Principles of Political Economy, Vol. 1

by Wilhelm Roscher

E. Frequent loans to foreign nations. Hence, Storch divides all countries into borrowing or poor countries, loaning or rich countries, and independent countries which hold a middle place between the two former.[103]

Section XI.

Of Economy (Husbandry).

All normal economy[104] (husbandry) aims at securing a maximum of personal advantage with a minimum of cost or outlay.[105] And there are always two intellectual incentives at the foundation of this economy. There is, first, self-interest, the positive manifestation of which is the effort to acquire as much of the world's goods as possible, and the negative expression of which, the effort to lose as little of them as possible—acquisitiveness—saving. Self-interest, losing its moral, and assuming a guilty, character, degenerates into egotism; acquisitiveness, into covetousness; and the disposition to save, into avarice—the solipsismus of Kant. The incentive to ameliorate one's condition is common to all men, no matter how varied [pg 074] the form or different the intensity of its manifestation. It guides us all from the cradle to the grave. It may be restricted within certain limits, but never entirely extinguished. It is, in the domain of economy, what the instinct of self-preservation is to our physical existence, a powerful principle of creation, preservation and of renewed life (I. Thessal., 4, 11, seq.).[106] Then there is the incentive of the demand of God's voice within us, the voice of conscience, whether we call it, in philosophic outline “the adumbration of the ideas of equity, right, benevolence, of perfection and inner freedom,” or, framing our lives in accordance with them, the striving after the Kingdom of God.[107] It matters not, how much the image of God may have been disfigured in most men, there is no one in whom the longing for it has so far disappeared as to leave no trace behind. This puts bounds to our self-interest, and [pg 075] transmutes it into an earthly means to enable us to approximate to an eternal ideal.

As, in the structure of the world, the apparently opposing tendencies of the centrifugal and centripetal forces produce the harmony of the spheres, so, in the social life of man, self-interest and conscience produce in him the feeling for the common good.[108] This sentiment of the common interest is the foundation on which rise in successive gradation, the life of the family, of the community, of the nation and of humanity, the last of which should be coincident with the life of the Church. It, alone, can realize the kingdom of heaven on earth. Through this sentiment alone can religion be made active and moral. Only through it, can self-interest be made really sure and always to the purpose. Even the most calculating mind must acknowledge, that numberless institutions, relations etc., are useful and even necessary to many individuals, which can be established or maintained only from a sense of the general welfare, for the reason that no one individual could make the sacrifice required to establish or maintain them. And so, since commerce has wrought the interests of all men into one great piece of net-work, the best means of obtaining wherewith to satisfy our own wants is to help others satisfy theirs. Self-interest causes every one to choose the course in life in which he shall meet with the least competition and the most abundant patronage; in other words, that which answers to the most pressing and least satisfied want of the community. As a rule, the physician who cures the greatest number of patients with the greatest skill, and the manufacturer who produces the best goods cheapest, will grow to be the richest. It is, moreover, easy to see that, according as the circle of common interests grows smaller, it approximates to self-interest; and [pg 076] to “the Kingdom of God”[109] as it grows larger. And yet, all these circles respectively condition one another. Cosmopolitanism or church-zeal, without love of country; patriotism, without fidelity to the community in which one lives, or love of one's family, are more than suspicious. The reverse is also true. This is a chief connecting link between the great apparent opposites.[110][111]

Section XII.

Economy.—Grades Of Economy.

Thanks to this feeling for the common weal, the eternal and destructive war—the bellum omnium contra omnes—which an unscrupulous self-interest would not fail to generate among men engaged in the isolated prosecution of their own economic interests, ceases in the higher, well-ordered organization[112] of society. On it are based the various forms of economy in common: family-economy, corporation or association-economy, [pg 078] municipal economy, and national economy.[113] And these forms of economy in common are so essentially the condition and complement of individual economy, that the latter, without them, could either not be maintained at all, or, at least, only in the very lowest stage of civilization.