Political economy and capitalism: some essays in economic tradition

An attempt to explore the whole territory of economics with so fragile a vehicle as eight slender essays might well be held sufficient evidence of a diffuseness doomed to be superficial. If these essays made any such pre tension, there would, I think, be no answer to the charge. But while their apparent range is wide, they make no claim to do more than survey certain aspects of their field, and they advisedly ignore large areas which many may judge to be more deserving of study. The selection of themes has not, however, been a random one. It has been guided by the opinion that Political Economy and the controversies which beset it have meaning as answers to certain questions of an essentially practical kind-questions concerning the nature and behaviour of the economic system which we know as capitalism; and that this type of question is crucial both to any full understanding of the development of economic thought and to the relation between economic thought and practice. In the later career of a theory there is a common tendency for original questions of this kind to become submerged and forgotten, so that essential meaning is lost or obscured. It is the belief that economic thought, if it is to have realistic worth, must be freed of many notions to-day encumbering its roots which gives to these essays such unity as they can claim to have, and explains their preoccupation so largely with interpretation and criticism.