Towards the end of General Theory by J. M. Keynes, chapter 23, there is an apparently surprising passage:
"I was brought up to believe that the attitude of the Medieval Church to the rate of interest was inherently absurd, and that the subtle discussions aimed at distinguishing the return on money-loans from the return to active investment were merely Jesuitical attempts to find a practical escape from a foolish theory. But I now read these discussions as an honest intellectual effort to keep separate what the classical theory has inextricably confused together, namely, the rate of interest and the marginal efficiency of capital.
For it now seems clear that the disquisitions of the schoolmen were directed towards the elucidation of a formula which should allow the schedule of the marginal efficiency of capital to be high, whilst using rule and custom and the moral law to keep down the rate of interest."
This passage seems very close to Saint Thomas Aquinas' thought:
Money is not an end but a means of buying goods and services. Putting money out for the generation of more money is an evil unto itself.
(a first contribution to the discussion may be the Massimo Amato's paper presented during the XIV International Economic History Congress, Helsinki 2006 http://www.helsinki.fi/iehc2006/papers2/Amato.pdf )
One must understand it clearly that in fact rate of interest and the marginal efficiency of capital have an opposite individual existence. Rate of interest does not takes care about the production activity and the profits and losses incurred, while MEC wholly depends upon the production and productivity. SO for me interest rate is the wildest form of exploitation used with great tactics, it is a vice almost sharing great responsibility in creating the large divide between rich and the poor.
@Aadil Ganaie: your view is interesting, you should deepen the Sraffian analysis on this point. You may see for example Nell's paper "Does the rate of interest determine the rate of profit?"
http://www.centrosraffa.org/pe/4,2/4,2.11.%20Nell.pdf
But I would like an answer to my question: Has Keynes'theory of liquidity been inspired by Saint Thomas' Scholasticism? Thank you
@Balázs Kotosz
"Saint Thomas' idea is based on a single (acceptable) function of money: transanctions." IMHO Saint Thomas thought is more complex: the attention is not on the transactions by themselves, but on the relations between transations and the Common Good of the "civitas". In Saint Thomas Summa Theologiae there is not a definition of "capital", but Summa Theologiae's problem is the improper use of money. Mutatis mutanda I think that this is Keynes'most important institutional problem too.
Keynes recognized that his theory of liquidity preference was not the first to deal with the question of the misuse of money for purposes of financial speculation and manipulation and its impact on the macro economy.Keynes recognized both the" ancients" and the "Medieval Church-schoolmen" as thinkers who realized that severe problems resulted from the use of borrowed money to engage in debt leverage.Theoretically,the only legitimate use of money is as a medium of exchange to purchase consumption goods and producer(capital) goods in order to make .