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[Posted on behalf of Roger Sandilands. - RBE]
Ross Emmett asks:
> In what ways would you argue that there is continuity between a
> modern economist and an economist in ancient Greece?
This is an answer given by Allyn Young in his lectures at the LSE
(notes taken by Nicholas Kaldor) shortly before his untimely death
in 1929:
"So long as men's economic activities reflected their intitutionally-
determined position, e.g. serfs, there was no room for economics.
The problems were juristic not economic, as seen in mediaeval
discussions, and Aristotle's ethics of trade. He considered the way
trade fitted into what he took to be a natural or rational order of
society. But his ideas of that order scarcely correspond to modern
views -- activities being then praised according to whether they did
or did not fit in with the structure of the Greek family, and the
Greek state. Aristotle's criteria were never drawn from an unbiased
survey of the economic consequences of economic activities. The
change from this treatment was due to the transformation of the
economic state of society -- the 'rise of modern capitalism', the
'competitive system', 'free business enterprise', the terminlogy
generally according with the views of the author. The mediaeval
belief in the invariability of the social structure needed to be broken.
The dominant factor was the growth of trade. (Cf. Charles Cooley:
'Old ideas come down perpendicularly; new ideas come in
sideways'.)
"The commercial revolution preceded the industrial revolution, for
with the growth of trade industrial specialisation became
advantageous. The new industrial revolution and economic situation
led to inventions, not vice versa. Then, with the expansion of
markets, and the extension of the division of labour, the welfare of
each man became increasingly dependent on an increasing
number of 'foreigners'. Certain common interests developed. Now
those interests, and the way in which they could be furthered, were
the questions to which political economy tried to give an answer.
Questions of public policy arose, and so economics was born --
though the old name, 'political economy', is the more descriptive."
Elsewhere in the same lectures, Young wrote:
"Economics is concerned with the communal problems of wealth,
not problems of household or business economy. There was no
economic science before the second half of the eighteenth century,
for men thought of the natural economic order of society as resting
uopn principles that were non-economic. For Aristotle, the natural
(social) order was inseparable from the structure of the Greek
family, and of the Greek state. Economic activities were appraised
according to whether or not they fitted in with these institutions.
Economic questions always became ethical, e.g. trade was
'natural' where exchange was proposed, but 'unnatural' when
devoted to making money profit. Similarly, in the Middle Ages,
economic questions were never discussed on their own merits. The
belief in the invariability of the social structure needed to be broken,
as it was when commerce developed. Individual statesmen
investigated particular economic problems but, lacking a view of the
economic world as a whole, failed to develop and sytematise their
studies. Economics, in fact, only began to develop when men were
free to make contracts."
- Roger Sandilands
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