Economics for the NationThe British historical economists produced a specifically conservative brand of social and economic reform.
Henry George
Dec 29, 2022
America and Britain are facing a litany of crises that, unaddressed, will leave them both poorer, less stable, and therefore less secure. The problems we face are both deep-seated, with roots going back decades, and more immediate, made acute by recent events. We are seeing domestic stagnation and stratification, concurrent with an increasingly unstable geopolitical environment, set to worsen over the coming decades.
Cultivating and implementing a political economy equal to the task before us is vital if we wish to regain a measure of prosperity that allows the common man and woman to live decent lives of security, stability, and relative harmony in an increasingly chaotic and dangerous world.
In 1893, economic historian W.J. Ashley articulated the conservative approach to political economy, arguing that it “is not a body of absolutely true doctrines, revealed to the world at the end of the last century... Political Economy was not born fully armed from the brain of Adam Smith or any other thinker; its appearance as an independent science meant only the disentanglement of economics from philosophical and political speculation.” The ideas of the Edwardian era British historical school of economics that emerged from this approach, and the milieu around Conservative politician Arthur Steel-Maitland, offer a rich depository of ideas that can provide inspiration for facing the challenges of today.
The problems of social division rooted in economic upheaval and cultural churn, combined with increased international competition and instability, were as much features of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as they are in our time. As historian E.H.H. Green argues in his books, the U.K.’s Conservative Party developed and engaged in a conservative brand of collective, communitarian thought and ideological development in response to material and cultural changes of the day. The goal for thinkers and intellectually engaged politicians was to lay out a philosophically conservative style of social reform that charted a path between liberal individualism and socialist collectivism.
The British historical school of economics was influenced by the thought emanating from Bismarckian Germany and German historical economists like Gustav von Schmoller and Friedrich List. The leading historical economists were William Cunningham, W.J. Ashley, H.S. Foxwell, L.L. Price, and W.A.S. Hewins. These figures gained serious intellectual traction from the 1880s on, but saw their approach gain political support during the Edwardian era. Their criticism of classical economics was fundamental and led to attacks on the iniquities of classical liberalism and socialism. The key idea they took from Germany was that, according to Cunningham, “individual competition is only a beneficient force when the conditions under which it acts are carefully regulated.”
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Source:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/economics-for-the-nation/
