Our economic problems and their solution
- London George Allen & Unwin 1945
- 148 p.
SOMETHING is wrong with our social and economic system. All the social reforms of the last hundred years, and indeed all the proposed reforms for post-war reconstruction, still leave us wondering if the leaders of our various political parties and our economists are really getting to the root of the trouble. In fact, one may justifiably ask if they are solving anything by proposals bearing such a strong suggestion of impermanence.
In 1940, four years after the death of the author, the work Hopousia was published. In this work, J. D. Unwin considered what social structure would be necessary in order to produce in society the greatest manifestation of energy, and what social, political and economic systems would establish the conditions which would encourage the display of the maximum human energy.
The present work is an extract from Hopousia. In order to make this exhaustive and complicated enquiry of more general interest and to concentrate on that aspect of the subject which appears to be the most urgent for civilization to-day, namely, the economic aspect, the social and political questions discussed in Hopousia have been omitted.
Plainly, our present system, which hampers initiative and frustrates energy at every turn, is not the most suitable that could be devised for an energetic society. What economic structure should be substituted? In his introduction to Hopousia, Aldous Huxley says