Politics and Political Economy

Abstract

The programme proposed at the end of the first chapter is now almost completed. I have attempted an appraisal in broad outline of the prescriptions of Classical Political Economy in the main fields with which it was concerned: consumption, the organisation of production, the stability of the system as a whole, welfare and distribution and international trade; and I have digressed to compare those aspects of Collectivism which are not in conflict with the fundamental Classical prescriptions and those which obviously are. But, save incidentally, I have not yet examined the broader political assumptions which inspired the Classical writers and discussed them in the light of experience and thought since that day. That is the object of this concluding chapter.