Ph. 404} exposition, which is so infinitely superior to the "traditional superficial reporting" {D. K. G. 105}. After mysteriously pointing out to us five times in succession how hazardous it was for Quesnay to operate in the Tableau with mere money values -- which moreover turned out not to be true -- he finally reaches the conclusion that, when he asks, "what becomes of the net product, which has been appropriated as rent, in the course of the national-economic circulation?" -- the economic Tableau "could offer nothing but confused and arbitrary conceptions, ascending to mysticism" {110}.
We have seen that the Tableau -- this both ****** and, for its time, brilliant depiction of the annual process of reproduction through the medium of circulation -- gives a very exact answer to the question of what becomes of this net product in the course of national-economic circulation. Thus once again the "mysticism" and the "confused and arbitrary conceptions"are left simply and solely with Herr Dühring, as "the most dubious aspect" and the sole "net product" {111} of his study of physiocracy.
Herr Dühring is just as familiar with the historical influence of the physiocrats as with their theories.
"With Turgot," he teaches us, "physiocracy in France came to an end both in practice and in theory" {120}.
That Mirabeau, however, was essentially a physiocrat in his economic views;that he was the leading economic authority in the Constituent Assembly of 1789; that this Assembly in its economic reforms translated from theory into practice a substantial portion of the physiocrats' principles, and in particular laid a heavy tax also on land rent, the net product appropriated by the landowners "without consideration" -- all this does not exist for "a" Dühring. --Just as the long stroke drawn through the years 1691 to 1752 removed all of Hume's predecessors, so another stroke obliterated Sir James Steuart, who came between Hume and Adam Smith. There is not a syllable in Herr Dühring's "enterprise" {9} on Steuart's great work, which, apart from its historical importance, permanently enriched the domain of political economy. But, instead, Herr Dühring applies to him the most abusive epithet in his vocabulary, and says that he was "a professor" {136} in Adam Smith's time. Unfortunately this insinuation is a pure invention. Steuart, as a matter of fact, was a large landowner in Scotland, who was banished from Great Britain for alleged complicity in the Stuart plot and through long residence and his journeys on the Continent made himself familiar with economic conditions in various countries.
In a word: according to the Kritische Geschichte the only value all earlier economists had was to serve either as "rudiments" {1}
of Herr Dühring's "authoritative" {1} and deeper foundations, or, because of their unsound doctrines, as a foil to the latter. In political economy, however, there are also some heroes who represent not only "rudiments"of the "deeper foundation" {D. C. 11}, but "principles" {5} from which this foundation, as was prescribed in Herr Dühring's natural philosophy, is not "developed" {353} but actually "composed": for example, the "incomparably great and eminent" {16} List , who, for the benefit of German manufacturers, puffed up the "more subtle" mercantilistic teachings of a Ferrier and others into "mightier" words; also Care , who reveals the true essence of his wisdom in the following sentence:
"Ricardo's system is one of discords ... its whole tends to the production of hostility among classes ... his book is the true manual of the demagogue, who seeks power by means of agrarianism, war, and plunder";People who want to study the history of political economy in the present and immediately foreseeable future will certainly be on much safer ground if they make themselves acquainted with the "watery products", "commonplaces"and "beggars' soup" {14} of the "most current text-book compilations" {109}, rather than rely on Herr Dühring's "historical depiction in the grand style" {556}.
* * * What, then, is the final result of our analysis of Dühring's "very own system" of political economy? Nothing, except the fact that with all the great words and the still more mighty promises we are just as much duped as we were in the Philosophy. His theory of value, this "touchstone of the worth of economic systems" {499}, amounts to this: that by value Herr Dühring understands five totally different and directly contradictory things, and, therefore, to put it at its best, himself does not know what he wants. The "natural laws of all economics" {D. C. 4}, ushered in with such pomp, prove to be merely universally familiar and often not even properly understood platitudes of the worst description. The sole explanation of economic facts which his "very own" system can give us is that they are the result of "force", a term with which the philistine of all nations has for thousands of years consoled himself for everything unpleasant that happens to him, and which leaves us just where we were. Instead however of investigating the origin and effects of this force, Herr Dühring expects us to content ourselves gratefully with the mere word "force"as the last final cause and ultimate explanation of all economic phenomena.
