The Ministry for the Future

64

Once John Maynard Keynes wrote of “the euthanasia of the rentier class.” This is a very provocative, not to say ominous, phrase. Euthanasia was a 1930s euphemism, one of many phrases used in that period to refer to state-sponsored execution of any perceived political rivals. A century later it still sounds deadly.

But it appears that Keynes used the word only to mean something like putting some poor creature out of its misery by a relatively painless procedure. This is true to the original Greek: in literal translation, euthanasia means something like “a good death.” Dictionary: “The painless killing of a patient suffering from an incurable and painful disease or in an irreversible coma. The practice is illegal in most countries.” Mercy killing is one synonym.

First use in written language is in Suetonius, describing the emperor Augustus’s “happy death.” First use in describing a medical practice is by Francis Bacon. Relief from suffering was crucial to the early connotation of the word.

Now, it could be argued that the rentier class is not suffering, and in fact is happily engaged in eating up everything. A parasite killing its host by overindulgence is not suffering. In which case, really the rentier class needs to be executed.

But perhaps it is overstating the case to compare the alteration of certain tax and inheritance laws to execution. Although possibly more than changes in tax and inheritance laws would be required to bring an end to the rentier class, often called “the ruling class.” Still, the concepts get blurred on a regular basis: a shift in social structures is often regarded as a kind of killing. On the other hand, the name for a certain kind of fiscal decapitation is called taking a haircut, which clarifies just how minor and even trivial are most of the financial limitations on wealth that get considered in the neoliberal hegemony.

Euthanasia: “For the good of the person killed.”

Now this is interesting, because capitalism is not a person, and the rentier class as such, though made up of people, is not a person. And as a class it is suffering, one could argue, from guilt, anxiety, depression, shame, a surfeit of everything, a sense of irredeemable criminal culpability, and so on. So to put this class out of its misery would be to relieve the individuals in that class from that horrible psychic burden, and possibly release them to a fuller happier life as guilt-free humans on a planet of equally guilt-free humans.

Capitalism: after a long and vigorous life, now incurable, living in pain. In a coma; become a zombie; without a plan; without any hope of returning to health. So you put it out of its misery.

But what about banishment, what about exile? What about a really short haircut?

Criminals in earlier times could simply be banished, and not allowed to return to their home territory. A punishment which did not match a mortal crime with another mortal crime. A judgment, and a harsh punishment sometimes, but also it could be simply a chance to start over somewhere else, being the same person you were before. It all depended on circumstances.

“The rentier class.” Keynes meant by this the people who made money simply by owning something that others needed, and charging for the use of it: this is rent in its economic meaning. Rent goes to people who are not creators of value, but predators on the creation and exchange of value.

So “the euthanasia of the rentier class” was Keynes’s way of trying to describe a revolution without revolution, a reform of capitalism in his time, toward whatever subsequent post-capitalist system might follow. It was his evaluation of the parts of the already-existing system, for their possible use value in a future civilization. He did not suggest ending capitalism; just end rent, and rentiers. Although that very well might come to the same thing in the end. He might have been using a euphemism to conceal the shock of his suggestion.

A just civilization of eight billion, in balance with the biosphere’s production of the things we need; how would that look? What laws would create it? And how can we get there fast enough to avoid a mass extinction event?

The rentier class will not help in that project. They are not interested in that project. Indeed that project will be forwarded in the face of their vigorous resistance. Over their dead bodies, some of them will say. In which case, euthanasia may be just the thing.