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

by Charles Gide; Charles Rist

All the manifold aspects of the doctrine, whether biological, sociological, moral, religious, legal, or economic, were obviously matters of common knowledge to the writers of antiquity. But each phase of the subject seemed isolated from the rest, and it was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that it dawned upon thinkers that there was possibly something like unity underlying this apparent diversity. It has already been impressed upon us that Pierre Leroux and a few of the disciples of Fourier, as well as Bastiat, had realised something of the value of the doctrine of solidarity and of the appropriateness of the term. But it was reserved for Auguste Comte to appreciate its full possibilities. “The new philosophy, viewed as a whole, emphasises the intimacy that exists between the individual and the group in their different relations, so that the conception of social solidarity extending throughout time and embracing the whole of humanity has become a fairly familiar idea.”[1252]

It is necessary, however, to inquire somewhat more closely into the success of the new doctrine in holding the attention both of the public and of economists. It is possible that the seed would have borne little fruit but for the presence of extraneous circumstances which helped to impress the public with a sense of the importance of these new theories.

Nothing has left a deeper impression upon the public or afforded a better illustration of the infinite possibilities of the new doctrine than the study of bacteriology. The prevalence of certain contagious maladies or epidemics had been too terribly prominent in the history of the human race to require any confirmation; but it was something to learn that the most serious diseases and maladies of all kinds were communicated from man to man by means of invisible bacilli. It was now realised that men who were supposed to be dying a natural death were in reality being slowly murdered. It was with something like horror that men learned that the consumptive, the hero of a hundred sentimental tales, every day expectorated sufficient germs to depopulate a whole town. Such “pathological” solidarity is being more closely interwoven every day by the ever-increasing multiplicity and rapidity of the means of communication. The slow caravan journey across the desert was much more likely to destroy the vitality of the bacilli picked up at Mecca than the much more rapid railway journey of the future, which will speed the pilgrim across the sandy wastes in a few hours. The traveller of former days, who went either afoot or on horseback, ran less risk of infection than his descendant of to-day, who perhaps only spends a few hours in the metropolis.

Sociology has also brought its contingent of facts and theories.[1253] The sociologist stakes his reputation upon being able to prove that the fable of the body and its members is no fable at all, but a literal transcription of actual facts, and that the union existing between various members of the social body is as intimate as that which exists between the different parts of the same organism. Such is the fullness and minuteness with which the analogy has been pushed even into obscure points of anatomical detail that it is difficult not to smile at the naïveté of its authors. It is pointed out that so close is the resemblance between the respective functions in the two cases that the term “circulation” does duty in both spheres, and a comparison is instituted between nutrition and production, reproduction and colonisation, and accumulation of fat and capitalism. In Florence during the Middle Ages the bourgeois were spoken of as the fat people, the workers as the small people. The organs also are very similar. Arteries and veins have their counterpart in the railway system, with its network of “up” and “down” lines. The nervous system of the one becomes the telegraphic system of the other, with its rapid communication of news and sensations. The brain becomes the seat of government, the heart is the bank; and between the two, both in nature and in society, there is a most intimate connection. Even the white corpuscles have a prototype in the police force, whose duty is to rush to the seat of disorder and to attempt to crush it immediately.

The sociological analogy, ingenious rather than scientific, did not have a very long vogue.[1254] But it has at least supplied a few conclusions which are thoroughly well established, and which serve as the basis of the solidarist doctrine. Among these we may mention the following:

(a) That solidarity in the sense of the mutual dependence of members of the same body is a characteristic of all life. Inorganic bodies are incomplete simply because they are mere aggregates. Death is nothing but the dissolution of the mysterious links which bind together the various parts of the living organism, with the result that it relapses into the state of a corpse, in which the various elements become indifferent to the presence of one another and are dissipated through space, to enter into new combinations at the further call of nature.

(b) That solidarity becomes more perfect and intimate with every rise in the biological scale. Completely homogeneous organisms scarcely differ from simple aggregates. They may be cut into sections or have a member removed without suffering much damage. The section cut off will become the centre of independent existence and the amputated limb will grow again. In the case of some organisms of this kind reproduction takes the form of voluntary or spontaneous segmentation. But in the case of the higher animals the removal of a single organ sometimes involves the death of the whole organism, and almost always imperils the existence of some others.

(c) That a growing differentiation of the parts makes for the greater solidarity of the whole. Where every organ is exactly alike each is generally complete in itself. But where they are different each is just the complement of the other, and none can move or exist independently of the rest.

One has only to think of the treatment meted out to the innovator by primitive tribes to realise the tremendous solidarity of savage society. The “boycotting” familiar in civilised countries provides a similar example.