much the
better off by the cutting of it. Society was working not for the small pleasures of today but for the
future security and improvement of the race – in fact for “progress”. If only the cake were not cut but
was allowed to grow in the geometrical proportion predicted by Malthus of population, but not less
true of compound interest, perhaps a day might come when there would at last be enough to go round,
and when posterity could enter into the enjoyment of our labours. In that day overwork, overcrowding,
and underfeeding would come to an end, and men, secure of the comforts and necessities of the body,
could proceed to the nobler exercises of their faculties. One geometrical ratio might cancel another, and
the nineteenth century was able to forget the fertility of the species in a contemplation of the dizzy
virtues of compound interest.
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There were two pitfalls in this prospect: lest, population still outstripping accumulation, our
self-denials promote not happiness but numbers; and lest the cake be after all consumed, prematurely,
in war, the consumer of all such hopes.
6
But these thoughts lead too far from my present purpose. I seek only to point out that the
principle of accumulation based on inequality was a vital part of the pre-war order of Society and of
progress as we then understood it, and to emphasise that this principle depended on unstable
psychological conditions, which it may be impossible to recreate. It was not natural for a population, of
John Maynard Keynes – Selected Readings
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whom so few enjoyed the comforts of life, to accumulate so hugely. The war has disclosed the
possibility of consumption to all and the vanity of abstinence to many. Thus the bluff is discovered; the
labouring classes may be no longer willing to forgo so largely, and the capitalist classes, no longer
confident of the future, may seek to enjoy more fully their liberties of consumption so long as they last,
and thus precipitate the hour of their confiscation.
The Economic Consequences of the Peace, New York, Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920.
E-text available from Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/15776
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The Banana Parable
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Let us suppose a community owning banana plantations and labouring to cultivate and collect
bananas and nothing else; and consuming bananas and nothing else. Let us suppose, further, that there
has been an equilibrium between saving and investment in the sense that the money-income of the
community, not spent on the consumption of bananas but saved, is equal to the cost of production of
new investment in the further development of plantations; and that the selling price of bananas is equal to
their cost of production (including in this the normal remuneration of entrepreneurs). Finally, let us
suppose, what is plausible, that ripe bananas will not keep for more than a week or two.
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Into this Eden there enters a Thrift Campaign, urging the members of the public to abate their
improvident practices of devoting nearly all their current incomes to buying bananas for daily food. But
at the same time there is no corresponding increase in the development of new plantations – for one or
other of many reasons: it may be that counsels of prudence are influencing entrepreneurs as well as
savers, fears of future over-production of bananas and a falling price-level deterring them from new
development; or technical reasons may exist which prevent new development at more than a certain
pace; or the labour required for such development may be highly specialised and not capable of being
drawn from labour ordinarily occupied in harvesting bananas; or there may be a considerable time-lag
between the initial preparations required for development and the date of the bulk of the expenditure
eventually required by it. What, in such a case, will happen?
3
The same quantity of bananas as before will continue to be marketed, whilst the amount of
current income devoted to their purchase will, by reason of the thrift campaign, be diminished. Since
bananas will not keep, their price must fall; and it will fall proportionately to the amount by which
saving exceeds investment. Thus, as before, the public will consume the whole crop of bananas, but at
a reduced price-level. This is splendid, or seems so. The Thrift Campaign will not only have increased
saving; it will have reduced the cost of living. The public will have saved money, without denying
themselves anything. They will be consuming just as much as before, and virtue will be sumptuously
rewarded.
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But the end is not yet reached. Since wages are still unchanged, only the selling-price of bananas
will have fallen and not their cost of production; so that the entrepreneurs will suffer an abnormal loss.
Thus the increased saving has not increased in the least the aggregate wealth of the community; it has
simply caused a transfer of wealth from the pockets of the entrepreneurs into the pockets of the
general public. The savings of the consumers will be required, either directly or through the
intermediary of the banking system, to make good the losses of the entrepreneurs. The continuance of
this will cause entrepreneurs to seek to protect themselves by throwing their employees out of work or
reducing their wages. But even this will not improve their position, since the spending power of the
public will be reduced by just as much as the aggregate costs of production. By however much
entrepreneurs reduce wages and however many of their employees they throw out of work, they will
continue to make losses so long as the community continues to save in excess of new investment. Thus
there will be no position of equilibrium until either (a) all production ceases and the entire population
starves to death; or (b) the thrift campaign is called off or peters out as a result of the growing poverty;
or (c) investment is stimulated by some means or another so that its cost no longer lags behind the rate
of saving.
A Treatise on Money, 2 vols., New York, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1930.