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NOTE 10. Historicism

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Chapter 10 Historicism

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1.

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The Meaning of Historicism

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Historicism developed from the end of the 18th century on as a reaction against the

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social philosophy of rationalism.

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To the reforms and policies advocated by various authors of the Enlightenment, it opposed a

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program of preservation of existing institutions and, sometimes, even of a return to extinct

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Institutions Against the postulates of reason, it appealed

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to the authority of tradition and the wisdom of ages gone by.

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The main target of its critique was the ideas that had inspired the American and the French

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revolutions and kindred movements in other countries.

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Its champions proudly called themselves anti-revolutionary and emphasized their rigid conservatism.

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But in later years, the political orientation of historicism changed.

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It began to regard capitalism and free trade, both domestic and international, as the foremost

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evil and joined hands with the radical or leftist foes of the market economy, aggressive nationalism

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on the one hand and revolutionary socialism on the other.

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As far as historicism still has actual political importance, it is ancillary to socialism and

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to nationalism.

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Its conservatism has almost withered away.

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It survives only in the doctrines of some religious groups.

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People have again and again stressed the congeniality of historicism and artistic and literary romanticism.

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The analogy is rather superficial.

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Both movements had in common a taste for the conditions of ages gone by and an extravagant

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overestimation of old customs and institutions.

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But this enthusiasm for the past is not the essential feature of historicism.

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Historicism is, first of all, an epistemological doctrine and must be viewed as such.

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The fundamental thesis of historicism is the proposition that, apart from the natural sciences,

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mathematics, and logic, there is no knowledge but that provided by history.

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There is no regularity in the concatenation and sequence of phenomena and events in the

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sphere of human action.

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Consequently, the attempts to develop a science of economics and to discover economic laws

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are vain.

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The only sensible method of dealing with human action, exploits, and institutions is the

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historical method.

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The historian traces every phenomenon back to its origins.

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He depicts the changes going on in human affairs.

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He approaches his material, the records of the past, without any prepossessions and preconceived

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ideas.

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The historian utilizes sometimes, in preliminary, merely technical, and ancillary examination

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In the introduction of these sources, the results of the natural sciences, as, for instance,

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in determining the age of the material on which a document of disputed authenticity is

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written.

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But in his proper field, the exposition of past events, he does not rely upon any other

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branch of knowledge.

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The standards and general rules to which he resorts in dealing with the historical material

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are to be abstracted from this very material.

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must not be borrowed from any other source.

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The extravagance of these claims was later reduced to a more modest measure when Dilte

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stressed the role psychology plays in the work of the historian.

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The champions of historicism accepted this restriction and did not insist on their extreme

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description of the historical method.

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They were merely interested in the condemnation of economics and had no quarrel with psychology.

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If the historicists had been consistent, they would have substituted economic history for

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the, in their opinion, counterfeit science of economics.

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We may pass over the question how economic history could be treated without economic

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theory.

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But this would not have served their political plans.

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What they wanted was to propagandize for their interventionists or socialist programs.

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The wholesale rejection of economics was only one item in their strategy.

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relieved them from the embarrassment created by their inability to explode the economist's

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devastating critique of socialism and interventionism.

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But it did not in itself demonstrate the soundness of a pro-socialist or interventionist policy.

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In order to justify their unorthodox leanings, the historicists developed a rather self-contradictory

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discipline to which various names were given, such as realistic or institutional or ethical

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Economics or the Economic Aspects of Political Science.

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Most champions of these schools of thought did not bother about an epistemological explanation

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of their procedures.

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Only a few tried to justify their method.

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We may call their doctrine, Periodalism, and their supporters, Periodalists.

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The main idea underlying all these attempts to construct a quasi-economic doctrine that

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that could be employed to justify policies fighting the market economy, was borrowed

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from positivism.

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As historicists, the periodalists talked indefatigably about something they called the historical

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method and claimed to be historians, but they adopted the essential tenets of positivism,

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which rejected history as useless and meaningless chatter and wanted to inaugurate in its place

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a new science to be modeled after the pattern of Newtonian mechanics.

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The Periodalists accepted the thesis that it is possible to derive from historical experience

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a posteriori laws which, once they are discovered, will form a new, not yet existing, science

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of social physics or sociology or institutional economics.

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Only in one regard did the Periodalists' version of this thesis differ from that of

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the positivists.

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The positivists had laws in mind that would be valid universally.

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The Periodalists believed that every period of history has its own economic laws different

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from those of other periods of economic history.

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The Periodalists distinguish various periods in the course of historical events.

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Obviously, the criterion according to which this distinction is made is the characteristics

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of the economic laws determining economic becoming in each period.

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Thus, the Periodalists' argument moves in a circle.

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The periodization of economic history presupposes knowledge of the economic laws peculiar to

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each period, while these laws can only be discovered by examining each period without

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any reference to the events that happened in other periods.

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The periodalist's image of the course of history is this.

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There are various periods or stages of economic evolution succeeding one another according

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to a definite order.

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About each of these periods, the economic laws remain unchanged.

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Nothing is said about the transition from one period to the next.

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If we assume that it is not brought about at one blow, we must assume that between two

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periods there is an interval of transition, a transition period as it were.

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What happens in this interval?

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What kind of economic laws are operative in it?

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Is it a time of lawlessness, or has it its own laws?

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Besides, if one assumes that the laws of economic becoming are historical facts, and therefore

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changing in the flux of historical events, it is manifestly contradictory to assert that

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there are periods in which there is no change, that is, periods in which there is no history,

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and that between two such periods of rest, there is a period of transition.

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The same fallacy is also implied in the concept of a present age as resorted to by contemporary

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pseudo-economics.

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Studies dealing with the economic history of the recent past are mislabeled as dealing

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with present economic conditions.

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If we refer to a definite length of time as the present, we mean that in regard to a special

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issue conditions remain unchanged throughout this period.

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The concept of the present is therefore different for various fields of action.

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Besides, it is never certain how long this absence of change will last and, consequently,

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how much of the future has to be included.

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What a man can say about the future is always merely speculative anticipation.

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Dealing with some conditions of the recent past under the heading present conditions

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is a misnomer.

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The most that can be said is, such were the conditions yesterday.

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We expect they will remain unchanged for some time to come.

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Economics deals with irregularity in the concatenation and sequence of phenomena that is valid in

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the whole field of human action.

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It can therefore contribute to the elucidation of future events.

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It can predict within the limits drawn to praxeological prediction.

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If one rejects the idea of an economic law necessarily valid for all ages, one no longer

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has the possibility of discovering any regularity that remains unchanged in the flux of events.

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Then one can say no more than, if conditions remain unchanged for some time, they will

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remain unchanged.

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But whether or not they really remain unchanged can only be known afterward.

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The honest historicist would have to say, nothing can be asserted about the future.

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Nobody can know how a definite policy will work in the future.

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All we believe to know is how similar policies worked in the past.

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Provided all relevant conditions remain unchanged, we may expect that the future effects will

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not widely differ from those of the past.

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But we do not know whether or not these relevant conditions will remain unchanged.

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Hence, we cannot make any prognostication about the necessarily future effects of any

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measure considered.

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We are dealing with the history of the past, not with the history of the future.

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A dogma supported by many historicists asserts that tendencies of social and economic evolution

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as manifested in the past, and especially in the recent past, will prevail in the future

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too.

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Many of the past, they conclude, discloses therefore the shape of things to come.

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Leaving aside all the metaphysical ideas with which this trend philosophy has been loaded,

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we have only to realize that trends can change, have changed in the past, and will change

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in the future too.

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The historicist does not know when the next change will occur.

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What he can announce about trends refers only to the past, never to the future.

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Some of the German historicists liked to compare their periodization of economic history with

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the periodization of the history of art.

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As the history of art deals with the succession of various styles of artistic activities,

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economic history deals with the succession of various styles of economic activities.

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This metaphor is neither better nor worse than other metaphors.

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But what the historicists who resorted to it failed to say was that the historians of

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of Art talk only about the styles of the past and do not develop doctrines about the art

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styles of the future.

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However, the historicists are writing and lecturing about the economic conditions of

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the past only in order to derive from them conclusions about economic policies that necessarily

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are directed toward the economic conditions of the future.

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2.

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The Rejection of Economics

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As historicism sees it, the essential error of economics consists in its assumption that

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man is invariably egoistic and aims exclusively at material well-being.

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According to Gunnar Myrdal, economics asserts that human actions are solely motivated by

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economic interests and considers as economic interests the desire for higher incomes and

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and lower prices, and, in addition, perhaps stability of earnings and employment, reasonable

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time for leisure and an environment conducive to its satisfactory use, good working conditions,

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etc.

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This, he says, is an error.

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One does not completely account for human motivations by simply registering economic

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interests.

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What really determines human conduct is not interests alone, but attitudes.

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Rudd means the emotive disposition of an individual or a group to respond in certain ways to

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actual or potential situations.

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There are, fortunately, many people whose attitudes are not identical with their interests.

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Now the assertion that economics ever maintained that men are solely motivated by the striving

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after higher incomes and lower prices is false.

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Because of their failure to disentangle the apparent paradox of the use-value concept,

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The classical economists and their epigones were prevented from providing a satisfactory

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interpretation of the conduct of the consumers. They virtually dealt only with the conduct

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of the businessmen who serve the consumers and for whom the valuations of their customers

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are the ultimate standard. When they referred to the principle of buying on the cheapest

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market and selling on the dearest market, they were trying to interpret the actions

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They did not enter into an analysis of the motives prompting the individual consumers

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to buy and to consume, so they did not investigate whether individuals try only to fill their

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bellies or whether they also spend for other purposes, for example, to perform what they

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consider to be their ethical and religious duties.

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When they distinguished between purely economic motives and other motives, the classical economists

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referred only to the acquisitive side of human behavior.

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They never thought of denying that men are also driven by other motives.

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The approach of classical economics appears highly unsatisfactory from the point of view

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of modern subjective economics.

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Modern economics rejects as entirely fallacious also the argument advanced for the epistemological

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Classical Justification of the Classical Methods by their last followers, especially John

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Stuart Mill.

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According to this lame apology, pure economics deals only with the economic aspect of the

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operations of mankind, only with the phenomena of the production of wealth, as far as those

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phenomena are not modified by the pursuit of any other object.

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But, says Mill, in order to deal adequately with reality, the didactic writer on the subject

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will naturally combine in his exposition with the truth of pure science, as many of the

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practical modifications as will, in his estimation, be most conducive to the usefulness of his

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work.

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This certainly explodes Mr. Myrdal's assertion, so far as classical economics is concerned.

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Modern economics traces all human actions back to the value judgments of individuals.

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It never was so foolish, as Myrdal charges, as to believe that all that people are after

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is higher incomes and lower prices.

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Against this unjustified criticism, which has been repeated a hundred times, Boehm-Bawerk,

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already in his first contribution to the theory of value and then later again and again, explicitly

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emphasized that the term well-being, as he uses it in the exposition of the theory of

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of Value does not refer only to concerns commonly called egoistic, but comprehends everything

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that appears to an individual as desirable and worthy of being aimed at.

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In acting, man prefers some things to other things, and chooses between various modes

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of conduct.

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The result of the mental process that makes a man prefer one thing to another thing is

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called a judgment of value.

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When speaking of value and valuations, economics refers to such judgments of value, whatever

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their content may be. It is irrelevant for economics, up to now the best developed part

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of praxeology, whether an individual aims like a member of a labor union at higher wages,

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or like a saint at the best performance of religious duties. The institutional fact that

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But most people are eager to get more tangible good is a datum of economic history, not

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a theorem of economics.

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All brands of historicism, the German and the British historical schools of the social

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sciences, American institutionalism, the adepts of Sismondi, Laplace, and Veblen, and many

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kindred unorthodox sects, emphatically reject economics.

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But their writings are full of inferences drawn from general propositions about the

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effects of various modes of acting.

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It is, of course, impossible to deal with any institutional or historical problem without

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referring to such general propositions.

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Every historical report, no matter whether its theme is the conditions and events of

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a remote past or those of yesterday, is inevitably based on a definite kind of economic theory.

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The historicists do not eliminate economic reasoning from their treatises.

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While rejecting an economic doctrine they do not like, they resort in dealing with events

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to fallacious doctrines long since refuted by the economists.

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The theorems of economics, say the historicists, are void because they are the product of a priori

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reasoning.

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Only historical experience can lead to realistic economics.

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They fail to see that historical experience is always the experience of complex phenomena,

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00:18:36.380 --> 00:18:41.700
of the joint effects brought about by the operation of a multiplicity of elements.

237
00:18:41.700 --> 00:18:46.800
Such historical experience does not give the observer facts in the sense in which the natural

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00:18:46.800 --> 00:18:51.940
sciences apply this term to the results obtained in laboratory experiments.

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00:18:51.940 --> 00:18:57.460
People who call their offices, studies and libraries laboratories for research and economics,

240
00:18:57.460 --> 00:19:02.580
Statistics or the social sciences are hopelessly muddleheaded.

241
00:19:02.580 --> 00:19:07.580
Historical facts need to be interpreted on the ground of previously available theorems.

242
00:19:07.580 --> 00:19:10.620
They do not comment upon themselves.

243
00:19:10.620 --> 00:19:17.020
The antagonism between economics and historicism does not concern the historical facts.

244
00:19:17.020 --> 00:19:20.380
It concerns the interpretation of the facts.

245
00:19:20.380 --> 00:19:26.420
In investigating and narrating facts, a scholar may provide a valuable contribution to history,

246
00:19:26.420 --> 00:19:32.340
and he does not contribute to the increase and perfection of economic knowledge.

247
00:19:32.340 --> 00:19:38.260
Let us once more refer to the often repeated proposition that what the economists call economic

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laws are merely principles governing conditions under capitalism and of no avail for a differently

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00:19:44.380 --> 00:19:50.560
organized society, especially not for the coming socialist management of affairs.

250
00:19:50.560 --> 00:19:56.020
As these critics see it, it is only the capitalists with their acquisitiveness who bother about

251
00:19:56.020 --> 00:19:58.940
About Costs and About Profit

252
00:19:58.940 --> 00:20:03.780
Once production for use has been substituted for production for profit, the categories

253
00:20:03.780 --> 00:20:07.740
of cost and profit will become meaningless.

254
00:20:07.740 --> 00:20:13.060
The primary error of economics consists in considering these and other categories as

255
00:20:13.060 --> 00:20:18.380
eternal principles determining action under any kind of institutional conditions.

256
00:20:18.380 --> 00:20:23.940
However, cost is an element in any kind of human action, whatever the particular features

257
00:20:23.940 --> 00:20:32.340
Cost is the value of those things the actor renounces in order to attain what he wants

258
00:20:32.340 --> 00:20:33.980
to attain.

259
00:20:33.980 --> 00:20:39.660
It is the value he attaches to the most urgently desired satisfaction among those satisfactions

260
00:20:39.660 --> 00:20:44.020
which he cannot have because he preferred another to it.

261
00:20:44.020 --> 00:20:46.900
It is the price paid for a thing.

262
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If a young man says, This examination cost me a weekend with friends in the country,

263
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Money means, if I had not chosen to prepare for my examination, I would have spent this

264
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weekend with friends in the country.

265
00:21:01.380 --> 00:21:07.700
Things it costs no sacrifice to attain are not economic goods, but free goods, and as

266
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such no objects of any action.

267
00:21:11.460 --> 00:21:13.940
Economics does not deal with them.

268
00:21:13.940 --> 00:21:19.140
Man does not have to choose between them and other satisfactions.

269
00:21:19.140 --> 00:21:24.100
is the difference between the higher value of the good obtained and the lower value of

270
00:21:24.100 --> 00:21:27.540
the good sacrificed for its obtainment.

271
00:21:27.540 --> 00:21:32.980
If the action, due to bungling, error, and unanticipated change in conditions or to other

272
00:21:32.980 --> 00:21:38.540
circumstances, results in obtaining something to which the actor attaches a lower value

273
00:21:38.540 --> 00:21:43.580
than to the price paid, the action generates a loss.

274
00:21:43.580 --> 00:21:48.660
Since action invariably aims to substitute a state of affairs which the actor considers

275
00:21:48.660 --> 00:21:54.080
Actions as more satisfactory for a state which he considers less satisfactory, action always

276
00:21:54.080 --> 00:21:58.200
aims at profit and never at loss.

277
00:21:58.200 --> 00:22:03.420
This is valid not only for the actions of individuals in a market economy, but no less

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00:22:03.420 --> 00:22:08.660
for the actions of the economic director of a socialist society.

279
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3.

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The Quest for Laws of Historical Change

281
00:22:15.500 --> 00:22:23.480
A widespread error confuses historicism and history, yet the two have nothing in common.

282
00:22:23.480 --> 00:22:28.240
History is the presentation of the course of past events and conditions, a statement

283
00:22:28.240 --> 00:22:31.580
of facts and of their effects.

284
00:22:31.580 --> 00:22:35.240
Historicism is an epistemological doctrine.

285
00:22:35.240 --> 00:22:40.000
Some schools of historicism have declared that history is the only way to deal with

286
00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:45.440
human action and have denied the adequacy, possibility, and meaningfulness of a general

287
00:22:45.440 --> 00:22:48.780
All Theoretical Science of Human Action.

288
00:22:48.780 --> 00:22:54.300
Other schools have condemned history as unscientific and, paradoxically enough, have developed

289
00:22:54.300 --> 00:22:59.060
a sympathetic attitude toward the negative part of the doctrines of the positivists who

290
00:22:59.060 --> 00:23:04.420
asked for a new science which, modeled on the pattern of Newtonian physics, should derive

291
00:23:04.420 --> 00:23:10.700
from historical experience, laws of historical evolution and of dynamic change.

292
00:23:10.700 --> 00:23:16.180
The natural sciences have developed, on the basis of Carnot's second law of thermodynamics,

293
00:23:16.180 --> 00:23:20.180
a doctrine about the course of the history of the universe.

294
00:23:20.180 --> 00:23:25.400
Free energy capable of work depends on thermodynamic instability.

295
00:23:25.400 --> 00:23:30.060
The process producing such energy is irreversible.

296
00:23:30.060 --> 00:23:36.060
Once all free energy produced by unstable systems is exhausted, life and civilization

297
00:23:36.060 --> 00:23:37.820
will cease.

298
00:23:37.820 --> 00:23:43.140
In the light of this cognition, the universe as we know it appears as an evanescent episode

299
00:23:43.140 --> 00:23:45.380
in the flux of eternity.

300
00:23:45.380 --> 00:23:48.780
It moves toward its own extinction.

301
00:23:48.780 --> 00:23:55.540
But the law from which this inference is drawn, Carnot's second law, is in itself not a historical

302
00:23:55.540 --> 00:23:57.620
or dynamic law.

303
00:23:57.620 --> 00:24:02.960
Like all other laws of the natural sciences, it is derived from the observation of phenomena

304
00:24:02.960 --> 00:24:05.660
and verified by experiments.

305
00:24:05.660 --> 00:24:11.020
We call it a law because it describes a process that repeats itself whenever the conditions

306
00:24:11.020 --> 00:24:13.940
for its operation are present.

307
00:24:13.940 --> 00:24:19.900
The process is irreversible, and from this fact, scientists infer that the conditions

308
00:24:19.900 --> 00:24:26.580
for its operation will no longer be given once all thermodynamic instability has disappeared.

309
00:24:26.580 --> 00:24:31.740
The notion of a law of historical change is self-contradictory.

310
00:24:31.740 --> 00:24:37.340
History is a sequence of phenomena that are characterized by their singularity.

311
00:24:37.340 --> 00:24:43.260
Those features which an event has in common with other events are not historical.

312
00:24:43.260 --> 00:24:48.420
What murder cases have in common refers to penal law, to psychology, to the technique

313
00:24:48.420 --> 00:24:50.100
of killing.

314
00:24:50.100 --> 00:24:55.820
As historical events, the assassination of Julius Caesar and that of Henry IV of France

315
00:24:55.820 --> 00:24:58.420
are entirely different.

316
00:24:58.420 --> 00:25:03.980
The importance of an event for the production of further events is what counts for history.

317
00:25:03.980 --> 00:25:08.260
This effect of an event is unique and unrepeatable.

318
00:25:08.260 --> 00:25:14.180
Seen from the point of view of American constitutional law, the presidential elections of 1860 and

319
00:25:14.180 --> 00:25:18.100
of 1956 belong to the same class.

320
00:25:18.100 --> 00:25:22.900
For history, they are two distinct events in the flux of affairs.

321
00:25:22.900 --> 00:25:28.380
If a historian compares them, he does so in order to elucidate the differences between

322
00:25:28.380 --> 00:25:34.380
Not in order to discover laws that govern any instance of an American presidential election.

323
00:25:34.380 --> 00:25:44.380
Sometimes, people formulate certain rules of thumb concerning such elections, as for instance, the party in power wins if business is booming.

324
00:25:44.380 --> 00:25:48.380
These rules are an attempt to understand the conduct of the voters.

325
00:25:48.380 --> 00:25:57.380
Nobody ascribes to them the necessity and apodictic validity which is the essential logical feature of a law of the natural sciences.

326
00:25:57.380 --> 00:26:02.420
Everybody is fully aware that the voters might proceed in a different way.

327
00:26:02.420 --> 00:26:08.120
Carnot's second law is not the result of a study of the history of the universe.

328
00:26:08.120 --> 00:26:13.500
It is a proposition about phenomena that are repeated daily and hourly in precisely the

329
00:26:13.500 --> 00:26:16.100
way the law describes.

330
00:26:16.100 --> 00:26:22.540
From this law, science deduces certain consequences concerning the future of the universe.

331
00:26:22.540 --> 00:26:26.740
This deduced knowledge is in itself not a law.

332
00:26:26.740 --> 00:26:29.180
It is the application of a law.

333
00:26:29.180 --> 00:26:33.940
It is a prognostication of future events made on the basis of a law that describes what is

334
00:26:33.940 --> 00:26:40.780
believed to be an inexorable necessity in the sequence of repeatable and repeated events.

335
00:26:40.780 --> 00:26:45.940
Neither is Darwin's principle of natural selection a law of historical evolution.

336
00:26:45.940 --> 00:26:52.580
It tries to explain biological change as the outcome of the operation of a biological law.

337
00:26:52.580 --> 00:26:57.500
interprets the past, it does not prognosticate things to come.

338
00:26:57.500 --> 00:27:02.300
Although the operation of the principle of natural selection may be considered as perennial,

339
00:27:02.300 --> 00:27:07.860
it is not permissible to infer that man must inevitably develop into a sort of superman.

340
00:27:07.860 --> 00:27:13.140
A line of evolutionary change may lead into a dead end beyond which there is no further

341
00:27:13.140 --> 00:27:18.020
change at all or a retrogression to previous states.

342
00:27:18.020 --> 00:27:23.240
As it is impossible to deduce any general laws from the observation of historical change,

343
00:27:23.240 --> 00:27:28.740
the program of dynamic historicism could only be realized by discovering that the operation

344
00:27:28.740 --> 00:27:34.180
of one or several praxeological laws must inevitably result in the emergence of definite

345
00:27:34.180 --> 00:27:37.340
conditions of the future.

346
00:27:37.340 --> 00:27:43.080
Praxeology and its until now best developed branch, economics, never claimed to know anything

347
00:27:43.080 --> 00:27:45.880
about such matters.

348
00:27:45.880 --> 00:27:59.780
Everything that has been said about future historical events, inevitably bound to come,

349
00:27:59.780 --> 00:28:05.620
stems from prophecies elaborated by the metaphysical methods of the philosophy of history.

350
00:28:05.620 --> 00:28:11.180
By dint of intuition, the author guesses the plans of the prime mover, and all uncertainty

351
00:28:11.180 --> 00:28:13.720
about the future disappears.

352
00:28:13.720 --> 00:28:19.400
The author of the apocalypse, Hegel and, above all, Marx, held themselves to be perfectly

353
00:28:19.400 --> 00:28:22.780
familiar with the laws of historical evolution.

354
00:28:22.780 --> 00:28:25.820
But the source of their knowledge was not science.

355
00:28:25.820 --> 00:28:29.720
It was the revelation of an inner voice.

356
00:28:29.720 --> 00:28:32.620
4.

357
00:28:32.620 --> 00:28:35.200
HISTORICIST RELATIVISM

358
00:28:35.200 --> 00:28:40.760
The ideas of historicism can be understood only if one takes into account that they sought

359
00:28:40.760 --> 00:28:47.160
exclusively one end, to negate everything that rationalist social philosophy and economics

360
00:28:47.160 --> 00:28:49.340
had established.

361
00:28:49.340 --> 00:28:54.000
In this pursuit, many historicists did not shrink from any absurdity.

362
00:28:54.000 --> 00:28:59.100
Thus, to the statement of the economists that there is an inevitable scarcity of nature-given

363
00:28:59.100 --> 00:29:05.280
factors upon which human well-being depends, they opposed the fantastic assertion that

364
00:29:05.280 --> 00:29:08.320
there is abundance and plenty.

365
00:29:08.320 --> 00:29:15.400
What brings about poverty and want, they say, is the inadequacy of social institutions.

366
00:29:15.400 --> 00:29:20.260
When the economists referred to progress, they looked upon conditions from the point of view

367
00:29:20.260 --> 00:29:23.540
of the ends sought by acting men.

368
00:29:23.540 --> 00:29:27.500
There was nothing metaphysical in their concept of progress.

369
00:29:27.500 --> 00:29:30.560
Most men want to live and to prolong their lives.

370
00:29:30.560 --> 00:29:33.140
They want to be healthy and to avoid sickness.

371
00:29:33.140 --> 00:29:37.520
They want to live comfortably and not to exist on the verge of starvation.

372
00:29:37.520 --> 00:29:42.520
In the eyes of acting men, advance toward these goals means improvement.

373
00:29:42.520 --> 00:29:45.720
The reverse means impairment.

374
00:29:45.720 --> 00:29:51.940
This is the meaning of the terms progress and retrogression as applied by economists.

375
00:29:51.940 --> 00:29:56.880
In this sense, they call a drop in infant mortality, or success in fighting contagious

376
00:29:56.880 --> 00:29:59.440
diseases, progress.

377
00:29:59.440 --> 00:30:03.520
The question is not whether such progress makes people happy.

378
00:30:03.520 --> 00:30:07.160
It makes them happier than they would otherwise have been.

379
00:30:07.160 --> 00:30:12.240
Most mothers feel happier if their children survive, and most people feel happier without

380
00:30:12.240 --> 00:30:15.560
tuberculosis than with it.

381
00:30:15.560 --> 00:30:20.400
Looking upon conditions from his personal point of view, Nietzsche expressed misgivings

382
00:30:20.400 --> 00:30:26.520
about the much too many, but the objects of his contempt thought differently.

383
00:30:26.520 --> 00:30:31.720
In dealing with the means to which men resorted in their actions, history as well as economics

384
00:30:31.720 --> 00:30:36.480
distinguishes between means which were fit to attain the end sought, and those which

385
00:30:36.480 --> 00:30:38.080
were not.

386
00:30:38.080 --> 00:30:43.320
In this sense, progress is the substitution of more suitable methods of action for less

387
00:30:43.320 --> 00:30:45.420
suitable.

388
00:30:45.420 --> 00:30:48.320
Historicism takes offense at this terminology.

389
00:30:48.320 --> 00:30:53.440
All things are relative and must be viewed from the point of view of their age.

390
00:30:53.440 --> 00:30:59.080
Yet no champion of historicism has the boldness to contend that exorcism ever was a suitable

391
00:30:59.080 --> 00:31:02.440
Historical Means to Cure Sick Cows

392
00:31:02.440 --> 00:31:06.880
But the historicists are less cautious in dealing with economics.

393
00:31:06.880 --> 00:31:12.720
For instance, they declare that what economics teaches about the effects of price control

394
00:31:12.720 --> 00:31:16.480
is inapplicable to the conditions of the Middle Ages.

395
00:31:16.480 --> 00:31:22.280
The historical works of authors imbued with the ideas of historicism are muddled precisely

396
00:31:22.280 --> 00:31:27.960
on account of their rejection of economics, while emphasizing that they do not want to

397
00:31:27.960 --> 00:31:33.900
To judge the past by any preconceived standard, the historicists, in fact, try to justify

398
00:31:33.900 --> 00:31:37.800
the policies of the good old days.

399
00:31:37.800 --> 00:31:42.240
Instead of approaching the theme of their studies with the best mental equipment available,

400
00:31:42.240 --> 00:31:45.400
they rely upon the fables of pseudo-economics.

401
00:31:45.400 --> 00:31:50.520
They cling to the superstition that decreeing and enforcing maximum prices below the height

402
00:31:50.520 --> 00:31:56.360
of the potential prices, which the unhampered market would fix, is a suitable means to improve

403
00:31:56.360 --> 00:31:58.860
of the Conditions of the Buyers

404
00:31:58.860 --> 00:32:03.780
They omit to mention the documentary evidence of the failure of the just price policy and

405
00:32:03.780 --> 00:32:08.680
of its effects which, from the point of view of the rulers who resorted to it, were more

406
00:32:08.680 --> 00:32:13.960
undesirable than the previous state of affairs which they were designed to alter.

407
00:32:13.960 --> 00:32:19.240
One of the vain reproaches heaped by historicists on the economists is their alleged lack of

408
00:32:19.240 --> 00:32:21.080
historical sense.

409
00:32:21.080 --> 00:32:25.760
Economists, they say, believe that it would have been possible to improve the material

410
00:32:25.760 --> 00:32:38.520
Now, there can be no doubt that the conditions of the Roman Empire would have been considerably

411
00:32:38.520 --> 00:32:43.480
affected if the emperors had not resorted to currency debasement and had not adopted

412
00:32:43.480 --> 00:32:45.980
a policy of price ceilings.

413
00:32:45.980 --> 00:32:51.360
It is no less obvious that the mass penury in Asia was caused by the fact that the despotic

414
00:32:51.360 --> 00:32:56.200
government nipped in the bud all endeavors to accumulate capital.

415
00:32:56.200 --> 00:33:01.560
The Asiatics, unlike the Western Europeans, did not develop a legal and constitutional

416
00:33:01.560 --> 00:33:06.760
system which would have provided the opportunity for large-scale capital accumulation, and

417
00:33:06.760 --> 00:33:11.720
the public, actuated by the old fallacy that a businessman's wealth is the cause of other

418
00:33:11.720 --> 00:33:18.820
people's poverty, applauded whenever rulers confiscated the holdings of successful merchants.

419
00:33:18.820 --> 00:33:24.660
The economists have always been aware that the evolution of ideas is a slow, time-consuming

420
00:33:24.660 --> 00:33:26.500
process.

421
00:33:26.500 --> 00:33:31.860
The history of knowledge is the account of a series of successive steps made by men,

422
00:33:31.860 --> 00:33:35.700
each of whom adds something to the thoughts of his predecessors.

423
00:33:35.700 --> 00:33:41.060
It is not surprising that Democritus of Abdera did not develop the quantum theory or that

424
00:33:41.060 --> 00:33:45.860
the geometry of Pythagoras and Euclid is different from that of Hilbert.

425
00:33:45.860 --> 00:33:50.120
Nobody ever thought that a contemporary of Pericles could have created the free trade

426
00:33:50.120 --> 00:33:58.080
philosophy of Hume, Adam Smith, and Ricardo and converted Athens into an emporium of capitalism.

427
00:33:58.080 --> 00:34:02.900
There is no need to analyze the opinion of many historicists that to the soul of some

428
00:34:02.900 --> 00:34:08.720
nations the practices of capitalism appear so repulsive that they will never adopt them.

429
00:34:08.720 --> 00:34:12.480
If there are such peoples, they will forever remain poor.

430
00:34:12.480 --> 00:34:16.580
There is but one road that leads toward prosperity and freedom.

431
00:34:16.580 --> 00:34:22.760
Can any historicist on the ground of historical experience contest this truth?

432
00:34:22.760 --> 00:34:28.080
No general rules about the effects of various modes of action and of definite social institutions

433
00:34:28.080 --> 00:34:31.520
can be derived from historical experience.

434
00:34:31.520 --> 00:34:37.480
In this sense, the famous dictum is true that the study of history can teach only one thing,

435
00:34:37.480 --> 00:34:41.360
namely, that nothing can be learned from history.

436
00:34:41.360 --> 00:34:46.080
You could therefore agree with the historicists in not paying much attention to the indisputable

437
00:34:46.080 --> 00:34:51.440
fact that no people ever raised itself to a somewhat satisfactory state of welfare and

438
00:34:51.440 --> 00:34:57.340
civilization without the institution of private ownership of the means of production.

439
00:34:57.340 --> 00:35:02.680
It is not history but economics that clarifies our thoughts about the effects of property

440
00:35:02.680 --> 00:35:03.680
rights.

441
00:35:03.680 --> 00:35:09.240
But we must entirely reject the reasoning, very popular with many 19th century writers,

442
00:35:09.240 --> 00:35:13.680
But the alleged fact that the institution of private property was unknown to peoples

443
00:35:13.680 --> 00:35:20.200
in primitive stages of civilization is a valid argument in favor of socialism.

444
00:35:20.200 --> 00:35:25.400
Having started as the harbingers of a future society which will wipe out all that is unsatisfactory

445
00:35:25.400 --> 00:35:31.720
and will transform the earth into a paradise, many socialists, for instance Engels, virtually

446
00:35:31.720 --> 00:35:37.520
became advocates of a return to the supposedly blissful conditions of a fabulous golden age

447
00:35:37.520 --> 00:35:39.760
of the Remote Past.

448
00:35:39.760 --> 00:35:45.560
It never occurred to the historicists that man must pay a price for every achievement.

449
00:35:45.560 --> 00:35:49.520
People pay the price if they believe that the benefits derived from the thing to be

450
00:35:49.520 --> 00:35:56.280
acquired outweigh the disadvantages resulting from the sacrifice of something else.

451
00:35:56.280 --> 00:36:02.180
In dealing with this issue, historicism adopts the illusions of romantic poetry.

452
00:36:02.180 --> 00:36:06.720
It sheds tears about the defacement of nature by civilization.

453
00:36:06.720 --> 00:36:12.640
How beautiful were the untouched virgin forests, the waterfalls, the solitary shores before

454
00:36:12.640 --> 00:36:16.440
the greed of acquisitive people spoiled their beauty.

455
00:36:16.440 --> 00:36:22.320
The romantic historicists pass over in silence the fact that the forests were cut down in

456
00:36:22.320 --> 00:36:28.720
order to win arable land and the falls were utilized to produce power and light.

457
00:36:28.720 --> 00:36:34.080
There is no doubt that Coney Island was more idyllic in the days of the Indians than it

458
00:36:34.080 --> 00:36:40.120
is today, but in its present state, it gives millions of New Yorkers an opportunity to

459
00:36:40.120 --> 00:36:44.400
refresh themselves which they cannot get elsewhere.

460
00:36:44.400 --> 00:36:49.680
Talk about the magnificence of untouched nature is idle if it does not take into account what

461
00:36:49.680 --> 00:36:53.360
man has got by desecrating nature.

462
00:36:53.360 --> 00:36:58.920
The earth's marvels were certainly splendid when visitors seldom set foot upon them.

463
00:36:58.920 --> 00:37:03.280
Commercially organized tourist traffic made them accessible to the many.

464
00:37:03.280 --> 00:37:09.800
The man who thinks, what a pity not to be alone on this peak, intruders spoil my pleasure,

465
00:37:09.800 --> 00:37:14.580
fails to remember that he himself probably would not be on the spot if business had not

466
00:37:14.580 --> 00:37:17.960
provided all the facilities required.

467
00:37:17.960 --> 00:37:23.320
The technique of the historicists' indictment of capitalism is simple indeed.

468
00:37:23.320 --> 00:37:28.100
They take all its achievements for granted, but blame it for the disappearance of some

469
00:37:28.100 --> 00:37:32.520
Some enjoyments that are incompatible with it and for some imperfections which still

470
00:37:32.520 --> 00:37:35.180
may disfigure its products.

471
00:37:35.180 --> 00:37:40.740
They forget that mankind has had to pay a price for its achievements, a price paid willingly

472
00:37:40.740 --> 00:37:45.740
because people believe that the gain derived, for example, the prolongation of the average

473
00:37:45.740 --> 00:37:50.180
length of life, is more to be desired.

474
00:37:50.180 --> 00:37:51.900
5.

475
00:37:51.900 --> 00:37:54.980
Dissolving History

476
00:37:54.980 --> 00:37:58.020
History is a sequence of changes.

477
00:37:58.020 --> 00:38:03.540
Every historical situation has its individuality, its own characteristics that distinguish it

478
00:38:03.540 --> 00:38:05.960
from any other situation.

479
00:38:05.960 --> 00:38:11.260
The stream of history never returns to a previously occupied point.

480
00:38:11.260 --> 00:38:14.380
History is not repetitious.

481
00:38:14.380 --> 00:38:19.620
Stating this fact is not to express any opinion about the biological and anthropological problem

482
00:38:19.620 --> 00:38:24.140
of whether mankind is descended from a common human ancestry.

483
00:38:24.140 --> 00:38:28.700
There is no need to raise the question here whether the transformation of subhuman primates

484
00:38:28.700 --> 00:38:33.740
into the species Homo sapiens occurred only once at a definite time and in a definite

485
00:38:33.740 --> 00:38:38.900
part of the earth's surface, or came to pass several times and resulted in the emergence

486
00:38:38.900 --> 00:38:44.260
of various original races. Neither does the establishment of this fact mean that there

487
00:38:44.260 --> 00:38:50.340
is such a thing as unity of civilization. Even if we assume that all men are scions

488
00:38:50.340 --> 00:38:54.660
In the absence of a common human ancestry, there remains the fact that the scarcity of

489
00:38:54.660 --> 00:39:00.020
the means of sustenance brought about a dispersal of people over the globe.

490
00:39:00.020 --> 00:39:04.180
This dispersal resulted in the segregation of various groups.

491
00:39:04.180 --> 00:39:09.540
Each of these groups had to solve for itself man's specific problem of life, how to pursue

492
00:39:09.540 --> 00:39:14.580
the conscious striving after improvement of conditions warranting survival.

493
00:39:14.580 --> 00:39:17.940
Thus, various civilizations emerged.

494
00:39:17.940 --> 00:39:23.860
It will probably never be known to what extent definite civilizations were isolated and independent

495
00:39:23.860 --> 00:39:25.460
of one another.

496
00:39:25.460 --> 00:39:31.540
But it is certain that for thousands of years instances of such cultural isolation existed.

497
00:39:31.540 --> 00:39:37.980
It was only the explorations of European navigators and travelers that finally put an end to it.

498
00:39:37.980 --> 00:39:40.900
Many civilizations came to an impasse.

499
00:39:40.900 --> 00:39:46.220
They either were destroyed by foreign conquerors or disintegrated from within.

500
00:39:46.220 --> 00:39:50.800
Most to the ruins of marvelous structures, the progeny of their builders live in poverty

501
00:39:50.800 --> 00:39:52.600
and ignorance.

502
00:39:52.600 --> 00:39:57.880
The cultural achievements of their forefathers, their philosophy, technology, and often even

503
00:39:57.880 --> 00:40:03.620
their language have fallen into oblivion, and the people have relapsed into barbarism.

504
00:40:03.620 --> 00:40:08.740
In some cases, the literature of the extinct civilization has been preserved and, rediscovered

505
00:40:08.740 --> 00:40:14.440
by scholars, has influenced later generations and civilizations.

506
00:40:14.440 --> 00:40:19.480
Other civilizations developed to a certain point and then came to a standstill.

507
00:40:19.480 --> 00:40:22.360
They were arrested, as Badgett said.

508
00:40:22.360 --> 00:40:26.820
The people tried to preserve the achievements of the past, but they no longer planned to

509
00:40:26.820 --> 00:40:29.200
add anything new to them.

510
00:40:29.200 --> 00:40:34.920
A firm tenet of eighteenth-century social philosophy was Meliorism.

511
00:40:34.920 --> 00:40:40.480
Once the superstitions, prejudices, and errors that caused the downfall of older civilizations

512
00:40:40.480 --> 00:40:43.480
Humans have given way to the supremacy of reason.

513
00:40:43.480 --> 00:40:46.920
There will be a steady improvement of human conditions.

514
00:40:46.920 --> 00:40:49.840
The world will become better every day.

515
00:40:49.840 --> 00:40:53.000
Mankind will never return to the dark ages.

516
00:40:53.000 --> 00:40:58.360
Progress toward higher stages of well-being and knowledge is irresistible.

517
00:40:58.360 --> 00:41:02.160
All reactionary movements are doomed to failure.

518
00:41:02.160 --> 00:41:06.840
Present-day philosophy no longer indulges in such optimistic views.

519
00:41:06.840 --> 00:41:12.180
We realize that our civilization, too, is vulnerable. True, it is safe against external

520
00:41:12.180 --> 00:41:17.600
attacks on the part of foreign barbarians, but it could be destroyed from within by domestic

521
00:41:17.600 --> 00:41:23.120
barbarians. Civilization is the product of human effort,

522
00:41:23.120 --> 00:41:29.040
the achievement of men eager to fight the forces adverse to their well-being. This achievement

523
00:41:29.040 --> 00:41:34.960
is dependent on men's using suitable means. If the means chosen are not fit to produce

524
00:41:34.960 --> 00:41:38.320
The End Sought Disaster Results

525
00:41:38.320 --> 00:41:44.680
Bad policies can disintegrate our civilization as they have destroyed many other civilizations.

526
00:41:44.680 --> 00:41:49.320
But neither reason nor experience warrants the assumption that we cannot avoid choosing

527
00:41:49.320 --> 00:41:53.980
bad policies and thereby wrecking our civilization.

528
00:41:53.980 --> 00:41:58.360
There are doctrines hypothesizing the notion of civilization.

529
00:41:58.360 --> 00:42:02.240
In their view, a civilization is a sort of living being.

530
00:42:02.240 --> 00:42:08.040
It comes into existence, thrives for some time, and finally dies.

531
00:42:08.040 --> 00:42:12.560
All civilizations, however different they may appear to the superficial observer, have

532
00:42:12.560 --> 00:42:14.440
the same structure.

533
00:42:14.440 --> 00:42:18.880
They must necessarily pass through the same sequence of successive stages.

534
00:42:18.880 --> 00:42:21.160
There is no history.

535
00:42:21.160 --> 00:42:25.800
What is mistakenly called history is in fact the repetition of events belonging to the

536
00:42:25.800 --> 00:42:31.960
same class, is, as Nietzsche put it, eternal recurrence.

537
00:42:31.960 --> 00:42:37.320
The idea is very old and can be traced back to ancient philosophy.

538
00:42:37.320 --> 00:42:40.900
It was adumbrated by Giovanni Battista Vico.

539
00:42:40.900 --> 00:42:46.600
It played some role in the attempts of several economists to develop schemes of parallelisms

540
00:42:46.600 --> 00:42:49.760
of the economic history of various nations.

541
00:42:49.760 --> 00:42:55.240
It owes its present popularity to Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West.

542
00:42:55.240 --> 00:43:01.200
Softened, to some extent, and thereby rendered inconsistent, it is the main idea of the voluminous

543
00:43:01.200 --> 00:43:06.080
The Study of History on which Arnold J. Toynbee is still working.

544
00:43:06.080 --> 00:43:10.760
There is no doubt that both Spangler and Toynbee were prompted by the widespread disparagement

545
00:43:10.760 --> 00:43:13.040
of capitalism.

546
00:43:13.040 --> 00:43:18.920
Spangler's motive clearly was to prognosticate the inevitable breakdown of our civilization.

547
00:43:18.920 --> 00:43:24.680
Although unaffected by the chiliastic prophecies of the Marxians, he was himself a socialist

548
00:43:24.680 --> 00:43:29.600
and entirely under the sway of the socialist's vilification of the market economy.

549
00:43:29.600 --> 00:43:34.440
He was judicious enough to see the disastrous implications of the policies of the German

550
00:43:34.440 --> 00:43:40.720
Marxians, but, lacking any economic knowledge and even full of contempt for economics, he

551
00:43:40.720 --> 00:43:46.260
came to the conclusion that our civilization has to choose between two evils, each of which

552
00:43:46.260 --> 00:43:48.640
is bound to destroy it.

553
00:43:48.640 --> 00:43:53.060
The doctrines of both Spangler and Toynbee show clearly the poor results engendered by

554
00:43:53.060 --> 00:43:57.320
neglect of economics in any treatment of human concerns.

555
00:43:57.320 --> 00:44:04.080
True, Western civilization is decadent, but its decadence consists precisely in the endorsement

556
00:44:04.080 --> 00:44:07.300
of the anti-capitalistic creed.

557
00:44:07.300 --> 00:44:12.440
What we may call the Spengler Doctrine dissolves history into the record of the life span of

558
00:44:12.440 --> 00:44:16.240
individual entities, the various civilizations.

559
00:44:16.240 --> 00:44:21.280
We are not told in precise terms what marks characterize an individual civilization as

560
00:44:21.280 --> 00:44:25.040
such and distinguish it from another civilization.

561
00:44:25.040 --> 00:44:29.440
All that we learn about this essential matter is metaphorical.

562
00:44:29.440 --> 00:44:32.600
A civilization is like a biological being.

563
00:44:32.600 --> 00:44:38.520
It is born, grows, matures, decays, and dies.

564
00:44:38.520 --> 00:44:44.660
Such analogies are no substitute for unambiguous clarification and definition.

565
00:44:44.660 --> 00:44:48.320
Historical research cannot deal with all things together.

566
00:44:48.320 --> 00:44:52.600
It must divide and subdivide the totality of events.

567
00:44:52.600 --> 00:44:57.440
Out of the whole body of history, it carves separate chapters.

568
00:44:57.440 --> 00:45:02.560
The principles applied in so doing are determined by the way the historian understands things

569
00:45:02.560 --> 00:45:08.280
and events, value judgments and the actions prompted by them, and the relation of actions

570
00:45:08.280 --> 00:45:10.820
to the further course of affairs.

571
00:45:10.820 --> 00:45:15.180
Almost all historians agree in dealing separately with the history of various, more or less

572
00:45:15.180 --> 00:45:18.760
isolated peoples and civilizations.

573
00:45:18.760 --> 00:45:23.560
Ideas of opinion about the application of this procedure to definite problems must be

574
00:45:23.560 --> 00:45:28.340
decided by careful examination of each individual case.

575
00:45:28.340 --> 00:45:33.400
No epistemological objection can be raised to the idea of distinguishing various civilizations

576
00:45:33.400 --> 00:45:36.560
within the totality of history.

577
00:45:36.560 --> 00:45:41.120
But what the Spengler Doctrine means is something entirely different.

578
00:45:41.120 --> 00:45:48.740
In its context, a civilization is a Gestalt, a whole, an individuality of a distinct nature.

579
00:45:48.740 --> 00:45:54.380
What determines its origin, changes, and extinction stems from its own nature.

580
00:45:54.380 --> 00:46:00.140
It is not the ideas and actions of the individuals that constitute the historical process.

581
00:46:00.140 --> 00:46:03.780
There is, in fact, no historical process.

582
00:46:03.780 --> 00:46:09.500
On the earth, civilizations come into being, live for some time, and then die, just as

583
00:46:09.500 --> 00:46:15.140
various specimens of every plant species are born, live, and wither away.

584
00:46:15.140 --> 00:46:19.320
Whatever men may do is irrelevant to the final outcome.

585
00:46:19.320 --> 00:46:23.660
Every civilization must decay and die.

586
00:46:23.660 --> 00:46:28.060
There is no harm in comparing different historical events and different events that occurred

587
00:46:28.060 --> 00:46:32.940
in the history of various civilizations, but there is no justification whatever for the

588
00:46:32.940 --> 00:46:39.020
assertion that every civilization must pass through a sequence of inevitable stages.

589
00:46:39.020 --> 00:46:44.580
Mr. Toynbee is inconsistent enough not to deprive us entirely of any hope for the survival

590
00:46:44.580 --> 00:46:46.820
of Our Civilization.

591
00:46:46.820 --> 00:46:52.060
While the whole and only content of his study is to point out that the process of civilization

592
00:46:52.060 --> 00:46:57.780
consists of periodic repetitive movements, he adds that this does not imply that the

593
00:46:57.780 --> 00:47:02.660
process itself is of the same cyclical order as they are.

594
00:47:02.660 --> 00:47:08.100
Having taken pains to show that 16 civilizations have perished already and 9 others are at

595
00:47:08.100 --> 00:47:16.360
the Point of Death, He expresses a vague optimism concerning the future of the 26th civilization.

596
00:47:16.360 --> 00:47:23.140
History is the record of human action. Human action is the conscious effort of man to substitute

597
00:47:23.140 --> 00:47:29.940
more satisfactory conditions for less satisfactory ones. Ideas determine what are to be considered

598
00:47:29.940 --> 00:47:35.620
more and less satisfactory conditions and what means are to be resorted to to alter

599
00:47:35.620 --> 00:47:42.320
Thus, ideas are the main theme of the study of history.

600
00:47:42.320 --> 00:47:47.220
Ideas are not an invariable stock that existed from the very beginning of things and that

601
00:47:47.220 --> 00:47:49.380
does not change.

602
00:47:49.380 --> 00:47:55.800
Every idea originated at a definite point of time and space in the head of an individual.

603
00:47:55.800 --> 00:48:00.340
Of course, it has happened again and again that the same idea originated independently

604
00:48:00.340 --> 00:48:04.780
in the heads of various individuals at various points of time and space.

605
00:48:04.780 --> 00:48:11.360
The genesis of every new idea is an innovation. It adds something new and unheard of before

606
00:48:11.360 --> 00:48:17.780
to the course of world affairs. The reason history does not repeat itself is that every

607
00:48:17.780 --> 00:48:23.500
historical state is the consummation of the operation of ideas different from those that

608
00:48:23.500 --> 00:48:30.900
operated in other historical states. Civilization differs from the mere biological and physiological

609
00:48:30.900 --> 00:48:39.560
The essence of civilization is ideas.

610
00:48:39.560 --> 00:48:45.680
If we try to distinguish different civilizations, the differential specifica can be found only

611
00:48:45.680 --> 00:48:50.260
in the different meanings of the ideas that determine them.

612
00:48:50.260 --> 00:48:54.820
Civilizations differ from one another precisely in the quality of the substance that characterizes

613
00:48:54.820 --> 00:48:57.380
them as civilizations.

614
00:48:57.380 --> 00:49:03.560
In their essential structure, they are unique individuals, not members of a class.

615
00:49:03.560 --> 00:49:08.960
This forbids us to compare their vicissitudes with the physiological process going on in

616
00:49:08.960 --> 00:49:12.300
an individual man's or animal's life.

617
00:49:12.300 --> 00:49:17.520
In every animal body, the same physiological changes come to pass.

618
00:49:17.520 --> 00:49:25.100
A child ripens in the mother's womb, it is delivered, grows, matures, decays and dies

619
00:49:25.100 --> 00:49:28.860
in the Consummation of the Same Cycle of Life.

620
00:49:28.860 --> 00:49:32.240
It is quite another thing with civilizations.

621
00:49:32.240 --> 00:49:37.880
In being civilizations, they are disparate and incommensurable because they are actuated

622
00:49:37.880 --> 00:49:43.320
by different ideas and therefore develop in different ways.

623
00:49:43.320 --> 00:49:49.380
Ideas must not be classified without regard to the soundness of their content.

624
00:49:49.380 --> 00:49:52.800
Men have had different ideas concerning the cure of cancer.

625
00:49:52.800 --> 00:49:57.720
Up to now, none of these ideas has produced fully satisfactory results.

626
00:49:57.720 --> 00:50:02.560
But this would not justify the inference that therefore future attempts to cure cancer will

627
00:50:02.560 --> 00:50:04.520
also be futile.

628
00:50:04.520 --> 00:50:10.140
The historian of past civilizations may declare, There was something wrong with the ideas upon

629
00:50:10.140 --> 00:50:14.520
which those civilizations that decayed from within were built.

630
00:50:14.520 --> 00:50:19.280
But he must not derive from this fact the conclusion that other civilizations, built

631
00:50:19.280 --> 00:50:23.360
on Different Ideas are also doomed.

632
00:50:23.360 --> 00:50:28.380
Within the body of animals and plants, forces are operating that are bound to disintegrate

633
00:50:28.380 --> 00:50:30.100
it eventually.

634
00:50:30.100 --> 00:50:34.760
No such forces could be discovered in the body of a civilization, which would not be

635
00:50:34.760 --> 00:50:38.100
the outcome of its particular ideologies.

636
00:50:38.100 --> 00:50:43.060
No less vain are efforts to search in the history of various civilizations for parallelisms

637
00:50:43.060 --> 00:50:46.180
or identical stages in their lifespan.

638
00:50:46.180 --> 00:50:51.740
We may compare the history of various peoples and civilizations, but such comparisons must

639
00:50:51.740 --> 00:50:56.200
deal not only with similarities, but also with differences.

640
00:50:56.200 --> 00:51:02.020
The eagerness to discover similarities induces authors to neglect or even to conjure away

641
00:51:02.020 --> 00:51:03.620
discrepancies.

642
00:51:03.620 --> 00:51:09.220
The first task of the historian is to deal with historical events.

643
00:51:09.220 --> 00:51:13.860
Comparisons made afterward on the basis of a knowledge of events as perfect as possible

644
00:51:13.860 --> 00:51:32.100
6. Undoing History

645
00:51:32.100 --> 00:51:37.100
There have always been people who exalted the good old days and advocated a return to the

646
00:51:37.100 --> 00:51:43.140
happy past. The resistance offered to legal and constitutional innovations by those whom

647
00:51:43.140 --> 00:51:57.620
In some cases, reforms that aimed at something essentially new have been recommended as a

648
00:51:57.620 --> 00:52:00.660
restoration of ancient law.

649
00:52:00.660 --> 00:52:06.620
An eminent example was provided by the role Magna Carta played in the ideologies of England's

650
00:52:06.620 --> 00:52:10.340
seventeenth-century anti-Stewart parties.

651
00:52:10.340 --> 00:52:15.460
But it was historicism which for the first time frankly suggested unmaking historical

652
00:52:15.460 --> 00:52:21.000
changes and returning to extinct conditions of a remote past.

653
00:52:21.000 --> 00:52:25.420
We need not deal with the lunatic fringe of this movement, such as German attempts to

654
00:52:25.420 --> 00:52:27.940
revive the cult of Woden.

655
00:52:27.940 --> 00:52:33.580
Neither do the sartorial aspects of these tendencies deserve more than ironical comments.

656
00:52:33.580 --> 00:52:38.100
A magazine picture showing members of the Hanover-Coburg family parading in the garb

657
00:52:38.100 --> 00:52:52.300
In the course of history, many languages have been submerged.

658
00:52:52.300 --> 00:52:55.580
Some disappeared completely without leaving any trace.

659
00:52:55.580 --> 00:53:01.660
Others are preserved in old documents, books, and inscriptions, and can be studied by scholars.

660
00:53:01.660 --> 00:53:07.780
Several of these dead languages—Sanskrit, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin—influence contemporary

661
00:53:07.780 --> 00:53:11.960
Every thought through the philosophical and poetical value of the ideas expressed in their

662
00:53:11.960 --> 00:53:17.700
literature. Others are merely objects of philological research.

663
00:53:17.700 --> 00:53:22.960
The process that resulted in the extinction of a language was in many cases merely linguistic

664
00:53:22.960 --> 00:53:29.020
growth and transformation of the spoken word. A long succession of slight changes altered

665
00:53:29.020 --> 00:53:34.920
the phonetic forms, the vocabulary, and the syntax so thoroughly that later generations

666
00:53:34.920 --> 00:53:39.480
Languages could no longer read the documents bequeathed by their ancestors.

667
00:53:39.480 --> 00:53:43.200
The vernacular developed into a new distinct language.

668
00:53:43.200 --> 00:53:47.760
The old tongue could only be understood by those with special training.

669
00:53:47.760 --> 00:53:52.600
The death of the old language and the birth of the new one were the outcome of a slow,

670
00:53:52.600 --> 00:53:55.040
peaceful evolution.

671
00:53:55.040 --> 00:54:01.080
But in many cases, linguistic change was the outcome of political and military events.

672
00:54:01.080 --> 00:54:05.200
People speaking a foreign language acquired political and economic hegemony either by

673
00:54:05.200 --> 00:54:10.840
military conquest or by the superiority of their civilization.

674
00:54:10.840 --> 00:54:15.680
Those speaking the native tongue were relegated to a subordinate position.

675
00:54:15.680 --> 00:54:20.260
On account of their social and political disabilities, it did not matter very much what they had

676
00:54:20.260 --> 00:54:23.800
to say and how they said it.

677
00:54:23.800 --> 00:54:28.160
Important business was transacted exclusively in the language of their masters.

678
00:54:28.160 --> 00:54:33.520
Rulers, courts, church, and schools employed only this language.

679
00:54:33.520 --> 00:54:36.920
It was the language of the laws and the literature.

680
00:54:36.920 --> 00:54:41.720
The old native tongue was used only by the uneducated populace.

681
00:54:41.720 --> 00:54:46.240
Whenever one of these underlings wanted to rise to a better position, he had first to

682
00:54:46.240 --> 00:54:48.920
learn the language of the masters.

683
00:54:48.920 --> 00:54:53.280
The vernacular was reserved to the dullest and the least ambitious.

684
00:54:53.280 --> 00:54:56.920
It fell into contempt and finally into oblivion.

685
00:54:56.920 --> 00:55:00.860
A foreign language superseded the native idiom.

686
00:55:00.860 --> 00:55:06.000
The political and military events that actuated this linguistic process were in many cases

687
00:55:06.000 --> 00:55:11.900
characterized by tyrannical cruelty and pitiless persecution of all opponents.

688
00:55:11.900 --> 00:55:17.080
Such methods met with the approval of some philosophers and moralists of pre-capitalistic

689
00:55:17.080 --> 00:55:22.880
ages, as they have sometimes won the praise of contemporary idealists when the socialists

690
00:55:22.880 --> 00:55:24.880
resort to them.

691
00:55:24.880 --> 00:55:30.520
According to the spurious rationalistic dogmatism of the orthodox liberal doctrine heirs, they

692
00:55:30.520 --> 00:55:32.600
appear shocking.

693
00:55:32.600 --> 00:55:38.200
The historical writings of the latter lacked that lofty relativism which induced self-styled

694
00:55:38.200 --> 00:55:44.560
realistic historians to explain and to justify all that had happened in the past and to vindicate

695
00:55:44.560 --> 00:55:47.660
surviving oppressive institutions.

696
00:55:47.660 --> 00:55:53.920
As one critic reproachfully observed, in the utilitarians, old institutions awake no thrill,

697
00:55:53.920 --> 00:55:57.120
They are simply embodiments of prejudice.

698
00:55:57.120 --> 00:56:02.160
It does not need any further explanation why the descendants of the victims of those persecutions

699
00:56:02.160 --> 00:56:08.280
and oppressions judged in a different way the experience of their ancestors, still less

700
00:56:08.280 --> 00:56:13.400
why they were intent upon abolishing those effects of past despotism which still hurt

701
00:56:13.400 --> 00:56:14.520
them.

702
00:56:14.520 --> 00:56:19.760
In some cases, not content with eliminating still existing oppression, they planned to

703
00:56:19.760 --> 00:56:25.040
Attempts to undo also such changes as did not harm them any longer, however detrimental

704
00:56:25.040 --> 00:56:30.560
and malignant the process that had brought them about had been in a distant past.

705
00:56:30.560 --> 00:56:37.040
It is precisely this that the attempts to undo linguistic changes aim at.

706
00:56:37.040 --> 00:56:40.760
The best example is provided by Ireland.

707
00:56:40.760 --> 00:56:45.760
Aliens had invaded and conquered the country, expropriated the landowners, destroyed its

708
00:56:45.760 --> 00:56:51.200
Civilization, organized a despotic regime, and tried to convert the people by force of

709
00:56:51.200 --> 00:56:55.080
arms to a religious creed which they despised.

710
00:56:55.080 --> 00:56:59.760
The establishment of an alien church did not succeed in making the Irish abandon Roman

711
00:56:59.760 --> 00:57:05.480
Catholicism, but the English language superseded the native Gaelic idiom.

712
00:57:05.480 --> 00:57:10.380
When later the Irish succeeded step by step in curbing their foreign oppressors and finally

713
00:57:10.380 --> 00:57:15.100
acquiring political independence, most of them were no longer linguistically different

714
00:57:15.100 --> 00:57:16.600
from the English.

715
00:57:16.600 --> 00:57:21.120
They spoke English and their eminent writers wrote English books, some of which are among

716
00:57:21.120 --> 00:57:24.920
the outstanding works of modern world literature.

717
00:57:24.920 --> 00:57:28.700
This state of affairs hurts the feelings of many Irish.

718
00:57:28.700 --> 00:57:32.880
They want to induce their fellow citizens to return to the idiom their ancestors spoke

719
00:57:32.880 --> 00:57:35.280
in ages gone by.

720
00:57:35.280 --> 00:57:38.520
There is little open opposition to these pursuits.

721
00:57:38.520 --> 00:57:43.620
Few people have the courage to fight a popular movement openly, and radical nationalism is

722
00:57:43.620 --> 00:57:48.620
Today, Next, to Socialism, the most popular ideology.

723
00:57:48.620 --> 00:57:54.060
Nobody wants to risk being branded an enemy of his nation, but powerful forces are silently

724
00:57:54.060 --> 00:57:56.920
resisting the linguistic reform.

725
00:57:56.920 --> 00:58:00.560
People cling to the tongue they speak, no matter whether those who want to suppress

726
00:58:00.560 --> 00:58:04.500
it are foreign despots or domestic zealots.

727
00:58:04.500 --> 00:58:09.660
The modern Irish are fully aware of the advantages they derive from the fact that English is

728
00:58:09.660 --> 00:58:14.780
is the foremost language of contemporary civilization, which everyone has to learn in order to read

729
00:58:14.780 --> 00:58:20.060
many important books or to play a role in international trade, in world affairs and

730
00:58:20.060 --> 00:58:26.020
in great ideological movements. Precisely because the Irish are a civilized nation whose

731
00:58:26.020 --> 00:58:31.420
authors write not for a limited audience but for all educated people, the chances of a

732
00:58:31.420 --> 00:58:37.660
substitution of Gaelic for English are slim. No nostalgic sentimentality can alter these

733
00:58:37.660 --> 00:58:44.420
It must be mentioned that the linguistic pursuits of Irish nationalism were prompted by one

734
00:58:44.420 --> 00:58:48.780
of the most widely adopted political doctrines of the 19th century.

735
00:58:48.780 --> 00:58:53.740
The principle of nationality, as accepted by all the peoples of Europe, postulates that

736
00:58:53.740 --> 00:58:59.180
every linguistic group must form an independent state and that this state must embrace all

737
00:58:59.180 --> 00:59:02.220
people speaking the same language.

738
00:59:02.220 --> 00:59:06.340
From the point of view of this principle, an English-speaking Ireland should belong

739
00:59:06.340 --> 00:59:11.460
of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the mere existence of an independent

740
00:59:11.460 --> 00:59:14.820
Irish free state appears irregular.

741
00:59:14.820 --> 00:59:21.020
The prestige which the principle of nationality enjoyed in Europe was so enormous that various

742
00:59:21.020 --> 00:59:25.900
peoples who desired to form a state of their own, the independence of which was at variance

743
00:59:25.900 --> 00:59:30.740
with it, tried to change their language in order to justify their aspirations in its

744
00:59:30.740 --> 00:59:32.060
light.

745
00:59:32.060 --> 00:59:36.860
This explains the attitude of the Irish nationalists, but it does not affect what has been said

746
00:59:36.860 --> 00:59:40.340
about the implications of their linguistic plans.

747
00:59:40.340 --> 00:59:44.180
A language is not simply a collection of phonetic signs.

748
00:59:44.180 --> 00:59:47.520
It is an instrument of thinking and acting.

749
00:59:47.520 --> 00:59:53.100
Its vocabulary and grammar are adjusted to the mentality of the individuals whom it serves.

750
00:59:53.100 --> 00:59:59.300
A living language, spoken, written, and read by living men, changes continually in conformity

751
00:59:59.300 --> 01:00:02.660
with Changes Occurring in the Minds of Those Who Use It.

752
01:00:02.660 --> 01:00:07.720
A language fallen into desolitude is dead because it no longer changes.

753
01:00:07.720 --> 01:00:11.900
It mirrors the mentality of people long since passed away.

754
01:00:11.900 --> 01:00:16.180
It is useless to the people of another age, no matter whether these people are biologically

755
01:00:16.180 --> 01:00:22.620
the scions of those who once used it or merely believe themselves to be their descendants.

756
01:00:22.620 --> 01:00:26.620
The trouble is not with the terms signifying tangible things.

757
01:00:26.620 --> 01:00:33.680
Such terms could be supplemented by neologisms. It is the abstract terms that provide insoluble

758
01:00:33.680 --> 01:00:38.860
problems. The precipitate of a people's ideological controversies, of their ideas

759
01:00:38.860 --> 01:00:45.180
concerning issues of pure knowledge and religion, legal institutions, political organization,

760
01:00:45.180 --> 01:00:51.500
and economic activities, these terms reflect all the vicissitudes of their history.

761
01:00:51.500 --> 01:00:56.460
In learning their meaning, the rising generation are initiated into the mental environment

762
01:00:56.460 --> 01:01:02.540
in which they have to live and to work. This meaning of the various words is in continual

763
01:01:02.540 --> 01:01:09.740
flux in response to changes in ideas and conditions. Those who want to revive a dead language must

764
01:01:09.740 --> 01:01:15.340
in fact create out of its phonetic elements a new language whose vocabulary and syntax

765
01:01:15.340 --> 01:01:20.260
are adjusted to the conditions of the present age, entirely different from those of the

766
01:01:20.260 --> 01:01:24.260
old age. The tongue of their ancestors is of no use

767
01:01:24.260 --> 01:01:30.260
The Laws of Present-day Ireland could not be written in the old vocabulary.

768
01:01:30.260 --> 01:01:36.260
Shaw, Joyce, and Yates could not have employed it in their plays, novels, and poems.

769
01:01:36.260 --> 01:01:40.260
One cannot wipe out history and return to the past.

770
01:01:40.260 --> 01:01:51.260
Different from the attempts to revive dead idioms are the plans to elevate local dialects to the position of a language of literature and other manifestations of thinking and acting.

771
01:01:51.260 --> 01:01:57.340
When communication between the various parts of a nation's territory was infrequent,

772
01:01:57.340 --> 01:02:01.040
on account of the paucity of the interlocal division of labor and the primitiveness of

773
01:02:01.040 --> 01:02:07.700
transportation facilities, there was a tendency toward a disintegration of linguistic unity.

774
01:02:07.700 --> 01:02:11.600
Different dialects developed out of the tongue spoken by the people who had settled in an

775
01:02:11.600 --> 01:02:13.400
area.

776
01:02:13.400 --> 01:02:18.060
Sometimes these dialects evolved into a distinct literary language, as was the case with the

777
01:02:18.060 --> 01:02:19.600
Dutch language.

778
01:02:19.600 --> 01:02:25.120
In other cases, only one of the dialects became a literary language, while the others remained

779
01:02:25.120 --> 01:02:30.400
idioms employed in daily life but not used in the schools, the courts, in books, and

780
01:02:30.400 --> 01:02:33.400
in the conversation of educated people.

781
01:02:33.400 --> 01:02:37.780
Such was the outcome in Germany, for instance, where the writings of Luther and the Protestant

782
01:02:37.780 --> 01:02:43.900
theologians gave the idiom of the Saxon chancellery a preponderant position and reduced all other

783
01:02:43.900 --> 01:02:47.000
dialects to subordinate rank.

784
01:02:47.000 --> 01:02:52.480
Under the impact of historicism, movements sprang up which aim at undoing this process

785
01:02:52.480 --> 01:02:56.000
by elevating dialects into literary languages.

786
01:02:56.000 --> 01:03:01.680
The most remarkable of these tendencies is Ferebrige, the design to restore to the Provençal

787
01:03:01.680 --> 01:03:05.480
tongue the eminence it once enjoyed as Languedoc.

788
01:03:05.480 --> 01:03:10.440
The Fellebrists, led by the distinguished poet Mistral, were judicious enough not to

789
01:03:10.440 --> 01:03:14.460
plan a complete substitution of their idiom for French.

790
01:03:14.460 --> 01:03:20.020
But even the prospects of their more moderate ambition to create a new Provençal poesy

791
01:03:20.020 --> 01:03:22.580
seem to be inauspicious.

792
01:03:22.580 --> 01:03:28.240
One cannot imagine any of the modern French masterpieces composed in Provençal.

793
01:03:28.240 --> 01:03:32.700
Local dialects of various languages have been employed in novels and plays depicting the

794
01:03:32.700 --> 01:03:34.700
life of the uneducated.

795
01:03:34.700 --> 01:03:38.860
There is often an inherent insincerity in such writings.

796
01:03:38.860 --> 01:03:43.140
The author condescendingly puts himself on a level with people whose mentality he never

797
01:03:43.140 --> 01:03:46.340
were shared or has since outgrown.

798
01:03:46.340 --> 01:03:50.580
He behaves like an adult who condescends to write books for children.

799
01:03:50.580 --> 01:03:55.780
No present-day work of literature can withdraw itself from the impact of the ideologies of

800
01:03:55.780 --> 01:03:56.860
our age.

801
01:03:56.860 --> 01:04:02.020
Once, having gone through the schools of these ideologies, an author cannot successfully

802
01:04:02.020 --> 01:04:08.200
masquerade as a simple common man and adopt his speech and his worldview.

803
01:04:08.200 --> 01:04:14.620
7.

804
01:04:14.620 --> 01:04:17.940
Undoing Economic History

805
01:04:17.940 --> 01:04:22.960
The history of mankind is the record of a progressive intensification of the division

806
01:04:22.960 --> 01:04:24.740
of labor.

807
01:04:24.740 --> 01:04:29.660
Animals live in perfect autarky of each individual or of each quasi-family.

808
01:04:29.660 --> 01:04:34.360
What made cooperation between men possible is the fact that work performed under the

809
01:04:34.360 --> 01:04:40.120
Division of Tasks is more productive than the isolated efforts of autarkic individuals

810
01:04:40.120 --> 01:04:44.080
and that man's reason is capable of conceiving this truth.

811
01:04:44.080 --> 01:04:49.360
But for these two facts, men would have remained forever solitary food seekers, forced by an

812
01:04:49.360 --> 01:04:53.840
inevitable law of nature to fight one another without pity and pardon.

813
01:04:53.840 --> 01:04:58.500
No social bonds, no feelings of sympathy, benevolence, and friendship.

814
01:04:58.500 --> 01:05:02.680
No civilization would have developed in a world in which everybody had to see in all

815
01:05:02.680 --> 01:05:09.660
All Other Men Rivals in the Biological Competition for a Strictly Limited Supply of Food.

816
01:05:09.660 --> 01:05:14.740
One of the greatest achievements of eighteenth-century social philosophy is the disclosure of the

817
01:05:14.740 --> 01:05:19.580
role which the principle of higher productivity resulting from division of labor has played

818
01:05:19.580 --> 01:05:21.280
in history.

819
01:05:21.280 --> 01:05:26.320
It was against these teachings of Smith and Ricardo that the most passionate attacks of

820
01:05:26.320 --> 01:05:29.060
historicism were directed.

821
01:05:29.060 --> 01:05:34.300
The operation of the principle of division of labor and its corollary, cooperation, tends

822
01:05:34.300 --> 01:05:38.900
ultimately toward a world-embracing system of production.

823
01:05:38.900 --> 01:05:43.820
Insofar as the geographical distribution of natural resources does not limit the tendencies

824
01:05:43.820 --> 01:05:49.220
toward specialization and integration in the processing trades, the unhampered market aims

825
01:05:49.220 --> 01:05:54.900
at the evolution of plants operating in a comparatively narrow field of specialized production, but

826
01:05:54.900 --> 01:05:58.300
serving the whole population of the earth.

827
01:05:58.300 --> 01:06:02.660
From the point of view of people who prefer more and better merchandise, to a smaller

828
01:06:02.660 --> 01:06:08.100
and poorer supply, the ideal system would consist in the highest possible concentration

829
01:06:08.100 --> 01:06:10.680
of the production of each specialty.

830
01:06:10.680 --> 01:06:15.460
The same principle that brought about the emergence of such specialists as blacksmiths,

831
01:06:15.460 --> 01:06:21.860
carpenters, tailors, bakers, and also physicians, teachers, artists, and writers, would finally

832
01:06:21.860 --> 01:06:27.900
result in the emergence of one factory supplying the whole ecumen with some particular article.

833
01:06:27.900 --> 01:06:33.900
Although the geographical factor mentioned earlier counteracts the full operation of this tendency,

834
01:06:33.900 --> 01:06:43.900
international division of labor came into existence and will move forward until it reaches the limits drawn by geography, geology and climate.

835
01:06:43.900 --> 01:06:51.900
Every step on the road toward intensification of the division of labor hurts in the short run the personal interests of some people.

836
01:06:51.900 --> 01:07:00.900
The expansion of the more efficient plant hurts the interests of less efficient competitors whom it forces to go out of business.

837
01:07:00.900 --> 01:07:08.900
Technological innovation hurts the interests of workers who can no longer make a living by clinging to the discarded inferior methods.

838
01:07:08.900 --> 01:07:16.900
The vested short-run interests of small business and of inefficient workers are adversely affected by any improvement.

839
01:07:16.900 --> 01:07:28.900
This is not a new phenomenon, neither is it a new phenomenon that those prejudiced by economic improvement ask for privileges that will protect them against the competition of the more efficient.

840
01:07:28.900 --> 01:07:37.900
The history of mankind is a long record of obstacles placed in the way of the more efficient for the benefit of the less efficient.

841
01:07:37.900 --> 01:07:45.900
It is customary to explain the obstinate efforts to stop economic improvement by referring to the interests.

842
01:07:45.900 --> 01:07:49.900
The explanation is very unsatisfactory.

843
01:07:49.900 --> 01:07:55.900
Leaving aside the fact that an innovation hurts merely the short-run interests of some people,

844
01:07:55.900 --> 01:08:03.900
we must emphasize that it hurts only the interests of a small minority while favoring those of the immense majority.

845
01:08:03.900 --> 01:08:08.620
The bread factory certainly hurts the small bakers, but it hurts them solely because it

846
01:08:08.620 --> 01:08:12.820
improves the conditions of all people consuming bread.

847
01:08:12.820 --> 01:08:18.060
The importation of foreign sugar and watches hurts the interests of a small minority of

848
01:08:18.060 --> 01:08:24.940
Americans, but it is a boon for all those who want to eat sugar and to buy watches.

849
01:08:24.940 --> 01:08:28.260
The problem is precisely this.

850
01:08:28.260 --> 01:08:33.180
Why is an innovation unpopular although it favors the interests of the great majority

851
01:08:33.180 --> 01:08:35.120
of the People.

852
01:08:35.120 --> 01:08:40.200
A privilege accorded to a special branch of business is, in the short run, advantageous

853
01:08:40.200 --> 01:08:44.660
to those who, at the instant, happen to be in this branch.

854
01:08:44.660 --> 01:08:48.360
But it hurts all other people to the same extent.

855
01:08:48.360 --> 01:08:54.620
If everybody is privileged to the same degree, he loses as much in his capacity as a consumer

856
01:08:54.620 --> 01:08:57.920
as he wins in his capacity as a producer.

857
01:08:57.920 --> 01:09:02.840
Moreover, everybody is hurt by the fact that productivity in all branches of domestic

858
01:09:02.840 --> 01:09:07.160
Production drops on account of these privileges.

859
01:09:07.160 --> 01:09:12.440
To the extent that American legislation is successful in its endeavors to curb big business,

860
01:09:12.440 --> 01:09:17.420
all are hurt because the products are produced at higher costs in plants which would have

861
01:09:17.420 --> 01:09:21.120
been wiped out in the absence of this policy.

862
01:09:21.120 --> 01:09:26.000
If the United States had gone as far as Austria did in its fight against big business, the

863
01:09:26.000 --> 01:09:31.060
average American would not be much better off than the average Austrian.

864
01:09:31.060 --> 01:09:35.860
It is not the interests that motivate the struggle against the further intensification of the

865
01:09:35.860 --> 01:09:41.700
division of labor, but spurious ideas about alleged interests.

866
01:09:41.700 --> 01:09:47.900
As in any other regard, historicism, in dealing with these problems, too, sees only the short-run

867
01:09:47.900 --> 01:09:53.580
disadvantages that result for some people and ignores the long-run advantages for all

868
01:09:53.580 --> 01:09:55.340
of the people.

869
01:09:55.340 --> 01:10:00.180
It recommends measures without mentioning the price that must be paid for them.

870
01:10:00.180 --> 01:10:05.340
What fun shoemaking was in the days of Hans Sachs and the Meistersinger?

871
01:10:05.340 --> 01:10:09.160
No need to analyze critically such romantic dreams.

872
01:10:09.160 --> 01:10:12.420
But how many people went barefoot in those days?

873
01:10:12.420 --> 01:10:16.280
What a disgrace the big chemical concerns are.

874
01:10:16.280 --> 01:10:20.600
But would it have been possible for pharmacists in their primitive laboratories to turn out

875
01:10:20.600 --> 01:10:23.760
the drugs that kill the bacilli?

876
01:10:23.760 --> 01:10:28.320
Those who want to set the clock of history back ought to tell people what their policy

877
01:10:28.320 --> 01:10:30.600
would cost.

878
01:10:30.600 --> 01:10:35.560
Splitting up big business is all right if you are prepared to put up with the consequences.

879
01:10:35.560 --> 01:10:40.200
If the present American methods of taxing incomes and estates had been adopted fifty

880
01:10:40.200 --> 01:10:45.840
years ago, most of those new things which no American would like to do without today

881
01:10:45.840 --> 01:10:50.480
would not have been developed at all, or, if they had, would have been inaccessible

882
01:10:50.480 --> 01:10:53.120
to the greater part of the nation.

883
01:10:53.120 --> 01:10:58.280
What such authors as Professors Sombart and Tawny say about the blissful conditions of

884
01:10:58.280 --> 01:11:01.320
of the Middle Ages is mere fantasy.

885
01:11:01.320 --> 01:11:06.680
The effort to achieve a continuous and unlimited increase in material wealth, says Professor

886
01:11:06.680 --> 01:11:12.280
Taney, brings ruin to the soul and confusion to society.

887
01:11:12.280 --> 01:11:17.240
No need to stress the fact that some people may feel that a soul so sensitive it is ruined

888
01:11:17.240 --> 01:11:21.820
by the awareness that more infants survive the first year of their lives and fewer people

889
01:11:21.820 --> 01:11:27.520
die from starvation today than in the Middle Ages is worth being ruined.

890
01:11:27.520 --> 01:11:33.680
What brings confusion to society is not wealth, but the efforts of historicists such as Professor

891
01:11:33.680 --> 01:11:37.600
Taney to discredit economic appetites.

892
01:11:37.600 --> 01:11:43.160
After all, it was nature, not the capitalists, that implanted appetites in man and impels

893
01:11:43.160 --> 01:11:45.620
him to satisfy them.

894
01:11:45.620 --> 01:11:51.680
In the collectivist institutions of the Middle Ages, such as church, township, village community,

895
01:11:51.680 --> 01:11:57.760
Man, Family, and Guild, says Sombart, the individual was kept warm and sheltered like

896
01:11:57.760 --> 01:12:00.160
a fruit in its rind.

897
01:12:00.160 --> 01:12:05.300
Is this a faithful description of a time when the population was harassed again and again

898
01:12:05.300 --> 01:12:11.920
by famines, plagues, wars, the persecution of heretics, and other disasters?

899
01:12:11.920 --> 01:12:16.840
It is certainly possible to stop the further progress of capitalism or even to return to

900
01:12:16.840 --> 01:12:22.280
The conditions in which small business and more primitive methods of production prevail.

901
01:12:22.280 --> 01:12:27.880
A police apparatus organized after the pattern of the Soviet constabulary can achieve many

902
01:12:27.880 --> 01:12:29.040
things.

903
01:12:29.040 --> 01:12:34.040
The question is only whether the nations that have built modern civilization will be ready

904
01:12:34.040 --> 01:12:35.160
to pay the price.