Encyclopaedia Britannica > Volume 19, PHY-PRO

POLITICAL ECONOMY
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sciences of inorganic and vital nature which, is necessary
whether as supplying bases of doctrine or as furnishing
lessons of method. Their education has usually been of a
metaphysical kind. Hence political economy has retained
much of the form and spirit which belonged to it in the 17th
and 18th centuries, instead of advancing with the times,
and assuming a truly positive character. It is homogene¬
ous with the school logic, with the abstract unhistorical
jurisprudence, with the a priori ethics and politics, and
other similar antiquated systems of thought; and it will be
found that those who insist most strongly on the mainten¬
ance of its traditional character have derived their habitual
mental pabulum from those regions of obsolete speculation.
We can thus understand the attitude of true men of science
towards this branch of study, which they regard with ill-
disguised contempt, and to whose professors they either re¬
fuse or very reluctantly concede a place in their brotherhood.
The radical vice of this unscientific character of political
economy seems to lie in the too individual and subjective
aspect under which it has been treated. Wealth having
been conceived as what satisfies desires, the definitely
determinable qualities possessed by some objects of supply¬
ing physical energy, and improving the physiological con¬
stitution, are left out of account. Everything is gauged by
the standard of subjective notions and desires. All desires
are viewed as equally legitimate, and all that satisfies our
desires as equally wealth. Value being regarded as the
result of a purely mental appreciation, the social value of
things in the sense of their objective utility, which is
often scientifically measurable, is passed over, and ratio of
exchange is exclusively considered. The truth is, that at
the bottom of all economic investigation must lie the idea
of the destination of wealth for the maintenance and
evolution of a society. And, if we overlook this, our
economics will become a play of logic or a manual for the
market, rather than a contribution to social science; whilst
wearing an air of completeness, it will be in truth one-sided
and superficial. Economic science is something far larger
than the catallactics to which some have wished to reduce
it. A special merit of the physiocrats seems to have lain in
their vague perception of the close relation of their study
to that of external nature; and, so far, we must recur to
their point of view, basing our economics on physics and
biology as developed in our own time. Further, the science
must be cleared of all the theologico-metaphysical elements
or tendencies which still encumber and deform it. Teleology
and optimism on the one hand, and the jargon of “natural
liberty ” and “ indefeasible rights ” on the other, must be
finally abandoned.
Nor can we assume as universal premises, from which
economic truths can be deductively derived, the con¬
venient formulas which have been habitually employed,
such as that all men desire wealth and dislike exertion.
These vague propositions, which profess to anticipate and
supersede social experience, and which necessarily intro¬
duce the absolute where relativity should reign, must be
laid aside. The laws of wealth (to reverse a phrase of
Buckle’s) must be inferred from the facts of wealth, not
from the postulate of human selfishness. We must bend
ourselves to a serious direct study of the way in which
society has actually addressed itself and now addresses
itself to its own conservation and evolution through the
supply of its material wants. What organs it has
developed for this purpose, how they operate, how they are
affected by the medium in which they act and by the co¬
existent organs directed to other ends, how in their turn
they react on those latter, how they and their functions
are progressively modified in process of time—these
problems, whether statical or dynamical, are all questions
of fact, as capable of being studied through observation
and history as the nature and progress of human language
or religion, or any other group of social phenomena. Such
study will of course require a continued “reflective
analysis ” of the results of observation; and, whilst eliminat¬
ing all premature assumptions, we shall use ascertained
truths respecting human nature as guides in the inquiry
and aids towards the interpretation of facts. And the
employment of deliberately instituted hypotheses will be
legitimate, but only as an occasional logical artifice.
II. Economics must be constantly regarded as forming
only one department of the larger science of sociology, in
vital connexion with its other departments, and with the
moral synthesis which is the crown of the whole intellectual
system. We have already sufficiently explained the
philosophical grounds for the conclusion that the economic
phenomena of society cannot be isolated, except provision¬
ally, from the rest,—that, in fact, all the primary social
elements should be habitually regarded with respect to their
mutual dependence and reciprocal actions. Especially must
we keep in view the high moral issues to which the eco¬
nomic movement is subservient, and in the absence of which
it could never in any great degree attract the interest or fix
the attention either of eminent thinkers or of right-minded
men. The individual point of view will have to be sub¬
ordinated to the social; each agent will have to be regarded
as an organ of the society to which he belongs and of the
larger society of the race. The consideration of interests,
as George Eliot has well said, must give place to that of
functions. The old doctrine of right, which lay at the basis
of the system of “ natural liberty,” has done its temporary
work; a doctrine of duty will have to be substituted, fixing
on positive grounds the nature of the social co-operation of
each class and each member of the community, and the rules
which must regulate its just and beneficial exercise.
Turning now from the question of the theoretic constitu¬
tion of economics, and viewing the science with respect to
its influence on public policy, we need not at the present
day waste words in repudiating the idea that “ non-govern¬
ment ” in the economic sphere is the normal order of things.
The laissez faire doctrine, coming down to us from the
system of natural liberty, was long the great watchword of
economic orthodoxy, and it had a special acceptance and
persistence in England, in consequence of the political
struggle for the repeal of the corn laws, which made
economic discussion in this country turn almost altogether
on free trade—a state of things which was continued by
the effort to procure a modification of the protective policy
of foreign nations. But it has now for some time lost the
sacrosanct character with which it was formerly invested.
This is a result not so much of scientific thought as of the
pressure of practical needs—a cause which has modified
the successive forms of economic opinion more than theorists
are willing to acknowledge. Social exigencies will force
the hands of statesmen, whatever their attachment to
abstract formulas ; and politicians have practically turned
their backs on laissez faire. The state has with excellent
effect proceeded a considerable way in the direction of
controlling, for ends of social equity or public utility, the
operations of individual interest. The economists them¬
selves have for the most part been converted on the question;
amongst theorists Mr Herbert Spencer finds himself
almost a vox clamantis in deserto in protesting against what
he calls the “ new slavery ” of Governmental interference.
He will protest in vain, so far as he seeks to rehabilitate
the old absolute doctrine of the economic passivity of the
state. But it is certainly possible that even by virtue of the
force of the reaction against that doctrine there may be an
excessive or precipitate tendency in the opposite direction.
With the course of production or exchange considered in
itself there will probably be in England little disposition