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Moral Conditions of Economic Growth*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Karl F. Helleiner
Karl F. Helleiner
Affiliation:
The University of Toronto
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Extract

Historians in general are rather suspicious of theories—and who is to blame them? The temptation to do violence to historical reality is strong, and must be resisted with might and main. However, bad company will sooner or later corrupt even the best of manners; and the economic historian, owing to his long and intimate association with that bold and reckless crowd, the theorists, has finally learned to overcome his scruples and inhibitions. Like the children of Israel, he goes a whoring after Baalim: he tries to develop a general theory of economic growth.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , Spring 1951 , pp. 97 - 116
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1951

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References

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4 See, for instance, Simon Kuznets, “Measurement of Economic Growth,” The Tasks of Economic History (Supplemental Issue of The Journal of Economic History), VII (1947), 10 ff., and Spengler, Joseph J., “Theories of Socio-Economic Growth,” Problems in the Study of Economic Growth (New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1949), pp. 47 ff.Google Scholar

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8 In the case of the Stoics, however, this fundamental attitude of serene indifference and detachment did not lead to complete withdrawal from worldly activities. The Stoic, while setting no store by personal achievements in the field of politics or in economic pursuits, nevertheless accepted active participation in social life as a duty. Since the Stoic was expected to fulfill his social obligations—though without enthusiasm—his asceticism did not, perhaps, seriously impair his energy in matters economic or political. Indeed, some of the most active and successful administrators of imperial Rome were disciples of the Stoa.

It was different, however, with the Epicureans. Unlike the followers of Zeno, those of Epicurus did advocate withdrawal. “The life they envisaged as ideal was that of a club, a group of congenial friends like the one in the midst of which their Master lived in the Garden in Athens, unmolested because of its obscurity and inactivity.”—W. S. Ferguson, “The Leading Ideas of the New Period,” The Cambridge Ancient History, VII, 37.

9 The statement of a Christian writer of the second half of the fourth century, Tyrannius Rufinus, that in Egypt the number of monks was nearly equal to the remainder of the people (Gibbon, Edward, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [Modern Library; New York: Random House], II, 4, n. 15Google Scholar) was-undoubtedly a gross exaggeration. But we may give some credence to other contemporary authors (quoted by Gibbon), all of whom testify to the multitude of anchorites and monasteries in various regions of the Hellenistic world.

10 St. Augustine, De opere monachorum, chap. 22, quoted by Gibbon, II, 7, n. 30.

11 To many of these people the attractions of monastic life may not have been purely spiritual. The economic and social security of the cloister must often have appeared preferable to the hardships and dangers of worldly life. To oppressed tenant farmers and poor mechanics the ascetic discipline to which they had to submit may have seemed sweet and lenient, compared with the toil and misery of their previous existence.

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25 See Brunner, Otto, Land und Herrschaft (3d ed.; Brno, Munich, Vienna: R. M. Rohrer, 1943)Google Scholar.

26 In recent times, however, an increasingly broad interpretation of labor's right to “peaceful” picketing threatens to introduce an element of neofeudalism—nor can it be said to be the only one—into modern society.

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28 See Easterbrook, W. T., “The Climate of Enterprise,” American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, XXXIX (1949), 322 ff.Google Scholar

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