Communism and the Negro

Abstract

Abstract The launching of the New Deal was followed by high hopes for a new day and these high hopes were based on a new faith of the American people, faith in the ability of the brain trust by means of mathematical formulae and with mathematical formulae and with mathematical certainty, quickly to exit the depression and bring in an era of prosperity of a new kind. It appears that the country is gradually rising out of the depression. But it also appears that there is an increasing realization that economic formulas do not work out infallibly when applied to human affairs. And this means that the United States is discovering what certain European countries learned some time ago that economics is an important branch of learning but is not an exact science. Contrary to the rather widespread notion, there are no laws in the realm of economics that are fixed and inevitable as are, say, the laws of physics or chemistry. The chemist knows that a combination of certain chemical elements in certain proportions will produce a certain reaction, and he will wager his life on the result, wager that he will get the same reaction not only once but every time the experiment is made. When an economist is confronted with a combination of human elements he is subjected to definite limitations in predicting what the reaction will be; even when he has as a precedent what looks like an identical combination. The plain reason is that in these combinations of human elements the variable and unknown quantities are next to infinite and defy the fomulation of laws that will positively govern or foretell the course of affairs.