文档介绍：Silvio Gesell - The NATURAL ECONOMIC ORDER
Silvio Gesell
The NATURAL ECONOMIC ORDER
translated by Philip Pye .
PREFACE
(Preface to the third edition, 1918)
Magna quies in magna spe.
The economic order here discussed is a natural order only in the sense that it is adapted to the nature
of man. It is not an order which arises spontaneously as a natural product. Such an order does not,
indeed, exist, for the order which we impose upon ourselves is always an act, an act consciously
willed.
The proof that an economic order is suited to the nature of man is furnished by observation of
mankind's development. The economic order under which men thrive is the most natural economic
order. Whether an economic order which stands this test is at the same time technically the most
efficient order, whether it provides the bureau of trade statistics with record figures is a matter of
secondary importance. At the present day it is easy to imagine an economic system of high technical
efficiency coupled with gradual exhaustion of the human material. It may, however, be taken for
granted that an economic order under which mankind thrives will also prove its technical superiority.
For human work can, ultimately, only advance with the advance of the human race. "Man is the
measure of all things" including the economic system under which he lives.
The prosperity of mankind, as of all living beings, depends in the main upon whether selection takes
place under natural laws. But these laws petition. Only petition, chiefly
competition in the economic sphere, is right evolution, eugenesis, possible. Those who wish to ensure
the full miraculous effects of the laws of natural selection must base their economic order upon
competition under the conditions really decreed by nature, that is, with the weapons furnished by
nature after the exclusion of all privileges. ess petition must be exclusively determined by
inborn characte