A History of Economic Doctrines / from the time of the physiocrats to the present day

by Charles Gide; Charles Rist

The new school had one distinctive characteristic. In its search for a basis upon which to build the new theory it hit upon the general principle that man always seeks pleasure and avoids pain, getting as much of the former with as slight a dilution of the latter as he possibly can.[1103] A fact of such great importance and one that was not confined to the field of economic activities, but seemed present everywhere throughout nature in the guise of the principle of least resistance, could scarcely have escaped the notice of the Classical theorists. They had referred to it simply as “personal interest,” but to-day we speak of it as Hedonism, from the Greek ἠδονή (pleasure or agreeableness). Hence the name Hedonists, by which we have chosen to designate these two schools.

The elimination of all motives affecting human action except one does not imply any desire on the part of these writers to deny the existence of others. They simply lay claim to the right of abstraction, without which no exact science could ever be constituted. In other words, they demand the right of eliminating from the field of research every element other than the one which they wish to examine. The study of the other motives belongs to the province of other social sciences. The homo œconomicus of the Classicals which has been the object of so much derision has been replaced on its pedestal. But it has in the meantime undergone such a process of simplification that it is scarcely better than a mere abstraction. Men are again to be treated as forces and represented by curves or figures as in treatises on mechanics. The object of the study is to determine the interaction of men among themselves, and their reaction upon the external world.

We shall also find that the new schools arrive at an almost identical conclusion with the old, namely, that absolutely free competition alone gives the maximum of satisfaction to everybody. Allowing for the differences in their respective points of view, to which we shall refer later on, what is this but simply a revival of the great Classical tradition?

Little wonder, then, that we find a good deal of sympathy shown for the old Classical school. Indeed, it is throughout regarded with almost filial piety.[1104]

This does not mean that the Classical doctrine is treated as being wholly beyond reproach, although it does mean that the new school could scarcely accuse it of being in error, seeing that it comes to similar conclusions itself. But what it does lay to the charge of the older writers is a failure to prove what they assumed to be true and a tendency to be satisfied with a process of reasoning which too often meant wandering round in a hopeless circle. Especially was this the case with their study of causal relations, forgetting that as often as not cause was effect and effect cause. The attempt to determine which is cause and which effect is clearly futile, and the science must rest content with the discovery of uniformities either of sequence or of coexistence.

This applies especially to the three great laws which form the framework of economic science, namely, the law of demand and supply, the law of cost of production, and the law of distribution, none of which is independent of the others. Let us review them briefly.

The law stating that “price varies directly with demand and inversely with supply” possessed just that degree of mathematical precision necessary to attract the attention of the new writers. In fact, it just served for the passage from the old to the new economics. But no sooner was the crossing effected than the bridge was destroyed. Little difficulty was experienced in pointing out that this so-called law which had been considered to be one of the axioms of political economy, the quid inconcussum upon which had been raised all the superstructure of economic theory, was an excellent example of that circular reasoning of which we have just spoken. There was a considerable flutter among the economists of the mid-nineteenth century when they found themselves forced to recognise this. However true it may be that price is determined by demand and supply, it is equally true that demand and supply are each in their turn determined by the price, so that it is impossible to tell which is cause or which is effect. Stuart Mill had already noted this contradiction, and had attempted correction in the way already described (p. 359). But he was ignorant of the fact that Cournot had completely demolished the formula by setting up another in its place, namely, that “demand is a function of price.”[1105] The substitution of that formula marks the inauguration of the Hedonistic calculus. Demand is now shown to be connected with price by a kind of see-saw movement, falling when prices rise and rising when prices fall. Supply is equally a function of price, but it operates in the opposite fashion, moving pari passu with it—rising as it rises and falling as it falls. Thus price, demand, and supply are like three sections of one mechanism, none of which can move in isolation, and the problem is to determine the law of their interdependence.

This does not by any means imply that there is no longer any place in economics for the law of demand and supply. It has merely been given a new significance, and the usual way of expressing it nowadays is by means of a supply and demand curve, which simply involves translating Cournot’s dictum into figures.

The same is true of the law stating that cost of production determines value. There is the same petitio principii here. It is easy enough to see, on the contrary, that the entrepreneur regulates his cost of production according to price. The Classical school had realised this as far as one of the elements in the cost of production was concerned, for it was quite emphatic in its teaching that price determined rent, but that rent did not determine price. It is just as true of the other elements. In other words, the second law is just as fallible as the first. It is obviously imperative that the vain quest for causal relations should be abandoned and that economists should be content with the statement that between cost of production and price there exists a kind of equilibrating action in virtue not of any mysterious solidarity which subsists between them, but because the mere absence of equilibrium due either to a diminution or an increase in the quantity of products immediately sets up forces which tend to bring it back to a position of equilibrium. This interdependent relation, which is extremely important in itself and upon which the Hedonists lay great store, is simply one example taken from among many where the value of one thing is just a function of another.