It is not enough to say that the cause is a deliberate determination of parents to have no children or to have only a limited number. The question is, Why do they decide to have none or to limit their family to a certain number only? Why is this limitation more marked in France than elsewhere, and why is it more pronounced there to-day than it was say two or three generations ago? The special causes which apply to the France of to-day must somehow be discovered, and such causes may be expected to be less active elsewhere. It may be that Paul Leroy-Beaulieu is right when he claims that the progress of civilisation must always mean a declining birth-rate, because the fresh needs and desires and the extra expenditure which it necessarily involves are incompatible with the duties and responsibilities of maternity. It is possible that it diminishes as democracy advances, because the latter strengthens the telescopic faculty and quickens the desire to rise in the social scale as rapidly and as effectively as possible. M. Dumont, who advocates this view, has happily named it the law of capillarity. More precise causes are sometimes invoked, but they vary according to the particular school that formulates them. Le Play thinks that it is due to the practice of social inheritance. Paul Bureau takes it as a sign of the weakening of moral and religious belief, and of the growth of intemperate habits of every kind—alcoholism, debauchery, etc. Unfortunately none of the explanations given seem quite satisfactory, and a second Malthus is required to open up a new chapter in the history of demography.[312]
II: RICARDO
Next to Smith, Ricardo is the greatest name in economics, and fiercer controversy has centred round his name than ever raged around the master’s. Smith founded no school, and his wisdom and moderation saved him from controversy. Hence every economist, whatever his views, is found sitting at his feet straining to catch the divine accents as they fall from his lips.
But Ricardo was no dweller in ethereal regions. He was in the thickest of the fight—the butt of every shaft. In discussions on the question of method the attack is always directed against Ricardo, who is charged with being the first to lead the science into the fruitless paths of abstraction. The Ricardian theory of rent affords a target for every Marxian in his general attack upon private property. The Ricardian theory of value is the starting-point of modern socialism—a kinship that he could never have disavowed, however little to his taste. The same thing is true of controversies concerning banks of issue and international trade: Ricardo’s place was ever with the vanguard.
His defects are as interesting as his merits, and have been equally influential. Of his theories, especially his more characteristic ones, there is now little left, unless we recall what is after all quite as important—the criticisms they aroused and the adverse theories which they begot. The city banker was a very indifferent writer, and his work is adorned with none of those beautiful passages so characteristic of Smith and Stuart Mill. No telling phrase or striking epithet ever meets the eye of the reader. His principal work is devoid of a plan, its chapters being mere fragments placed in juxtaposition. His use of the hypothetical method and the constant appeal to imaginary conditions makes its reading a task of some difficulty. This abstract method has long held dominion over the science, and it is still in full activity among the Mathematical economists. His thoughts are penetrating, but his exposition is frequently obscure, and a remark which he makes somewhere in speaking of other writers, namely, that they seldom know their own strength, may very appropriately be applied to him. But obscurity of style has not clouded his fame. Indeed, it has stood him in good stead, as it did Marx at a later date. We hardly like to say that a great writer is unintelligible—a feeling prompted partly by respect and partly arising out of fear lest the lack of intelligence should really be on our side. The result is an attempt to discover a profound meaning in the most abstruse passage—an attempt that is seldom fruitful, especially in the case of Ricardo.
It is clearly impossible to outline the whole of this monumental work. We shall content ourselves with an attempt to place the leading conceptions clearly before our readers.[313]
Speaking generally, Ricardo’s chief concern is with the distribution of wealth. He was thus instrumental in opening up a new field of economic inquiry, for his predecessors had been largely engrossed with production. “To determine the laws which regulate this distribution is the principal problem in political economy.” We have already some acquaintance with the tripartite division of revenues corresponding with the threefold division of the factors of production—the rent of land, the profits of capital, and the wages of labour. Ricardo wanted to determine the way in which this division took place and what laws regulated the proportion which each claimant got. Although unhampered by any preconceptions concerning the justice or injustice of distribution, we can easily understand how he ushered in the era of polemics and of socialistic discussion, seeing that the natural laws pale into insignificance when contrasted with the influence wielded by human institutions and written laws. The latter override the former, and individual interests which may co-operate in production frequently prove antagonistic in distribution.
We shall follow him in his exposition of the laws of rent, wages, and profits, but especially rent, for according to him the share given to land determines the proportions which the other factors are going to receive.
One would imagine that an indispensable preliminary to this study would be an examination of the Ricardian theory of value, especially when we recall the importance of his theory of labour-value in the history of economics doctrine and how it prepared the way for the Marxian theory of surplus value, which is the foundation-stone of contemporary socialism. Despite all this we shall only refer to his theory of value incidentally, and chiefly in connection with the laws of distribution. We have Ricardo’s own authority for doing this: “After all, the great problem of rent, of wages, or of profits might be elucidated by determining the proportions in which the total product is distributed between the proprietors, the capitalists, and the workers, but this is not necessarily connected with the doctrine of value.”[314]