Principles Of Political Economy
- Автор: Mill John Stuart
- Год: 2022
- Язык: английский
- Год: Strelbytskyy Multimedia Publishing
- Жанр: Политика
Электронная книга - «Principles Of Political Economy». Краткое содержание книги:
Beside discussing descriptive issues such as which nations tended to benefit more in a system of trade based on comparative advantage (Mill's answer: those with more elastic demands for other countries' goods), the work also discussed normative issues such as ideal systems of political economy, critiquing proposed systems such as communism and socialism.
Along with A System of Logic, Principles of Political Economy established Mill's reputation as a leading public intellectual. Mill's sympathetic attitude in this work and in other essays toward contemporary socialism, particularly Fourierism, earned him esteem from the working class as one of their intellectual champions.
It is asserted that the prevalence of homicide in certain parts of the United States has had a vital influence in retarding the material growth of those sections. The Southern States have received but a very small fraction (from ten to thirteen per cent) of foreign immigration. “A country where law and order prevail to perfection may find its material prosperity checked by a deadly and fatal climate; or, on the other hand, a people may destroy all the advantages accruing from matchless natural resources and climate by persistent disregard of life and property. A rather startling confirmation of this economic truth is afforded by the fact that homicide has been as destructive of life in the South as yellow fever. Although there have been forty thousand deaths from yellow fever since the war, the deaths from homicide, for the same period, have been even greater.”[129] The influence of the old slave régime, and its still existing influences, in checking foreign immigration into the South can be seen by the colored chart, No. VIII, showing the relative density of foreign-born inhabitants in the several parts of the United States. The deeper color shows the greater foreign-born population.
The more perfect the security, the greater will be the effective strength of the desire of accumulation. Where property is less safe, or the vicissitudes ruinous to fortunes are more frequent and severe, fewer persons will save at all, and, of those who do, many will require the inducement of a higher rate of profit on capital to make them prefer a doubtful future to the temptation of present enjoyment.
In the circumstances, for example, of a hunting tribe, “man may be said to be necessarily improvident, and regardless of futurity, because, in this state, the future presents nothing which can be with certainty either foreseen or governed.... Besides a want of the motives exciting to provide for the needs of futurity through means of the abilities of the present, there is a want of the habits of perception and action, leading to a constant connection in the mind of those distant points, and of the series of events serving to unite them. Even, therefore, if motives be awakened capable of producing the exertion necessary to effect this connection, there remains the task of training the mind to think and act so as to establish it.”
§ 3. Examples of Deficiency in the Strength of this Desire.
For instance: “Upon the banks of the St. Lawrence there are several little Indian villages. The cleared land is rarely, I may almost say never, cultivated, nor are any inroads made in the forest for such a purpose. The soil is, nevertheless, fertile, and, were it not, manure lies in heaps by their houses. Were every family to inclose half an acre of ground, till it, and plant it in potatoes and maize, it would yield a sufficiency to support them one half the year. They suffer, too, every now and then, extreme want, insomuch that, joined to occasional intemperance, it is rapidly reducing their numbers. This, to us, so strange apathy proceeds not, in any great degree, from repugnance to labor; on the contrary, they apply very diligently to it when its reward is immediate. It is evidently not the necessary labor that is the obstacle to more extended culture, but the distant return from that labor. I am assured, indeed, that among some of the more remote tribes, the labor thus expended much exceeds that given by the whites. On the Indian, succeeding years are too distant to make sufficient impression; though, to obtain what labor may bring about in the course of a few months, he toils even more assiduously than the white man.”
This view of things is confirmed by the experience of the Jesuits, in their interesting efforts to civilize the Indians of Paraguay. The real difficulty was the improvidence of the people; their inability to think for the future; and the necessity accordingly of the most unremitting and minute superintendence on the part of their instructors. “Thus at first, if these gave up to them the care of the oxen with which they plowed, their indolent thoughtlessness would probably leave them at evening still yoked to the implement. Worse than this, instances occurred where they cut them up for supper, thinking, when reprehended, that they sufficiently excused themselves by saying they were hungry.”
As an example intermediate, in the strength of the effective desire of accumulation, between the state of things thus depicted and that of modern Europe, the case of the Chinese deserves attention. “Durability is one of the chief qualities, marking a high degree of the effective desire of accumulation. The testimony of travelers ascribes to the instruments formed by the Chinese a very inferior durability to similar instruments constructed by Europeans. The houses, we are told, unless of the higher ranks, are in general of unburnt bricks, of clay, or of hurdles plastered with earth; the roofs, of reeds fastened to laths. A greater degree of strength in the effective desire of accumulation would cause them to be constructed of materials requiring a greater present expenditure, but being far more durable. From the same cause, much land, that in other countries would be cultivated, lies waste. All travelers take notice of large tracts of lands, chiefly swamps, which continue in a state of nature. To bring a swamp into tillage is generally a process to complete which requires several years. It must be previously drained, the surface long exposed to the sun, and many operations performed, before it can be made capable of bearing a crop. Though yielding, probably, a very considerable return for the labor bestowed on it, that return is not made until a long time has elapsed. The cultivation of such land implies a greater strength of the effective desire of accumulation than exists in the empire. The amount of self-denial would seem to be small. It is their great deficiency in forethought and frugality in this respect which is the cause of the scarcities and famines that frequently occur.”
That it is defect of providence, not defect of industry, that limits production among the Chinese, is still more obvious than in the case of the semi-agriculturized Indians. “Where the returns are quick, where the instruments formed require but little time to bring the events for which they were formed to an issue,” it is well known that “the great progress which has been made in the knowledge of the arts suited to the nature of the country and the wants of its inhabitants” makes industry energetic and effective. “What marks the readiness with which labor is forced to form the most difficult materials into instruments, where these instruments soon bring to an issue the events for which they are formed, is the frequent occurrence, on many of their lakes and rivers, of structures resembling the floating gardens of the Peruvians, rafts covered with vegetable soil and cultivated. Labor in this way draws from the materials on which it acts very speedy returns. Nothing can exceed the luxuriance of vegetation when the quickening powers of a genial sun are ministered to by a rich soil and abundant moisture. It is otherwise, as we have seen, in cases where the return, though copious, is distant. European travelers are surprised at meeting these little floating farms by the side of swamps which only require draining to render them tillable.”
129
“International Review,” article “Colonization,” 1881, p. 88. See H. V. Redfield, “Homicide North and South,” 1880.