Finally, let us take a glance at the
Herr Dühring makes a great deal of noise over his discovery that
“economic science” is “an enormously modern phenomenon” (p. 12).
In fact, Marx says in
“But if this enterprise, in its externally appreciable peculiarities and in the more novel portion of its content, is absolutely without precedent, in its inner critical approaches and its general standpoint, it is even more peculiarly mine” (p. 9).
It is a fact that, on the basis of both its external and its internal features, he might very well have announced his “enterprise” (the industrial term is not badly chosen) as:
Since political economy, as it made its appearance in history, is in fact nothing but the scientific insight into the economy in the period of capitalist production, principles and theorems relating to it, for example, in the writers of ancient Greek society, can only be found in so far as certain phenomena–commodity production, trade, money, interest-bearing capital, etc.–are common to both societies. In so far as the Greeks make occasional excursions into this sphere, they show the same genius and originality as in all other spheres. Because of this, their views form, historically, the theoretical starting-points of the modern science. Let us now listen to what the world-historic Herr Dühring has to say.
“We have, strictly speaking, really” (!) “absolutely nothing positive to report of antiquity concerning scientific economic theory, and the completely unscientific Middle Ages give still less occasion for this” (for this – for reportingnothing!). “As however the fashion of vaingloriously displaying a semblance of erudition ... has defaced the true character of modern science, notice must be taken of at least a few examples” {17}.
And Herr Dühring then produces examples of a criticism which is in truth free from even the “semblance of erudition”.
Aristotle's thesis, that
“twofold is the use of every object... The one is peculiar to the object as such, the other is not, as a sandal which may be worn, and is also exchangeable. Both are uses of the sandal, for even he who exchanges the sandal for the money or food he is in want of, makes use of the sandal as a sandal. But not in its natural way. For it has not been made for the sake of being exchanged” –
this thesis, Herr Dühring maintains, is “not only expressed in a really platitudinous and scholastic way” {18}; but those who see in it a “differentiation between use-value and exchange-value” fall besides into the “ridiculous frame of mind” {19} of forgetting that “in the most recent period” and “in the framework of the most advanced system”–which of course is Herr Dühring's own system–nothing has been left of use-value and exchange-value.
“In Plato’s work on the state, people ... claim to have found themodern doctrine of the national-economic division of labour” {20}.
This was apparently meant to refer to the passage in
“set by the given dimensions of the market to the further differentiation of professions and the technical subdivision of special operations... Only the conception of this limit constitutes the knowledge with the aid of which this idea, otherwise hardly fit to be called scientific, becomes a major economic truth” {20}.
It was in fact “Professor” Roscher {14}, of whom Herr Dühring is so contemptuous, who set up this “limit” at which the idea of the division of labour is supposed first to become “scientific”, and who therefore expressly pointed to Adam Smith as the discoverer of the law of the division of labour. In a society in which commodity production is the dominant form of production, “the market”–to adopt Herr Dühring’s style for once–was always a “limit” very well known to “business people” {18}. But more than “the knowledge and instinct of routine” is needed to realise that it was not the market that created the capitalist division of labour, but that, on the contrary, it was the dissolution of former social connections, and the division of labour resulting from this, that created the market (see
“The role of money has at all times provided the first and main stimulus to economic” (!) “ideas. But what did an Aristotle know of this role? No more, clearly than was contained in the idea that exchange through the medium of money had followed the primitive exchange by barter” {21}.
But when “an” Aristotle presumes to discover the two different
he is thereby–according to Herr Dühring–”only expressing a moral antipathy”
And when “an” Aristotle carries his audacity so far as to attempt an analysis of money in its “role” of a
Final result: Greek antiquity, as mirrored in the “notice taken” {21} by Dühring, in fact possessed “only quite ordinary ideas” (p. 25), if such
It would be better to read Herr Dühring's chapter on mercantilism
in the “original”, that is, in F. List's
List, Chapter 28: “The Italian Political Economists”, says:
“Italy was in advance of all modern nations both in the practice and in the theory of political economy”,
and then he cites, as
“the first work written in Italy, which deals especially with political economy, the book by Antonio Serra, of Naples, on the way to secure for the kingdoms an abundance of gold and silver (1613)”.
Herr Dühring confidently accepts this and is therefore able to regard Serra's
“as a kind of inscription at the entrance of the more recent prehistory of economics” {34}.
His treatment of the
Of
“a fair measure of superficiality in his way of thinking” {54} and that “he had no sense of the intrinsic and nicer distinctions between concepts” {55} ... while he possessed “a versatility which knows a great deal but skips lightly from one thing to another without taking root in any idea of a more profound character” {56}, .. his “national-economic ideas are still very crude”, and “he achievesnaivetés , whose contrasts ... a more serious thinker may well find amusing at times” {56}.
What inestimable condescension, therefore, for the “more serious thinker” Herr Dühring to deign to take any notice at all of “a Petty” {60}! And what notice does he take of him?
Petty's propositions on
“labour and even labour-time as a measure of value, of whichimperfect traces can be found in his writings” {62}
are not mentioned again apart from this sentence. Imperfect traces! In his
“This” (estimation by equal labour) “I say to bethe foundation of equalizing and balancing of values , yet in the superstructures and practices hereupon, I confess there is much variety, and intricacy.”
Petty was thus conscious equally of the importance of his discovery and of the difficulty of applying it in detail. He therefore tried to find another way in certain concrete cases.
Anatural par should therefore be found between land and labour, so that value might be expressed at will “by either of them alone as well or better by both”
Even this error has genius.
Herr Dühring makes this penetrating observation on Petty's theory of value:
“Had his own thought been more penetrating it would not be possible to find, in other passages, traces of a contrary view, to which we have previously referred” {63-64};
that is to say, to which no “previous” reference has been made except that the “traces” are “imperfect”. This is very characteristic of Herr Dühring's method–to allude to something “previously” in a meaningless phrase, in order “subsequently” to make the reader believe that he has “previously” been made acquainted with the main point, which in fact the author in question has slid over both previously and subsequently.
In Adam Smith, however, we can find not only “traces” of “contrary views” on the concept of value, not only two but even three, and strictly speaking even four sharply contrary opinions on value, running quite comfortably side by side and intermingled. But what is quite natural in a writer who is laying the foundations of political economy and is necessarily feeling his way, experimenting and struggling with a chaos of ideas which are only just taking shape, may seem strange in a writer who is surveying and summarising more than a hundred and fifty years of investigation whose results have already passed in part from books into the consciousness of the generality. And, to pass from great things to small: as we have seen, Herr Dühring himself gives us five different kinds of value to select from at will, and with them, an equal number of contrary views. Of course, “had his own thought been more penetrating”, he would not have had to expend so much effort in trying to throw his readers back from Petty's perfectly clear conception of value into the uttermost confusion.
A smoothly finished work of Petty’s which may be said to be cast in a single block, is his
Petty's foundations of
Petty’s most important ideas–which received such scant attention in Herr Dühring's “enterprise” {9}–are, in the latter's view, nothing but disconnected conceits, chance thoughts, incidental comments, to which only in our day a significance is given, by the use of excerpts torn from their context, which in themselves they have not got; which therefore also play no part in the
In connection with the former, we must draw attention to the sole find made by Herr Dühring: he has discovered a connection between Boisguillebert and Law which had hitherto been missed. Boisguillebert asserts that the precious metals could be replaced, in the normal monetary functions which they fulfil in commodity circulation, by credit money (
“turn of thought already harboured a new turn in mercantilism” {83}
in other words, already included Law. This is made as clear as daylight in the following:
“All that was necessary was to assign to the ‘simple pieces of paper’ the same role that the precious metalsshould have played, and a metamorphosis of mercantilism was thereby at once accomplished” {83}.
In the same way it is possible to accomplish at once the metamorphosis of an uncle into an aunt. It is true that Herr Dühring adds appealingly:
“Of course Boisguillebert had no such purpose in mind” {83}.
But how, in the devil’s name, could he intend to replace his own rationalist conception of the monetary function of the precious metals by the superstitious conception of the mercantilists for the sole reason that, according to him, the precious metals can be replaced in this role by paper money?
Nevertheless, Herr Dühring continues in his serio-comic style,
“nevertheless it may be conceded that here and there our author succeeded in making a really apt remark” (p. 83).
In reference to Law, Herr Dühring succeeded in making only this “really apt remark”:
“Law too was naturally never able completely toeradicate the above-named basis” (namely, “the basis of the precious metals”), “but he pushed the issue of notes to its extreme limit, that is to say, to the collapse of the system” (p. 94).
In reality, however, these paper butterflies, mere money tokens, were intended to flutter about among the public, not in order to “eradicate” the basis of the precious metals, but to entice them from the pockets of the public into the depleted treasuries of the state.
To return to Petty and the inconspicuous role in the history of economics assigned to him by Herr Dühring, let us first listen to what we are told about Petty’s immediate successors, Locke and North. Locke’s
“What he” (Locke) “wrote on interest and coin does not go beyond the range of the reflections, current under the dominion of mercantilism, in connection with the events of political life” (p. 64).
To the reader of this “report” it should now be clear as crystal why Locke's
“Many businessmen thought the same” (as Locke) “on free play for the rate of interest, and the developing situation also produced the tendency to regard restrictions on interest as ineffective. At a period when a Dudley North could write hisDiscourses upon Trade in the direction of free trade, a great deal must already have been in the air, as they say, which made the theoretical opposition to restrictions on interest rates seem something not at all extraordinary” (p. 64).
So Locke had only to cogitate the ideas of this or that contemporary “businessman”, or to breathe in a great deal of what was “in the air, as they say” to be able to theorise on free play for the rate of interest without saying anything “extraordinary”! In fact, however, as early as 1662, in his
As regards this last point, Locke and North did little more than copy him. In regard to interest, however, Locke followed Petty’s parallel between rent of money and rent of land, while North goes further and opposes interest as rent of stock to land rent, and the stocklords to the landlords. And while Locke accepts free play for the rate of interest, as demanded by Petty, only with reservations, North accepts it unconditionally.
Herr Dühring–himself still a bitter mercantilist in the “more subtle” {55} sense–surpasses himself when he dismisses Dudley North’s
Herr Dühring, by the way, informs us that
North was a “merchant” and a bad type at that, also that his work “met with no approval” {64}.
Indeed! How could anyone expect a book of this sort to have met with “approval” among the mob setting the tone at the time of the final triumph of protectionism in England? But this did not prevent it from having an immediate effect on theory, as can be seen from a whole series of economic works published in England shortly after it, some of them even before the end of the seventeenth century.
Locke and North gave us proof of how the first bold strokes which Petty dealt in almost every sphere of political economy were taken up one by one by his English successors and further developed. The traces of this process during the period 1691 to 1752 are obvious even to the most superficial observer from the very fact that all the more important economic writings of that time start from Petty, either positively or negatively. That period, which abounded in original thinkers, is therefore the most important for the investigation of the gradual genesis of political economy. The “historical depiction in the grand style” {556}, which chalks up against Marx the unpardonable sin of making so much commotion in
Hume’s economic
Like Vanderlint, Hume treated money as a mere token of value; he copied almost word for word (and this is important as he might have taken the theory of money as a token of value from many other sources) Vanderlint's argument on why the balance of trade cannot be permanently either favourable or unfavourable to a country; like Vanderlint, he teaches that the equilibrium of balances is brought about naturally, in accordance with the different economic situations in the different countries; like Vanderlint, he preaches free trade, but less boldly and consistently; like Vanderlint, though with less profundity, he emphasises wants as the motive forces of production; he follows Vanderlint in the influence on commodity prices which he erroneously attributes to bank money and government securities in general; like Vanderlint, he rejects credit money; like Vanderlint, he makes commodity prices dependent on the price of labour, that is, on wages; he even copies Vanderlint’s absurd notion that by accumulating treasures commodity prices are kept down, etc., etc.
At a much earlier point Herr Dühring made an oracular allusion to how others had misunderstood Hume's monetary theory with a particularly minatory reference to Marx, who in
As for this misunderstanding, the facts are as follows. In regard to Hume’s real theory of money (that money is a mere token of value, and therefore, other conditions being equal, commodity prices rise in proportion to the increase in the volume of money in circulation, and fall in proportion to its decrease), Herr Dühring, with the best intentions in the world – though in his own luminous way–can only repeat the errors made by his predecessors. Hume, however, after propounding the theory cited above, himself raises the objection (as Montesquieu, starting from the same premises, had done previously) that
nevertheless “’tis certain” that since the discovery of the mines in America, “industry has encreased in all the nations of Europe, except in the possessors of those mines”, and that this “may justly be ascribed, amongst other reasons, to the encrease of gold and silver”.
His explanation of this phenomenon is that
“though the high price of commodities be a necessary consequence of the encrease of gold and silver, yet it follows not immediately upon that encrease; but some time is required before the money circulate through the whole state, and make its effects be felt on all ranks of people”. In this interval it has a beneficial effect on industry and trade.
At the end of this analysis Hume also tells us why this is so, although in a less comprehensive way than many of his predecessors and contemporaries:
“‘Tis easy to trace the money in its progress through the whole commonwealth; where we shall find, that it must first quicken the diligence of every individual, beforeit encreases the price of labour .”
In other words, Hume is here describing the effect of a revolution in the value of the precious metals, namely, a depreciation, or, which is the same thing, a revolution in the
Hume's arguments, expressly directed against Locke that the rate of interest is not regulated by the amount of available money but by the rate of profit, and his other explanations of the causes which determine rises or falls in the rate of interest, are all to be found, much more exactly though less cleverly stated, in An
“In general,” Herr Dühring sermonises us, “the attitude of most of Hume’s commentators has been very prejudiced, and ideas have been attributed to him which he never entertained in the least” {131}.
And Herr Dühring himself gives us more than one striking example of this “attitude”.
For example, Hume’s essay on interest begins with the following words:
“Nothing is esteemed a more certain sign of the flourishing condition of any nation than the lowness of interest: And with reason; though I believe the cause is somewhat different from what is commonly apprehended.”
In the very first sentence, therefore, Hume cites the view that the lowness of interest is the surest indication of the flourishing condition of a nation as a commonplace which had already become trivial in his day. And in fact this “idea” had already had fully a hundred years, since Child, to become generally current. But we are told:
“Among” (Hume’s) “views on the rate of interestwe must particularly draw attention to the idea that it is the true barometer of conditions” (conditions of what?) “and that its lowness is an almost infallible sign of the prosperity of a nation” (p. 130).
Who is the “prejudiced” and captivated “commentator” who says this? None other than Herr Dühring.
What arouses the naive astonishment of our critical historian is the fact that Hume, in connection with some felicitous idea or other, “does not even claim to have originated it” {131}. This would certainly not have happened to Herr Dühring.
We have seen how Hume confuses every increase of the precious metals with such an increase as is accompanied by a depreciation, a revolution in their own value, hence, in the measure of value of commodities. This confusion was inevitable with Hume because he had not the slightest understanding of the function of the precious metals as the
In this he is much inferior not only to Petty but to many of his English contemporaries. He shows the same “backwardness” in still proclaiming the old-fashioned notion that the
“They” (taxes on consumption) “must be very heavy taxes, indeed, and very injudiciously levied, which the artisan will not, of himself, be enabled to pay, by superior industry and frugality,without raising the price of his labour.”
It is almost as if Robert Walpole himself were speaking, especially if we also take into consideration the passage in the essay on “public credit” in which, referring to the difficulty of taxing the state’s creditors, the following is said:
“The diminution of their revenue would not bedisguised under the appearance of a branch of excise or customs.”
As might have been expected of a Scotchman, Hume’s admiration of bourgeois acquisitiveness was by no means purely platonic. Starting as a poor man, he worked himself up to a very substantial annual income of many thousands of pounds; which Herr Dühring (as he is here not dealing with Petty) tactfully expresses in this way:
“Possessed of very small means to start with he succeeded, by gooddomestic economy , in reaching the position of not having to write to please anyone” {134}.
Herr Dühring further says:
“He had never made the slightest concession to the influence of parties, princes or universities” {134}.
There is no evidence that Hume ever entered into a literary partnership with a “Wagener”,
but it is well known that he was an indefatigable partisan of the Whig oligarchy, which thought highly of
“In politics Hume was and always remained conservative and strongly monarchist in his views. For this reason he was never so bitterly denounced for heresy as Gibbon by the supporters of the established church,”
says old Schlosser.
“This selfish Hume, this lying historian” reproaches the English monks with being fat, having neither wife nor family and living by begging; “but he himself never had a family or a wife, and was a great, fat fellow, fed, in considerable part, out of public money, without having merited it by any real public services”–this is what the “rude” plebeian Cobbett says.
Hume was “in essential respects greatly superior to a Kant in the
But why is Hume given such an exaggerated position in
“the creation of this whole branch of science” (economics) “is the achievement of a more enlightened philosophy” {123};
and similarly Hume as predecessor is the best guarantee that this whole branch of science will find its close, for the immediately foreseeable future, in that phenomenal man who has transformed the merely “more enlightened” philosophy into the absolutely luminous philosophy of reality, and with whom, just as was the case with Hume,
“the cultivation of philosophy in the narrow sense of the word is combined – something unprecedented on German soil–with scientific endeavours on behalf of the national economy” {D. Ph. 531}
Accordingly we find Hume, in any case respectable as an economist, inflated into an economic star of the first magnitude, whose importance has hitherto been denied only by the same envious people who have hitherto also so obstinately hushed up Herr Dühring's achievements, “authoritative for the epoch” {D. K. G. 1}.
* * *
The
What this “economic image of the relations of production and distributionmeans in Quesnay himself,” he says, can only be stated if one has”first carefully examined the leading ideas which are peculiar to him”. All the more because these have hitherto been set forth only with “wavering indefiniteness”, and their “essential features cannot be recognised” {105} even in Adam Smith.
Herr Dühring will now once and for all put an end to this traditional “superficial reporting”. He then proceeds to pull the reader’s leg through five whole pages, five pages in which all kinds of pretentious phrases, constant repetitions and calculated confusion are designed to conceal the awkward fact that Herr Dühring has hardly as much to tell us in regard to Quesnay's “leading ideas” {105}, as the “most current textbook compilations” {109} against which he warns us so untiringly. It is “one of the most dubious sides” {111} of this introduction that here too the
In his “effort” Herr Dühring says:
“It seemed to him” (Quesnay) “self-evident that the proceeds” (Herr Dühring had just spoken of the net product) “must be thought of and treated as amoney value {105-06} ... He connected his deliberations” (!) “immediately with themoney values which he assumed as the results of the sales of all agricultural products when they first change hands. In this way” (!) “he operates in the columns of hisTableau with several milliards” {106} (that is, with money values).
We have therefore learnt three times over that, in his
“Had Quesnay considered things from a really natural standpoint, and had he rid himself not only of regard for the precious metals and the amount of money, but also of regard for
So for the fourth and fifth time: there are only money values in the
“He” (Quesnay) “obtained it” (the net product) “by deducting the expenses andthinking,” (!) ”principally” (not traditional but for that matter all the more superficial reporting) “of that value which would accrue to the landlord as rent” {106}.
We have still not advanced a step; but now it is coming:
“On the other hand,however, now also” –this “however, now also” is a gem!–”the net product, as a natural object, enters into circulation, and in this way becomes an element which ... should serve ... to maintain the class which is described as sterile. In this the confusion canat once ” (!)”be seen–the confusion arising from the fact that in one case it is the money value, and in the other the thing itself, which determines the course of thought” {106}.
In general, it seems,
“Quesnay is anxious to avoid a double booking of the national-economic proceeds” {106}.
With Herr Dühring's permission: In Quesnay's
After all this “effort”, we at last get the “result”. Listen and marvel at these words:
“Nevertheless, the inconsequence” (referring to the role assigned by Quesnay to the landlords) ”at once becomes clear when we enquire what becomes of the net product, which has been appropriated as rent, in the course of the national-economic circulation. In regard to this the physiocrats and theeconomic Tableau could offer nothing but confused and arbitrary conceptions, ascending to mysticism” {110}.
All’s well that ends well. So Herr Dühring does not know “what becomes of the net product, which has been appropriated as rent, in the course of the national-economic circulation” (represented in the
Once he has shaken off this painful secret, this Horatian “black care” which sat hunched on his back during his ride through the land of the physiocrats, our “serious and subtle thinker” blows another merry blast on his trumpet, as follows:
“The lines which Quesnay draws here and there” (in all there are just five of them!) “in his otherwise fairly simple” (!) “Tableau , and which are meant to represent the circulation of the net product”, make one wonder whether “these whimsical combinations of columns” may not be suffused with fantastic mathematics; they are reminiscent of Quesnay’s attempts to square the circle” {110}–and so forth.
As Herr Dühring, by his own admission, was unable to understand these lines in spite of their simplicity, he had to follow his favourite procedure of
“We have considered the net product in this itsmost dubious aspect” {111}, etc.
So the confession he was constrained to make that he does not understand the first word about the
But in order that our readers may not be left in the same cruel ignorance about Quesnay’s
As is known, the physiocrats divide society into three classes: (1) The productive, i.e., the class which is actually engaged in agriculture – tenant-farmers and agricultural labourers; they are called productive, because their labour yields a surplus: rent. (2) The class which appropriates this surplus, including the landowners and their retainers, the prince and in general all officials paid by the state, and finally also the Church in its special character as appropriator of tithes. For the sake of brevity, in what follows we call the first class simply “farmers”, and the second class “landlords”. (3) The industrial or sterile class; sterile because, in the view of the physiocrats, it adds to the raw materials delivered to it by the productive class only as much value as it consumes in means of subsistence supplied to it by that same class. Quesnay's
The first premise of the
Further premises: (1) that for the sake of simplicity constant prices and simple reproduction prevail; (2) that all circulation which takes place solely within one class is excluded, and that only circulation between class and class is taken into account; (3) that all purchases and sales taking place between class and class in the course of the industrial year are combined in a single total sum. Lastly, it must be borne in mind that in Quesnay’s time in France, as was more or less the case throughout Europe, the home industry of the peasant families satisfied by far the greater portion of their needs other than food, and is therefore taken for granted here as supplementary to agriculture.
The starting-point of the
The whole gross product, of a value of five milliards, is therefore in the hands of the productive class, that is, in the first place the farmers, who have produced it by advancing an annual working capital of two milliards, which corresponds to an invested capital of ten milliards. The agricultural products–foodstuffs, raw materials, etc.–which are required for the replacement of the working capital, including therefore the maintenance of all persons directly engaged in agriculture, are taken in
After the replacement of the working capital out of the gross product there remains a surplus of three milliards, of which two are in means of subsistence and one in raw materials. The rent which the farmers have to pay to the landlords is however only two-thirds of this sum, equal to two milliards. It will soon be seen why it is only these two milliards which figure under the heading of “net product” or “net income” {106}.
But in addition to the “total reproduction” of agriculture amounting in value to five milliards, of which three milliards enter into general circulation, there is also in the hands of the farmers,
As the total harvest is the starting-point of the
The class of landlords drawing rent first appears, as is the case sometimes even today, in the role of receivers of payments. On Quesnay's assumption the landlords proper receive only foursevenths of the two milliards of rent: two-sevenths go to the government, and one-seventh to the receivers of tithes. In Quesnay's day the Church was the biggest landlord in France and in addition received the tithes on all other landed property.
The working capital (
So now we know the economic position of the three different classes at the beginning of the movement set out in the
The productive class, after its working capital has been replaced in kind, still has three milliards of the gross product of agriculture and two milliards in money. The landlord class appears only with its rent claim of two milliards on the productive class. The sterile class has two milliards in manufactured goods. Circulation passing between only two of these three classes is called imperfect by the physiocrats; circulation which takes place between all three classes is called perfect.
Now for the economic
In his
“what becomes of the net product, which has been appropriated as rent, in the course of the economic circulation?” {110.}
We saw above that at the starting-point of the process there was a surplus of three milliards in the hands of the productive class. Of these, only two were paid as net product in the form of rent to the landlords. The third milliard of the surplus constitutes the interest on the total invested capital of the farmers, that is, ten per cent on ten milliards. They do not receive this interest–this should be carefully noted–from circulation; it exists
If it were not for this interest, the farmer–the chief agent in agriculture–would not advance the capital for investment in it. Already from this standpoint, according to the physiocrats, the appropriation by the farmer of that portion of the agricultural
The whole process is certainly “fairly simple” {110}. There enter into circulation: from the farmers, two milliards in money for the payment of rent, and three milliards in products, of which two-thirds are means of subsistence and one-third raw materials; from the sterile class, two milliards in manufactured goods. Of the means of subsistence amounting to two milliards, one half is consumed by the landlords and their retainers, the other half by the sterile class in payment for its labour. The raw materials to the value of one milliard replace the working capital of this latter class. Of the manufactured goods in circulation, amounting to two milliards, one half goes to the landlords and the other to the farmers, for whom it is only a converted form of the interest, which accrues at first hand from agricultural reproduction, on their invested capital. The money thrown into circulation by the farmer in payment of rent flows back to him, however, through the sale of his products, and thus the same process can take place again in the next economic year.
And now we must admire Herr Dühring's “really critical” {D. Ph. 404} exposition, which is so infinitely superior to the “traditional superficial reporting” {D. K. G. 105}. After mysteriously pointing out to us five times in succession how hazardous it was for Quesnay to operate in the
“what becomes of the net product, which has been appropriated as rent, in the course of the national-economic circulation?”–the economicTableau ”could offer nothing but confused and arbitrary conceptions, ascending to mysticism” {110}.
We have seen that the
Herr Dühring is just as familiar with the historical influence of the physiocrats as with their theories.
“With Turgot,” he teaches us, “physiocracy in France came to an end both in practice and in theory” {120}.
That Mirabeau, however, was essentially a physiocrat in his economic views; that he was the leading economic authority in the Constituent Assembly of 1789; that this Assembly in its economic reforms translated from theory into practice a substantial portion of the physiocrats' principles, and in particular laid a heavy tax also on land rent, the net product appropriated by the landowners “without consideration”–all this does not exist for “a” Dühring. –
Just as the long stroke drawn through the years 1691 to 1752 removed all of Hume’s predecessors, so another stroke obliterated Sir James Steuart, who came between Hume and Adam Smith. There is not a syllable in Herr Dühring's “enterprise” {9} on Steuart’s great work, which, apart from its historical importance, permanently enriched the domain of political economy. But, instead, Herr Dühring applies to him the most abusive epithet in his vocabulary, and says that he was
In a word: according to the
“Ricardo’s system is one of discords ... its whole tends to the production of hostility among classes ... his book is the true manual of the demagogue, who seeks power by means of agrarianism, war, and plunder”;
People who want to study the history of political economy in the present and immediately foreseeable future will certainly be on much safer ground if they make themselves acquainted with the “watery products”, “commonplaces” and “beggars’ soup” {14} of the “most current text-book compilations” {109}, rather than rely on Herr Dühring’s “historical depiction in the grand style” {556}.
* * *
What, then, is the final result of our analysis of Dühring’s “very own system” of political economy? Nothing, except the fact that with all the great words and the still more mighty promises we are just as much duped as we were in the