[
276 ] Notes on Sources
ous to the Concert of Europe. Their participation in the Suez share deal, the offer
of the Bleichroeders to finance the French War indemnity of 1871 through the issu-
ance of an international loan, the vast transactions of the Oriental Railway period
are not included. Historical works like Langer and Sontag give but scant attention
to international finance (the latter in his enumeration of peace factors omits the
mentioning of finance); Leathes's remarks in the
Cambridge Modern History are
almost an exception. Liberal freelance criticism was either directed to show up the
lack of patriotism of the financiers or their proclivity to support protectionist and
imperialist tendencies to the detriment of free trade, as in the case of writers such
as Lysis in France, or J. A. Hobson in England. Marxist works, like Hilferding's or
Lenin's studies, stressed the imperialistic forces emanating from national bank-
ing, and their organic connection with the heavy industries. Such an argument,
besides being restricted mainly to Germany, necessarily failed to deal with inter-
national banking interests.
The influence of Wall Street on developments in the 1920s appears too recent
for objective study. There can be hardly any doubt that, on the whole, its influence
was thrown into the scales on the side of international moderation and media-
tion, from the time of the Peace Treaties to the Dawes Plan, the Young Plan, and
the liquidation of reparations at and after Lausanne. Recent literature tends to
separate off the problem of private investments, as in Staley's work which ex-
pressly excludes loans to governments, whether proffered by other governments
or by private investors, a restriction which practically excludes any general ap-
praisal of international finance in his interesting study. Feis's excellent account, on
which we have profusely drawn, comes near to covering the subject as a whole, but
also suffers from the inevitable dearth of authentic material, since the archives of
haute finance have not yet been made available. The valuable work done by Earle,
Remer, and Viner is subject to the same unavoidable limitation.
T O C H A P T E R F O U R
6. Selected References to "Societies and Economic Systems"
The nineteenth century attempted to establish a self-regulating economic sys-
tem on the motive of individual gain. We maintain that such a venture was in the
very nature of things impossible. Here we are merely concerned with the distorted
view of life and society implied in such an approach. Nineteenth-century thinkers
assumed, for instance, that to behave like a trader in the market was "natural," any
other mode of behavior being artificial economic behavior—the result of inter-
ference with human instincts; that markets would spontaneously arise, if only
men were let alone; that whatever the desirability of such a society on moral
grounds, its practicability, at least, was founded on the immutable characteristics
of the race, and so on. Almost exactly the opposite of these assertions is implied in
the testimony of modern research in various fields of social science such as social
anthropology, primitive economics, the history of early civilization, and general
Notes on Sources [ 277 ]
economic history. Indeed, there is hardly an anthropological or sociological as-
sumption—whether explicit or implicit—contained in the philosophy of eco-
nomic liberalism that has not been refuted. Some citations follow.
(a) The motive of gain is not "natural" to man.
"The characteristic feature of primitive economics is the absence of any desire
to make profits from production or exchange" (Thurnwald,
Economics in Primi-
tive Communities, 1932, p. xiii). "Another notion which must be exploded, once
and forever, is that of the Primitive Economic Man of some current economic
textbooks" (Malinowski,
Argonauts of the Western Pacific, 1930, p. 60). "We must
reject the
Idealtypen of Manchester liberalism, which are not only theoretically,
but also historically misleading" (Brinkmann, "Das soziale System des Kapitalis-
mus," in
Grundriss der Sozialbkonomik, Vol. IV, p. 11).
(b) To expect payment for labor is not "natural" to man.
"Gain, such as is often the stimulus for work in more civilized communities,
never acts as an impulse to work under the original native conditions" (Malinow-
ski,
op. cit., p. 156). "Nowhere in uninfluenced primitive society do we find labour
associated with the idea of payment" (Lowie, "Social Organization," in
Encyclope-
dia of the Social Sciences, Vol. XIV, p. 14).
"Nowhere is labour being leased or sold"
(Thurnwald,
Die menschliche Gesellschaft, Book III, 1932, p. 169). "The treatment
of labour as an obligation, not requiring indemnification . . . " is general (Firth,
Primitive Economics of the New Zealand Maori, 1929). "Even in the Middle Ages
payment for work for strangers is something unheard of." "The stranger has no
personal tie of duty, and, therefore, he should work for honour and recognition."
Minstrels, while being strangers, "accepted payment, and were consequently de-
spised" (Lowie,
op. cit.).
(c) To restrict labor to the unavoidable minimum is not "natural" to man.
"We can not fail to observe that work is never limited to the unavoidable mini-
mum but exceeds the absolutely necessary amount, owing to a natural or acquired
functional urge to activity" (Thurnwald,
Economics, p. 209). "Labour always
tends beyond that which is strictly necessary" (Thurnwald,
Die menschliche Ge-
sellschaft, p. 163).
(d) The usual incentives to labor are not gain but reciprocity, competition,
joy of work, and social approbation.
Reciprocity: "Most, if not all economic acts are found to belong to some chain
of reciprocal gifts and countergifts, which in the long run balance, benefiting both
sides equally.... The man who would persistently disobey the rulings of law in his
economic dealings would soon find himself outside the social and economic or-