My chief concern is with economic viability. Can Israel feed herself from the limited area granted by the partition? She cannot feed herself from her own soil. And this point appears crucial to "political" economists, both Irgunist and Arab. A realistic economist will reflect, neither can Britain feed herself from her own soil, yet she remains great. Neither can southern California, in a way the closest analogue to the State of Israel, as I shall develop later. Yet southern California is immensely prosperous.
The more specifically Keynesian economists can be distinguished by the emphasis that they place upon fiscal policy—that is, the variation in governmental deficit or surplus—as the crucial element in any program for the overall stabilization of the economic system. Over against these extreme Keynesians stand those who would place chief reliance on monetary measures, such as control of reserve ratios, changes in rediscount rates, and the purchase and sale of government bonds on the open market. These are the methods that were considered to be proper by respectable economists before the advent of the Keynesian era, and which Keynes showed to be, under certain conditions, inadequate to produce the desired results. The object of this paper is to show in what circumstances each of these two policies can be relied on, in what circumstances each is likely to prove ineffective, and, in those cases where both may be effective, the relative advantages of two policies.
It is important neither to underestimate nor to overestimate the strength of the cooperatives in Sweden. They have gone a long way toward complete success in their immediate aim, that of safeguarding the small consumer from neglect of his interests by producers and salesmen. In doing so, they have proved the possibility of successful management in a firm based not on capital supply from a few powerful hands, but from hundreds of thousands of members, each with very limited resources. On the other hand, complete reform of Swedish economic life according to the ideas of the cooperative movement—or even of Swedish cooperative leaders—is as remote as ever.
By "scientism" we shall understand an intellectual movement of which the beginnings could be discerned as early as the second half of the sixteenth century. It is movement which accompanied the rise of modern mathematics and physics. The splendid advance of the 'new science' became the cause of an elation with far-reaching consequences, which, through the centuries, have had a wide range. They began in a fascination with the new science to the point of underrating and neglecting the concern for experiences of the spirit; they developed into the assumption that the new science could create a worldview that would substitute for the religious order of the soul; and they culminated, in the nineteenth century, in the dictatorial prohibition, on the part of scientistic thinkers, against asking questions of a metaphysical nature. The results of this development lie before us today in the form of the scientistic creed.
Though one can say that the single word, no matter which way it is used, denotes a definite thing--each a different--human speech, interlacing the words, can confuse and conceal the things and can do so intentionally. Language is both the master of mere semblance and the vehicle of truth. Language steps between man and thing, man and man, thing and world. it severs and it links. It serves any ends of mutable men, the wise and the foolish, the good and the bad.
Review of book by Alfred Cobban. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1948. xvi & 186 pp.
Review of book by Rustem Vambery. New York: Frederick Ungar. 1946. 205 pp.
Review of book by Harry Elmer Barnes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1948. 960 pp.
Der Wandel des internationalen Kartellbegriffs: Amerikanische Kartelldoktrin und Workd Trade Charter
Review of book by Frederick Haussmann. Berne: A. Francke. 1947. viii & 160 pp.
Review of book by Hans Zeisel. New York: Harper. 1947. 250 pp.