LENIN is said to have declared that the best way
to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch
the currency. By a continuing process of
inflation, Governments can confiscate, secretly
and unobserved, an important part of the
wealth of their citizens. By this method they
not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbi-
trarily; and, while the process impoverishes
many, it actually enriches some. The sight of
this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes
not only at security, but at confidence in the
equity of the existing distribution of wealth.
Those to whom the system brings windfalls,
beyond their deserts and even beyond their
expectations 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 currency
fluctuates wildly from month to month, all
permanent relations between debtors and credi-
tors, which form the ultimate foundation of
capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to

-77-