User:Gaeanautes/The classics

Historical background
For centuries...

The stationary state in classical economics
From Adam Smith and onwards, economists in the classical period of economic theorising described the general development of society in terms of a contrast between the scarcity of arable agricultural land on the one hand, and the growth of population and capital on the other hand. The incomes from gross production were distributed as rents, profits and wages among landowners, capitalists and labourers respectively, and these three classes were incessantly engaged in the struggle for increasing their own share. The accumulation of capital (net investments) would sooner or later come to an end as the rate of profit falled to a minimum or to nill. At that point, the economy would settle in a final stationary state with a constant population size and a constant stock of capital.

Adam Smith's concept of the stationary state
Adam Smith's magnum opus on The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, laid the foundation of classical economics in Britain. Smith thereby disseminated and established a concept that has since been a cornerstone in economics throughout most of the world: In a liberal capitalist society, provided with a stable institutional and legal framework, the 'invisible hand' will ensure that the enlightened self-interest of all members of society will contribute to the growth and prosperity of society as a whole and lead to an 'obvious and simple system of natural liberty'.

Smith was convinced of the beneficial effect of the enlightened self-interest on the wealth of nations; but he was less certain this wealth would grow forever. Smith observed that any country in the world found itself in either a 'progressive', a 'stationary', or a 'declining' state: Although England was wealthier than its North American colonies, wages were higher in the latter place as wealth in North America was growing faster than in England; hence, North America was in the 'cheerful and hearty' progressive state. In China, on the other hand, wages were low, the condition of poor people was scantier than in any nation in Europe, and more marriages were contracted here because the 'horrid' killing of newborn babies was permitted and even widely practised; hence, China was in the 'dull' stationary state, although it did not yet seem to be declining. In nations situated in the 'melancholic' declining state, the higher ranks of society would fall down and settle for occupation amid the lower ranks, while the lowest ranks would either subsist on a miserable and insufficient wage, resort to begging or crime, or slide into starvation and early death. Bengal and some other English settlements in the East Indies possibly found themselves in this state, Smith oberved.

Smith pointed out that as wealth was growing in any nation, the rate of profit would tend to fall and investment opportunities would diminish. In a nation that had thereby reached this 'full complement of riches', society would finally settle in a stationary state with a constant stock of people and capital. In an 18th century anticipation of The Limits to Growth, Smith described the state as follows:

In a country which had acquired that full complement of riches which the nature of its soil and climate, and its situation with respect to other countries, allowed it to acquire; which could, therefore, advance no further, and which was not going backwards, both the wages of labour and the profits of stock would probably be very low. In a country fully peopled in proportion to what either its territory could maintain or its stock employ, the competition for employment would necessarily be so great as to reduce the wages of labour to what was barely sufficient to keep up the number of labourers, and, the country being already fully peopled, that number could never be augmented. In a country fully stocked in proportion to all the business it had to transact, as great a quantity of stock would be employed in every particular branch as the nature and extent of the trade would admit. The competition, therefore, would everywhere be as great, and consequently the ordinary profit as low as possible."

According to Smith, Holland seemed to be approaching this stationary state, although at a much higher level than in China. Smith was unable to provide any contemporary examples of a nation in the world that had in fact reached the full complement of riches and thus had settled in stationarity, because, as he casually remarked, "... perhaps no country has ever yet arrived at this degree of opulence."

David Ricardo's concept of the stationary state
In the early 19th century, David Ricardo was the leading economist of the day and the champion of British laissez-faire liberalism. According to Ricardo, the limits to growth were ever present due to scarcity of arable agricultural land. In the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars on the European continent, the British economy was approaching the stationary state as population was growing, plots of land with decreasing fertility were put into agricultural use, and the rents of the rural landowning class were crowding out the profits of the urban capitalists. This was the broad outline of Ricardo's controversial land rent theory, published in his On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation in 1817.

Ricardo believed that the only way for Britain to avoid the stationary state was to increase its volume of international trade. The country should export more of its industrial products and start importing cheap agricultural products from abroad in turn. However, this course of development was impeded by the Corn Laws, a protectionist two-sided measure of subsidies on corn exports and tariffs on corn imports. These laws seemed to be hampering both the industrialisation and the internationalization of the British economy, but the laws were nonetheless upheld by a Parliament dominated by a landowning class only too eager to preserve its own position and income in society. In the 1820s, Ricardo and his followers — Ricardo himself died in 1823 — directed much of their fire at the Corn Laws in order to have them repealed.

The Corn Laws were not repealed before 1846. In the meantime, the British economy kept growing, a fact that effectively undermined the credibility and thrust of Ricardian economics in Britain; but Ricardo had by now established himself as the first stationary state theorist in the history of economic thought.

John Stuart Mill's concept of the stationary state
John Stuart Mill was the leading economist, philosopher and social reformer in the middle of 19th century Britain. His economics treatise on the Principles of Political Economy, published in 1848, attained status as the standard textbook in economics throughout the English-speaking world until the turn of the century.

A champion of classical liberalism, Mill believed that an ideal society should allow all individuals to pursue their own good without any interference from others or from government. Also a utilitarian philosopher, Mill regarded the 'Greatest Happiness Principle' as the ultimate ideal for a harmonious society:

As the means of making the nearest approach to this ideal, utility would enjoin, first, that laws and social arrangements should place the happiness ... of every individual, as nearly as possible in harmony with the interest of the whole; and secondly, that education and opinion, which have so vast a power over human character, should so use that power as to establish in the mind of every individual an indissoluble association between his own happiness and the good of the whole; ...

Mill's concept of the stationary state was strongly coloured by these ideals. Mill conjectured that the stationary state of society was not too far away in the future:

It must always have been seen, more or less distinctly, by political economists, that the increase of wealth is not boundless; that at the end of what they term the progressive state lies the stationary state, that all progress in wealth is but a postponement of this, and that each step in advance is an approach to it. We have now been led to recognize that this ultimate goal is at all times near enough to be fully in view; that we are always on the verge of it, and that, if we have not reached it long ago, it is because the goal itself flies before us.

Contrary to both Smith and Ricardo before him, Mill took an optimistic view on the future stationary state. Mill could not "... regard the stationary state of capital and wealth with the unaffected aversion so generally manifested toward it by political economists of the old school." Instead, Mill attributed many important qualities to this future state, he even believed the state would bring about "... a very considerable improvement on our present condition. According to Mill, the stationary state was at one and the same time inevitable, necessary and desirable: It was inevitable, because the accumulation of capital would bring about a falling rate of profit that would diminish investment opportunities and hamper further accumulation; it was also necessary, because mankind had to learn how to reduce its size and its level of consumption within the boundaries set by nature and by employment opportunities; finally, the stationary state was desirable, as it would ease the introduction of public income redistibution schemes, create more equality and put an end to man's ruthless struggle to get by — instead, the human spirit would be liberated to the benefit of more elevated social and cultural activities, 'the graces of life'.

Hence, Mill was able to express all of his liberal ideals for mankind through his concept of the stationary state. It has been argued that Mill essentially made a quality-of-life argument for the stationary state.

Main developments in economics since Mill
When the influence of John Stuart Mill and his Principles declined, the classical-liberalist period of economic theorising came to an end. By the turn of the 19th century, Marxism and neoclassical economics had emerged to dominate economics. This development led to the exclusion of any concern with natural resource scarcity in economic modelling and analysis:


 * Although a classical economist in his own right, Karl Marx abandoned the earlier concept of a stationary state and replaced it with his own unique vision of historical materialism, according to which human societies pass through several 'modes of production', eventually leading to communism. In each mode of production, man's increasing mastery over nature and the 'productive forces' of society develop to a point where the class struggle bursts into revolutions, followed by the establishment of a new mode of production. In opposition to his liberalist predecessors in the field, Marx did not regard natural resource scarcity as a factor constraining future economic growth; instead, the capitalist mode of production was to be overturned before the productive forces of society could fully develop, bringing about an abundance of goods in a new society based on the principle of "from each according to ability, to each according to need" — that is, communism. It was assumed that communism would overcome any resource scarcity ever to be encountered. For ideological reasons, then, orthodox Marxism has generally been opposed to any concern with natural resource scarcity ever since Marx's own day.


 * In neoclassical economics, on the other hand, the classical preoccupation with society's long term growth and development was abandoned altogether; instead, economic analysis came to focus on the study of the relationship between given ends and given scarce means, forming the concept of general equilibrium theory within an essentially static framework. Hence, neoclassical economics achieved greater generality, but only by asking easier questions; and any concern with natural resource scarcity was neglected.

Taken together, it has been argued that "... if Judeo-Christian monotheism took nature out of religion, Anglo-American economists (after about 1880) took nature out of economics." Almost one century later, nature was reintegrated into economics by Herman Daly in his concept of a steady-state economy (see below).

John Maynard Keynes's concept of reaching saturation
John Maynard Keynes was the paradigm founder of modern macroeconomics, and is widely considered today to be the most influential economist of the 20th century. Keynes rejected the basic tenet of classical economics that free markets would lead to full employment by themselves. Consequently, he recommended government intervention to stimulate aggregate demand in the economy, a macroeconomic policy now known as Keynesian economics. Keynes also believed that capital accumulation would reach saturation at some point in the future.

In his essay from 1930 on The Economic Possibilities of Our Grandchildren, Keynes ventured to look one hundred years ahead into the future and predict the standard of living in the 21st century. Writing at the beginning of the Great Depression, Keynes rejected the prevailing "bad attack of economic pessimism" of his own time and foresaw that by 2030, the grandchildren of his generation would live in a state of abundance, where saturation would have been reached. People would find themselves liberated from such economic activities as saving and capital accumulation, and be able to get rid of 'pseudo-moral principles' — avarice, exaction of interest, love of money — that had characterized capitalistic societies so far. Instead, people would devote themselves to the true art of life, to live "wisely and agreeably and well." Mankind would finally have solved "the economic problem," that is, the struggle for existence.

The similarity between John Stuart Mill's concept of the stationary state (see above) and Keynes's predictions in this essay has been noted. It has been argued that although Keynes was right about future growth rates, he underestimated the inequalities prevailing today, both within and across countries. He was also wrong in predicting that greater wealth would induce more leisure spent; in fact, the reverse trend seems to be true.

In his magnum opus on The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Keynes looked only one generation ahead into the future and predicted that state intervention balancing aggregate demand would by then have caused capital accumulation to reach the point of saturation. The marginal efficiency of capital as well as the rate of interest would both be brought down to zero, and — if population was not increasing rapidly — society would finally "... attain the conditions of a quasi-stationary community where change and progress would result only from changes in technique, taste, population and institutions ..." Keynes believed this development would bring about the disappearance of the rentier class, something he welcomed: Keynes argued that rentiers incurred no sacrifice for their earnings, and their savings did not lead to productive investments unless aggregate demand in the economy was sufficiently high. "I see, therefore, the rentier aspect of capitalism as a transitional phase which will disappear when it has done its work."

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