THE COLLECTED WORKS OF THORSTEIN VEBLEN: Business Theories, Economic Articles & Essays. Thorstein Veblen
especially ch. VII. and XXII.
38See ch. IX.
39Cf. e.g. E. Jenks, Law and Politics in the Middle Ages, ch. VI and VII.
40"It has been said that the science of one age is the common sense of the next. It might with equal truth be said that the equity of one age becomes the law of the next. If positive law is the basis of order, ideal right is the active factor in progress." - H.S. Foxwell, Introduction to Menger's Right to the Whole Produce of Labor, p. XI. Cf. the entire passage.
41See the essay, of Civil Government, ch. V.
42Apart from the familiar historical materials for the study of the growth of national rights, including the right of property, there are a number of late writings that may be consulted; e.g. Jellinek, Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen; Ritchie, Natural Rights; Bonar, chapters relating to this topic in Philosophy and Political Economy; Hoffding, History of Modern Philosophy, vol. I; Albee, History of English Utilitarianism; and, lately come to hand, Scherger, Evolution of Modern Liberty. These and other writers treat of natural rights and the law of nature chiefly in other bearings than that of ownership; while the legal writers treat the subject from the legal rather than the de facto standpoint. It is also not unusual to spend attention chiefly on the pedigree of the doctrines rather than on the genesis and growth of the concepts. An endeavor at a genetic account of the modern concepts of ownership is found in Jenks, Law and Politics in the Middle Ages, so also in Cunningham, Western Civilization in its Economic Aspects.
43What appears to be necessary to the development of such a sentiment is that neither slavery nor the machine system shall be present in sufficient force to give a pronounced bias to the community's habits of thought, at the same time that each member of the community, or each minor group of persons, habitually carries on its own work at its own discretion and for its own ends. Such a situation may or may not involve handicraft as that term is specifically understood. A presumption of similar import, but less pronounced and less defined, seems to prevail in an uncertain degree among many peoples on a low stage of culture. The tenet, accordingly, has some claim to stand as an egression of "natural" right, even when "natural" is taken in an evolutionary sense.
44Taken by and large, the standardization of conduct, knowledge, and ideals Current in the eighteenth century, and consonant with the eighteenth-century economic situation, is in the last analysis reducible to terms of workmanlike efficiency rather than terms of material cause and effect. This leaning to personal, workmanlike efficiency as an ultimate term shows itself even in the science of that time, e.g. in the quasi-personal character imputed to the so-called "natural laws" which then largely occupied scientific speculation; similarly in the Romantic literature and political philosophy.
45As late as the close of the sixteenth century English law and usage in the matter of loans for interest and other contracts of a pecuniary character were in a less advanced state, admitted a less full and free discretion, than the corresponding development on the Continent; but from about that time the English rapidly gains on the Continental community in the habitual acceptance and application of these "business principles," and it has since then held the lead in this respect. Cf. Ashley, Economic History, vol. II. ch. VI.
46Cf. Sombart, Kapitalismus, vol. II. ch. II.
47On the putative stability of the money unit, cf. W.W. Carlile, The Evolution of Modern Money, pt. II. ch. IV.
48Economists are in the habit of speaking of money as a medium of exchange, a "great wheel" for the circulation of goods. In the same connection business traffic is spoken of as a means of obtaining goods suitable for consumption, the end of all purchase and sale being consumable goods, not money values. It may be true in some profound philosophical sense that money values are not the definitive term of business endeavor, and that the business man seeks through the mediation of money to satisfy his craving for consumable goods. Looking at the process of economic life as a whole and taking it in its rationalized bearing as a collective endeavor to purvey goods and services for the needs of collective humanity, the office of the money unit - money transactions, exchange, credit, and all the rest that make up the phenomena of business - is perhaps justly rated as something subsidiary, serving to facilitate the distribution of consumable goods to the consumers, the Consumption of goods being the objective point of all this traffic. Such is the view of this matter given by the rationalistic, normalizing speculations of the eighteenth-century philosophers; and such is, in substance, the view spoken for by those economists who still consistently remain at the standpoint of the eighteenth century. The contention need neither be defended nor refuted here, since it does not seriously touch the facts of modern business. Within the range of business transactions this ulterior end does not necessarily come into view, at least not as a motive that guides the transactions from day to day. The matter is not so conceived in business transactions, it does not so appear on the face of the negotiable instruments, it is not in this manner that the money unit enters into the ruling habits of thought of business men.
49Still, latterly, in the traffic of some of the more wide-awake business men, account is practically taken of the variations of the unit of value. What may be the future effects of habitual and incontinent variations of the unit, such as prevail in the present, is of course impossible to foretell. These variations seem due mainly to the extensive prevalence of credit relations; and the full development of credit relations in business is apparently a matter of the future rather than of the recent past, in spite of the great improvements that have been made in the use of credit. The modern conventional imputation of stability to the money unit dates back to the regime of a "money economy," such as prevailed under the circumstances of handicraft and the earlier huckstering commerce, and it holds its place in the developed "credit economy" largely as a survival of this more elementary past phase of economic life.
50The conventional acceptance of the money unit as an invariable measure of value and standard of wealth is of very ancient derivation. (Cf. Carlile, Evolution of Modern Money, pt. II. ch. I; Ridgeway, Origin of Metallic Currency and Weight Standards, ch. I, II) Its present-day consequences are also of first-rate importance, as will be indicated in a later chapter.
51Cf., e.g., Mun, England's Treasure, particularly ch. II; Ashley, Economic History and Theory, bk. II. ch. VI. pp. 391-397. This, essentially handicraft, presumption is reflected even in the classical economists, who feel a moral necessity of explaining profits on some basis of productivity, or even of workmanship in some sophisticated sense. The whole discussion of the doctrine of Wages of Superintendence will serve to illustrate the case; the point is well shown in Mr Davidson's article on "Earnings of Management" in Palgrave's Dictionary of Political Economy.
52The "ordinary" rate, of course, differs in detail from one line of business to another, as well as from place to place.
53This statement applies with greater aptness to the business situation of England during the earlier three-quarters of the nineteenth century, and to the American situation of the