s of the history of property with the philosophic basis
of property itself. From such an error it is the task of history above
all to free us. For it records the ideals and doubts of earlier ages as
a perennial challenge to the coming time.

The rightness of this attitude admits of proof in terms of the double
tradition to which Adam Smith gave birth. On the one hand he is the
founder of the classic political economy. With Ricardo, the elder Mill
and Nassau Senior, the main preoccupation is the production of wealth
without regard to its moral environment; and the state for them is
merely an engine to protect the atmosphere in which business men achieve
their labors. There is nothing in them of that fine despair which made
Stuart Mill welcome socialism itself rather than allow the continuance
of the new capitalist system. Herein the State is purged of moral
purpose; and the utilitarian method achieves the greatest happiness by
insisting that the technique of production must dominate all other
circumstances. Until the Reform Act of 1867, the orthodox economists
remained unchallenged. The use of the franchise was only beginning to be
understood. The "new model" of trade unionism had not yet been tested in
the political field. But it was discovered impossible to act any longer
upon the assumptions of the abstract economic man. The infallible sense
of his own interest was discovered to be without basis in the facts for
the simple reason that the instruments of his perception obviously
required training if they were to be applied to a complex world.
Individualism, in the old, utilitarian sense, passed away because it
failed to build a State wherein a channel of expression might be found
for the creative energies of humble men.

It is only within the last two decades that we have begun to understand
the inner significance of the protest against this economic liberalism.
Adam Smith had declared the source of value to lie in labor; and, at
the moment of its deepest agony, there were men willing to point the
moral of his tale. That it represented an incautious analysis was, for
them, unimportant beside the fact that it opened once more a path
whereby economics could be reclaimed for moral science. For if labor was
the source of value, as Bray and Thompson pointed out, it seemed as
though degradation was the sole payment for its services. They did not
ask whether the organization they envisaged was economically profitable,
but wh