IN the present and following volumes accordingly, I am to make an attempt to reconstruct these distinctively human specialisms, in so far at least as their leading principles arc concerned, from the point of view of Civilisation as a whole, or General Sociology, as outlined in the preceding volumes of this series, and propose to devote the present one to the Specialism of Political Economy. I have chosen this course not only because the subject matter of Political Economy follows naturally out of the discussions on General Politics of the preceding volume, but because as it will involve more reconstruction than any other of the distinctively human specialisms - even the dismantling of the existing science down to its foundation - it will illustrate and enforce better perhaps than any other object lesson could have done, the necessity there is for a general science of Civilisation or Sociology, which shall bear authority and dominion over all lesser specialisms included within it, and which shall give point and direction to their special researches - a General Sociology not rigid, final, and immutable, but loose, flexible, and modifiable in turn by these specialisms; much in the same way as the general plan of organic evolution originally propounded by Darwin is being gradually modified by his successors in accordance with the new knowledge that is being constantly thrown up by the Biological Sciences with which organic evolution is concerned.

Should we in this way succeed in reconstructing the science of Political Economy by the help of principles drawn from the studies of Civilisation and Sociology embodied in former volumes, we can then advance with a more lively assurance and expectation of success to those other human specialisms which, like Religion and Morals, although demanding reconstruction from the same point of view, are nevertheless, owing to the passions and prejudices which they arouse, still more or less difficult of access to new and unfamiliar methods of investigation and thought.

As regards the form and distribution of the subject matter of this volume, I had originally intended to have followed the course pursued in the preceding volume, and to have divided it into two separate parts, the first critical, the second reconstructive, the one aiming at getting rid of the old economy, the other at substituting a new system in its place. But owing to causes which will appear as we proceed, I found it impossible entirely to separate the critical from the constructive portions of the book; and the consequence is that instead of a straightforward evolution, as of links in a continuous chain, the argument will be found to proceed in a circuitous course like a spiral, returning into itself, as it were, at each stage of its progress, prior to a fresh advance; the critical and constructive parts more or less alternating throughout. Beginning then with the critical portions I shall endeavour in a general way to establish the following positions:

1st

That up to the present time the orthodox Political Economy of the Schools is neither a pure science nor an applied science; not a pure science because it has excluded altogether from its purview elements essential to the problem of the pure science; not an applied science, because it has embodied in its teachings elements which do not properly belong to it, and which are so local, temporary, or capricious, that they cannot be made the subject matter of any single scientific specialism at all, unless indeed it be the all-comprehensive one of Sociology.

2nd

That having cut the subject matter of Political Economy out of the living tissue of Civilisation, with the view of making a specialism of it, instead of putting it back again, to have the life blood of that civilisation stream through it before deducing its laws and principles, the orthodox economy has deduced these laws and principles from the particular material only which it has marked out for itself as the subject matter of its specialism; and so its conclusions when applied to the phenomena of industry, which everywhere lie enmeshed in a web of legal and social powers interpenetrating them at every point and from all sides, are not only misleading in this or that particular, but practically misleading in all.

But before we can get fully under way in this demonstration, it is necessary that the different aspects of our problem should be given their proper focus and perspective, in order to avoid that confusion and overlapping of boundaries which has wrought so much mischief in the existing economv. And the first observation I would make is, that Political Economy under analysis ought to disclose as distinguishable features first, a pure Science, secondly, an Art, or applied Science, and thirdly, a Polity; the pure Science being the inner core of doctrine, as it were, while the Art and the Polity form the general material, political, and social framework in which it is embodied, and in and through which it has to work. But as a matter of fact, up to the present time, although the orthodox systems contain a science of a kind, it is neither a pure science nor a true science, inasmuch as it leaves out, as I have said, certain factors essential to the pure science; and the consequence of this, again, is that these systems cannot have an applied science which will be found at once true and applicable to all stages of industry alike.

In this they resemble that system of Astronomy which made a flat earth the centre of the world, with the sun rising and setting, and the planets and stars revolving around it, and which although it answered all the practical purposes of the everyday life of human beings quite as well perhaps as the true system, produced nothing but falsity the moment it was attempted to draw from it deductions as to other aspects of the world. And so with the existing Political Economy. It has never professed that its principles, which had they been parts of a true science, whether pure or applied, would have explained and illumined all industrial regimes alike, were applicable to regimes founded like slavery or serfdom on status, or like the guild or metayer system on fixed or customary wages and rent, or like Socialism where the land and instruments of production are to be owned by the State, but only to the present stage of Modern Capitalism, with its division of industrial society into landlords, capitalists, and labourers, respectively.