[These are the concluding paragraphs of an article "Can They Really Cure Depression" written by Harry Braverman for the American Socialist in May of 1954. Braverman was co-editor of the magazine until he moved on to the Monthly Review editorial board at the end of the '50s. The magazine was co-edited by Bert Cochran, who along with Braverman and 125 others, were expelled from the Trotskyist SWP for challenging sectarianism. Braverman's critique of Keynes retains validity for today's world 36 years after it was written.] THE MAIN MISTAKE that Keynes made when he set forth his platform is that he thought "smartness" alone is enough. He thought our troubles under capitalism came about because nobody had figured out the problem and set forth the remedy. He didn’t understand that the rich and dominant capitalist class has no intention of taking his advice and getting any "smarter." They have only a single purpose: to defend their position. As things got worse under capitalism, instead of becoming more reasonable they have become more and more determined to keep society in its present form, even if they have to try to use police regimes, fascism, the H-bomb, and every other form of violence to do so. So that, as we have seen in the 18 years since Keynes wrote his book, the tendency of almost all capitalist governments has not been toward Keynes but in the other direction. Today, in the U.S., even the most liberal of politicians doesn’t dare to advocate the one-fiftieth part of what Keynes said would be required. The Democrats are further from Keynesiansm than they ever were, and the real Keynesian program is deader than the dodo. Now let’s look at the problem just one more way. Assume that Keynes is right as against Marx. Assume, for the sake of argument, that Marx was too sweeping and radical, and that all that must be done is the "socialization of investment" instead of the socialization of the economy as a whole, which Marx and the socialists advocate. The question then remains: Can the socialization of investment be accomplished without the socialization of industry? This is not a purely economic question. There is no doubt that somebody could work out a nice blueprint for socialized investment without touching private ownership of industry. But we will never see anything of the kind. The capitalist class will never give up control of its profits and their disposal, either "gradually" or all at once, so long as it retains control over industry. The power of the capitalist class is in its stranglehold, through ownership, over the entire means of production. Barricading itself behind that power, it will resist to the attempt to take away control over investment. In fact, the only way to bring about even that which Keynes advocated, socialization of investment, is by the nationalization of the nation’s basic industry. EVEN IF KEYNES had hit upon a correct working solution, it is clear that before such a solution could be put into practice, the state power would ha wrested from the hands of the controlling capitalists by a very determined and uncompromising movement of the people. The American capitalists, who declare civil war against the CIO in the industrial unions of the Thirties, are not going to give up control of their profits and investments without a basic struggle. So we find that what we confront is not, as Keynes imagined, a polite discussion among "all the people" in the course of which the "right things" will be and done. We face instead a struggle in which the future lies with the only class that has the power to do the working class. Society will be set right only such a struggle, in which the people will take control of industry out of the hands of the capitalists and vest it in themselves. And that, in a nutshell, is the program of socialism. Keynesian economics, by its very nature, has very little interest in the long-term problems of capitalism. "In the long run," Keynes himself once wrote, "we shall all be dead." Keynes himself is already safely dead, but for the living and for the generations of tomorrow it is another matter. A Louis XIV can talk like a negligent plumber-- "After me, the deluge"—but the people must, in self-defense, take a different view. The American workers, while they may have all the illusions about "saving capitalism," are not really Keynsians in their basic outlook, because they do not upon depend upon "discussions" with the capitalists. They believe in fighting for their betterment. But what we have tried to point to in this article is that the fight for our rights is not a fight without a goal. If, in the fight between labor and capital, labor finds its way to victory, as in the long run it must, that victory can be spelled in only one way: Socialism. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
