ABSTRACT
In its general plan M. Tarde’s book is an application of his well-known “social laws” to economics, together with a recasting of the received scheme of economic theory to fit the scheme of his social laws. The economics to whose revision he addresses himself is a somewhat old-fashioned economics; approximately, one might say, some half-a-century old, more or less. Later discussion, with the exception of what M. Gide has contributed, has not in any appreciable degree affected M. Tarde’s apprehension of what economics aims at as regards either its scope, its method, or the range of phenomena which engage its attention. He finds fault with the received scheme of Production, Circulation, Distribution, and Consumption (Book I, chap. iii), and rejects these several captions one by one as being in part artificial and incompetent subdivisions of the subject-matter, and in part as not belonging within the scope of the science. Circulation (following Gide) is but a corollary of the division of labor (p. 98), hence this drops out without further comment; consumption is either inseparable from production, or it is extra-economic, so that also drops out; by distribution M. Tarde appears to understand the “diffusion” of the products of industry, which, again, cannot be fairly considered a distinct head of theory, but falls under the same general head with production (reproduction). But the remaining head of Production fares no better. It is condemned because as it stands it has regard simply to objective entities, products, instead of dealing with the producers and their relations to one another in the productive process (pp. 99, 100). Instead of the worn-out scheme of economics as it has hitherto stood,
M. Tarde proposes to discuss economic conduct under his own scheme of social-psychological laws: Repetition, Opposition, and Adaptation. The scheme is the same as has been expounded on several earlier occasions by M. Tarde, most succinctly and comprehensively in his Lois Sociales. The discussion which economic phenomena get in the three books in which these several heads are taken up is, on the whole, more suggestive than convincing. In Book I, chapter ii, on the “Economic Function of Opinion” (Croyance), and vi, on “Money,” may be singled out as of peculiar value. The former
aims to show how opinions, ideas regarding the desirability of certain products, for instance, grow up and spread through the body of consumers under the guidance of advertising and the like; and how, on the other hand, the opinions and predilections of consumers influence the conduct of [147] producers. Chapter vi offers an analysis of the psychological processes involved in the establishment of a standard of value as well as in the use of money. Of Book II, on “Economic Opposition,” it is difficult to single out any particular portion that is peculiarly worth while; it contains little else than well-worn general reflections on prices, competition, crises, and the like, with some slight illustrative material. Of Book III, on “Economic Adaptation,” the valuable portions are in the main comprised in chapter ii, on “The Economic Imagination,” which offers some suggestive passages on the part played by imagination in invention, in the direction and organization of industry, and in commercial enterprise. On the whole, M. Tarde’s book is not a work with which economic science
will have to count. The author’s familiarity with economics is patently scanty, and has a perfunctory air. The book has the faults that habitually attach to M. Tarde’s writings: it is unnecessarily bulky, diffuse, and discursive, at the same time that the penchant for system making and symmetry gives it an air of completeness and definitiveness which is not borne out by substantial results. M. Tarde’s psychology is in much the same case as his economics: it is somewhat behind the times; its outlook over its field is narrow, and is subject to essentially mechanical limitations; it deals in catchwords and mechanical schematization of phenomena rather than with causal relations and the springs of human conduct. This applies, of course, to M. Tarde’s psychology generally, as it is set forth in his earlier works, as well as in the present book. After a busy life spent in this field, M. Tarde has come in sight of the cen-
tral principle of modern psychology, which has been the common property of American and English psychologists of the last generation, ever since Professor James broke away from the earlier empiricism: but it cannot be said that he has assimilated this modern standpoint which he has approached, nor, perhaps, that he sees the outcome of his own speculations in this respect. As is well known, though perhaps not always known under this phrase, the
point of departure of modern psychological inquiry is the empirical generalization that The Idea is Essentially Active. By a painstaking, somewhat mechanical process of generalization, illuminated with many happy turns of expression, M. Tarde has worked out his “laws” of repetition, opposition, and adaptation; the general upshot of which is nothing more than the concept covered by this phrase. Had he been so fortunate as to make this well-assured concept [148] his point of departure, his detailed theories of social forces would unavoidably have fallen into the form of corollaries under this main thesis. The resulting theories of social conduct would of course not have taken the same form of expression, nor showed the same structural relations as the present body of psychological doctrines offered by M. Tarde – the apparatus by which he has made his approach to this point of departure.
