Problems of Order of Economic and Agricultural Policy

Abstract

THE discussions on problems of agricultural policy in Parliament, in newspapers and in agricultural periodicals indicate that large differences of opinion continue not only in questions of detail, which is natural, but as regards broad objectives of agricultural policy as well. A scientific approach may help to clarify principles by trying to determine the social-geometrical position (an expression used by Swiss economist Fritz Marbach) which agricultural policy is holding or should be holding today within total system of economy and economic policy. In speaking of problems of order (Ordnungsprobleme) in agricultural policy we mean (1) to adapt agricultural policy to political and social concepts of free democracy; (2) to adapt it to inherent laws of economic process in such a way that functioning of those laws will be controlled and supported, but not hindered; (3) to co-ordinate it appropriately with general economic policy; and (4) to harmonize its specific aims and measures with circumstances of time and place. These four problems themselves are subject to an order of precedence. Political and social principles are supreme values which are recognized as axiomatic. As we know from experience of our own lives, it is not sufficient for conduct of one's life to have principles. One must also know how to apply them. This brings us to other pole of our existence, material foundations, which have largely objective character of fate. We certainly do not go as far as orthodox Marxism which regards political and social convictions only as an ideological superstructure of conditions of production; on other hand, we do acknowledge that economic process follows its inherent laws in continuous repetition of its course and has its own dynamics in its development in time. When a century and a half ago natural laws of economic process were discovered, many, inspired by first enthusiasm and full of abhorrence of mercantile system of privileges and police intervention, thought that a satisfactory order of economy was secured by economic laws alone. Economic history has shown that this optimism was not justified. The opinion, however, widely held today by marginal producers and their political and administrative representatives, that economic laws exist solely in imagination of theoreticians and that