The Industrial Revolution

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1027928145

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-159926

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Cunningham, William http://d-nb.info/gnd/128907487

Title:: The Industrial Revolution

Place of publication:: Cambridge

Publisher:: The University Press

Year of publication:: 1922

Scope:: xxii S., S. 404-886

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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378 POSTSCRIPT national prosperity have an abiding interest. But it is important to remember that the Science of Political Economy, as they formulated it, only deals with one aspect of human life,—or with the material and physical conditions of exist- ence and progress, rather than with life itsglf> These con- stitute a very important aspect ; and they are very difficult to deal with, as the severance between private and public in- terest, or the divergence of temporarily conflicting interests, is more marked in this connection than in the other elements of welfare. The interests of landed and moneyed men, or of capital and labour, or of an old and an undeveloped country, often are distinct, and the chief problem of modern political life is to prevent any one interest from becoming dominant and allowing itself to pursue its own advantage in disregard of the common weal. Since 1832, when England became consciously demo- cratic, and still more since 1874, when the new principles were more thoroughly applied, the physical well-being of labour has been kept very prominently in view by English legislators and administrators. Political power rests with ‘o the the working classes, and they may possibly use it so as to nterests of labour burden the owners of property unduly, and prevent the in England py ntion of capital, or so as to harass emplovers in the | An attempt has been made by Jevons and his followers to revolutionise Political Economy and to recast it in a form in which it appears to offer a scientific account of Human Welfare. They start from the conception, which Adam Smith liscarded, of value-in-use, instead of value-in-exchange, and explain transactions ‘n terms of the degrees of utility or disutility involved. This is a convenient node of statement for treating certain problems, particularly those of con- sumption, but the analysis of subjective motives has always seemed to me a cumbrous and inconvenient way of approaching the facts of the actual exchange of goods, a8 it goes on in the world. It is comparatively easy to take a certain type of human being and analyse his probable conduct, but the principles thus obtained are not real generalisations from observed fact (Cunningham, Plea for Pure Theory, in Economic Review, nm. 85). It is difficult to see within what limits they are applicable, or what corrections it is necessary to apply in order to make them the basis of practical maxims. According to Adam Smith’s treatment exchange-value is the fundamental conception; and in modern life the conditions of exchange dominate over the methods of production and the terms of distri. bution. The most recent English writers, Professor Nicholson in his elaborate jreatise, and Mr Devas in his manual, while embodying the results obtained on the new methods, show a decided reaction against the mode of statement intro- duced by Jevons, and a tendency to revert to the objective treatment which vas adornted by Adam Smith and the (Classical Economists.

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