But, as soon as speculators become an important influence in the market, their business is to speculate on each others behaviour.

A sure sign of a crisis is the prevalence of cranks. It is characteristic of a crisis in theory that cranks get a hearing from the public which orthodoxy is failing to satisfy.

But, as soon as speculators become an important influence in the market, their business is to speculate on each others behaviour.

It is the business of economists, not to tell us what to do, but show why what we are doing anyway is in accord with proper principles.

Voltaire remarked that it is possible to kill a flock of sheep by witchcraft if you give them plenty of arsenic at the same time. The sheep, in this figure, may well stand for the complacent apologists of capitalism; Marx's penetrating insight and bitter hatred of oppression supply the arsenic, while the labour theory of value provides the incantations.

owning capital is not a productive activity.

Not only subjective poverty is never overcome by growth, but absolute poverty is increased by it. ... Absolute misery grows while wealth increases.