Keynes e Lenin

John Maynard Keynes nel 1920, pubblicò un libretto molto interessante, The Economic Consequences of the Peace.
Nel Cap. 6 che, opportunamente, inizia con queste parole “This chapter must be one of pessimism. ....” J.M.K. scrive:
“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, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.
… Lenin was certainly right. 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.”

J.M.K. fu probabilmente ispirato da un’intervista sul N.Y.T. del 23 aprile 1919, dove una fonte anonima riporta le parole pronunciate da Lenin in un’intervista:
“Hundreds of thousands of rouble notes are being issued daily by our treasury. This is done, not in order to fill the coffers of the State with practically worthless paper, but with the deliberate intention of destroying the value of money as a means of payment.
.....
Experience has taught us it is impossible to root out the evils of capitalism merely by confiscation and expropriation… The simplest way to exterminate the very spirit of capitalism is therefore to flood the country with notes of a high face-value without financial guarantees of any sort. …The great illusion of the value and power of money, on which the capitalist state is based will have been definitely destroyed.”

da cui l’apocrifo di Lenin, ampiamente diffusosi in tempi moderni:

“La maniera per schiacciare la borghesia è quella di macinarla tra due pietre da mulino: la tassazione e l’inflazione”.

Figuriamoci se il cattocomunismo italiano odierno non sta brindando alla vittoria di Tsipras.
Con dell’ottimo Dom Perignon, naturalmente, sono persone di tale buon gusto........