Historical materialism and the economics of Karl Marx

by Benedetto Croce

And from this recognition is inferred in its turn the true criticism of the hedonistic conception of the economic principle. You say that 'the equations of pure economics express merely the fact of a choice, and can be drawn up independently of the ideas of pleasure and pain,' but you admit at the same time that the fact of the choice 'can be expressed equally well as a fact of pleasure.'

It is true that every case of economic choice is at the same time, a case of feeling: of agreeable feeling if the economic choice is rightly made, of disagreeable feeling, if it is ill made. Man's activity develops itself in the human mind, not under a pneumatic bell, and an activity which develops rightly, brings as its reflex, a feeling of pleasure, that which develops badly, one of displeasure. What is economically useful, is, at the same time pleasurable.

But this judgment cannot be converted. The pleasurable is not always economically useful. The mistake in the hedonist theory consists in making this conversion. Pleasure may appear unaccompanied by man's activity, or may be accompanied by a human activity which is not economic. Herein lies the fundamental distinction between pleasure and choice. A choice, is in the concrete, inseparable from the feeling of pleasure and displeasure; but this feeling is separable from choice, and may in fact exist independently of it.

If psychology be understood (as it is usually understood) as the science of psychical mechanism, economics is not a psychological science; this Herr von Ehrenfels fails to grasp. I do not know whether you have read the two volumes hitherto published on the System der Werttheorie.[96] After devoting some hundred pages to psychological disquisitions—which I do not mean to discuss here—he wishes, finally, to prove that his definitions of value remain sound, from whatever theory of psychology you start. He does this as he asserts (§ 87), not because he is doubtful of himself, but to safeguard his economic conclusions, which are so important for the practical problems of life, from unjustified attacks based on the standpoints of schools of psychology other than his own, the method of the barrister, who composes an apparent conclusion, and makes several demands that are connected therewith subordinately. It is true that there is no need for economists to spend their time on details of theoretical psychology; so true that Professor Ehrenfels might spare us his: but is it not true that economics remains the same whatever psychological theory is accepted. The unity of science means that a modification at one point is never without some reaction on the others; and the reaction is greatest when it is a question of the way of conceiving two facts, distinct but inseparable, like the economic and the psychical fact.

An economic datum is not then a hedonistic datum, nor, in general, a mechanical datum. But as the fact of man's activity, it still remains to determine whether it is a fact of knowledge or of will: whether it is theoretical or practical.

You, who conceive it as choice, can have no doubt that it is a fact of practical activity, i.e. of will. This is also my own conclusion. To choose something can only mean to will it.

But you somewhat obscure the conclusion now indicated when you speak of logical and illogical actions, and place actions properly economic amongst the former. Logical and illogical bring us back to theoretical activity. A logical or illogical action is a common way of speaking; but it is not a way of speaking exactly or accurately. The logical work of thought is quite distinct from the action of the will. To reason is not to will.

Nor is to will to reason; but the will presupposes thought and hence logic. He who does not think, cannot even will. I mean by willing, what is known to us by the evidence of our consciousness; not Schopenhauer's metaphysical will.

In knowledge, in so far as it is a necessary presupposition of economic action, is found, if not a justification, an explanation of your phrases about logical and illogical actions. Economic actions are always (we say so, at any rate) logical actions, i.e. preceded by logical acts. But it is necessary to distinguish carefully the two stages: the phenomenon and its presupposition, since from lack of distinction between the two stages has arisen the erroneous conception of the economic principle as a technological fact. I have criticised at length in other essays this confusion between technical and economic, and I may be allowed to refer both to what I have written in my review of Stammler's book Wirthschaft und Recht, and to the more exact analyses in my recent memorandum on the Estetica. Stammler maintains precisely that the economic principle can be nothing but a technical concept. I would advise anyone who wishes to see at a glance, the difference between the technical and the economic to consider carefully in what a technical error and in what an economic error respectively consist. A technical error is ignorance of the laws of the material on which we wish to work: for instance the belief that it is possible to put very heavy beams of iron on a delicate wall, without the latter falling into ruins. An economic error is the not aiming directly at one's own object; to wish this and that, i.e. not really to wish either this or that. A technical error is an error of knowledge: an economic error is an error of will. He who makes a technical mistake will be called, if the mistake is a stupid one, an ignoramus; he who makes an economic mistake, is a man who does not know how to behave in life: a weak and inconclusive person. And, as is well known and proverbial, people can be learned without being men (practical or complete).

Thus an economic fact is a fact of practical activity. Have we attained our object in this definition? Not yet. The definition is still incomplete and to complete it we must not only cross another expanse of sea, but avoid another rock: viz. that of the conception of economic data as egoistic data.