CHAPTER XI
POST-WAR ECONOMICS
So much for the war-havoc in party politics. Let me now turn to a topic more germane to the general purpose of this book, viz. the influence of the War and post-War events in this and other countries upon the “science” of economics. (May I note in passing the significant avoidance of the older term “Political Economy” at a time when political forces and actions influence economic thought and policy more than ever before?)
We saw that before the War “Economics” in this and other countries was moving in two opposite directions, towards a purely and exactly quantitative study of measured facts and tendencies, on the one hand, towards a “humanist” interpretation of these facts and tendencies, upon the other. This divergence had been greatly enlarged and accelerated by the War and its sequelae. The former tendency has been fed from two widely different sources. The prominence given to monetary changes and their visible reactions upon industry and commerce has pushed “the measuring rod” into the forefront of economic thought, and monetary-minded economists have been greatly encouraged in their insistence that supply and demand, and the “costs” and “utilities” which
