Dreaming of something else

If profits are invested, demand for consumption is insufficient. This can be rebalanced by consumer credit, or by trading consumption for investments abroad. But consumer credit can only be paid back by reducing demand, and foreign trade is too often about plundering resources. Supposing profits were consumed, there would be no lack of demand, and if credit was invested, its repayment would be insured by the investment’s produce. In fact, invested credit could be considered a monetary creation, left in circulation and not paid back. The returned investment could then renew itself indefinitely.

A simple reversal of common practise, consuming income instead of investing it and investing credit instead of consuming it, would resolve surplus consumption, unsustainable debts and periodic recessions. This inversion, however, would turn the actual structures of society upside down. It would be a revolution, in as much as it would fundamentally modify political institutions as well as the ownership of the means of production. Incomes too big to be consumed would have to be shared, and the property of invested credit would be more collective. A dreamer’s nowhere-land, in which wealth and power are replaced by wisdom and authority. Meanwhile, the destructive upheavals of private capitalism will run their course.