Here are some quotes from John Stuart Mill, a 19th century philosopher and proponent of capitalism, on the inevitable end to capitalism: “It must always have been seen, more or less distinctly, by political economists, that the increase in wealth is not boundless: that at the end of what they term the progressive state lies the stationary state, that all progress in wealth is but a postponement of this, and that each step in advance is an approach to it…(…) This impossibility of ultimately avoiding the stationary state – this irresistible necessity that the stream of human industry should finally spread itself out into an apparently stagnant sea – must have been, to the political economists of the last two generations, an unpleasant and discouraging prospect.” “I cannot …regard the stationary state of capital and wealth with the unaffected aversion so generally manifested towards it by political economists of the old school. I am inclined to believe that it would be, on the whole, a very considerable improvement on our present condition. I confess I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other’s heels which form the existing type of social life, are the most desirable lot of human kind, or anything but the disagreeable symptoms of one of the phases of industrial progress. (…) (T)he best state for human nature is that in which, while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear being thrust back, be the efforts of others to push themselves forward.” “It is scarcely necessary to remark that a stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. (…) There would be as much scope as ever for all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress; as much room for improving the Art of Living, and much more likelihood of its being improved, when minds ceased to be engrossed by the art of getting on. Even the industrial arts might be as earnestly and as successfully cultivated, with this sole difference, that instead of serving no purpose but the increase of wealth, industrial improvements would produce their legitimate effect, that of abridging labour.” ......... John Stuart Mill
Posted on: Tue, 12 Nov 2013 22:34:59 +0000
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