The paramount and overriding aim of bourgeois economic science is to present

itself precisely as science, that is to say, as a system of universally valid

laws based on some causally binding physical necessity. Of course,
bourgeois science accepts that it is possible for human beings to choose to act in
a manner that diverges significantly from these necessary laws of economic
reality, just as it is possible for humans to choose not to follow the path dictated
by physical laws to achieve a stated goal. But in both cases, choosing such a
divergent path, far from negating the validity of scientific laws, will only result in
the non-attainment of those stated goals, at least not in an optimal sense.
Thus, scientific laws are seen not as the result of human practices or techniques
but rather as an objective framework that must be followed because it is
ineluctable. Science is no longer seen as a human practice, as praxis, as one of
many and indefinite paths to action just as the causal chains that lead to a
particular outcome are indefinite (cf. M. Weber, The Methodology of the Social
Sciences) -, but rather as objective and unchangeable, hence physical, laws.
The difficulty with the assumption of scientific necessity of physical laws lies in
the expression itself because there is nothing physical about laws and
there is nothing legal about the supposedly physical. The pursuit of science
(Nietzsches will to truth) is just that: a pursuit, a particular modus
operandi or praxis that has nothing to do with physical necessity. The necessity
implied in the word physical or natural can only be legal and therefore not
necessary at all! Scientific laws do not and cannot prescribe necessity
because to do so they would have to have the irresistibility of logic (H. Arendt,
The Life of the Mind). Yet, even and especially in the case of logic we know that
nothing is irresistible at all. For this reason, Leibniz and Kant spoke of the
intuitus originarius. Kant in particular, having first sought to establish the a priori
status of scientific findings though synthetic rather than analytic -, was forced
finally to concede the failure of his enterprise in the Opus Postumum.
The path followed by Menger to establish the scientificity of his economic theory
starts appositely with the bare assertion of causal necessity. As we have seen,
Menger prudently distinguishes between the necessity of causal relations known
to us and the merely probable connection of causal relations we have not yet
been able to establish. Human freedom or rather, the illusion of freedom can be only provisional; it can apply only to the realm of the unknown or of
uncertainty because all events must be causally determined regardless of
whether we know or do not know such a con-nection. That is the point of all
determinisms (cf. Hobbes, Of Liberty and Necessity) that all events are causally
related even though there are many whose causal relation is as yet not known to
us. This is the presumption of scientific progress to which Menger staunchly
adheres:
All things are subject to the law of cause and effect. This
great principle knows no exception, and we would
search in vain in the realm of experience for an example
to the contrary. Human progress has no tendency to cast it in
doubt, but rather the effect of confirming it and of always further
widening knowledge of the scope of its validity. Its continued and
growing recognition is therefore closely linked to human progress.

The problem with this position is, of course, that the assertion that every event
must be causally related is a simple and unprovable presumption and we know
only too well that events we think at present are causally related may well not be
so because their causal relation the physical law that con-nects them must be
empirically falsifiable to be valid (K. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery)
whence we can conclude that every physical law is only legally, that is,
conventionally, valid and not at all ab-solutely. In other words, no physical law is
a legibus soluta (literally, absolute, free from all laws) that is to say, no physical
necessity is immune from law, from a conventional or normative assumption or
rule: there is no ordo et connexio rerum et idearum.
Menger seeks to extend the necessity of scientific laws from physical events to
the realm of human needs starting from the most basic individual needs for the
provision of physical sustenance or survival. Yet we know that, first, no such
basic needs are definable at an individual level, and indeed all needs are not
definable at a physical level, in terms of calories or in any other way, that is not
culturally or legally defined in terms of scientific laws. Menger seeks to
establish such a scientific necessity starting with the most basic needs of the
human individual, consisting of goods of lower order, and then ascend to
goods of higher order which, because of their complementarity and
relatedness (Verhaltnisse), lead to and result in the division of social labour which Menger, like Adam Smith, mistakes for the division of labour or
individual labours.
But each time it is evident that even the most basic goods, those of lower order,
are indefinable not just because they are not goods in terms of their objective
physical properties a proposition with which Menger agrees -, but also because
they are indefinable in terms of human needs understood other than culturally,
that is to say, in terms of the higher order from which Menger arbitrarily
distinguishes them. There are no elemental needs because human beings are
aspects of being human so that all human being presupposes the existence of
social labour. Consequently, contra Adam Smith, it is not exchange that leads
to the division of labour, because there is no such thing as labour in the
abstract: but it is instead the division of social labour that makes exchange
possible. And this is so essentially because it is impossible to define needs in
individual terms because all human needs are essentially social and
therefore cultural for they are never biological in any sense at all. Use values
do not become goods because of biological needs: they become goods
because a historically specific division of social labour allows for their
exchange but it is not their exchange that gives rise to the division of social
labour in the first place, as Adam Smith incorrectly believed!
Menger unjustifiably assumes that use values are necessarily goods or
exchange values he assumes what he needs to prove. Thus, he tries to
establish a causal connection between indirect goods and direct goods but
must settle for the reality that such a causal chain between need and
relations is categorically and scientifically impossible: categorically, because
needs which are presumably served by the direct goods of lower order - cannot
be understood separately from indirect goods of higher order; and scientifically
because therefore there cannot be any necessary causal relation or link leading
from direct to indirect goods, that is, from goods that satisfy human needs
immediately and goods that do so mediately.

The goods-character of a thing is, as we have seen, dependent

on its being capable of being placed in a causal connection with the
satisfaction of human needs. But we have also seen that a direct
causal connection between a thing and the satisfaction of a need is
by no means a necessary prerequisite of its goods-character. On the
contrary, a large number of things derive their goods-character
from the fact that they stand only in a more or less indirect causal
relationship to the satisfaction of human needs. P.64

And because needs are not biological but social, Menger is never able to
establish a strictly economic nexus between the various order of goods that is
not tied to their possession so that each time Menger tries to link causally one
good with one of higher order in terms of value the value can no longer be
attributed to the order or nature of the good but rather to its possession. In
other words, Menger is simply unable to separate causally the biological
usefulness of goods from the fact (a very human and cultural fact in a Vichian
political sense) of their constituting property. The indissolubility of use value
and property so as to fix scientifically a science of exchange value or of
economics is the insurmountable obstacle that condemns Mengers entire
scientific enterprise to failure ab initio! Given that a good cannot be defined
independently in a biological sense and therefore independently of human social
relations, it is obvious that the science of economics cannot stand on
necessary laws of cause and effect as Menger pretended to show.
Mengers fallacious attempt to establish a scientific link between use values and
goods or exchange values falters because use values are not necessarily
goods for exchange for the simple reason that exchange is a historically
specific form of the division of social labour it is not exchange that causes the
division of social labour because social labour is not dissectible into individual
labours. But because Menger wrongly assimilates use values to exchange values
he then needs to pursue this mistaken physical assimilation to include the
temporal dimension of production.
The process by which goods of higher order are progressively
transformed into goods of lower order and by which these are
directed finally to the satisfaction of human needs is, as we have
seen in the preceding sections, not irregular but subject, like all
other processes of change, to the law of causality. The idea of
causality, however, is inseparable from the idea of time. A process
of change involves a beginning and a becoming, and these are only
conceivable as processes in time. Hence it is certain that we can
never fully understand the causal interconnections of the various
occurrences in a process, or the process itself, unless we view it in
time and apply the measure of time to it. Thus, in the process of
change by which goods of higher order are gradually transformed
into goods of first order, until the latter finally bring about the state
called the satisfaction of human needs, time is an essential feature
of our observations. P.67

Time is central to Mengers division of goods of different orders because those of

lower order are for immediate consumption or need, and those of higher order
are for delayed consumption or relations or wants (Bedarf), requirements).
After what has been said, it is evident that command of
goods of higher order and command of the corresponding

goods of first order differ, with respect to a particular kind of

consumption, in that the latter can be consumed immediately
whereas the former represent an earlier stage in the formation of
consumption goods and hence can be utilized for direct consumption only after the passage of an appreciable period of time, which
is longer or shorter according to the nature of the case. P.68

Here is the first intimation of that renunciation of immediate consumption that

leads to interest or the accumulation of capital through the roundaboutness
of production that is central to Bohm-Bawerks economic theory. It is entirely
evident, however, that these physical-natural attributes of use values only
become relevant to the process of production if we consider human products as
exchange values, as goods, that therefore necessarily belong to separated
producers, to individual labours. From the viewpoint of social labour, of
associated producers, time simply cannot be a factor in the production of
exchange values (goods) either as sacrifice or as uncertainty.
But another exceedingly important difference between immediate
command of a consumption good and indirect command of it (through
possession of goods of higher order) demands our consideration. A
person with consumption goods directly at his disposal is certain of their
quantity and quality. But a person who has only indirect command of
them, through possession of the corresponding goods of higher order,
cannot determine with the same certainty the quantity and quality of the
goods of first order that will be at his disposal at the end of the production
process. Pp.68-9

Leaving uncertainty to one side for the moment, the delay or postponement of
consumption this ascetic renunciation (cf. Schopenhauers Entsagung) is
rewarded by the greater productivity of goods of higher order. But here Menger
and Bohm-Bawerk fail to explain why producers would wish to delay consumption
in exchange for higher productivity given that delay and uncertainty cannot be
the aim of production. Menger himself contradicts this natural progress of
production with this example:
Conversely, goods often lose their goods-character because men
do not have command of the necessary labor services, complementary
to them. In sparsely populated countries, particularly in
countries raising one predominant crop such as wheat, a very serious
shortage of labor services frequently occurs after especially
good harvests, both because agricultural workers, few in numbers
and living separately, find few incentives for hard work in times of
abundance, and because the harvesting work, as a result of the
exclusive cultivation of wheat, is concentrated into a very brief
period of time. Under such conditions (on the fertile plains of Hungary,
for instance), where the requirements for labor services,
within a short interval of time, are very great but where the available
labor services are not sufficient, large quantities of grain often
spoil on the fields. The reason for this is that the goods complementary
to the crops standing on the fields (the labor services necessary
for harvesting them) are missing, with the result that the
crops themselves lose their goods-character. P.62

Here the natural progression of human production from the satisfaction of basic
needs to less basic wants and requirements (Bedarf) is clearly called into
question: not only do the producers in Mengers example choose not to produce
in excess of their immediate needs, not only do they not postpone consumption,
but they also seek to produce those use values that can be obtained with the
least amount of effort intended as sacrifice (Kraft als Leid als Opfer)! (This link
between effort and sacrifice will be made explicit by the co-founder, with Menger
and Jevons, of neoclassical economics, Gossen.) Therefore, the willingness of
some workers to delay consumption can never turn them into capitalists and
result in their accumulating wealth-as-capital (or Mengers goods of higher
order or Bohm-Bawerks roundabout tools) unless these ascetics can use
their command over goods to force others to work for them that is to say,
unless they use their possession of dead labour to command politically and
violently the living labour of other workers!
Clearly then, the ability of intermediate or indirect goods to command immediate
or direct goods depends on the ability of the owners of the former to deny the
consumption of the latter by other producers! As Menger asseverates, where
workers are few in numbers and living separately, [they] find few incentives for
hard work whence we infer that the causal connection between direct and
indirect goods in terms of command breaks down unless those few workers
are made many that is, there is an excess of population caused by the violent
denial to some workers of access to the harvest through expropriation!
Conversely, the reason why the crops themselves lose their goods-character is
precisely that workers are not forcibly excluded from access to them as use
values. Thus, the creation of exchange values, of goods, is not a natural or
physical attribute of overall command over use values by all human beings
and producers, but rather it requires the parcelisation of social labour through
the proprietary exclusion of some producers by others from the products of
human labour, from use values. This is the key to the accumulation of social
wealth as capital.

Mengers utter misconception of the human basis of production he makes utterly

evident in these passages
Assume a people
which extends its attention to goods of third, fourth, and higher
orders, instead of confining its activity merely to the tasks of a
primitive collecting economythat is, to the acquisition of naturally
available goods of lowest order (ordinarily goods of first, and
possibly second, order). If such a people progressively directs
goods of ever higher orders to the satisfaction of its needs, and
especially if each step in this direction is accompanied by an
appropriate division of labor, we shall doubtless observe that
progress in welfare which Adam Smith was disposed to attribute
exclusively to the latter factor. We shall see the hunter, who initially
pursues game with a club, turning to hunting with bow and
hunting net, to stock farming of the simplest kind, and in
sequence, to ever more intensive forms of stock farming. We shall
see men, living initially on wild plants, turning to ever more intensive
forms of agriculture. We shall see the rise of manufactures,
and their improvement by means of tools and machines. And in

the closest connection with these developments, we shall see the

welfare of this people increase.
The further mankind progresses in this direction, the more varied
become the kinds of goods, the more varied consequently the
occupations, and the more necessary and economic also the progressive
division of labor. But it is evident that the increase in the
consumption goods at human disposal is not the exclusive effect of
the division of labor. Indeed, the division of labor cannot even be designated as the
most important cause of the economic progress of mankind. Correctly, it should be
regarded only as one factor among the great influences that lead mankind from
barbarism and misery to civilization and wealth. P.73

Obviously, here Menger reduces Smiths observations on the division of labour to

a purely technical factor which is simply wrong because Smith made
civilisation and the division of labour one and the same thing with the mistake
that he attributed the division of labour to the need for exchange rather than
the existence of exchange as a historically specific form of the division not of
labour! - but of social labour. For Smith, quite rightly, it is impossible to
dissect the division of labour from the expansion of human needs. But these
needs and their satisfaction through new production and the division of social
labour cannot be linked naturally to exchange and therefore to property rights
though this is what Smith does by assuming (a) the existence of individual
labours and therefore, (b), the necessity for exchange, for goods.

Mengers vain attempt to link the provision (Bedarf) of use values to the
production of exchange values (goods) his attempt to identify use values with
goods and thus to link two categorically different entities is evinced in the
last two sections of Chapter One of the Principles of Economics: the first on the
division of labour and the command over production, and the second on property.
Now, the division of social labour has nothing to do with the command over
production, as every anthropologist can attest. But it is this emphasis on the
quantity of use values, and therefore their transformation into exchange values
that can be commanded that truly concerns Menger. It is not sufficient that
human beings divide up social labour, as they must to be human in any sense.
Because for Menger, and for Smith, the division of social labour is only the
division of individual labours which is made social only by the need to
exchange the products of individual labours, then it is clear that the mere
division of labour is not sufficient to drive economic growth because Menger,
unlike Smith, understands economic growth scientifically or physicallynaturally as the ultimate need to satisfy what he thinks are clearly identifiable
basic human needs. Therefore, this greater command over the production of
lower order goods can be achieved only through the renunciation of immediate
consumption, which is paid for with abstinence (from immediate consumption)
and uncertainty (of eventual production). And these two sacrifices are what
gives rise to property.
The explanation of the effect of the increasing employment of

goods of higher order upon the growing quantity of goods available

for human consumption (goods of first order) is a matter of little
difficulty.
In its most primitive form, a collecting economy is confined
to gathering those goods of lowest order that happen to be
offered by nature. Since economizing individuals exert no
influence on the production of these goods, their origin is independent
of the wishes and needs of men, and hence, so far as they are concerned,
accidental. But if men abandon this most primitive and treat them as goods
of higher order, they will obtain consumption
goods that are as truly the results of natural processes as
the consumption goods of a primitive collecting economy, but the
available quantities of these goods will no longer be independent
of the wishes and needs of men. Instead, the quantities of consumption
goods will be determined by a process that is in the
power of men and is regulated by human purposes within the limits
set by natural laws. Consumption goods, which before were the
product of an accidental concurrence of the circumstances of their
origin, become products of human will, within the limits set by
natural laws, as soon as men have recognized these circumstances
and have achieved control of them. The quantities of consumption
goods at human disposal are limited only by the extent of human
knowledge of the causal connections between things, and by the
extent of human control over these things. Increasing understanding
of the causal connections between things and human welfare,
and increasing control of the less proximate conditions responsible
for human welfare, have led mankind, therefore, from a state of
barbarism and the deepest misery to its present stage of civilization
and well-being, and have changed vast regions inhabited by a
few miserable, excessively poor, men into densely populated civilized
countries. Nothing is more certain than that the degree of
economic progress of mankind will still, in future epochs, be commensurate
with the degree of progress of human knowledge. Pp.73-4

Just as Menger mistakenly sought to distinguish between basic needs and wants
or requirements (Bedarf), satisfied respectively by goods of lower and higher
order, so now he seeks also to distinguish between basic needs and less basic
ones by means of the amount of control or command that human beings have
over the production of goods for their satisfaction. In both cases, Menger seeks
to trace a causal link or chain in the progress from the satisfaction of basic to
less basic needs or requirements or wants. Yet we know that no such distinction
can be made, nor can any such link be traced. Furthermore, there can be no
question of making the leap from command over use values on the part of
human beings as a species - through social labour and command over goods
for exchange between individual human beings because command over use
values by the human species will never be able to be reduced to command over
goods or exchange values as if use values naturally or physically or
scientifically belonged to individual producers!
In the quotation below, Menger fully displays his inability to distinguish between
the division of social labour, which is not the product of individual decisions but
rather the result of specific historical forms of social organisation, and one such
specific historical form whereby the division of social labour hinges entirely on
the politically violent institution of private property over individual labours, that

is to say, on the fictitious parcelisation of social labour into alienable individual

labours (wage labour).
When the economy of a people is highly developed, the various
complementary goods are generally in the hands of different persons.
The producers of each individual article usually carry on
their business in a mechanical way, while the producers of the
complementary goods realize just as little that the goods-character
of the things they produce or manufacture depends on the existence
of other goods that are not in their possession. The error that
goods of higher order possess goods-character by themselves, and
without regard to the availability of complementary goods, arises
most easily in countries where, owing to active commerce and a
highly developed economy, almost every product comes into existence
under the tacit, and as a rule quite unconscious, supposition
of the producer that other persons, linked to him by trade, will
provide the complementary goods at the right time. Only when
this tacit assumption is disappointed by such a change of conditions
that the laws governing goods make their operation manifestly
apparent, are the usual mechanical business transactions
interrupted, and only then does public attention turn to these manifestations
and to their underlying causes. P.63

Use values can belong to individual producers and be available for exchange as
goods only through the political establishment of property rights over
individual use values. Menger simply cannot see that property rights can in no
guise arise from natural relations of cause and effect. No amount of causal
links between basic needs, at one end of the causal chain, and wants or
requirements at the other can ever explain what is the necessarily political origin
of property rights. And only property rights can beget more property rights
because no amount of physical-natural command over use values will turn use
values which refer to humans as a species with its division of social labour into goods or exchange values subject to property rights that are necessarily
individual the essential ingredient for the exchange of use values and
therefore for the existence of goods!
The colossal non sequitur involved in Mengers reasoning; his entirely fallacious
leap from social labour to alienable individual labours based on the institution
of private property is made entirely evident in his reckless explanation of the
nature of property rights:
We see everywhere that not single goods but combinations of
goods of different kinds serve the purposes of economizing men.
These combinations of goods are at the command of individuals
either directly, as is the case in the isolated household economy,
or in part directly and in part indirectly, as is the case in our
developed exchange economy. Only in their entirety do these
goods bring about the effect that we call the satisfaction of our
requirements, and in consequence, the assurance of our lives and
welfare. [75]
The entire sum of goods at an economizing individuals command
for the satisfaction of his needs, we call his property. His
property is not, however, an arbitrarily combined quantity of
goods, but a direct reflection of his needs, an integrated whole, no
essential part of which can be diminished or increased without

affecting realization of the end it serves. [76]

Menger here leaps from stating correctly that only in their entirety[!] do these
goods [use values] bring aboutthe satisfaction of our requirements, to the
inadmissible conclusion that the entire sum of goods[!] at an. individuals
command[!] we call his property. The entire sum of use values, belonging to
the human division of social labour, can never suddenly become the entire sum
of [individually owned] goods [exchange values] without the violent institution
of alienated labour, wage labour on which private property is based!

--------------------------------------All things are subject to the law of cause and effect. This
great principle knows no exception, and we would
search in vain in the realm of experience for an example
to the contrary. Human progress has no tendency to cast it in
doubt, but rather the effect of confirming it and of always further
widening knowledge of the scope of its validity. Its continued and
growing recognition is therefore closely linked to human progress.
Ones own person, moreover, and any of its states are links
in this great universal structure of relationships. It is impossible
to conceive of a change of ones person from one state to
another in any way other than one subject to the law of causality.
If, therefore, one passes from a state of need to a state in which
the need is satisfied, sufficient causes for this change must exist.
There must be forces in operation within ones organism that remedy
the disturbed state, or there must be external things acting
upon it that by their nature are capable of producing the state we
call satisfaction of our needs.
Things that can be placed in a causal connection with the satisfaction
of human needs we term useful things.1 If, however, we both
recognize this causal connection, and have the power actually to
direct the useful things to the satisfaction of our needs, we call
them goods.2
If a thing is to become a good, or in other words, if it is to
acquire goods-character, all four of the following prerequisites
must be simultaneously present:
1. A human need.
2. Such properties as render the thing capable of being brought
into a causal connection with the satisfaction of this need.
3. Human knowledge of this causal connection.
4. Command of the thing sufficient to direct it to the satisfaction
of the need.
Only when all four of these prerequisites are present simultaneously
can a thing become a good. When even one of them is
absent, a thing cannot acquire goods-character,3 and a thing
already possessing goods-character would lose it at once if but one
of the four prerequisites ceased to be present.4 (pp.51-2)

Conversely, goods often lose their goods-character because men

do not have command of the necessary labor services, complementary

to them. In sparsely populated countries, particularly in

countries raising one predominant crop such as wheat, a very serious
shortage of labor services frequently occurs after especially
good harvests, both because agricultural workers, few in numbers
and living separately, find few incentives for hard work in times of
abundance, and because the harvesting work, as a result of the
exclusive cultivation of wheat, is concentrated into a very brief
period of time. Under such conditions (on the fertile plains of Hungary,
for instance), where the requirements for labor services,
within a short interval of time, are very great but where the available
labor services are not sufficient, large quantities of grain often
spoil on the fields. The reason for this is that the goods complementary
to the crops standing on the fields (the labor services necessary
for harvesting them) are missing, with the result that the
crops themselves lose their goods-character. P.62

The goods-character of a thing is, as we have seen, dependent

on its being capable of being placed in a causal connection with the
satisfaction of human needs. But we have also seen that a direct
causal connection between a thing and the satisfaction of a need is
by no means a necessary prerequisite of its goods-character. On the
contrary, a large number of things derive their goods-character
from the fact that they stand only in a more or less indirect causal
relationship to the satisfaction of human needs. P.64

The process by which goods of higher order are progressively

transformed into goods of lower order and by which these are
directed finally to the satisfaction of human needs is, as we have
seen in the preceding sections, not irregular but subject, like all
other processes of change, to the law of causality. The idea of
causality, however, is inseparable from the idea of time. A process
of change involves a beginning and a becoming, and these are only
conceivable as processes in time. Hence it is certain that we can
never fully understand the causal interconnections of the various
occurrences in a process, or the process itself, unless we view it in
time and apply the measure of time to it. Thus, in the process of
change by which goods of higher order are gradually transformed
into goods of first order, until the latter finally bring about the state
called the satisfaction of human needs, time is an essential feature
of our observations. P.67
After what has been said, it is evident that command of
goods of higher order and command of the corresponding
goods of first order differ, with respect to a particular kind of
consumption, in that the latter can be consumed immediately
whereas the former represent an earlier stage in the formation of
consumption goods and hence can be utilized for direct consumption only after the passage of an appreciable period of time, which
is longer or shorter according to the nature of the case.
But another
exceedingly important difference between immediate command of
a consumption good and indirect command of it (through possession
of goods of higher order) demands our consideration.
A person with consumption goods directly at his disposal is

certain of their quantity and quality. But a person who has only
indirect command of them, through possession of the corresponding
goods of higher order, cannot determine with the same certainty
the quantity and quality of the goods of first order that will
be at his disposal at the end of the production process. Pp.68-9

Assume a people
which extends its attention to goods of third, fourth, and higher
orders, instead of confining its activity merely to the tasks of a
primitive collecting economythat is, to the acquisition of naturally
available goods of lowest order (ordinarily goods of first, and
possibly second, order). If such a people progressively directs
goods of ever higher orders to the satisfaction of its needs, and
especially if each step in this direction is accompanied by an
appropriate division of labor, we shall doubtless observe that
progress in welfare which Adam Smith was disposed to attribute
exclusively to the latter factor. We shall see the hunter, who initially
pursues game with a club, turning to hunting with bow and
hunting net, to stock farming of the simplest kind, and in
sequence, to ever more intensive forms of stock farming. We shall
see men, living initially on wild plants, turning to ever more intensive
forms of agriculture. We shall see the rise of manufactures,
and their improvement by means of tools and machines. And in
the closest connection with these developments, we shall see the
welfare of this people increase.
The further mankind progresses in this direction, the more varied
become the kinds of goods, the more varied consequently the
occupations, and the more necessary and economic also the progressive
division of labor. But it is evident that the increase in the
consumption goods at human disposal is not the exclusive effect of
the division of labor. Indeed, the division of labor cannot even be designated as the
most important cause of the economic progress of mankind. Correctly, it should be
regarded only as one factor among the great influences that lead mankind from
barbarism and misery to civilization and wealth.
The explanation of the effect of the increasing employment of
goods of higher order upon the growing quantity of goods available
for human consumption (goods of first order) is a matter of little
difficulty.
In its most primitive form, a collecting economy is confined
to gathering those goods of lowest order that happen to be
offered by nature. Since economizing individuals exert no
influence on the production of these goods, their origin is independent
of the wishes and needs of men, and hence, so far as they are concerned,
accidental. But if men abandon this most primitive and treat them as goods
of higher order, they will obtain consumption
goods that are as truly the results of natural processes as
the consumption goods of a primitive collecting economy, but the
available quantities of these goods will no longer be independent
of the wishes and needs of men. Instead, the quantities of consumption
goods will be determined by a process that is in the
power of men and is regulated by human purposes within the limits
set by natural laws. Consumption goods, which before were the
product of an accidental concurrence of the circumstances of their
origin, become products of human will, within the limits set by

natural laws, as soon as men have recognized these circumstances

and have achieved control of them. The quantities of consumption
goods at human disposal are limited only by the extent of human
knowledge of the causal connections between things, and by the
extent of human control over these things. Increasing understanding
of the causal connections between things and human welfare,
and increasing control of the less proximate conditions responsible
for human welfare, have led mankind, therefore, from a state of
barbarism and the deepest misery to its present stage of civilization
and well-being, and have changed vast regions inhabited by a
few miserable, excessively poor, men into densely populated civilized
countries. Nothing is more certain than that the degree of
economic progress of mankind will still, in future epochs, be commensurate
with the degree of progress of human knowledge. Pp.73-4

From Investigations the division of social labour

1. The theory of the analogy between social phenomena

and natural organisms
The normal function of organisms is conditioned by the function of their parts
(organs), and these in turn are conditioned by the combination of the parts to
form a higher unit, or by the normal function of the other organs.-A similar
observation about social phenomena.-Organisms exhibit a purposefulness of
their parts in respect to the function of the whole unit, a purposefulness which is
not the result of human calculation, however.-Analogous observation about social
phenomena.-The idea of an anatomical-physiological orientation of research in
the realm of the social sciences results as a methodological consequence of
these analogies between social structures and natural organisms.
There exists a certain similarity between natural organisms and a series of
structures of social life, both in respect to their function and to their origin. In
natural organisms we can observe a complexity almost incalculable in detail, and
especially a great variety of their parts (single organs). All this variety, however,
is helpful in the preservation, development, and the propagation of the
organisms as units. Each part of them has its specific function in respect to this
result. The disturbance of this function, accord
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