ABSTRACT
It is rare to hear a defense of outsized wealth and income inequality. But when a defense is mounted, it typically runs along lines familiar to persons living one hundred years ago. Keynes was outlining not just the facts of inequality but its justification. Growth depended on a "double bluff or deception." Keynes's description of nineteenth-century capital accumulation depicted a time when profitable prospects brought in "immense accumulations of fixed capital." Keynes's optimistic assessment could be challenged on several levels. Keynes's depiction avoided any discussion of the territorial captivity of native peoples and the associated violence that maintained imperial empires. The Physiology of Industry thus implicated inadequate consumption power relative to the capital stock and therefore clearly pointed towards the redistribution of income advocated by Hobson in his later works. The export of British capital to the United States was also considerable, making up roughly one-fourth to one-fifth of capital export from mid-century to first World War.
