MUCH MALIGNED ECONOMISTS

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21355, 24 December 1934, Page 15

MUCH MALIGNED ECONOMISTS

PRESENT STATE OF THE WORLD IS IT THEIR FAULT? (SPECIALLY WIUTTEX FOB THE PRESS.) I [By HARTLEY WITHERS.] ! In the present unholy and ridiculous mess into which the world's , affairs have fallen it is natural enough that all institutions and au- t thorities should be discredited. Says • the man in the street, "Here we are 1 just 16 years from the end of the war that was to end war, and yet ' war feeling and war fears are more ' rampant than ever, international i trade is knocked into a cocked hat, unemployment prevails on an immense scale, nobody can buy as much goods as he wants, industry j cannot sell half the goocts that it is j ready to turn out. The whole thing j is disgusting, and all the people who ' are responsible for guiding and lead- ( ing us must have contributed to the J mess or failed, at least, to clean it { up." Governments, churches, all ' kinds of leaders, teachers, and j preachers share in the blame for • the present discontents; but most of i the discredit. I think, falls on the organisers 0 f business and the econ- ' omists—the former because they are expected to get trade on its legs 1 again, and the latter because they : are expected to tell the world why ! it is poor in the midst of potential ■ plenty, and what is to be done to put things right. ; In America As to the business organisers, they, in one immensely important country, certainly deserve nearly all the blame that is now being showered on their heads. Until Mr Roosevelt took charge, the Republican party managed America in the interest of big business and at its bidding. It made a sorry hash of the job, and this, owing to America's commanding position in finance and commerce, was one of the most devastating causes of the world's present distresses. In other countries business lias had much less power and lias seen its efforts to pull itself out of the mire largely frustrated by the exaggerated economic nationalism that has done so much to kill international trade. At every turn business organisers are hampered by quotas, exchange restrictions, and other difficulties. But the unfortunate economists have never had any power anywhere, and they and their so-called science have been covered with obloquy and ridicule by a world which has got into ils present mess chiefly by disregarding their doctrines. It lis true, of couise, that they are, in (many wavs a very tiresome set of llolk.' I The Man in the Street ! An article in the October number lof the "Highway," the journal of I the Workers' Educational Association, falls foid of an economist who had, in another number of the same magazine, implied that the ordinary person has no right to have views upon economic questions, and had held up to scorn "the layman who for some mysterious reason feels himself competent to pass judgment upon economic issues that are far more intricate than most of the problems of natural science for i which In.' feels exaggerated respect." I Which, of course, is quite true. But jthe ordinary man must necessarily 'pass judgment on matters which af- ' feet his daily life and work; and if Mho economists cannot put their docI trines before the man in the street | in language that he can understand, they are failing in their duty to j mankind at an important turning jpoint in its history. For them to tell i us, "You must not have views about currency or trade problems, because they are too difficult for you," is about as sensible as for doctors to tell us that we ought not to have views about what we eat or drink, because the working of the gastric juices is a matter that is only understood by experts. Tn each case it is the business of the expert to instruct us in a way that we can understand—the doctor explains why some food is good for us and some is not; and the economist ought to make it clear why money and trade have to be treated on certain lines if the world's business is to come round the corner at which it is stuck.

This most of them have failed to do, partly by their own fault, but largely owing to the inherent weakness of their science, and most of all because their advice, even when it is plainly enough expressed, is not listened to. As to their fault, it is to some extent due to that dogmatic superiority of which the writer in the "Highway" complained, but more generally it is because the leading economists, though quite modest and unassuming people, are very clever and can never remember that the public which they ought to instruct is not nearly as clever as they are; also, most of them are highly trained mathematicians, and mathematics fit people better for making calculations than for thinking and writing clearly. "A Hopeless Task" But apart from all these difficulties economists have a hopeless task in trying to persuade the world, when it is in a bad temper, to go about its business in a manner conducive to prosperity. For the science that they teach concerns man as a wealth-getting animal, and man is also an animal that does and desires a great many things besides wealthgetting. Any economist who had been consulted on the eve of the war about its consequences to business, would have said unhestitatingly that it was bound to be disastrous, both to victors and vanquished. But none of the statesmen and only a tiny minority of the popu- i lations that were proposing to go to war would have allowed that consideration to stop them. They would have said "Sorry about that, but our national honour is at stake, and we've got to fight, whatever it may cost." And when the war was over, the great majority of economists of all countries told us that if we wanted to get back to peace-time prosperity the first thing to do was to make peace real, and to trade together once more in a friendly spirit and to deal with war debts and war obligations on reasonable lines. Instead of which America put up a tariff that made debt payments impossible, and Europe was divided into groups of peoples snarling and growling at each other across the frontiers and doing their best to keep out one another's goods, and making preparations for the next war. And then the world turns round and abuses the economists because it has got itself into a discreditable mess by ignoring their advice!