Position Of Political Economy In The Circle Of Related Sciences.
Section XVI.
Political Or National Economy.
By the science of national,[130] or Political Economy, we understand the science which has to do with the laws of the development of the economy of a nation, or with its economic national life. (Philosophy of the history of Political Economy, [pg 088] according to von Mangoldt.) Like all the political sciences, or sciences of national life, it is concerned, on the one hand, with the consideration of the individual man, and on the other, it extends its investigations to the whole of human kind.[131]
National life, like all life, is a whole, the various phenomena of which are most intimately connected with one another. Hence it is, that to understand one side of it scientifically, it is necessary to know all its sides. But, especially, is it necessary to fix one's attention on the following seven: language, religion, art, science, law, the state and economy.[132] Without language, all higher mental activity is unthinkable; without religion, all else would lose its firmest foundation and highest aim. Through art, alone, do all these sides attain to beauty; through science, alone, to clearness. Law arises, the moment conflicts of will become inevitable and an adjustment is desired. The state has to do with them, in so far as they have any external force or validity. Indeed, there is no human relation, not even the highest and the sweetest, but has its economic interests. It is, therefore, natural, that each of the sciences which relate to these various regions of human life should, in part, presuppose all others, and, in part, serve as a basis for them.[133]
But in the midst of this universal relationship, it is easy to see that law, the state and economy constitute a family, as it were apart and more closely connected. (The social sciences, in the narrower sense of the expression.)
They are confined almost exclusively to what Schleiermacher has called “effective action” (wirksame Handeln), while art and science belong almost entirely to the “action of representation” (darstellenden Handeln); and religion and language combine both kinds. Law, the state, and economy too, have their roots so deep in the physical and intellectual imperfection of man, that we can scarcely imagine their continuance beyond his life on earth (Gospel of Matthew, 22, 30). But within these limits, their several provinces and the subjects with which they are concerned are almost coincident. They only consider these from different points of view: the science of politics from that of sovereignty; the science of Political Economy from that of the satisfaction of the requirement of external goods by the people; the science of law from that of the prevention or the peaceable adjustment of conflicts of will. As every economic act, consciously or unconsciously, supposes forms of law, so, by far the greater number of the laws relating to rights, and the greater number of judgments in the matter of rights, contain an economic element. In numberless cases, the science of law gives us only the external how; the deeper why is revealed to us by the science of Political Economy.[134][135] And, as to the state, who, for instance, can appreciate [pg 090] the political significance of a nobility, without understanding the economic character of rent, and of the possession of large landed estates? Who can politically appreciate the inferior classes of society, unless initiated into a knowledge of the laws that govern wages and population? It were much easier to cultivate psychology without physiology! “The state is society protected by force” (Herbart). There are two bases to all material power:[136] wealth and warlike ability (χρήματα—ναυτικά, according to Thucydides); and how much the latter has need of the former is well expressed by the familiar saying of Montecuccoli: “Money is not only the first, but the second and third condition of war.”[137]
Frederick the Great calls finance the pulse of the state, and Richelieu, the point of support which Archimedes was in search of, to move the world. In all modern nations, the history of the debates on the raising of revenue and of the passing of budgets is, at the same time, the history of parliamentary life; and most great revolutions, the Reformation of the sixteenth century not excepted, if not caused have been promoted, by financial embarrassment.