Excerpt from An Alphabet of Economics

The following Alphabet grew out of an attempt to compile a glossary of economic and political terms for the use of readers of the New Age in general and of students of the system of National Guilds in particular. It developed, however, into a more or less systematic attempt to define economics in terms of the wage system, and, at the same time, to suggest an alternative to it. Though fragmentary, therefore, in appearance, it will be found to contain a consistent criticism of current. Economic theory, a consistent exposition, however inadequate, of the eco nomic theory held by the new school of National Guildsmen, and consistent Sugges tions, somewhat shadowy, it is true, towards a social reconstruction.

It has long been realised that modern industry depends for its main motive upon the desire for gain and hence that profit cering, or production for the sake of profit, is an accurate description of it. It has long also been realised that in thus permitting production to be carried on from an irrele vant motive we were admitting an ethical contradiction into the practices of the State. At the same time, since economists, by means of their analysis of the factors of pro duction, found themselves unable to detect any intellectual defect in the system, the ethical defect was assumed to be either a passing phenomenon, to be remedied by education, or inherent in human nature. Nothing, they concluded, was wrong in the theory of economics hence nothing could be wrong in the practice unless it were due to factors outside economic control. Economic theory, in short, was assumed to be able to leave the court, where it had been charged with the crimes of modern industry, without a stain upon its character.

To this, however, it was not possible that everybody always should agree; and, in fact, as the history of Socialist criticism shows, there have always been protestants and dissentients, who maintain that what is right in theory cannot be wrong in practice, and that what is wrong in practice must needs, therefore, be wrong in theory. With out attempting in this place to resume the course of such a criticism or to review the successive hypotheses upon which such criticisms have rested themselves, it may be said that the common sum of them is to be found and is assumed in the defini tions herein contained. The issue turns, it will be seen, upon the original analysis of the factors of production, from which, if we accept the current conception, all the con sequences of modern industry flow, and which, therefore, must be re-examined if we are to build our industry upon a new foundation.

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