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+ I 02-L3803 9/1/06 7:26AM Page 21 CHAPTER 2 The Ordinary Man's Social Philosophy 1 Capitalism as It Is and as It Is Seen by the Common Man The emergence ofeconomics as a new branch ofknowledge was one of the most portentous events in the history ofmankind. In paving the way for private capitalistic enterprise ittransformecl within a few generations all human affairs more radically than the preceding ten thousand years had clone. From the clay of their birth to the clay of their demise, the denizens ofa capitalistic country are every minute benefited by the marvelous achievements ofthe capitalistic ways ofthinking and acting. The most amazing thing concerning the unprecedented change in earthly conditions brought about by capitalism is the fact that it was accomplished by a small number of authors and a hardly greater number ofstatesmen who had assimilated their teachings. Not only the sluggish masses but also most ofthe businessmen who, by their trading, made the laissez-faire principles effective failed to comprehend the essential features of their operation. Even in the heyday of liberalism only a few people had a full grasp ofthe functioning ofthe market economy. Western civilization adopted capitalism upon recommendation on the part ofa small elite. There were, in the first decades of the nineteenth century, many people who viewed their own unfamiliarity with the problems concerned as a serious shortcoming and were anxious to redress it. In the years between Waterloo and Sebastopol, no other books were more eagerly absorbed in Great Britain than treatises on economics. But the vogue soon subsided. The subject was unpalatable to the general reader. Economics is so different from the natural sciences and technology on the one hand, and history and jurisprudence on the other hand, that it seems strange and repulsive to the beginner. Its heuristic singularity is viewed with suspicion by those whose research work is performed in + + I 02-L3803 9/1/06 7:26AM Page 22 22 ~ THE ORDINARY MAN'S SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY laboratories or in archives and libraries. Its epistemological singularity appears nonsensical to the narrow-minded fanatics of positivism. People would like to find in an economics book knowledge that perfectly fits into their preconceived image ofwhat economics ought to be, viz., a discipline shaped according to the logical structure of physics or ofbiology. They are bewildered and desist from seriously grappling with problems the analysis of which requires an unwonted mental exertion. The result of this ignorance is that people ascribe all improvements in economic conditions to the progress ofthe natural sciences and technology . As they see it, there prevails in the course of human history a self-acting tendency toward progressing advancement of the experimental natural sciences and their application to the solution oftechnological problems. This tendency is irresistible, it is inherent in the destiny ofmankind, and its operation takes effect whatever the political and economic organization of society may be. As they see it, the unprecedented technological improvements ofthe last two hundred years were not caused or furthered by the economic policies ofthe age. They were not an achievement of classical liberalism, free trade, laissez faire and capitalism. They will therefore go on under any other system ofsociety's economic organization. The doctrines of Marx received approval simply because they adopted this popular interpretation of events and clothed it with a pseudophilosophical veil that made it gratifying both to Hegelian spiritualism and to crude materialism. In the scheme of Marx the "material productive forces" are a superhuman entity independent ofthe will and the actions of men. They go their own way that is prescribed by the inscrutable and inevitable laws of a higher power. They change mysteriously and force mankind to adjust its social organization to these changes; for the material productive forces shun one thing: to be enchained by mankind's social organization. The essential content of history is the struggle ofthe material productive forces to be freed from the social bonds by which they are fettered. Once upon a time, teaches Marx, the material productive forces were embodied in the shape of the hand mill, and then they arranged human affairs according to the pattern of feudalism. When, later, the unfathomable laws that determine the evolution of the material productive forces substituted the steam mill for the hand mill, feudalism had to give way to capitalism. Since then the material productive forces have developed further, and their present shape imperatively requires + [3.144.102.239] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 10...

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