INFLATION AND DEFLATIONi. Inflation (1919)

Lenin is said to have declared that the best wayto destroy the Capitalist System was to debauchthe currency. By a continuing process ofinflation, Governments can confiscate, secretlyand unobserved, an important part of thewealth of their citizens. By this method theynot only confiscate, but they confiscate arbi-trarily, and, while the process impoverishesmany, it actually enriches some. The sight ofthis arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikesnot only at security, but at confidence in theequity of the existing distribution of wealth.Those to whom the system brings windfalls,beyond their deserts and even beyond theirexpectations or desires, become “profiteers,”who are the object of the hatred of the bour-geoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished,not less than of the proletariat. As the infla-tion proceeds and the real value of the currencyfluctuates wildly from month to month, allpermanent relations between debtors and credi-tors, which form the ultimate foundation ofcapitalism, become so utterly disordered as to

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