Superphysics Superphysics
Part 1

What is Economy?

January 11, 2025 5 minutes  • 1032 words

The word “Œconomy” is derived from:

  • οἰκός, a house
  • νόμος, law

It originally meant only the wise and legitimate government of the house for the common good of the whole family.

This was was then extended to the government of that great family, the State.

To distinguish these two senses of the word:

  • the state economy is called general or political economy
  • the family economy is called domestic or particular economy.

I will talk about the political economy.

There is a close analogy between the State and the family.

But the rules of conduct proper for one is not proper for the other.

In a domestic government, a father can see everything.

In a civil government, the chief sees hardly anything save through the eyes of others.

For them to be the same, the talents, strength, and the faculties of the king would have to increase in proportion to the size of his empire.

The father is physically stronger than his children.

But in the state:

  • all the members are naturally equal.
  • the political authority is:
    • purely arbitrary
    • founded only on conventions
  • the Magistrate only has authority by virtue of the laws.

The duties of a father are dictated to him by natural feelings which seldom allows him to neglect them.

For rulers there is no such principle. They are really obliged to the people only by what they have promised.

The people have therefore a right to require of them.

The children only have what they receive from their father.

All the rights of property belong to him, or emanate from him.

But in a state, the general administration is established only to secure individual property, which is antecedent to it.

The principal object of the work of the whole house is to preserve and increase the patrimony of the father, in order that he may be able some day to distribute it among his children without impoverishing them; whereas the wealth of the exchequer is only a means, often ill understood, of keeping the individuals in peace and plenty.

The family is destined to be extinguished unnless it multiplies.

But the state is constituted to endure forever in the same condition. It does not need to multiply. It only needs to maintain itself.

Any increase does it more harm than good.

In the family, the father should command, for the following reasons:

  1. The authority ought not to be equally divided between father and mother.

The government must be single. In every division of opinion, there must be one preponderant voice to decide.

  1. In a family, women necessarily have intervals of inaction.

This is a sufficient reason for excluding them from this supreme authority.

For when the balance is perfectly even, a straw is enough to turn the scale.

Besides, the husband should be able to superintend his wife’s conduct, because it is of importance for him to be assured that the children, whom he is obliged to acknowledge and maintain, belong to no-one but himself.

  1. Children should be obedient to their father, at first of necessity, and afterwards from gratitude.

After having had their wants satisfied by him during one half of their lives, they ought to consecrate the other half to providing for his.

  1. Servants owe him their services in exchange for the provision he gives.

They may break off the bargain as soon as it ceases to suit them. I say nothing here of slavery, because it is contrary to nature, and cannot be authorised by any right or law.

There is nothing of all this 4 in political society. The leader of society does not have any natural interest in the happiness of the individuals.

This is why it is not uncommon for him to seek his own happiness in their misery.

If the magistracy is hereditary, the state is often governed by a child.

If it be elective, innumerable inconveniences arise from such election.

In both cases, all the advantages of paternity are lost.

  • If you have but a single ruler, you lie at the discretion of a master who has no reason to love you.
  • If you have several, you must bear at once their tyranny and their divisions.

Abuses are inevitable. Their consequences are fatal in every society where the public interest and the laws have no natural force, and are perpetually attacked by personal interest and the passions of the ruler and the members.

The functions of the father and those of the chief magistrate should make for the same object. But they must do so in such different ways.

Their duty and rights are so essentially distinct. We cannot confound them without forming very false ideas about the fundamental laws of society, and falling into errors which are fatal to mankind.

The father can trust the voice of nature in the discharge of his duty.

But for the Magistrate, the voice of nature is a false guide. It continually:

  • prevents him from performing his,
  • leads him to the ruin of himself and of the State, if he is not restrained by the most sublime virtue.

The father only needs to:

  • guard himself against depravity
  • prevent his natural inclinations from being corrupted

Whereas it is these themselves which corrupt the Magistrate.

In order to act aright:

  • the father has only to consult his heart.
  • the magistrate must not listen to his heart.
    • Even his own reason should be suspect to him, nor should he follow any rule other than the public reason, which is the law.

Thus nature has made a multitude of good fathers of families; but it is doubtful whether, from the very beginning of the world, human wisdom has made ten men capable of governing their peers.

It follows that:

  • public economy has been rightly distinguished from private economy
  • the State has nothing in common with the family except the obligations which their heads lie under of making both of them happy, the same rules of conduct cannot apply to both.

I overthrow the detestable system of Sir Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha.

Moreover, this error is of very long standing; for Aristotle himself thought proper to combat it with arguments which may be found in the first book of his Politics.

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