SOME WORKS ON ECONOMICS.*
ECONOMIC theories which justify the existing order have the advantage of prescriptive right against their rivals, but %hey labour under certain disadvantages. The conditions of life which they have to defend are in evidence, and their imper- fections are glaring. It is an inevitable, and on the whole an improving, world, but it is by no means the best of all possible worlds. There are features in it which render it an easy target for the artillery of the innovator and the revolutionist. The book market is therefore flooded with attacks on the status quo, and under cover of this fire the onslaught of those who have rival Utopias to proclaim is eagerly advanced. The besieged have lived long in a security which seemed, and still seems, to them impregnable. They are beginning, however, to bestir themselves in a mild and indolent fashion. We have had occasion recently to notice in these pages a number of hostile criticisms of Socialism, but it is interesting, and, we think, characteristic of the situation, to observe that compara- tively little has been written by way of justification of the system under which we live. Its most unanswerable defence will probably take the form that it is inevitable. There is need, however, if a comfortable feeling of security is to be restored to the besieged, for a reasoned and philosophical apology, not for the existing conditions of society, but for the principle of liberty, property, and freedom of exchange on which, as history shows, modern civilisation is struggling to develop itself.
Philippe de Comines, it has been remarked, wrote his history of mediaevalism in supreme unconsciousness of the fact that the knell of the Middle Ages had rung. So a Socialist might remark about the besieged bourgeoisie of our analogy that they continue to write their economic treatises -wholly • (1) The Law Relating to Custom and the Usages of Trade. By Robert WiTham Aeke. London : Stevens and Song. [16s.]—(2) A History of the Bank of England. By A. Andreades. Translated by Christabel Meredith. With a Preface UT EL S. Poirwell. London : P. S. King and Son. [10e. 6d. net.] —(S) ineestigattons its Currency and Finance. By W. St:alley Jevons. New Edition. London Macmillan and Co. [10e. net.]--(4) Socialiem in Theory and Practice. By Morris Hillquit Same publishers. [6s. 6d. net.]— (5) Natural Monopolies in Relation to Social Democracy. By Charles perwent Smith. London : A. C. Piiield. [Se. 6d. net.)—(6) 7.4 Socialisme a lEtratiggr. Preface by Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, Articles by Various Writers, mid Conclusion by Jean Bourdeatt. Paris: rglix Akan. [3 fr. 50 c.]---(7) The Enforcement of the Statutes of Labourers, 1149-1860. . By Bertha Haven Putnam, Ph.D. New York : Columbia University. ($4.)—(8) Economic Heresies, By Sir Nathaniel Nathan. London; A. Constable and Co. [10s. 6d. net]
inappreciative of the fact that the doom of " capitalism " has sounded. To a more sober judgment the first three volumes named on our list remind us how vast is the superstructure of jurisprudence and commercial organisa- tion involved in the so-called bourgeois view of life, and how far-reaching is the Socialist policy of revolutionising or destroying it.
Thus Mr. Aske's volume is a legal treatise, but incidentally it analyses and explains the process of natural selection and rejection by which individual experience becomes crystallised into local custom, and then into national law. The conception of property and the right to use property as capital for reproductive purposes are fundamental. Arithmetic would not be more violently revolutionised by a denial of the fact that two and two make four than would be the jurisprudence and commerce of the civilised world by a rejection of these axioms as to property.
So, too, with the next work on our list, A History of the Bank of England. What would be the use or province of the Bank of England if the right of private invest- ment were abolished? The whole question of currency and credit becomes foolishness if the reproductive use of capital is prohibited to the individual. The late Mr. Stanley Jevons (of whose Investigations in Currency and Finance we have a welcome reprint) invites us to study, inter alia, the autumnal drain of currency to the provinces, and the subject is important and well worthy of consideration; but on what a wild and uncharted sea should we be embarking if we were asked to consider the drain of bullion which would result if investment were prohibited, and metallic currency were deprived of the relief which incorporeal instruments of credit at present afford it! The only way of providing for deferred consumption, an in- eradicable instinct of human kind, would then be by hoarding bullion. No wonder that the scientific Socialism of Marx proposed the abolition of money. Marx's proposal, however, only postpones the impracticable crisis, as his followers now generally admit. Mr. Hillquit, for instance (Socialism in Theory and Practice, p.118), quotes Kautsky, who is generally cited as a belated believer in the plenary inspiration of Marx, for the opinion that in this matter the teaching of their master must be repudiated. When we are confronted by a divided party, a section of which lightly proposes the abolition of money, while the other with no leas levity argues for its retention, ignoring, nevertheless, the danger of the inevitable panic which would result from the prohibition of the practice of individual investment, we see how profoundly true is the analysis of M. Gustav Le Bon, who in his Psychologie du Socialisme shows how Socialism is not an economic system based on reasoning, but a new religion, a false religion if you will, adopted by an act of faith, and, as such, altogether impervious to the attacks of logic.
Mr. Smith in his Natural Monopolies undertakes to reply to Mr. Mallock, whose main argument he summarises in the statement that "the ownership of capital is the only means by which directive ability can secure the effective direction of manual labour" (p. 20). Mr. Mallock is very well able to defend himself, but, as has been frequently pointed out, this particular argument is open to the rejoinder that ability, like manual labour, can be hired, and that under Socialism it will be hired in the interest of the community. The defence of property and its use as capital, however, rests on a much wider base. "Owning things," says Mr. Smith, "cannot be construed into a service to the com- munity at all." Perhaps not, but none the less owner- ship is a definite "economic function," without which, as f,er as experience goes, civilisation cannot exist. Society has to choose between two alternatives : universal scramble, or the institution of property as developed by jurisprudence and the consent of the civilised world. A. "common property," a thing that is at once proprium and commune, is a contradiction in terms. Some ownership, like some labour, may be useless or mischievous, bat the institution of property, apart from facilitating the enriching enterprise of ability to which Mr. Mallock has drawn attention, is the instrumentsleliberately adopted by the experience of the ages as a. necessary element in the economic" development of an industrial community. It is a decisive . influence in, regulating the growth of population ; it restrains Inxurions expinclitarewithin bounds; it provides the machinery'
by which men make provision for the aged, for widows, invalids, and minors ; and it puts leisure and independence within the reach of industry and thrift. It is the instrument. in fact, by which most of the harmonies of civilised society are effected.
The economy as distinct from the equity of the private ownership of capital is not seriously disputed. The stimulus to production to which it gives rise is admitted. In our view, however, its superior equity over rival alternatives is even more remarkable. We deliberately prefer private monopoly (all property is monopoly) tempered by the obligation which lies on every man to keep his property serviceable—the only means of retaining its value—to the ignis fatuus of common property. Common property, as we have said, is an impossible thing, and the first step to be taken by the new Committee of Management would be to divest it of its common element, and to reintroduce monopoly and property by apportioning to each man his daily bread, his separate share in the common stock ; its next step would also be to apportion employments, eligible and ineligible, to the "able men" or directors and to the "labour men" or subordinates ; and the question remains, how is the selection to be made ? At the direction ultimately, we must presume, of the political " boss " of the hour. It is, of course, an accursed world that we should be troubled with property and all its woes, but for ourselves we confess that we would rather be dependent on Mr. Rockefeller himself than on the chairman of the political caucus of the more or leas corrupt borough in which it is our misfortune to dwell !
Our next volume is an interesting study, Le Socialism.
l'Etranger, with a preface by M. Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu (not to be confused with his brother, M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, whose admirable work, Le Collectivism; translated by Sir A. Clay, was recently noticed in these pages). It consists of papers, by various authors, on Socialism in different countries, M. Baxdoux, who writes on England, is struck by the bourgeois respectable character of English Socialism. Many of the leaders of English Socialism go to chapel ! There is here an absence of those flamboyant devices and truculent proclama- tions which characterise the movement in France. He notes also that English Socialists as a body repudiate international sentiment, and, like the rest of us, are inclined to embrace their country's quarrel, right or wrong!
The four hundred and eighty pages of Dr. Bertha Putnam's volume, The Enforcement of the Statutes of Labourers, 1349-1359, a few weeks ago might have been regarded as a purely antiquarian study. It appears that in the fourteenth century several authorities were charged with the duty of enforcing the payment of a maximum wage : a special Commission of Justices of Labourers, and the local and central Courts of Judicature. Dr. Putnam is not satisfied that this legislation had absolutely no effect, as has been assumed too readily by economic writers. This is probable, but as net result we have the admission that "in the end the keen competition of employers made it impossible permanently to check the rise in wages" (p. 223).
Of a different class is the last book on our list. The author of Economic Heresies is a shrewd man of the world. His
heresy consists, he tells us, in thinking that "the formulas deduced by orthodox economists are inadequate," and that "efforts of society to bring about a better state of things must not be hampered by an unquestioning acquiescence in a body of doctrine deduced from imperfect observation of some of the facts attending a bygone and rudimentary stage in the economic history of the world." This prelude prepares us for some eclecticism, and we are not disappointed. The author is against the orthodox economists—a term which is now of very vague import—and he is against the Socialists in their "new creed of collectivism." He is, however, in favour Of that particular form of Socialism which thinks it can regulate trade, not by free exchange, but by that variety of considera- tions which go to prompt a scientific tariff. We cannot ourselves reconcile what appear to us to be irreconcilable opinions, but we recommend the work as typical of the frame of mind which rejects 'the aid of general principles, and considers every project on what are called "the merits of the case," a euphemism for much of the unscientific thinking by which the world is now troubled.
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