Economic essays

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Identifikator:: 1753623200

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-136107

Document type:: Monograph

Title:: Economic essays

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: Macmillan

Year of publication:: 1927

Scope:: viii, 368 S.; Ill., graph. Darst.

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Alternatives seen as basic economic facts / Franklin H. Giddings

Collection:: Economics Books

ALTERNATIVES SEEN AS BASIC ECONOMIC FACTS 197 despised and shunned. He may be locked up or otherwise segre- gated. Economic values arise early, but social values arise as early and possibly are antecedent. These first two alternatives constrain us to abide in society and to lead an economic life. Their relation to economic theory strictly defined, however, is relatively remote. Closer to it is a third alternative, namely: Think creatiwely or accept the economics of exploitation. For two thousand years after Plato and Aristotle had found slavery necessary to civilization slavery and the near slavery of serfdom persisted in Christendom. To this present hour strong nations continue to subjugate and to exploit weaker ones, Economically powerful groups (financial, commercial and indus- trial) continue to exploit the so-called masses. Humanitarians revolted against serfdom and against slavery but their efforts availed little until invention came to their aid. It was neither preaching nor agitation but the-steam engine and power-driven machinery that abolished slavery. It is highly probable that electro-physics, chemistry, and biology will one day be more effective than pacifist ethics in preventing war, and more effective than strikes and boycotts in further ameliorating the wages system. When Professor Clark and I were actively exchanging ideas he was formulating his discrimination of pure from concrete capital.” He went on to work out the implications of his idea for the theory of values. I became interested in the economic possibilities of a progressive production of concrete goods, material wealth. I wanted to discover whether we may hope to carry further indefinitely nature's processes of assembling, cor- relating and coérdinating elements into compouds, and com- pounds into bigger and more complex compounds under conditions of varying cost. Specifically I was interested in the possibility (which I could not believe unlimited) of increasing that supply of unconsumed wealth which Adam Smith had called “stock,” which the Austrians were calling “present goods,” which Pro- fessor Clark identified with “concrete capital,” and which I presently called “capital goods.” * Yet more specifically I sought an answer to a question which I think had not before been raised, Association, Vol 11, Nar 38547, Publications of the American. Economic * Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 1V, January, 1890, D. 178.

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