Doug Henwood wrote:
> He said about as little as Marx did about his future society, though,
> didn't he? As I remember, this excerpt - which appears in vol. 14 of
> his collected works, as part of the jottings collected in "The
> General Theory and After: Defense and Development" - is one of the
> more detailed expositions of his "somewhat comprehensive
> socialization of investment":
>
> "It is theoretically conceivable that communal saving might have to
> be loaned to private enterprise. But I am assuming that the Board of
> National Investment would in one way or another control by far the
> greater part of investment. Private enterprise (meaning industry)
> requires such a tiny fragment of total savings that it could probably
> look after itself. Building, transport and public utilities are
> almost the only outlets for new capital on a large scale."
>
> And this sounds like he's talking mainly about public works and
> infrastructure, not machinery, meaning not much encroachment on the
> prerogatives of private capitalists - or entrepreneurs, as he (and
> Paul Davidson) usually put it.
Except for "public" utilities, Doug, the vast majority of whose assets are privately owned (it is interesting that Keynes would separate utilities from private enterprise). Utilities account for a large chunk of new private investment, so (real) public control of their investment could matter. It could also matter because, again, some form of real control would provide an entre into ways to effectively reduce the environmental damage done by electricity generation, which have so far been blunted by private capital.
This an industry, btw, that is about to be swarming with entrepreneurs, with deregulation sweeping the US, and parts of the world. Until, that is, the big boys sort things out. Watch out for some serious electricity shortages in the next few years, boys and girls.
To Jim H.:
Social control of investment, i.e., in the interests of workers, consumers, and community, is a revolutionary *thought*. I said he didn't want to pursue it, meaning in that sense. You, Doug and Michael have further elaborated on this point; Keynes had no such intention. As the above scribblings show, he was only thinking about buttressing capital; nothing more.