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Part 1
Origins of Economic Science
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Chapter 1
The science of wealth
I Wealth
1
Since the origins of economics as a science its definition has always been with reference to the manner of provision for the wants of the members of society. It is the circle of needs which defines concretely the livelihood of the family as of the state which provides for economic analysis its starting point both historically, as regards the development of the theory, and conceptually, as regards the theory itself. Indeed, it is the concept of need which, once subject to analysis, provides a first real insight into the character of economics and into the object of economic science. Yet, the notion of need taken with reference to the historical development of the science differs sharply from the concept of need which provides a fundamental component of the theory of economic life which emerges as the culmination of that historical development. The development of economic theory is no less the development of the concept of need which appears in its definition from the outset. Those wants of society and of its members which appear with the earliest writings in political economy exhibit an inadequacy of conception which requires and, indeed, gives rise to a definite development. It is only out of this development that political economy is able to establish itself as a science.
The conception of wants which provides the starting point for this development originates in the life of the family and is, then, extended to the society as a whole where the latter has the form of an aggregate of particular households and of the needs which they represent. In this sense, the definition of economic life proceeds first from the activity by which the family seeks to renew itself through the fulfillment of its needs. None the less, while the conception of need begins here, economic theory makes no further reference to the needs of the household, always preferring to take them as given. Thus, the needs of the household as such are posited outside of the theory so that the latter is itself unconcerned with needs so defined. The theory, far from occupying itself with the wants of the family, concerns itself from the outset with the type of need characteristic not of nature but of society, indeed with the kind of need which defines the specifically social life of the species.
The needs of the household which are bracketed in this way are determined for the family as an element of nature. The opposition out of which classical thinking seeks to derive a concept of society is that which opposes ‘subsistence’ needs which are necessary to the individual so far as he engages in the renewal of himself and his family within nature, to those needs which are not determined by the necessities connected to the individual's biological existence. The fulfillment of needs which are given by the natural subsistence of the species does not, and cannot, form the subject-matter of the theory. To the extent that ‘economics’ has as its connotation the life process of the family, the manner in which it sustains itself simply as a limited unit, it does not provide the object for a systematic investigation by a distinct science.
The true social character of need is never fully grasped in classical thought since the social determination of need is never really separated from its determination in nature. It is the task of classical political economy to establish the specificity of economic theory as differentiated from and opposed to natural science. To accomplish this task classical thought proceeds by isolating the distinguishing feature of those needs characteristic of economic life. The needs distinguished in this way are substantially different from the needs of the family as defined by its subsistence within nature. But the reference point for this distinction is always nature so that the opposition also unites the two conceptions, distorting each and undermining the development of a real concept of society. There can only be a distinct concept of society where the type of need specific to the renewal of social life is established in its own right, as distinct from nature-given wants, by merit of its real determination not in opposition to nature but on the part of the life process of society. Classical political economy marks out this distinction but fails to establish it in a positive way, always falling back upon the natural system as the defining term for the conception of society.
To the extent that needs are determined by nature they must be presupposed by economic theory. Yet, since economics has as its object the investigation of needs and the means to their fulfillment this presupposition is tantamount to taking the whole of the theory as its own presupposition. It follows that the system of needs, were it defined exclusively in this way, would possess no social determination and could not provide the object for a specifically economic science. And, indeed, there exists no specifically social theory of the life process of the family as regards the provision of its needs where those needs are substantively and exclusively the needs of the family taken as determined within the species. For classical political economy there is an economic life within the family and there is as well an economic life of the state, but the theory concerns itself only with the latter. There is, then, a science of ‘political economy’ but no ‘economic science.’
With the situation of wants and their provision within the household, economic life is considered as nothing more than an aspect of the life of the family. This reduction has also an historical origin in that prior to the emergence of modern bourgeois society economic activity remains to a greater or lesser degree within the family. Classical political economy removes economic life from the sphere of the family and in so doing makes possible for the first time a conception of the system of economic relations. This removal of economic activity from the family takes the form of its transfer from the household to the state. Conceptually, the equation of economic life with the family on one side and the state on the other precludes the development of a fully scientific conception of the system of economic relations. The economy is not made sufficiently distinct to allow for its conception to emerge. The project of classical political economy is to give birth to a new science precisely by marking out economic life and establishing its specificity. This requires a conception of the distinctiveness of economic interaction vis-à-vis the family and the state. For this to be achieved it is necessary to make clear the specificity of the system of economic relations, therefore to establish the peculiarly economic character of needs.
Need takes on its economic character first when it is displaced from the family to the state. This effectively emancipates need from the natural determination which results inevitably from the subordination of economic life to the family. Wherever the economy remains a subordinate part of the life of the family the system of needs and the production of the means to their fulfillment must continue to exist, to a greater or lesser degree, outside of social life. Only with the constitution of the economic system as a distinct sphere does it become possible to conceive of production as within society, therefore fully as an economic activity. While the identification of need with the activity of the household involves needs in a natural determination, the identification of need with the state makes of the former a political rather than economic reality, once again, it would seem, excluding the development of a conception of the economy as a distinct sphere. When political economy leaves behind the confusions bound up with the conflation of economic life with the family it does so only in order to grab onto a new confusion in its identification of the economy with the state (a confusion which is also, it might be added, connected to a real historical condition). But, whereas originally the conception of the economy is lost within the family so that the latter makes the former unnecessary, now it is the conception of the state which disappears into the economy so that the conception of a system of economic relations absorbs the concept of the state. The state becomes, in effect, an economic sphere. This means that the science which claims to treat the provision for the wants of the state deals, in reality, with the state as a system of economic relations, and therefore treats the economic character of wants. It is in this manner that the object of political economy first distinguishes itself.
Political economy considers economic activity so far as it involves relations of mutual dependence among members of a social division of labor which constitute the reference point for economic life not as the individual but as the collectivity, in particular the state. Relations within the collectivity defined in this way are, for classical thought, predominantly social relations which, as such, always transcend the presumed irreducible natural quality which is attributed to the system of economic interactions restricted to the particular household taken by itself. To this extent, once economics is replaced by political economy the provision of needs takes as its reference point a preeminently social reality which transcends directly the natural sphere. Still, the starting point is the notion of economic life defined with reference to the household and the retention of this definitional presupposition marks clearly the limits within which the economic life of the state can take on a social character. Indeed, political economy begins as that science which deals with the natural renewal of the state, therefore with the manner in which a series of natural activities preserve and maintain the system of social interactions. To this extent, political economy is predicated upon a contradiction: on one side, its object is a political, and therefore a preeminently social one which transcends the species existence of the household making of the latter a political unit; and on the other side, political economy retains for its object the nature-given requisites for the renewal of the household, the provision of its wants as defined within a natural sphere.
This last involves classical thought in a confusion of the nature of the wants whose provision provides the subject-matter of the theory of economic life. To the extent that the subsistence provided by economic activity is that of a social reality the needs which must be provided become themselves social in character rather than those needs connected to the nurture of the family as situated within a natural process. And yet, political economy considers these needs to be conceivable as extensions of the needs of the household still situated within the species and therefore as effecting its subsistence independently of the state. The science exists only so far as there is a subsistence of the individual which is specific to his membership in the state, therefore of the individual as a political entity, while political economy retains within its conception of subsistence the nurture of the individual or family as elements of a species, thereby reducing the political relations to relations of nature and eliminating any foundation for economic analysis as a science. Economics becomes a science only when the renewal of the species becomes a social act so that the species is itself constituted as a social reality, therefore when the original object of economic activity becomes a social object.
For the renewal of the species to constitute a social act the needs which must be fulfilled within that renewal must undergo an alteration so that the conception of the species is itself altered. The nurture of the family becomes the subsistence of a social relation. The conception shifts from the species to society, from the family as a part of the species to the individual as a determination of society. Political economy begins, therefore, with the transformation of need from that for the renewal of a natural relation to the renewal of social life. The crucial element in the conception of economic theory is not simply the notion of need taken in the abstract, but the conception of the kind of need which is characteristic in what classical political economy calls ‘civilized society.’ The necessity that the conception of need be made specific to modern society is the driving force behind the development of classical political economy to the standpoint of economic science. The contradictions which give rise to this development are concentrated within the classical conception of economics as the science of wealth.
The development of the concept of wealth is the other side of the development of the concept of need. Where needs are given by nature so also must the objects which fulfill those needs be provided in the same manner so that wealth is given as an element of nature, accountable to nature. Thus wealth is the produce of the soil, the resources of the earth, etc. By contrast, where the needs whose provision is the end of economic activity are social needs the objects which fulfill those needs and are the components of wealth must, perforce, be themselves social objects. Implicitly, the problem of wealth which confronts political economy is that of the constitution of wealth as a social substance. To be sure, there is no point at which this appears as explicitly problematic. Still, the concept of wealth undergoes, within classical thought, a definite development which, rather than altering its substance, serves to make explicit its hidden reality: that wealth is connected to the multiplication of need and that this multiplication of need and of the means to its satisfaction is the defining characteristic of civilized society, indeed of social life itself; and, further, that this multiplication of need is no more than an expression for the general principle of sociality in bourgeois society - value - and especially for the inner law of bourgeois economy - self-expanding value, capital.
2
What is ‘luxury’ or ‘wealth’? The answer to this question provided by classical political economy takes as its reference point a form of human existence which is the antithesis of wealthy society, a hunting and gathering form of life which is prior to agriculture and industry and within which all needs are given and fulfilled by and within nature. This ‘savage state of man’ forms an antithesis for civilized (wealthy) society which allows for the conception of the latter.1 The needs existing within the savage state are those needs bound up either with the renewal of the species, the economy of the household taken as a natural relation, or with the whims of the individual taken outside of any relation either natural or social.
It is only with the development of agriculture and especially with the introduction of ‘industriousness’ into economic life and into the method of provision of wants that the fulfillment of need is no longer restricted to the abundance of nature taken as existing independently and as making immediate provision for the needs of the family.
Out of agriculture there emerges a multiplication of needs and of the means for their satisfaction. This multiplication plays a fundamental role in the development of economic theory and is designated, by classical political economy, ‘luxury’ and later simply ‘wealth.’ The development of the connection between need, so far as it provides the subject-matter of economic thinking, and luxury obviates the link between need and the biological renewal of the species. It is no longer possible to take the determination of need as simply given so long as economic thinking retains its object of accounting for the emergence of civilized society, therefore for wealth and for the provision for the needs of society. The form which the recognition of this necessity takes in the development of economic theory is that of the division of production, and therefore of the division of needs into (1) that production and those needs connected to the subsistence of the members of society which is provided, in the first instance, immediately by nature (e.g. through hunting and gathering), and (2) an additional part of production connected to additional needs brought into existence with the growth of agriculture. The latter provides for the fulfillment of wants which exist over and above those which are provided directly by nature, while the former represent the subsistence of the members of society taken as outside of society, and provided for by nature. Where there exist no needs not given by nature and by the natural determination of the household, there exists no activity pointed towards the satisfaction of needs over and above those provided immediately by nature. In this case there is no sphere of economic relations subject to investigation by a specifically economic theory so that there can be no science of political economy. The science of wealth, therefore, does not study the subsistence and its renewal taken as provided by nature, but luxury and the process by which it is determined, its origins in society. So far as production is concerned, political economy begins where it is necessary to fulfill needs not posited by nature. Since, in the first instance, need was identified with subsistence and it only now begins to differentiate itself, political economy constitutes such needs which make up the object of its investigations as existing over and above, therefore to that degree apart from, nature.
This development is most forcefully expressed in physiocratic thought. The latter attempts, for the first time, to base economic thinking explicitly upon the distinction between subsistence and the ‘net revenue.’ The latter is understood simultaneously as solely the product of the soil (therefore of nature) and as the foundation of civilized life. Wealth, accordingly, is both the product of nature, since only the earth is productive of a net product, and the origin of society. The equation of the net product with wealth2 reveals clearly the opposition between wealth and subsistence, therefore implicitly the opposition between wealth and the exclusive sphere of natural interaction. At the same time the net product is taken to exist only as the product of that same natural interaction from which it must be distinguished. Still, the identification of the net product with wealth marks the definitive break which makes possible the emergence of economic science. It becomes immediately apparent that the identification of wealth with the material requisites for the provision of wants has broken down. It is only to the provision of those wants over and above the subsistence that wealth is relevant. In this case the referent for economic life ceases to be the immediate relation of man to nature for which the household exists exclusively as an element of a naturally determined system, having become instead a relation within a process of renewal already displaced from the natural world.
For classical thought social needs, and the system of needs which emerges with their multiplication and is identified with wealth and luxury, exist always in a relation to nature. Here, however, this relation appears as also one of opposition, as additional to, as over and above, etc., therefore not simply as a part of the natural subsistence. To be additional to is, however, to remain in essence a part of so that the peculiar manner in which classical economics conceives of wealth as a surplus achieves an identification between wealth and subsistence which is implied by the manner in which they are distinguished. This identification leads simultaneously in two directions. Particularly in early classical thought the equation of wealth and subsistence, in which wealth exists solely as a multiplication of the subsistence, implied a reduction of the former to the latter. The implication of this reduction is, furthermore, that civilization, which emerges on the basis of wealth, is ultimately rooted in a natural sphere and reducible to a system of naturally determined relations. At the same time, the identification of wealth with subsistence as an increment to ...
