[SOCIAL COMPTABILISM]
(COMPLEMENTARY NOTE)
By Ernest SOLVAY
In the last number of these Annals[G], I explained in a manner which I consider definitive, the theoretical conception of comptabilism.
To this point of view it seems to me necessary to add a few words in order to throw light on certain points which the first article did not sufficiently bring out.
We have seen what is the use of money and to whom it is of use, we have considered if it was indispensable. Gold and silver are not a «real commodity» except when they take the form of useful objects, utensils, works of art, etc., the possession of which produces enjoyment. Turned into coin, they lose this character, they become an instrument, an instrument recognised so far as indispensable for obtaining a real commodity, be this commodity material or moral, by an operation which I have designated under the general term of «transaction». Money is not then a commodity in the true sense of the word; on the contrary it is generally obtained by the surrender of a commodity.
It is solely in order to accomplish the «operation» of transaction that money is needed, because this is the method, the means, the instrument which custom has consecrated; and if another practicable method, means or instrument were found in order to accomplish this operation money would no longer be indispensable. Now, this is what comptabilism does.
It is essential to note here that the comptabilistic unities, francs, marks, pounds, etc., would be derived from securities, and not, as with money by the surrender of commodities, that in consequence these unities would no longer have a value by themselves, but simply by the things which they represented.
But apart from that, they could be with held or parted with, they could be borrowed or lent, with or without interest, directly from man to man, or by the medium of banking houses, exactly as in the case of money.
And in fact, if the force of habit required, nothing would prevent their being called money of account or comptabilistic money, since apart from what has just been said as to the way of obtaining them and their nature, nothing would be altered in the current methods, everything would remain as to day both in the organisation of business and of society. And all that might have been said, written or thought until now in an opposite sense to the fore going considerations should be held as contrary to the reality of the facts resulting from comptabilism.
The conception of the comptabilistic system is one quite other than that of the monetary system. There is not the smallest trace of this second conception in the first; it becomes necessary to leave entirely the one to understand the other. In a word the two conceptions mutually exclude each other; the one is based upon exchange, the other upon accounts, and the two systems derived rest thus on two essentially different principles.