"Political economy" is also associated with the idea of economics as a
"moral science". This goes back to Aristotle's idea of "oeconomia" as
household and political management with a view to the acquisition for
members of the family and the political community of the means to a "good
life".
"there is one form of the art of acquisition which is by nature part of
household management, in so far as the latter must either find ready to
hand, or itself provide, the storeable necessaries of life which are useful
to the family or political community. These 'storeable necessaries,' of
course, are the elements of true wealth; and a good life requires no
unlimited amount of property, despite Solon's remark in one of his poems
that 'no bound to riches has been fixed for man.' There is indeed a
boundary fixed, as there is in the other arts also; for no art has unlimited
instruments, whether as regards number or size, and riches are a collection
of instruments for use in the household or in the state. We see, then,
*that* there is, and also *why* there is, a natural art of acquisition which
is practised both by managers of households and by statesmen." (Aristotle,
Politics, Everyman Library Ed., pp. 16-17)
Aristotle contrasts this with acquisition motivated by avarice. This, he
claims, is an unnatural and irrational form.
"Wealth, in fact, is often imagined to consist in large quantities of coin,
because one form of the art of acquisition, viz. retail trade, is concerned
with money. Some, however, maintain that coinage is a sham - unnatural, a
mere convention - on the grounds (1) that those who use it have only to
substitute another form of currency and it immediately becomes worthless,
and (2) that it is of no use as an alternative to any of the necessaries of
life, since he who has plenty of coin may often lack the necessary food. It
is indeed paradoxical to call a man wealthy who, in spite of his great
possessions, is doomed to starvation - like Midas in the legend, whose
insatiable prayer caused everything set before him to turn into gold." (p.
18)
"Some people, therefore, imagine that to acquire wealth is the object of
household management, and their one idea in life is either to grow
increasingly rich, or at any rate sit tight on what money they have. This
attitude results from their being so intent upon living rather than upon
living *well*: they are anxious to possess unlimited means for the
gratification of their unlimited desires. Those who do aspire after a good
life seek the means to bodily pleasures; and since these appear to depend on
acquisition, their whole concern is to make money. Hence the other form of
the art of acquisition. Since their enjoyment depends on having more than
is necessary, they look to the art which yields the superfluity; and if they
cannot obtain it through the art of acquisition, they have recourse to other
means and make unnatural use of every gift. ... some men direct all their
faculties to the acquisition of wealth, as if money-making were the end to
which all else must be subservient." (p. 19)
"As I have said, the art of acquisition is twofold: one form is a part of
household management, the other is retail trade. The first of these is both
necessary and commendable; but the other, which is the mode of exchange, is
rightly censured as being an unnatural procedure whereby men profit at one
another's expense. Usury is detested above all, and for the best of
reasons. It makes profit out of money itself, not from money's natural
object, and therefore it is the most unnatural means of acquiring wealth."
pp. 20-1
Marx and Keynes adopt Aristotle's conception of the rational art of
acquisition as the rational principle which would govern activity in what
Marx calls "the realm of necessity" in an ideal community (Capital, vol. 3,
p. 958-9). They both claim however that the dominant motivation in
capitalism is that underpinning the unnatural irrational form of acquisition
pointed to by Aristotle, the one dominated by avarice and embodied in Marx's
idea of capitalism as M-C-M'.
Neither idea has much to do with "economics" in its contemporary "only game
in town" form. Having mistakenly adopted the idea that logical error is
involved in treating values as objective, it assumes "science" can have
nothing to say about the nature of the "good life". It also denies that
motives in capitalism have anything to do with "avarice", though it does
assume that the desires that are operative are insatiable. The starting
point for economics of this kind is Benthamite utilitarianism.
Marx and Keynes do not have much that is positive to say about it. Keynes,
for instance, once referred to Benthamite economists as "Bedlamite
economists". For Marx they are "vulgar economists" whom he contrasts
sharply with the practitioners of "scientific political economy" e.g. Smith
and Ricardo (Capital, vol. 1, pp. 174-5). In Capital, having listed a
number of examples of "the kind of rubbish with which the brave fellow, with
his motto '*nulla dies sine linea*', has piled up mountains of books", Marx
says of Bentham:
"If I had the courage of my friend heinrich Heine, I should call Mr Jeremy a
genius in the way of bourgeois stupidity." (Capital, vol. 1, p. 759)
Ted Winslow
--
Ted Winslow E-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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