Читать книгу An Essay on Mediæval Economic Teaching - George Augustine Thomas O'Brien - Страница 6

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The question may be asked whether the study of a system of economic teaching, which, even if it ever did receive anything approaching universal assent, has long since ceased to do so, is not a waste of labour. We can answer that question in the negative, for two reasons. In the first place, as we said above, a proper understanding of the earlier periods of the development of a body of knowledge is indispensable for a full appreciation of the later. Even if the canonist system were not worth studying for its own sake, it would be deserving of attention on account of the light it throws on the development of later economic doctrine. 'However the canonist theory may contrast with or resemble modern economics, it is too important a part of the history of human thought to be disregarded,' says Sir William Ashley. 'As we cannot fully understand the work of Adam Smith without giving some attention to the physiocrats, nor the physiocrats without looking at the mercantilists: so the beginnings of mercantile theory are hardly intelligible without a knowledge of the canonist doctrine towards which that theory stands in the relation partly of a continuation, partly of a protest.'[1]

[Footnote 1: Op. cit., vol. i. pt. ii. p. 381.]

But we venture to assert that the study of canonist economics, far from being useful simply as an introduction to later theories, is of great value in furnishing us with assistance in the solution of the economic and social problems of the present day. The last fifty years have witnessed a reaction against the scientific abstractions of the classical economists, and modern thinkers are growing more and more dissatisfied with an economic science which leaves ethics out of account.[1] Professor Sidgwick, in his Principles of Political Economy, published in 1883, devotes a separate section to 'The Art of Political Economy,' in which he remarks that 'The principles of Political Economy are still most commonly understood even in England, and in spite of many protests to the contrary, to be practical principles—rules of conduct, public or private.'[2] The many indications in recent literature and practice that the regulation of prices should be controlled by principles of 'fairness' would take too long to recite. It is sufficient to refer to the conclusion of Devas on this point: 'The notion of just price, worked out in detail by the theologians, and in later days rejected as absurd by the classical economists, has been rightly revived by modern economists.'[3] Not alone in the sphere of price, but in that of every other department of economics, the impossibility of treating the subject as an abstract science without regard to ethics is being rapidly abandoned. 'The best usage of the present time,' according to the Catholic Encyclopædia, 'is to make political economy an ethical science—that is, to make it include a discussion of what ought to be in the economic world as well as what is.'[4] We read in the 1917 edition of Palgrave's Dictionary of Political Economy, that 'The growing importance of distribution as a practical problem has led to an increasing mutual interpenetration of economic and ethical ideas, which in the development of economic doctrine during the last century and a half has taken various forms.' [5] The need for some principle by which just distribution can be attained has been rendered pressing by the terrible effects of a period of unrestricted competition. 'It has been widely maintained that a strictly competitive exchange does not tend to be really fair—some say cannot be really fair—when one of the parties is under pressure of urgent need; and further, that the inequality of opportunity which private property involves cannot be fully justified on the principle of maintaining equal freedom, and leads, in fact, to grave social injustice.'[5] In other words, the present condition of affairs is admitted to be intolerable, and the task before the world is to discover some alternative. The day when economics can be divorced from ethics has passed away; there is a world-wide endeavour to establish in the place of the old, a new society founded on an ethical basis.[7] There are two, and only two, possible ways to the attainment of this ideal—the way of socialism and the way of Christianity. There can be no doubt the socialist movement derives a great part of its popularity from its promise of a new order, based, not on the unregulated pursuit of selfish desires, but on justice. 'To this view of justice or equity,' writes Dr. Sidgwick, 'the socialistic contention that labour can only receive its due reward if land and other instruments of production are taken into public ownership, and education of all kinds gratuitously provided by Government—has powerfully appealed; and many who are not socialists, nor ignorant of economic science, have been led by it to give welcome to the notion that the ideally "fair" price of a productive service is a price at least rendering possible the maintenance of the producers and their families in a condition of health and industrial efficiency.' This is not the place to enter into a discussion as to the merits or practicability of any of the numerous schemes put forward by socialists; it is sufficient to say that socialism is essentially unhistorical, and that in our opinion any practical benefits which it might bestow on society would be more than counterbalanced by the innumerable evils which would be certain to emerge in a system based on unsatisfactory foundations.

[Footnote 1: We must guard against the error, which is frequently made, that, because the classical economists assumed self-interest as the sole motive of economic action, they therefore approved of and inculcated it.]

[Footnote 2: P. 401, and see Marshall's Preface to Price's Industrial Peace, and Ashley, op. cit., vol. i. pt. i. p. 137.]

[Footnote 3: Political Economy, p. 268.]

[Footnote 4: Tit., 'Political Economy.']

[Footnote 5: Vol. iii. p. 138.]

[Footnote 6: Ibid.]

[Footnote 7: See Laveleye, Elements of Political Economy (Eng. trans.), pp. 7–8. On the general conflict between the ethical and the non-ethical schools of economists see Keynes, Scope and Method, pp. 20 et seq.]

The other road to the establishment of a society based on justice is the way of Christianity, and, if we wish to attempt this path, it becomes vitally important to understand what was the economic teaching of the Church in the period when the Christian ethic was universally recognised. During the whole Middle Ages, as we have said above, the Canon Law was the test of right and wrong in the domain of economic activity; production, consumption, distribution, and exchange were all regulated by the universal system of law; once before economic life was considered within the scope of moral regulation. It cannot be denied that a study of the principles which were accepted during that period may be of great value to a generation which is striving to place its economic life once more upon an ethical foundation.

One error in particular we must be on our guard to avoid. We said above that both the socialists and the Christian economists are agreed in their desire to reintroduce justice into economic life. We must not conclude, however, that the aims of these two schools are identical. One very frequently meets with the statement that the teachings of socialism are nothing more or less than the teachings of Christianity. This contention is discussed in the following pages, where the conclusion will be reached that, far from being in agreement, socialism and Christian economics contradict each other on many fundamental points. It is, however, not the aim of the discussion to appraise the relative merits of either system, or to applaud one and disparage the other. All that it is sought to do is to distinguish between them; and to demonstrate that, whatever be the merits or demerits of the two philosophies, they are two, and not one.