Confessions of a Capitalist

Sir Ernest Benn

From the author:

Three things may be said about this book upon which there must, I think, be general agreement, and I mention them to save my critics trouble.

The first is that the book is in bad taste, dealing as it does with matters which, by common consent, are not usually written or talked about. Secondly, the book aspires, to no literary merit. The matter of it has been dictated in the manner of commercial correspondence and no attempt has been made to shield bald fact behind art or style. And thirdly, the book and the arguments it contains are decidedly materialistic. That is not because I am unconscious of the ethical side of all these problems, but because I am concerned for the moment with the more practical aspect of affairs.

I have endeavored to put a point of view which is all too little considered in modern discussions, and without which, so it seems to me, all discussions of the common wealth must be futile and dangerous.

Confessions of a Capitalist by Sir Ernest Benn
Meet the Author
Sir Ernest Benn
Mises Daily Sir Ernest Benn
The 19th century was filled with enthusiasm for passing on to the future something better, for leaving behind more than it inherited, for providing for the children of the next generation. The 20th century has said: to hell with posterity.
Mises Daily Sir Ernest Benn
Our management of money is advocated as a way to save us from the rigors of the natural law, but it would appear that enormous inequality, indeed injustice, may result from these strange modern conceptions of the proper functions of a national treasury.
Mises Daily Sir Ernest Benn
I understand that in the United States there are still those who think that the machinery of government can be used as a substitute for personal responsibility on the part of the governed. This idea, as we know only too well in Britain, is the open road to disaster. It changes persons with responsibilities into robots with rights.
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