out capital be made most efficient? The clause is not consciously added, "regardless of its effects upon men;" but the extent to which this clause actually vitiates the temper and program of theoretical and applied economics really constitutes the central social problem of our epoch. This opening paragraph also supports the belief that frank repetition of some of Smith's confident presumptions would today place men well along in the way toward extreme socialism. No modern trade-union leader, at any rate, is more sure than Adam Smith was that labor is the original source of wealth. The difference is that Smith took it for granted, while the modern laborer has to fight against jealous denial of this most rudimentary economic truth. Today capital is not always content even to share honors with labor. Capital often goes so far as to claim superior virtues in the productive process, and to imply priority of right to the output. This perversion has not merely crept into economic practice, but it is written large between the lines of much economic theory. We shall see that this is in a considerable degree a change that marks secession from the moral presumptions upon which Smith's economic theories were based. Assuming, then, the homely fact that a nation is a collection of persons needing consumable TABLE OF CONTENTS III. THE ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY OF LABOR IV. THE ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY OF CAPITAL 155 V. ECONOMIC VS. SOCIOLOGICAL INTERPRETATION VI. THE PROBLEMS OF ECONOMIC AND OF SOCIOLOGI- VII. THE RELATION OF ECONOMIC TECHNOLOGY TO I INTRODUCTION If one were to come upon The Wealth of Nations for the first time, with a knowledge of the general sociological way of looking at society, but with no knowledge of economic literature, there would be not the slightest difficulty nor hesitation about classifying the book as an inquiry in a special field of sociology. Under those circumstances there would be no doubt that the author of the book had a fairly well-defined view, though not in detail the modern view, of the general relations of human society, and of the subordinate place occupied objectively, if not in conventional theory, by the economic section of activities to which the book was devoted. On its first page the reader would get hints of the outlook in the mind of the author, and it would not be hard to construct from those hints a perspective which would contrast very directly with certain points in the view that afterward stole into vogue among classical economists and working capitalists. 1 1 Sombart has made a very strong statement 1 Moderne Kapitalismus, Vol. I, pp. 196, et passim. |