industrialism, they urge a return to the earlier agrarian economy, to the simpler capitalist ways of yesterday, as the only material basis upon which the democratic philosophy of life can be restored and defended.
The reply to such proposals is that they are economically impossible. The economically impossible implies a counter-concept of economic necessity. What do we understand by economic necessity here, and why is the reply to the agrarian democrats a valid one? What we say will apply a fortiori to all proposals which suggest, as a programme of action, a return to earlier systems of economy, whose ideals and values we would keep as integral elements of our own democratic philosophy.
Why not, then, go back to an earlier economy? After all, an economic system is a set of social relationships that regulate the behaviour of men. It is a scheme of human arrangements, not a God-given or nature-given fact, but something that has resulted historically from the activities of men. True. As a logical possibility we can conceive of any economic system prevailing at any time. But precisely because an economic system is both a human economy and a historical economy, its basic relations cannot be made over at will.
We could not return to an agrarian economy without destroying our large cities, decentralizing mass-production industries, transforming our banking and transportation systems, producing catastrophic unemployment, making huge plants and many skills obsolescent, and depriving the existing farm population of its market—to mention only a few things. Almost every group in the population would have a vested interest immediately imperilled by the change, and with only the promise of an agrarian Utopia to console them. Even if the promise had a hypnotic effect, the disaster attendant upon any effort to carry out such a programme would awaken the populace from their trance. It would require the profoundest modification in present human motives, modes of appreciation, standards of living and taste—all once historically acquired but now set and hardened into habit or second nature. All of men’s habits can be altered, but not so many of them at the same time. So long as human beings did not lose their memories, it is even doubtful whether the devastation produced by an earthquake or war would incline them to return to the economies of the past. They would begin to rebuild where they had left off because it would be easier and more “natural” for them to do so. They would choose sites
