Keynes, far from being a wholehearted lover of freedom, viewed with some sympathy the fascist and Communist ‘experiments’ of the 1930s.

With virtually no knowledge of or interest in history, the masses simply take their unprecedented high living standards under capitalism for granted.

Liberalism is, in fact, the ideology of the capitalist revolution that prodigiously raised the living standards of the mass of people; a doctrine gradually elaborated over several centuries, which offered a new concept of social order, encompassing freedom in the only form suited to the modern world. Step by step, in practice and theory, the various sectors of human activity were withdrawn from the jurisdiction of coercive authority and given over to the voluntary action of self-regulating society.

Keynes, far from being a wholehearted lover of freedom, viewed with some sympathy the fascist and Communist ‘experiments’ of the 1930s.

The chief value of the rule lies in preventing an immediate and obvious but inferior good from replacing a longer-range, less obvious but superior one.

Tariffs, government contracts, naval and military spending, nationalized industries, tax policy, social welfare, the legal privileging of labor unions were among the means at the disposal of the governing class to exploit the public at large for the benefits of its various clienteles.

Protectionism, socialism, all varieties of state favoritism and restrictions on competition, and the growth of bureaucracy and jobbery were the means by which special interests sought to exploit the public, the great mass of consumers and taxpayers.