ABSTRACT
The ideas which are the deeper cause of insecurity are the common heritage of liberals and conservatives alike. These derive from a theory of capitalism which has deeply shaped the attitudes of both. This is the system of classical economics which was constructed in the latter part of the eighteenth and during the nineteenth century, primarily in England. The first requirement of the classical system, as everyone is aware, is competition. Competition was the rivalry of the merchants of the town or of the cotton manufacturers or pit proprietors of nineteenth-century England. The notion of efficiency as applied to an economic system is many-sided. It can be viewed merely as a matter of getting the most for the least; this is the commonplace engineering view of efficiency. If an economy is to be efficient some reasonably full use must be made of the available, or at least of the willing, labor supply.
