U Not Gonna Like This

I've already posted this here but thought I'd do so again and make it availble to the people
still visiting this site. I orginally found this ebook HERE and put a link to it in my PS post. But since America has just elected it's first Marxist president I though I'd post part of chapter one here at the blog so that anyone who did not get an opportunity to download it would be encourgaed to do so.

Here's a except part of the chapter one excerpt:

What makes the science of economics necessary and important is the fact that while human life and well-being depend on the production of wealth, and the production of wealth depends on the division of labor, the division of labor does not exist or function automatically. Its functioning crucially depends on the laws and institutions countries adopt. A country can adopt laws and institutions that make it possible for the division of labor to grow and flourish, as the United States did in the late eighteenth century. Or it can adopt laws and institutions that prevent the division of labor from growing and flourishing, as is the case in most of the world today, and as was the case everywhere for most of history. Indeed, a country can adopt laws and institutions that cause the division of labor to decline and practically cease to exist. The leading historical example of this occurred under the Roman Empire in the third and fourth centuries of the Christian era. The result was that the relatively advanced economic system of the ancient world, which had achieved a significant degree of division of labor, was replaced by feudalism, an economic system characterized by the self-sufficiency of small territories.

In order for a country to act intelligently in adopting laws and institutions that bear upon economic life, it is clearly necessary that its citizens understand the principles that govern the development and functioning of the division of labor, that is, understand the principles of economics. If they do not, then it is only a question of time before that country will adopt more and more destructive laws and institutions, ultimately stopping all further economic progress and causing actual economic decline, with all that that implies about the conditions of human life.

In the absence of a widespread, serious understanding of the principles of economics, the citizens of an advanced, division-of-labor society, such as our own, are in a position analogous to that of a crowd wandering among banks of computers or other highly complex machinery, with no understanding of the functioning or maintenance or safety requirements of the equipment, and randomly pushing buttons and pulling levers. This is no exaggeration. In the absence of a knowledge of economics, our contemporaries feel perfectly free to enact measures such as currency depreciation and price controls. They feel free casually to experiment with the destruction of such fundamental economic institutions as the freedom of contract, inheritance, and private ownership of the means of production itself. In the absence of a knowledge of economics, our civilization is perfectly capable of destroying itself, and, in the view of some observers, is actually in the process of doing so.

Thus, the importance of economics consists in the fact that ultimately our entire modern material civilization depends on its being understood. What rests on modern material civilization is not only the well-being but also the very lives of the great majority of people now living. In the absence of the extensive division of labor we now possess, the production of modern medicines and vaccines, the provision of modern sanitation and hygiene, and the production even of adequate food supplies for our present numbers, would simply be impossible. The territory of the continental United States, for example, counting the deserts, mountains, rivers, and lakes, amounts to less than nine acres per person with its present population—not enough to enable that population to survive as primitive farmers. In Western Europe and Japan, the problem of overpopulation would, of course, be far more severe. Needless to say, the present vast populations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America would be unable to survive in the absence of Western food and medical supplies.

Understanding History

Because it explains what promotes and what impairs the functioning of the division of labor, economics is an essential tool for understanding the world's history—the broad sweep of its periods of progress and its periods of decline—and the journalistic events of any given time. Its applications include a grasp of the causes of the decline of ancient civilization and of the rise of the modern, industrial world, both of which can be understood in terms of the rise or fall of the division of labor.

Economics brings to the understanding of history and journalism a foundation of scientific knowledge which can serve historians and journalists in much the same way as a knowledge of natural science and mathematics. Namely, it can give to historians and journalists a knowledge of what is and is not possible, and therefore a knowledge of what can and cannot qualify as an explanation of economic phenomena. For example, a knowledge of modern natural science precludes any historical or journalistic explanation of events based on Ptolemaic astronomy or the phlogiston theory of chemistry, not to mention beliefs in such notions as witchcraft, astrology, or any form of supernaturalism. In exactly the same way, it will be shown in this book that a knowledge of economics precludes any historical or journalistic explanation of events based on such doctrines as the Marxian theory of exploitation and class warfare, or on the belief that machinery causes unemployment or that depressions are caused by "overproduction."

Economics can also serve historians and journalists as a guide to what further facts to look for in the explanation of economic events. For example, whenever shortages exist, it tells them to look for government controls limiting the rise in prices; whenever unemployment exists, it tells them to look for government interference limiting the fall in money wage rates; and whenever a depression exists, it tells them to look for a preceding expansion of money and credit.


Implications for Ethics and Personal Understanding

Economics has powerful implications for ethics. It demonstrates exhaustively that in a division-of-labor, capitalist society, one man's gain is not another man's loss, that, indeed, it is actually other men's gain—especially in the case of the building of great fortunes. In sum, economics demonstrates that the rational self-interests of all men are harmonious. In so doing, economics raises a leading voice against the traditional ethics of altruism and self-sacrifice. It presents society—a division-of-labor, capitalist society—not as an entity over and above the individual, to which he must sacrifice his interests, but as an indispensable means within which the individual can fulfill the ultimate ends of his own personal life and happiness.

A knowledge of economics is indispensable for anyone who seeks to understand his own place in the modern world and that of others. It is a powerful antidote to unfounded feelings of being the victim or perpetrator of "exploitation" and to all feelings of "alienation" based on the belief that the economic world is immoral, purposeless, or chaotic. Such unfounded feelings rest on an ignorance of economics.

The feelings pertaining to alleged exploitation rest on ignorance of the productive role of various economic functions, such as those of businessman and capitalist, retailing and wholesaling, and advertising and speculation, and on the underlying conviction that essentially only manual labor is productive and is therefore the only legitimate form of economic activity.9 Feelings pertaining to the alleged purposelessness of much of economic activity rest on ignorance of the role of wealth in human life beyond the immediate necessities of food, clothing, and shelter. This ignorance leads to the conviction that economic activity beyond the provision of these necessities serves no legitimate purpose.10 Feelings pertaining to the alleged chaos of economic activity rest on ignorance of the knowledge economics provides of the benevolent role of such institutions as the division of labor, private ownership of the means of production, exchange and money, economic competition, and the price system.

In opposition to feelings of alienation, economic science makes the economic world fully intelligible. It explains the foundations of the enormous economic progress which has taken place in the "Western" world over the last two centuries. (This includes the rapid economic progress that has been made in recent decades by several countries in the Far East, which have largely become "Westernized.") And in providing demonstrable solutions for all of the world's major economic problems, it points the way for intelligent action to make possible radical and progressive improvement in the material conditions of human beings everywhere. As a result, knowledge of the subject cannot help but support the conviction that the fundamental nature of the world is benevolent and thus that there is no rational basis for feelings of fundamental estrangement from the world.

The above discussion, of course, is totally in opposition to the widely believed claims of Marx and Engels and their followers, such as Erich Fromm, that the economic system of the modern world—capitalism—is the basis of alienation. Indeed, it is consistent with the above discussion that the actual basis of "alienation" resides within the psychological makeup of those who experience the problem. Ignorance of economics reinforces feelings of alienation and allows the alleged deficiencies of the economic system to serve as a convenient rationalization for the existence of the problem.

Economics and the Defense of Individual Rights

Knowledge of economics is indispensable to the defense of individual rights. The philosophy of individual rights, as set forth in the writings of John Locke and the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States, has been thoroughly undermined as the result of the influence of wrong economic theories, above all, the theories of Karl Marx and the other socialists. The essential conclusion of such theories is that in the economic sphere the exercise of individual rights as understood by Locke and the Founding Fathers of the United States serves merely to enable the capitalists to exploit the workers and consumers, or is otherwise comparably destructive to the interests of the great majority of people. Precisely as a result of the influence of these vicious ideas, culminating in the victory of the New Deal, the Supreme Court of the United States has, since 1937, simply abandoned the defense of economic freedom. Since that time it has allowed Congress and the state legislatures, and even unelected regulatory agencies, to do practically anything they wish in this area, the Constitution and Bill of Rights and all prior American legal precedent notwithstanding.14

A thorough knowledge of economics is essential to understanding why the exercise of individual rights in the economic sphere not only is not harmful to the interests of others, but is in the foremost interest of everyone. It is essential if the American people are ever to reclaim the safeguards to economic freedom provided by their Constitution, or if people anywhere are to be able to establish and maintain systems of government based on meaningful respect for individual rights. Indeed, in demonstrating the harmony of the rational self-interests of all men under freedom, this entire book has no greater or more urgent purpose than that of helping to uphold the philosophy of individual rights.

The nature and importance of economics imply that study of the subject should be an important part of the general education of every intelligent person. Economics belongs alongside mathematics, natural science, history, philosophy, and the humanities as an integral part of a liberal education. It deserves an especially prominent place in the education of lawyers, businessmen, journalists, historians, the writers of literary works, and university, college, and secondary-school teachers of the humanities and social sciences. These are the groups that play the dominant role in forming people's attitudes concerning legislation and social institutions and whose work can most profit from an understanding of economics.

This book shows that the laws and social institutions necessary to the successful functioning, indeed, to the very existence, of the division of labor are those of capitalism. Capitalism is a social system based on private ownership of the means of production. It is characterized by the pursuit of material self-interest under freedom and it rests on a foundation of the cultural influence of reason. Based on its foundations and essential nature, capitalism is further characterized by saving and capital accumulation, exchange and money, financial self-interest and the profit motive, the freedoms of economic competition and economic inequality, the price system, economic progress, and a harmony of the material self-interests of all the individuals who participate in it.

As succeeding chapters of this book will demonstrate, almost every essential feature of capitalism underlies the division of labor and several of them are profoundly influenced by it in their own operation. When the connections between capitalism and the division of labor have been understood, it will be clear that economics, as the science which studies the production of wealth under a system of division of labor, is actually the science which studies the production of wealth under capitalism. Economics' study of the consequences of government intervention and of socialism will be shown to be merely study of the impairment or outright destruction of capitalism and the division of labor.

You can download the ebook by clicking on one of the links below:

http://tinyurl.com/5gqorl

http://tinyurl.com/6argsx