[7]
[7] "The principle which governs the life of nations is not pure
science: it is the total of the complex data which depend on the
state of enlightenment, on needs and interests." Thus expressed
itself, in December, 1844, one of the clearest minds that France
contained, M. Leon Faucher. Explain, if you can, how a man of
this stamp was led by his economic convictions to declare that
the COMPLEX DATA of society are opposed to PURE SCIENCE.
Thus the division of labor, without which production would be
almost nothing, is subject to a thousand inconveniences, the
worst of which is the demoralization of the laborer; machinery
causes, not only cheapness, but obstruction of the market and
stoppage of business; competition ends in oppression; taxation,
the material bond of society, is generally a scourge dreaded
equally with fire and hail; credit is necessarily accompanied by
bankruptcy; property is a swarm of abuses; commerce degenerates
into a game of chance, in which it is sometimes allowable even to
cheat: in short, disorder existing everywhere to an equal extent
with order, and no one knowing how the latter is to banish the
former, taxis ataxien diokein, the economists have decided that
all is for the best, and regard every reformatory proposition as
hostile to political economy.
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