Investment based on genuine long-term expectations is so difficult today as to be scarcely practicable.

I conceive, therefore, that a somewhat comprehensive socialisation of investment will prove the means of securing an approximation to full employment.

Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes a bubble on a whirlpool of speculation. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill done.

The decadent international but individualistic capitalism in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war is not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not beautiful. It is not just. It is not virtuous. And it doesn't deliver the goods.

How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeois and the intelligentsia who, with whatever faults, are the quality in life and surely carry the seeds of all human advancement?

In this autumn of 1919, in which I write, we are at the dead season of our fortunes.

When the facts change, I change my mind.