Historical materialism and the economics of Karl Marx Part 9

You have now rejected the first two, because you think that mechanical and hedonistic considerations belong to metaphysics and psychology.

But I acknowledge that I am dissatisfied with your method of arriving at this praiseworthy rejection.

You no longer say, indeed, as in your previous essay: 'L'economie pure n'est pas seulement semblable a la mechanique: c'est, a proprement parler, un genre de mechanique.' But you still say that 'Pure economics employs the same methods as rational mechanics, and has many points of contact with this science.' Although you do not pause over the mechanical considerations, it is not from a clear conviction that a datum in economics, as such, is quite different from a datum in mechanics; but merely because it seems to you _convenient_ to omit such considerations, of which you do not deny, but rather admit, the possibility.

Now I on the contrary, say decisively that the data of economics is not that of mechanics, or that there is no transition from the mechanical aspect of a fact to the economic aspect; and that the very possibility of the mechanical point of view is excluded, not as a thing which may or may not be abstracted from, but as a contradiction in terms, which it is needful to shun.

Do you wish for the simplest and clearest proof of the non-mechanical nature of the economic principle? Note, then, that in the data of economics a quality appears which is on the contrary repugnant to that of mechanics. _To an economic fact words can be applied which express approval or disapproval._ Man behaves economically _well_ or _ill_, with _gain_ or _loss_, _suitably_ or _unsuitably_: he behaves, in short, _economically_ or _uneconomically_. A fact in economics is, therefore, capable of _apprais.e.m.e.nt_ (positive or negative); whilst a fact in mechanics is a mere fact, to which praise or blame can only be attached metaphorically.

It seems to me that on this point we ought easily to be agreed. To ascertain it, it is sufficient to appeal to internal observation. This shows us the fundamental distinction between the mechanical and the teleological, between mere fact and value. If I am not mistaken, you a.s.sign to metaphysics the problem of reducing the teleological to the mechanical, value to mere fact. But observe that metaphysics cannot get rid of the distinction; and will only labour, with greater or less good luck, at its old business of _reconciling_ opposites, or of _deriving two contraries from one unity_.

I foresee what may be advanced against this a.s.sertion of the non-mechanical nature of the economic principle. It may be said: What is not mechanical, is not measurable; and economic values, on the contrary, _are measured_. Although hitherto the unit of measurement has not been found, it is yet a fact that we distinguish very readily _larger_ and _smaller_, _greater_ and least _values_ and construct scales of values. This suffices to establish the _measurability_ and hence the essentially mechanical nature of economic value. Look at the _economic man_, who has before him a series of possible actions _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_, _e_, _f_, ...; which have for him a decreasing value, indicated by the numbers 10, 9, 8, 7, 6 ... just because he _measures_ value, he decides on the action a=10, and not on c=8 or f=6.

And there is no fault in the deduction granted the existence of the _scale of values_, which we have just ill.u.s.trated by an example.

_Granted the existence_: but, supposing this to be an _illusion_ of ours? If the man in the example, instead of being the _h.o.m.o oeconomicus_ were the _h.o.m.o utopicus_ or _heterocosmicus_, not to be found even in imaginative constructions?

This is precisely my opinion. The supposed _scale of values_ is an absurdity. When the _h.o.m.o oeconomicus_ in the given example, selects _a_, all the other actions (_b_, _c_, _d_, _e_, _f_, ...) are not for him _values smaller than a_; they are merely _non-a_; they are what he rejects; they are _non-values_.

If then the _h.o.m.o oeconomicus_ could not have _a_, he would be acting _under different conditions_: under conditions without _a_. Change the conditions and the economic action--as is well known--changes also.

And let us suppose that the conditions are such that, for the individual acting, _b_ represents the action selected by him; and _c_, _d_, _e_, _f_, ... those which he omits to do, and which are all _non-b_, _i.e._ have no value.

If the conditions change again and it is supposed that the individual decides on _c_, and then on _d_, and then on _e_, and so on. These different economic actions, each _arising under particular conditions_, are _incommensurable_ amongst themselves. They are _different_; but each is perfectly adapted to the given conditions, and can only be judged _in reference to these conditions_.

But then what are these numbers, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6 ...? They are _symbols_, symbols of what? What is the _reality_ beneath the numerical symbol? The reality is the _alteration in the actual conditions_; and these numbers show a succession of changes: neither more nor less than is indicated by the alphabetic series, for which they are subst.i.tuted.

The absurdity involved in the notion of greater or smaller values is, in short, the a.s.sumption that an individual may be _at the same moment_ under different conditions. The _h.o.m.o oeconomicus_ is not at the same moment in _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_, _e_, _f_ ... but when he is in _b_, he is no longer in _a_; when he is in _c_ he is no longer in _b_.

He has before him only one action, approved by him; this action rules out all the others which are infinite, and which for him are only _actions not preferred_ (non-values).

Certainly physical objects form part of the data of economics; and these, just because they are _physical_, are _measurable_. But economics does not consider physical things and objects, but _actions_. The physical object is merely the brute matter of an economic act: in measuring it we remain in the physical world, we do not pa.s.s over to that of economics, or else, when measured, the economic fact has become volatile. You say that 'political economy only concerns itself with choices, which fall on things that are variable in quant.i.ty and capable of measurement'; but pardon me, dear friend, you would be much perplexed if you had to justify this wholly arbitrary limitation; and if you had to show that the attribute measurabilility influences in any way the attribute of belonging to economics.

I think that I have explained, shortly, but adequately for a wise man like yourself, the reasons why the mechanical conception of the economic principle is untenable. If calculations and measurements come into problems that are called economic they do so just in so far as these are not problems in _pure_ economics.

This non-mechanical datum, which is an economic datum, you call _choice_. And this is all right. But _to choose_ means to _choose consciously_. A choice made unconsciously, is either not a choice or not unconscious. You speak of the _unconscious actions_ of man; but these cannot be the _actions_ of the man _in so far as he is man_ but movements of man _in so far as he is also animal_. They are _instinctive_ movements; and instinct is not choice _except metaphorically_. Hence the examples you bring forward of dogs, of cats, of sparrows, of rats, and of a.s.ses from _Buridano_, are not facts of _choice_; and hence are not economic facts. You consider animal economics as an unfruitful science, which exhausts itself in descriptions. Look more closely and you will see that this science does not exist. An economics of the animals, understood in the sense of the naturalists, has not been written, not because it is not worth while, but because _it is impossible to write it_. Whence could it be obtained unless from books such as the _Roman de Renart_ and the _Animali parlanti_?

This a.n.a.lysis ought to lead us to conceive of an economic datum as an act of man; _i.e._ as a _fact of human activity_.

And from this recognition is inferred in its turn the true criticism of the _hedonistic_ conception of the economic principle. You say that 'the equations of pure economics express merely the fact of a choice, and can be drawn up independently of the ideas of pleasure and pain,'

but you admit at the same time that the fact of the _choice_ 'can be expressed equally well as a fact of _pleasure_.'

It is true that every case of economic choice is at the same time, a case of _feeling_: of agreeable feeling if the economic choice is rightly made, of disagreeable feeling, if it is ill made. Man's activity develops itself in the human mind, not under a pneumatic bell, and an activity which develops rightly, brings as its reflex, a feeling of pleasure, that which develops badly, one of displeasure.

What is economically useful, is, at the same time _pleasurable_.

But this judgment cannot be converted. The pleasurable is not always economically useful. The mistake in the hedonist theory consists in making this conversion. Pleasure may appear unaccompanied by man's activity, or may be accompanied by a human activity which is not economic. Herein lies the fundamental distinction between _pleasure_ and _choice_. A choice, is in the concrete, inseparable from the feeling of pleasure and displeasure; but this feeling is separable from _choice_, and may in fact exist independently of it.

If psychology be understood (as it is usually understood) as the science of psychical mechanism, economics is not a psychological science; this Herr von Ehrenfels fails to grasp. I do not know whether you have read the two volumes. .h.i.therto published on the _System der Werttheorie_.[96] After devoting some hundred pages to psychological disquisitions--which I do not mean to discuss here--he wishes, finally, to prove that his definitions of value remain sound, from whatever theory of psychology you start. He does this as he a.s.serts (-- 87), not because he is doubtful of himself, but to safeguard his economic conclusions, which are so important for the practical problems of life, from unjustified attacks based on the standpoints of schools of psychology other than his own, the method of the barrister, who composes an apparent conclusion, and makes several demands that are connected therewith _subordinately_. It is true that there is no need for economists to spend their time on details of theoretical psychology; so true that Professor Ehrenfels might spare us his: but is it not true that economics remains the same _whatever psychological theory is accepted_. The unity of science means that a modification at one point is never without some reaction on the others; and the reaction is greatest when it is a question of the way of conceiving two facts, distinct but inseparable, like the economic and the psychical fact.

An economic datum is not then a hedonistic datum, nor, in general, a mechanical datum. But as the fact of man's _activity_, it still remains to determine whether it is a fact of _knowledge_ or of _will_: whether it is theoretical or practical.

You, who conceive it as choice, can have no doubt that it is a fact of practical activity, _i.e._ of _will_. This is also my own conclusion.

_To choose_ something can only mean _to will it_.

But you somewhat obscure the conclusion now indicated when you speak of _logical_ and _illogical_ actions, and place actions properly economic amongst the former. Logical and illogical bring us back to theoretical activity. A _logical_ or _illogical_ action is a common way of speaking; but it is not a way of speaking exactly or accurately. The logical work of thought is quite distinct from the action of the will. To reason is not to will.

Nor is to will to reason; but the will _presupposes_ thought and hence logic. He who does not think, cannot even will. I mean by willing, what is known to us by the evidence of our consciousness; not Schopenhauer's metaphysical _will_.

In _knowledge_, in so far as it is a necessary presupposition of economic action, is found, if not a justification, an explanation of your phrases about _logical and illogical actions_. Economic actions are always (we say so, at any rate) _logical_ actions, _i.e._ preceded by logical acts. But it is necessary to distinguish carefully the two stages: the phenomenon and its presupposition, since _from lack of distinction between the two stages has arisen the erroneous conception of the economic principle as a technological fact_. I have criticised at length in other essays this confusion between _technical_ and _economic_, and I may be allowed to refer both to what I have written in my review of Stammler's book _Wirthschaft und Recht_, and to the more exact a.n.a.lyses in my recent memorandum on the _Estetica_.

Stammler maintains precisely that the economic principle can be nothing but a technical concept. I would advise anyone who wishes to see at a glance, the difference between the technical and the economic to consider carefully in what a _technical error_ and in what an _economic error_ respectively consist. A technical error is ignorance of the laws of the material on which we wish to work: for instance the belief that it is possible to put very heavy beams of iron on a delicate wall, without the latter falling into ruins. An _economic_ error is the not aiming directly at one's own object; to wish this and that, _i.e._ not really to wish either this or that. A technical error is an error of knowledge: an economic error is an error of will. He who makes a technical mistake will be called, if the mistake is a stupid one, an ignoramus; he who makes an economic mistake, is a man who does not know how to behave in life: a weak and inconclusive person. And, as is well known and proverbial, people can be _learned_ without being _men_ (_practical_ or _complete_).

Thus an economic fact is a fact of _practical activity_. Have we attained our object in this definition? Not yet. The definition is still incomplete and to complete it we must not only cross another expanse of sea, but avoid another rock: viz. that of the conception of economic data as _egoistic_ data.

This error arises as follows: if an economic fact is a practical activity, it is still necessary to say how this activity is distinguished from moral activity. But moral activity is defined as _altruistic_; then, it is inferred, economic data will be _egoistic_.

Into this mistake has fallen, amongst others, our able Professor Pantaleoni, in his _Principi d'economia pura_, and in other writings.

The _egoistic_ is not something merely _different_ from a moral fact; it is the _ant.i.thesis_ of it; it is the _immoral_. In this way, by making the economic principle equivalent to an egoistic fact, instead of distinguishing economics from morality, we should be subordinating the former to the latter, or rather should deny it any right to exist, recognising it as something merely negative, as a deviation from moral activity.

A datum in economics is quite different. It does not form an ant.i.thesis to a moral datum; but is in the peaceable relation of condition to conditioned. It is the general condition which makes the rise of ethical activity possible. In the concrete, every action (volition) of man is either moral or immoral, since no actions are _morally indifferent_. But both the moral and the immoral are economic actions; which means that the economic action, taken by itself, is neither moral nor immoral. Strength of character, for example, is needed both by the honest man and by the cheat.

It seems to me that you approach gropingly to this conception of the economic principle, as relating to practical actions, which taken in the abstract, are neither moral nor immoral; when at one point in your last essay, you exclude from economic consideration _choices_, which have an _altruistic motive_; and further on, exclude also those which are _immoral_. Now, since choices are necessarily either altruistic or egoistic, either moral or immoral, you have no way of escaping from the difficulty except the one which I suggest; to regard economics as concerned with practical activity in so far as it is (abstractly) _emptied_ of all _content, moral or immoral_.

I might enlarge further on this distinction and show how it has an a.n.a.logy in the sphere of theoretical activity, where the relation of economics to ethics is repeated in the relation of aesthetics to logic.

And I might point out the reason why scientific and aesthetic productions cannot be subjects of economic science, _i.e._ are not economic products. The reason given, in this connection, by Professor Ehrenfels, is, to say the least of it, curious: he remarks that: 'the relations of value upon which the data of logic and aesthetics rest, are so simple that they do not demand a special economic theory.' It should not be difficult to see that logical and aesthetic values are theoretical and not practical values, whereas economic value is a practical value, and that it is impossible to unite an _economics_ of the _theoretical_ as such. When, some years ago, the lamented Mazzola sent me the introduction in which he had discussed _Economics_ and _Art_, I had occasion to write to him and afterwards to say to him by word of mouth, that much more fundamental relations might be discovered between the two groups of phenomena; and he urged me to expound my observations and inquiries. This I have done in the essay on _Estetica_, referred to above. I am sorry to be obliged to _refer_ so many times in writing to you and to the public. But here the need for brevity and clearness constrains me.

This, then, is a rapid statement of how I arrive at the definition of the data of economics, which I should like to see at the beginning of every economic treatise. _The data of economics are the practical activities of men in so far as they are considered as such, independent of any moral or immoral determination._

Granted this definition, and it will be seen also that the concept of _utility_, or of _value_ or of _ofelimity_, is nothing but the economic action itself, _in so far as it is rightly managed_, _i.e._ in so far as it is really economic. In the same way as _the true_ is _thinking_ activity itself, and _the good_ is _moral_ activity itself.

And to speak of things (physical objects) as having or not having value, will appear simply a metaphorical usage to express those _causes which we think efficacious to produce the effects_ which we _desire_, and which are therefore our _ends_. _A_ is worth _b_, the value of _a_ is _b_, does not mean (the economists of the new school knew it well) _a=b_; nor even as is said _a>b_; but that _a_ has _value_ for us, and _b_ has not. And value--as you know--exists only at _the moment of exchange_, _i.e._ of _choice_.

To connect with these general propositions the different problems which are said to belong to economic science, is the task of the writer of a special treatise on economics. It is your task, esteemed friend, if after having studied these general propositions, they seem to you acceptable. To me it seems that they alone are able to safeguard the independence of economics, not only as distinct from _History_ and _Practice_ but as distinct from _Mechanics_, _Psychology_, _Theory of Knowledge_, and _Ethics_.

Naples, 15th May 1900.[97]

II

_Disagreement (1) about method (2) postulates: (1) Nothing arbitrary in economic method, a.n.a.logy of cla.s.sificatory sciences erroneous: (2) Metaphysical postulate that facts of human activity same as physical facts erroneous: Definition of practical activity in so far as admits of definition: Moral and economic activity and approval: Economic and moral remorse: Economic scale of values._

_Esteemed Friend_,

Our disagreement concerning the nature of economic data has two chief sources: disagreement on a question of _method_ and disagreement on a question of _postulates_. I acknowledge that one object of my first letter was to obtain from you such explanations as might set clearly in relief our disagreement on the two points indicated.--To reduce controversies to their simplest terms, to expose ultimate oppositions, is, you will agree, an approach to truth. I will explain briefly the two points at issue. In regard to that of method, although I agree with you in upholding the claims of a procedure that is logical, abstract and scientific, as compared with one that is historical (or synthetic, as you say), I cannot in addition allow that the former procedure involves something of the nature of an arbitrary choice, or that it can be worked out equally well in either of two ways. You talk of _cutting away_ a _slice_ from a concrete phenomenon, and examining this by itself; but I inquire how you manage to cut away that slice?

for it is no question here of a piece of bread or of cheese into which we can actually put the knife, but of a series of representations which we have in our consciousness, and into which we can insert nothing except the light of our mental a.n.a.lysis. In order to cut off your slice you would thus have to carry out a logical a.n.a.lysis; _i.e._ to do at the outset what you propose to do subsequently. Your _cutting off of the slice_ is indeed an answer to the problem of the _quid_ in which an economic fact consists. You a.s.sume the existence of a test to distinguish what you take for the subject of your exposition from what you leave aside. But the test or guiding concept must be supplied by the very nature of the theory, and must be in conformity with it.

Would it for instance be in conformity with the nature of the thing, to cut away, as you wish to do, only that group of economic facts which relates to objects capable of measurement? What intrinsic connection is there between this merely accidental attribute, measurability, of the objects which enter into an economic action, and the economic action itself? Does measurability lead to a modification in the economic fact by changing its nature, _i.e._ by giving rise to _another_ fact? If so, you must prove it. I, for my part, cannot see that an economic action changes its nature whether it relates to a sack of potatoes, or consists in an exchange of protestations of affection!

In your reply you refer to the need of avoiding waste of time over matters that are too simple, for which 'it is not worth while to set in motion the great machine of mathematical reasoning.' But this need relates to the pedagogy of the professional chair or of the book, not to the science in itself, which alone we are now discussing. It is quite evident that anybody who speaks or writes lays more stress on those portions which he thinks harder for his hearers and readers to grasp, or more useful to be told. But he who thinks, _i.e._ speaks with himself, pays attention to all portions without preferences and without omissions. We are now concerned with thought, that is with the _growth_ of science; not with the manner of _communicating_ it. And in thought, we cannot admit arbitrary judgments.

Nor need we be turned aside by an a.n.a.logy with the _cla.s.ses_ of facts, made by zoology and other natural sciences. The cla.s.sifications of zoology and botany are not scientific operations, but merely views in perspective; and, considered in relation to really scientific knowledge, they are arbitrary. He who investigates the nature of economic data, does not, however, aim at putting together, in perspective and roughly, groups of economic cases, as the zoologist or the botanist do, mutilating and manipulating the inexhaustible, infinite varieties of living creatures.

Upon the confusion between _a science_ and the _exposition of a science_ is based also the belief that we can follow different paths in order to arrive at a demonstration of the same truth. Unless in your case, since you are a mathematician, it arose from a false a.n.a.logy with calculation. Now, calculation is not a science, because it does not give us the reasons of things; and hence _mathematical_ logic is logic in a manner of speaking, a variety of formal logic, and has nothing to do with _scientific_ or inventive logic.