[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

ductive and historical methods as necessarily antagonistic, and rejects
the former on the ground that its professed solutions of economic prob-
144/John Neville Keynes
lems are illusory and false. It yields, he says.  no explanation of the
laws determining either the nature, the amount, or the distribution of
wealth ; the philosophical method of political economy must, on the
other hand,  be historical, and must trace the connexion between the
economical and the other phases of national history. 196 From a similar
point of view, Dr Ingram blames Jevons for seeking to  preserve the a
priori mode of proceeding alongside of, and concurrently with, the his-
torical. He adds that  the two methods will doubtless for a time coex-
ist, but the historical will inevitably supplant its rival. 197
Other writers, while professing that they do not entirely reject the
deductive method, still set it contemptuously on one side as having al-
ready done all it can do, and played to the full its unimportant part in
economic investigations. The necessity for a completely new departure
is no less strenuously insisted upon. Even if the doctrines reached by the
methods of the older economists possess a relative truth, they are, it is
said, of little importance; and political economy can do fruitful work in
the future only by taking on a new form and becoming a distinctively
historical science. The abstract method, says Professor Schmoller, has
degenerated into intellectual consumption; the spring of its vitality is
dried up. A necessary revolution is in progress, whereby things are viewed
from a totally different side the historical.  In the future a new epoch
will come for political economy, but only by giving value to the whole
historical and statistical material which now exists, not by the further
distillation of the already-a-hundred-times-distilled abstractions of the
old dogmatism. 198
The extreme  historismus of which we are now speaking is char-
acteristic only of the more advanced wing of the historical school, and
not of Roscher, who is usually regarded as its chief founder, or of its
more moderate representatives such as Wagner, whose treatment of the
whole subject of economic method is admirable.199
Roscher, for instance, insists on the necessity of taking into consid-
eration the varying character of economic habits and conditions, and
attacks especially the fallacy of criticizing economic institutions, re-
gardless of a people s history and the stage of social and industrial de-
velopment to which they have attained. But he neither effects nor seeks
to effect a complete transformation of political economy. Whilst his
chief treatise on the subject abounds in historical and statistical illustra-
tions, and is full of information about the history of economic prin-
ciples, the doctrines taught in it follow in the main the orthodox lines
The Scope and Method of Political Economy/145
both in substance and in manner of exposition. He even  has no doubt
that the future will accord both to Ricardo and Malthus their full meed
of honour as political economists and discoverers of the first rank. 200
This very moderation of Roscher is, however, by some of his more ad-
vanced followers made a subject of reproach. The dogmatic and the
historical matter in his Principles are said to be juxtaposed rather than
vitally combined; and he is charged with not having been sufficiently
under the influence of the method which he himself was one of the first
to characterize.201
In criticizing the conception of political economy as a distinctively
historical science the main difficulty consists in understanding what the
conception really amounts to. It is far from being easy to gain a clear
idea of the form to be assumed by economics when its  transformation
has been effected. Much that is said by the historical school consists of
mere negative criticism; and on the positive side, there is often wanting
an adequate discrimination between what really belongs to economic
science, and what is no more than economic history pure and simple.202
According to Knies, the historical conception of political economy
is based on the ideas of economic evolution and the relativity of eco-
nomic doctrines. Economic institutions and economic theories are prod-
ucts of historical development. No given economic system can be final.
It is itself the result of special conditions of time, place, and nationality;
and as these vary, it will be subjected to progressive modifications. Ev-
ery nation, therefore, and every age has a political economy of its own.
Hence follows the denial that there are any absolute or universal eco-
nomic laws. Every economic principle is relative to the particular phase
of development to which a nation has at any given time attained. And so
political economy resolves itself into a description of the various stages
of industrial evolution, and the principles appropriate to each in turn.203
The relativity of economic doctrines has been discussed in the pre-
ceding note; and only two remarks need be made at this point in regard
to the bearing of such relativity upon the question whether economics
must be regarded as a distinctively historical science.204
In the first place, the mere fact of a progressive evolution of indus-
trial conditions by no means establishes the impossibility of general
economic laws. There may be much that is common to the different
stages of development; the same tendencies may be in operation in vary-
ing circumstances. Nothing more, therefore, than special modifications
of the general laws may be requisite in order to suit special cases as they
146/John Neville Keynes
arise. It has been strewn that, notwithstanding the relativity of concrete
economic doctrines, a certain character of universality belongs to the
abstract theory of political economy.
In the second place, in so far as each epoch has a political economy
peculiar to itself, the question still remains how that political economy
is to be established. Hence, regarded as a system dealing primarily with
the economic problems of our own age, no need is strewn for a transfor-
mation of the existing science. At most all that is necessary is the recog-
nition that in regard to many of its doctrines, as ordinarily laid down, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]