[758] One is sometimes asked to state the differences between the Classical, the Individualist, the Liberal, and the Optimist schools. The question does not seem to us to be a very important one, but we may answer it in this way:
(a) The Individualist school, according to the worst interpretation put upon it, thinks that egoism is the only possible system of ethics and that each for himself is the sole principle of action. But, naturally enough, everyone is anxious to avoid the taunt of selfishness, and the existence of such economic ties as exchange and division of labour make egoism impossible as an ethical system. According to the broadest interpretation of the term, individualism implies the recognition of individual welfare as the sole aim of every activity, whether individual or social, economic or political. But this does not take us very far, for every socialist and individualist would accept this interpretation. We seldom speak of the welfare of society per se as an entity possessed of conscious feeling. This definition is much too wide. It includes solidarity and association, State intervention and labour legislation, provided the aim be to protect the individual against certain dangers. Self-sacrifice is not excluded, for what can strengthen individualism like self-sacrifice? This is the interpretation which Schatz puts upon it in his L’Individualisme économique et social. But the term “individualist” is too indefinite and we must avoid it whenever we can.
(b) The so-called Liberal school uses the term in a much more definite fashion. The individual is to be not merely the sole end of economic action, but he is also to be the sole agent of the economic movement, because no one else can understand his true interests or realise them in a better way. Interpreted in this fashion, it means letting the individual alone and removing every external intervention, whether by the State or the master.
According to the one definition, individualism is a creed which everyone can adopt; according to the other it is open to very serious objections. Experience shows that the individual, whether as consumer buying injurious, costly, or useless commodities, or as worker working for wages that ruin his health and lower his children’s vitality, is a poor judge of his own interest, and is helpless to defend himself, even where science and hygiene are on his side.
(c) If we push this interpretation a stage farther and admit not only that each individual is best qualified to speak for himself, but also that the social interest is simply the sum of the individual interests, all of which converge in a harmonious whole, then the Liberal school becomes the Optimistic. In France it has the tradition of a generation behind it, and an attempt has been made to revive it in certain recent works; still it may now be regarded as somewhat antiquated.
(d) When we speak of the Classical school we mean those who have remained faithful to the principles enunciated by the earlier masters of economic science. An effort has been made to improve, to develop, and even to correct the older theories, but no attempt has been made to change their essential aspects. Individualistic and liberal by tradition, this school has never been optimistic. It lays no claim to finality of doctrine or to the universality of its aim, but simply confines itself to pure science.
[759] Auguste Comte and Positivism.
[760] Principles, Book IV, chap. 7, par. 7 (Ashley’s ed., p. 793). See the recent work of Molinari, or La Morale de la Concurrence, by Yves Guyot.
[761] “It is in vain to say that all mouths which the increase of mankind calls into existence bring with them hands. The new mouths require as much food as the old ones and the hands do not produce as much.” (Principles, Book I, chap. 11, § 2.)
[762] “It is seldom by the choice of the wife that families are too numerous; on her devolves (along with all the physical suffering and at least a full share of the privations) the whole of the intolerable domestic drudgery resulting from the excess.” (Principles, Book II, chap. 13, § 2.)