The basis of economic statemanship

The fallure of contemporary economle statesmanship, of which the "depression" has made us painfully aware, was inevitable. The material realities of our civilization have never been controlled by pecuniary policles. What is required to make this clear is a clearer perception than we have enjoyed hitherto of the essential continuity of price theory-its perennlal indirection and speciousness-throughout the period of "capitalist" development. Thus it begins as a mediaeval abstraction and a technique for attacking burgher power by indirection. With burgher ascendency it appears with reversed effect as the dislectic of burgher ascendency. With the reversal of mer cantilist policies the pecuniary logic is once more reversed, becoming the dialectic of "free competition." But the circunustances which alone brought about the reversal of mercantilist policy and the ascendency of laissez-faire theory have worked themselves out in a situation which at last requires the complete abandonment of the pecuniary illusion.