Loria

Sidney Ball, reviewing Franklin Giddings's 1896 book The Principles of Sociology, offers some entertaining criticism:

The book is simply strewn with generalizations,  many of which are more than doubtful, or, if true, carry us a wonderfully little way.

Ball makes his praise for the book as empty as the book itself: "On the other hand ... the author's references to theoretic economics are generally happy and pertinent."

Even more striking, Ball uses the review as an opportunity to praise a different writer's work:

But it is surprising that an author who seems so thoroughly conversant with the literature of the subject should not have recognized -- even to the extent of discussing its "errors" in a footnote -- what we may call the school of Economic Sociology, of which Professor Achille Loria is the most distinguished representative. Some account should be taken, at least, of the view that all social causation is ultimately economic, and that all social institutions -- moral, legal, and political -- have their origin in the economic relations of the different social classes. This view may be a great abstraction, but it is at any rate a more positive working conception than any we can find in the kind of vague and abstract sociology of which Professor Giddings is a representative.

This was my introduction to Achille Loria, for whom all social causation is ultimately economic.

All social causation is ultimately economic. That's how I see things too, you know. So I sort of dropped everything and went looking for Achille Loria.

Wikipedia says Loria (1857 – 1943) was an Italian political economist who

developed an original deterministic theory of economic development. It is based on the premise that the relative scarcity of land leads to the subjugation of some members of society by others, a mechanism that works differently in different stages of development.

The scarcity of land leads to subjugation? That escapes me. But change "the relative scarcity of land" to "the relative scarcity of wealth" and I see it clearly. Loria's theory

• describes "a mechanism that works differently in different stages of development." I see that. Arnold Toynbee identifies the stages of civilization as genesis, growth, breakdown, disintegration, and the universal state. Carroll Quigley identifies them as mixture, gestation, expansion, conflict, the universal empire, decay, and invasion. Werner Sombart and Ernest Mandel studied the stages of capitalism; Sombart's study goes back to the proto-capitalism of the Early Middle Ages -- the Dark Age, where civilization begins. And Keynes himself identified the high point of civilization (and capitalism), writing of "a period of almost one hundred and fifty years" which he described as "the greatest age of the inducement to investment", a time when employment was "reasonably satisfactory" and  "not intolerably low".
  
  
• The theory ties the various stages together by identifying a mechanism that drives the process of change. For Loria, that mechanism is the scarcity of land. (For me, the mechanism is the concentration of wealth.)
  
  
• Loria's theory is "deterministic" one, meaning things could not happen any other way -- but, as I believe, if we know and understand the problem we can change the outcome. We can pause the "mechanism" at an opportune moment, before the fall-of-Rome stage. Maybe we can even turn downtrend into uptrend, which is really what needs to be done. "Challenge and response," Toynbee said: If our response is successful, our civilization survives. If not, then not.
  

And yes, Loria's theory may be "a great abstraction", as Sidney Ball said. But we are certainly capable of ignoring, denying, and not seeing half a century or more of dramatic decline in our own economy. 

Are we not capable of recognizing it when we finally do see it? Are we not capable of turning the trend around? We do not have to go the way of Rome and the other ancient civilizations. But we have to know about the problem, and we have to understand the problem. The difficulty is not in solving the problem. The difficulty is in understanding it. Once the problem is correctly understood, solving it is the easy thing.

Just to be clear on this, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans understand the problem. The hard work is yet to be done.

 

In the October 1950 edition of the journal *Agricultural History*, one finds Lee Benson's article "Achille Loria's Influence on American Economic Thought". JSTOR provides access to the article at no cost. Below is Benson's opening paragraph:

In recent years a mantle of obscurity has fallen over the name and reputation of the Italian economist, Achille Loria. Yet, in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, his system of "economic sociology" was of primary importance, and contemporary observers placed him among the foremost academicians of the time. His contributions to the economic interpretation of history and his theories concerning the role of land in the social process profoundly influenced both European and American thought. Thus there is a warrant for attempting to rescue him from an undeserved obscurity.

That's great, and maybe I can help rescue Loria from that obscurity. But my purpose here is to repeat Sidney Ball's description of Loria's view

that all social causation is ultimately economic, and that all social institutions -- moral, legal, and political -- have their origin in the economic relations of the different social classes.

When you turn the news on and it is all politics, try to remember: the underlying cause of it all is that our economy is in decline. When you turn the news on and it is war over Gaza and war over Crimea -- war over land, Loria would point out -- remember what people say: "War is politics by other means." Politics by worse means. Things get worse. And the root of it all is economic decline.

Long-term economic decline is indistinguishable from the decline of civilization. If it continues, long-term economic decline creates the decline of civilization. If we solve the economic problem, it doesn't.