Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 16.djvu/218

* POLITICAL ECONOMY. 182 POLITICAL ECONOMY. will be cousitlcred below, where the discussion of .scope is continued in connection with that of nietliod. In anticipation of that discussion, and following the >isaf;e of Adam Smith and the popular intcrprotalion of the term, we may de- fine political economy as the ordered knowWge of tile .social phenomena arisinj; out of man's ac- tivity in the acquisition and use of wealth. By wealth we mean things possessing; value. We mean goods and services which usually and regularly cost labor, and which arc exchangeable for '.abor. W e mean useful things of a material nature, and personal services which satisfy hu- man wants, which exist in quantities below the amounts desired, so that each unit of them pos- sesses distinct importance for us. History of Kcoxomic Tiioi'fiiiT. Greece. Greek economic thought is characterized by an exaggerated confidence in the jiowcr of the State to mold human nature, control industry, and direct the growth of society. In political thought this resulted in a striking subordination of the individual to the State: in the study of societ.v it led to the subordination of economics to poli- ties and ethics. Slavery was generall.v indorsed — indeed it was pirohably regarded as indispen- sable by the majority. The Greek philosophers fully understood the advantages of the division of labor, and Aristotle is generally credited with having entertained correct views upon money and advanced ideas concerning value. The Greek philosophers generally condemneil interest-tak- ing and entertained the traditional prejudices against trade and enmmerce. This brief sum- mary may be accepted as representing the opin- ions predominating among those Greek writers whose works have come down to us. To be sure, there are certain qualifications to be made to this view of Greek thought, but on the whole it is probably true that the Greeks had little or no eoncejition of the sacred regard for the individ- ual which characterizes the theory of modern individualism. The Romans took their philosojdiy from the Greeks, and though they made important studies of particular economic pro!)lenis, laborious stud- ies have utterly failed to reveal the existence of anything approaching a dominant system of eco- nomic thought. Tnterest-taking, avarice, and trade were generally condemned by the philos- ophers. Slavery was occasionally condemned — by Varro and Columella as an expensive and demoralizing industrial system, by Seiieea on the general princijdes of the Stoic philoscqihy. In the Koman jurists we find evidence of syste- matic thought upon the nature of money, wealth, and capital; the encouragement of popiilation, the regulation of private property and sump- tuary control of various kinds, etc. But the general line of historical development is from Aristotle to the Christian Fathers, and more particularl.v to the medianal Canonists. Chhlstianity. The inunediate etfeet of Chris- tianit.v was to strengthen in general the preva- lent Aristotelian system of economic jihilosophy, its condemnation of usury and the pursuit of wealth in trade^ its assertion of the superiority of agriculture, and its support of the social sys- tem of status. Christianity thus strengthened the subjection of economics to ethics, liut it weakened the subjection of economics to politics. Within the Church there was taught the equality of men before God, and the essential dignity of labor. The clergy were permitted to earn their own livelihood by manual labor, and thi' laity were exhorted to free their slaves as .soon as the.v became Christians. The ^Iiddle Ages (a.u. 400-1500). Inasmuch as the teachings and doctrines of the early me- di;eval writers arc well sununed uji in the Corjiiis Juris Canonici (see Canon Law), it will be convenient to discuss them under the general heading of the Canonists— the schoolmen and theologians who after the compilation of eccle- siastical laws by Gratian in the twelfth century analyzed and expounde<l, among other things, the relation to economic affairs of the Scrip- tures, the writings of the Christian Fathers, de- cisions of Church councils, and Papal decrees. The doctrines of the canonists were largely de- rived from the Scriptural injunctions against the excessive pursuit of wealth and the payment or acceptance of interest on loans. The early l''athers in their condemnation of avari<'e and their exaltation of fratcrna^^lovc, sometimes used ex- pressions which taken by themselves imply an utter condemnation of jnivate property anil an advocacy of comminiism among the faithful, but this was only an ideal, and private property was early recognized as a necessity resulting from the fall of man. The effect of this ideal, however, ai)pears in the accepted doctrine that the maintenance of the poor was not a matter of philanthropy, but an obligation. The Scrijitural attitude toward wealth led to an emphatic state- ment of the moral superiority of agricultvire and handiwork over trade and conuncrce as a means of earning a livelihood, and the early writers seemed almost unanimous in the belief that what the seller made by trade the buyer necessarily lost. With the increasing temporal power of the Church and the great develo])ment of commerce which marked the eleventh century, came the necessity of harmonizing the doctrines of the Church with the obvious rc(|nircments of com- merce, and many concessions were made by the later canonists. Thomas Aqiiinas ( e.l 220-74 ), the most aullKuitative of the later mediaeval canon- ists, concedes that it is lawful to trade for a simple livelihood, or in order to supply a cotui- try with necessary articles which it does not produce within its own borders, or when the profits of the trade are devoted to some honorable purpose such as the assistance of the poor, hut thai;, save in exceptional circumstances, a seller is bound to reveal a fault in an article, and that it is not permissible to sell an article for more than its worth. The fundamental axiom, in ac- cordance with which all tlu'se conclusions are reached, is that every commodity has a fixed and objective value, which can be readily ascertained, and which determines its just price. To ask more for an article than its just price was ex- tortion, and to pay less was equally unjustifiable. The distinctively ethical viewqioint of the canon- ists is shown in the prohibition of usury (((.v.). This was based upon the Scriptural injunctions against usury, and upon the Aristotelian argu- ment that, money being barren it would be extortion to charge for its use. Another favor- ite argument was that interest was pay for time, but time is barren, and hence to demand interest was to demand something for noth- ing. It is needless to add that, as the grow- ing commerce of the Middle Ages made the need of borrowing capital more and more imperative.