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KEYNES AND FULL EMPLOYMENT
Keynes looked at that feature of capitalism, the trade cycle, and pointed out that there was no rational reason why means of production and labour power should lie idle. The mechanism of the market means that exchange can take place; it does not mean that exchange will take place. Keynes showed that the commodity side of the exchange was not lacking: there were the means of production and labour power necessary for producing commodities. The problem was that there was not the means to purchase them. His solution was simply that the state should extend the credit for purchase: to increase the consumption in a national economy.
Before Keynes, consumption occurred to the extent that the working class was employed and able to consume because its labour was required by the market and also to the extent that it was profitable for capitalists to purchase means of production. After Keynes, the Government has used the credit at its disposal to ensure that the consumption of the working class is sufficient to call forth into productive use all the means of production and labour power in the nation, and also to initiate purchases of means of production both on its own account or through grants to private capitalists. In Britain, the Government has invented the "regulator", statutory powers at the disposal of the Chancellor to vary the rates of purchase tax by as much as 10% in between Budgets. The Government foregoes so many £million in taxes and borrows the resulting deficit to be able to meet its commitments (aid to industry, education, subsidies to local government for housing etc).
Therefore, quite independently of the "normal" workings of the economy (of activities of capitalists and workers) the amount of value consumed by the working class increases. It is obvious that there is no need to use the regulator if all the means of production and labour power are fully employed.
The decision to increase consumption must be taken as a result of assessing the capability of the society to produce (its total means of production and total labour power) and whether in fact that capability is being fully used. This assessment must be made as a result of conscious investigation: the mechanisms of capitalism provide no immediate answer.