POLITICAL ECONOMY AND COMMUNISM..
TO THE EDITOR OF TILE SPECTATOR.
Dublin, 166h August 1849. Sm—A few of your readers in this city have been gratified by the judicious re- tie you made a week or two since to abate a nuisance which has arisen since the recent European convulsions. In Parliament and the press the epithets " Com- munist" and " Communism " have been bandied about from party to party with the most provoking disregard of meaning in the use of theeterms. The words being supposed, in certain circles, to signify something, outrageously absurd, they have afforded a very convenient method of bringing into bad odour any measure professing to give aid from society to individuals. The worst ofit is, these parties appear to have a morbid terror of investigating what this " Communism " is.. Po- litical economists sneer, and hold it in profound contempt; while Protectionists de- nounce it as a scheme of spoliation. Whatever its character, it is nevertheless the faith, vague, no doubt, of large :ambers of the operative classes throughout Europe. It is an aspiration cherished in the hearts of millions, though the perceptions of very many of these upon the subject may be anything but clear or defined. To a greater extent than is gene- rally imagined, the minds of the more advanced of the working classes in the manufacturing districts of England and Scotland are imbued with Communistic ideas. This is a "great fact ' of the present age—concealed until lately on the Continent by the censorship of the press and political oppression ; but it is useless to shut our eyes to it, like the ostrich which imagines itself out of danger when it buries its head in the sand. The journalist, then, is doing a public service, who suggests the propriety of grappling with Communism in fair discussion, that its fallacies may be exposed, or that any truth it contains may be detected and ap- plied. In the late European revolutionary jumble, public opinion has confounded Commu- nists with the Red or violent section of politicians or agitators. Those who are acquainted with the writings of the Communist and "Associative" theorists know that for the most part they have been anxious to avoid being confused with political destructives—that they have repudiated physical force as the agency of social reform. Persecute a peaceful party, however, and you are very likely to drive some of them into the ranks of violence. Surely working men should be en- couraged to investigate the social laws which regulate their wellbeing; for it would be better than a mere political passion or blind hostility to existing insti- tutions.
Political economy should not only observe and classify what is, but should point oat what might and ought to be. From a study of the workings of society in the past, it may very fairlypredicate of improvements in the future. Mr. Mill, in his Principles of Political Economy, properly contends that to a "theory of equilibrium" must be added a "theory of motion "—that we must not be content with the "statics " of political economy, but must join " dynamics" to the science. It will not do to attempt the suppression of Communism by authoritative dicta- tion or by ridicule. The sneer of " Utopian" will not be effectual. Why, it is only a few years since Lord Melbourne declared that a repeal of the Corn-laws would be downright madness • and later still the Ministers who now rule the destinies of this empire, while advocating a fixed duty, treated Cobden as a visionary, and proclaimed the total abolition of those laws to be impracticable. Yet the Corn-laws are clean gone, and the Navigation-laws have followed. Your correspondent W. S. (who appears alarmed at your permitting allusion to the political heresy in your pages,) says in last week's number, " politico-economical science has not yet been fairly tested." Then, in so far as this is true, even he must admit that he is only a theorizer. The leading idea of this heresy seems to be the wider application of the in- surance principle—the extension through society of the associative idea involved in life-assurance, sick and benefit societies, and similar institutions. Cobbett, amongst his other strange prejudices, had an antipathy to sick and benefit so- cieties. He wanted to know why a man who took care to keep himself well should pay to support a fellow who ate and drank himself into illness. We laugh at this now. Yet many who smile, perhaps, allude to Communism in the same strain, and think they argue. To fire-insurance one might object that it would encourage carelessness, and that it was only a scheme to make the careful pay for the losses of the negligent. The advocates of Associative or Communist schemes do not feel themselves defeated when they are met by like objections. They have, too, some of our best instincts en their side, when they say there is need of more mutual help between man and man, and less antagonism, which is competition. Your correspondent W. S. admits "competition to be productive of much evil and suffering"; but he says it is a "natural law." And so are human affinities, at- tractions, and sympathies, natural laws. Competition, or "the striving of one man against his fellow man for his daily bread," is only "natural" as the opera- tion of the faculties under certain circumstances; and as society has passed through various phases, we may without great absurdity imagine the probability of its attaining in the course of progress a stage in which the more generous por- tions of our nature may find fuller development and freer activity. To square everything by the rigid rule and cold calculations of selfish competition and strife, calling such callousness science, is only bringing political economy into disrepute by putting it into hostility with the morals of Christianity and the best aspira- tions of human nature.
You are, Sir, aiding to place true political economy on its right basis, when you instruct the public that this subject admits of argument.
[As we mentioned, we have received other letters, all of them able and to the Purpose, but they concur in many arguments, so that to publish a considerable Portion would only be to repeat; and some of them develop, on the Communist side, points which we had already indicated in our summary of the case on both sides. They rely strongly on the self-evident fact that political economy cannot yet pretend to be a perfected science ; and on this part of the subject Mr. Joseph Canvin, of Porchester Terrace, speaks with considerable force. "Your correspondent is all at sea as to the relation which Communism bears to Christianity. A glance at the writings of the early Fathers of the Church Weald show him that such men as Clement of Alexandria, St. Ambrose, Tertul- lian, St. Jerome, St. Gregory, St. Chrysostom, and St. Augustin, (to whose names a long list might be added,) not only preached but practised Communism; and though your correspondent might possibly observe that the Fathers were very good Christians but very bad political economists, this rejoinder, I need not say, would not settle the question. W. S. may rest assured, that the day is fast ap- Proaching when political economy, like all the other sciences, will expand its prin- ciPlea so as to embrace the ever-changing phases of an ever-advancing civiliza- tion..... On this point hear a 'master in Israel,' who thus speaks—' The economists of future ages will no doubt be able to trace and appeal to principles that have not yet developed themselves, or that have escaped observation, to per- iod the theoretical and to complete or reconstruct the practical part of the science.' --3PCuiloch's Principles of Political Economy. P. xvi. Third edition."]
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