GUIDE TO THE PHILOSOPHY 1938 - 1947.pdf - Rare Books at ...

744
ETHICS AND POLITICS: THE MODERNS
people more than for others, means that on some occasions
and in some relations he will act vis-d-vis society, as if he
cared only for himself. It has been said that there is no
crime which a family man will not commit; " Un pbre de
famUle," in fact, "est capable de taut". The truth which the
aphorism enshrines is that men will often "act economically",
that is to say, they will act solely with a view to the
advancement of themselves and of those for whom they
care, when to "act economically" is to act from motives
other than, and often antagonistic to, those which the
idealist theory of the State takes into account. It is to the
growing prevalence of action from economic motives in
the sense defined, that the increase in modern society of
associations for economic purposes is due.
NATURE AND SIGNIFICANCE OP VOLUNTARY
ECONOMIC ASSOCIATIONS. The importance of
these associations has so impressed certain writers that they
were at one time inclined to regard them as making war
between States improbable, ifnot impossible. Thus Cobden's
ideal of Free Trade depended on and was conditioned by
an amicable society of free nations affording a secure background
for international trading companies and financial
associations. To increase the maximum of available wealth,
was his chief object, and he thanked God "that Englishmen
live in a time when it is impossible to make war profit-
able".
Sir Norman Angell describes a society so enmeshed by the
net of financial organizations that the economic welfare
the economic
of almost any part of it is dependent upon
welfare of the rest To take a single example, where many
might be given, he points out that "the telegraph involves
a single system of credit for the civilized world ; that system,
of credit involves the financial interdependence of all
States".
The single system of credit is reinforced by a synchronized
bank-rate a$d associations of international
finance. All these are factors hostile to the power and