Opening Page

Day 588, 23:00 • Published in USA South Africa • by Matthew Casey

When a professional student of social affairs writes a politial newspaper, his first duty is plainly to say so. This is a political newspaper. I do not wish to disguise this by describing it, as I might perhaps have done, by the more elegant and ambitious name of an essay in social philosophy. But, whatever the name, the essential point remainds that all I shall have to say is derived from certain ultimate values. I hope I have adequately discharged in the newspaper itself a second and no less important duty: to make it clear beyond doubt what these ultimate values are on which the whole argument depends.

There is, however, one thing I want to add to this. Though this is a political newspaper, I am as certain as anyone can be that the beliefs set out in it are not determined by my personal interests. I can discover no reason why the kind of society which seems to me desirable should offer greater advantages to me than to the great majority of the people of my country. In fact, I am always told by my socialist colleagues that as an economist I should oocupy a much more important position in the kind of society to which I am opposed--provided, of course, that I could bring myself to accept their views. I feel equally certain that my opposition to these views is not due to their being different from thsoe with which I have grown up, since they are the very views which I held as a teenager and which have led me to make the study of economics my profession. For those who, in the current fashion, seek interested motives in every profession of a political opinion, I may, perhaps, be allowed to add that I have every possible reason for NOT writing or publishing this newspaper. It is certain to offend many people with whom I wish to live on friendly terms; it has forced me to put aside work for which I feel better qualified and to which I attack greater importance in the long run; and, above all, it is certain to prejudice the reception of the results of the more strictly academic work to which all my inclinations lead me.

If in spite of this I have come to regard the writing of this newspaper as a duty which I must not evade, this was mainly due to a paculiar and serious feature of the discussions of problems of future economic policy at the present time, of which the public is scarcely sufficiently aware. This is the fact that the majority of economists have now for some years been absorbed by the war machine, and silence by their official positions, and that in consequence public opinion on these problems is to an alarming extent guided by amateurs and cranks, by people who have an ax to grind or a pet panacea to sell. In these circumstances one who still has the leisure for literary work is hardly entitled to keep to himself apprehensions which current tendencies must create in the minds of many who cannot publicly express them--through indifferent circumstances I should have gladly left the discussion of questions of national policy to those who are better authorized and better qualified for the task.

The central argument of this newspaper is to make clear beneficial economic arguments and to educate the populace so that brighter skies may lace our horizons. May you enjoy the reads as I tread through the writing.