IV. Herr List and Ferner
IV. Herr List and Ferner(1)
The book by Ferrier, sous-inspecteur des douanes(2) under Napoleon, Du gouvernement considéré dans ses rapports avec le commerce, Paris, 1805, is the work from which Herr List copied. In List's book there is not a single basic idea that has not been stated, and better stated, in Ferrier's book.
Ferrier was one of Napoleon's officials. He defended the Continental System. He does not speak about the system of protection but about the prohibitive system. He is far from making phrases about a union of all nations or eternal peace within the country. Nor, of course, has he any socialist phrases yet. We shall give a short extract from his book in order to throw light on this secret source of List's wisdom. Whereas Herr List falsifies Louis Say so as to be able to present him as his ally, nowhere, on the other hand, does he quote Ferrier, whom he has copied out everywhere. He wanted to lead the reader on a false trail.
We have already quoted Ferrier's judgment on Smith.[3] Ferrier still adheres to the old prohibitive system, but more honestly.
State Intervention. The Thrift of Nations
"There is a thrift and an extravagance (prodigalité) of nations, but a nation is extravagant or thrifty only in its relations with other peoples" (p. 143).
"It is untrue that the most profitable use of capital for the person who owns it is necessarily also the most profitable for industry.... The interest of the capitalists, far from coinciding with the general interest, is almost always in opposition to it" (pp. 168, 169).
"There is a thrift of nations, but it is very different from Smith's.... It consists in buying foreign products only in so far as they can be paid for by one's own products. Sometimes it consists in completely foregoing them" (pp. [174], 175).
Productive Forces and Exchange Value
"The principles of the thrift of nations which Smith laid down (set) are all based on the distinction between productive and unproductive labour.... This distinction is essentially incorrect. There is no unproductive labour" (p. 141).
"He" (Gamier) "saw in silver only the value of the silver, without thinking about its property, as silver, to make circulation more active and, consequently, to multiply the products of labour" (p. 18). "Therefore, when governments seek to prevent the outflow of money ... this is not on account of its value ..., but because the value that is received in exchange for it cannot have the same effect in circulation ..., because it cannot cause a new creation at each transition" (pp. 22, 23). "The word 'wealth', as applied to money that circulates as money, must be understood from the acts of reproduction that it facilitates ..., and in this sense a country enriches itself when it increases the quantity of its money, because with this increase of money all the productive forces of labour increase" (p. 71). "When it is said that a country can lay out (expend) an income of two milliards, ... what is meant is that the country has the means, with the aid of these two milliards, to support a circulation 10, 20, 30 times greater in values or, what is the same thing, that it can produce these values. It is these means of production, which the country owes to money, that are called wealth" (p. 22).
You see: Ferrier distinguishes the exchange value possessed by money from the productive force of money. Apart from the fact that in general he calls the means of production wealth, there was in any case nothing easier than to apply to all capital the distinction which he drew between the value and the productive force of money.
But Ferrier goes still farther, he defends the prohibitive system, in general on the grounds that it safeguards for the nations their means of production:
"Thus prohibitions are useful whenever they make it easier for nations to acquire the means to satisfy their needs.... I compare a nation which with its money buys abroad commodities it can make itself, although of poorer quality, with a gardener who, dissatisfied with the fruit he gathers, would buy juicier fruits from his neighbours, giving them his gardening tools in exchange" (p. 288). "Foreign trade is always profitable when it endeavours to enlarge productive capital. It is unprofitable when instead of multiplying capital it demands its alienation" (pp. 395-96).
Agriculture, Manufacture, Trade
"Should a government promote trade and factories in preference to agriculture? This question is still one of those on which governments and writers cannot agree" (p. 73).
"The progress of industry and trade is bound up with that of civilisation, the arts, the sciences, and shipping. A government, which can do almost nothing for agriculture, can do almost everything for industry. If a nation has habits or tastes capable of holding back its development, the government must use all its means to combat them" (p. 84).
"The true means of encouraging agriculture is the encouragement of manufactures" (p. 225). "Its domain" (that of industry, by which M. Ferrier means manufacturing industry) "is not limited, whether in its successes or in its means of improvement.... Far-reaching like imagination, and like imagination mobile and fruitful, its creative power has no limits other than those of the human mind itself, from which it daily receives fresh eclat" (p. 85).
"The true source of wealth for an agricultural-manufacturing nation is reproduction and labour. It must apply its capital to this end and be concerned to transport and sell its own commodities before it can engage in transporting and selling those of other nations" (p. 186). "This growth of man's wealth is to be ascribed primarily to internal trade, which long preceded the exchange of nation with nation" (p. 145). "According to Smith himself, of two capitals, one of which is invested in home trade and the other in foreign trade, the first gives the country's industry 24 times greater support and encouragement" (p. [145J-146).
But M. Ferrier at least understands that home trade cannot exist without foreign trade (loc. cit.).
consume (p. 91), but in so doing he is at least honest enough to refer to Smith himself. He refers to the Methuen Treaty,[114] so dear to
Herr List, and the subtlety of Smith's judgment of that treaty (p. 159). We have already seen how in general his judgment of Smith coincides almost word for word with List's. See also on carrying trade (p. 186 et passim).
The difference between Ferrier and List is that the former writes in support of an undertaking of world-historic importance — the Continental System, whereas the latter writes in support of a petty, weak-minded bourgeoisie.
The reader will admit that the whole of Herr List is contained in nuce in the extracts quoted from Ferrier. If, moreover, one adds the phrases he borrows from the development of political economy since Ferrier, then all that remains as his share is empty idealising, the productive force of which consists in words — and the clever hypocrisy of the German bourgeois striving for domination.
Endnotes
[3] Here and elsewhere Engels quotes Reichardt's reviews of C. Briiggemann's book, Preussens Beruf in der deutschen Staats-Entwickelung, und die nächsten Bedingungen zu seiner Erfüllung, Berlin, 1843 and A. Benda's Katechismus für wahlberechtigte Bürger in Preussen, Berlin, 1843. Both reviews were published in the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, Heft VI, May 1844.
[114] The Methuen Treaty was a trade treaty concluded on December 27, 1703, between England and Portugal (by Lord Methuen for the English) — allies in the War of Spanish Succession (fought by the Anglo-Austro-Dutch coalition against France and Spain). The treaty opened wide access in Portugal for English woollens, in return for which Portugal received the right to export its wines to England on privileged terms. In his book List emphasised that this treaty was unfavourable to Portugal.