The Socialism of to-day

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 835096955

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-28834

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Laveleye, Émile de

Title:: The Socialism of to-day

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: Field & Tuer

Year of publication:: 1884

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (XLIV, 331 S.)

Collection:: Economics Books

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THE SOCIALISTS OF THE CHAIR. 267 With this theory, the problems relating to the government of societies are wonderfully simplified. The statesman has only to fold his arms. The world will go on of itself to its appointed end. It is the optimism of Leibnitz and of the eighteenth century transported into Political Economy. Rely ing on this philosophical doctrine, Economists declare certain general principles applicable in all times and to all peoples, because they are absolute truths. Political Economy was essentially cosmopolitan. It took no account of the division of men into separate nations, nor of the diversity of interests that may arise therefrom, any more than it busied itself with the particular wants and conditions resulting from the history of the different States. It saw only the good of humanity considered as one large family, just as every abstract science and every universal religion, particularly Christianity, had done. Having thus expounded the old doctrine, the new Econo mists proceed to criticise it. They accuse it of taking a one sided view of things. Without doubt, they say, man pursues his own interest, but more than one motive acts on his mind and regulates his actions. By the side of egoism there is the sentiment of collectivity, the gemeinsinn, the social instinct, which is manifested in the formation of the family, the Com- mune, and the State. Man is not like the brute, that knows only the satisfaction of its wants ; he is a moral being, who understands obedience to duty, and who, from his religious or philosophical training, is often induced to sacrifice his satisfac tions, his welfare, and even his life, for his country, for humanity, for truth, and for God. It is, therefore, a mistake to base a series of deductions on the aphorism that man acts solely under the sway of a single motive, self-interest These “ general and constant facts of human nature,” from which Rossi would deduce economic laws, are imaginary. In different countries, at different epochs, men obey motives which are not always the same, seeing that they spring from different ideas of well-being, right, morality, and justice. The savage procures the where withal to live by hunting and devouring, at need, even his fellows ; the citizen of antiquity, by reducing them to slavery.

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