Arnold Toynbee / Economist (19. Jh.)

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Arnold Toynbee (*23. August 1852 in London, " 9. March 1883 in Wimbledon) was British national economy scientist and restaurant historian. Toynbee was well-known also because of its social employment for the working class.

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Life

Toynbee was the son of the physician Joseph Toynbee and uncle of the historical philosopher Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889-1975), with which it is often confounded due to the name similarity. It visited Privatschulen in Blackheath and Woolwich and studied starting from 1873 political economy at the University of Oxford, first at the Pembroke college, starting from 1875 at the Balliol college.

1878 terminated Toynbee its study of the political economy at the Balliol college in Oxford and worked from now on there as a teacher. Its lectures on the history of the Industriellen revolution in the Great Britain 18. and 19. Century proved as extremely influential. Toynbee coined/shaped the term in the English linguistic area considerably industrial revolution. Toynbee died 1883 at the age of 30 years, after its state of health had probably worsened due to revision rapidly.

"Lectures on the Industrielle revolution in England "

A collection of Toynbee lectures was published 1884 posthum and rapidly to a classical author of British restaurant history. Therein it reconstructed the theories of Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo in their historical context and pleaded for a more strongly historically aligned interpretation of economic developments, since at that time current political economy was too abstract. For example it can be only historically understood why "2512 persons possess half of the soil in the united kingdom ". In addition make the historical aspect the relativity of allegedly universal economic regularities clear. Free trade e.g. is not in principle favourable for the economic development, but only under certain conditions, which might not be verabsolutiert without closer inspection. Only few economic regularities would possess universal validity, for instance the law of the falling profit rate. Therefore there would be also no generally accepted scientific rules over it how far the state was allowed to intervene in the free-market economy; depending upon situation differently strong adjustments could be meaningful.

Toynbee warns however to give the deductive economic science up on one side in favor of restaurant history; rather abstract theory and historical experience would have to affect each other mutually: Economiceconomics knowledge made a better understanding possible of historical procedures. Toynbee warned however of to in-read how "party historian "controversies of the present into the past. Rather one must pursue "the facts over their sake, but with an awake sense for the problems of its own time ".

Toynbee criticized the theoretical view, competition is in principle favorable for the economic and social development, and in particular the increased height of the competition in the Sozialdarwinismus, arising at that time. Toynbee suggests differentiating exactly between one "fight around the existence "and one "fight for a certain kind from existence ". The entire human culture was since more jeher designed to intervene in "the brutal fight around the existence. We want to reduce and prevent the force of the fight that the weak ones are down-trampled ". Economic competition has quite advantages - without it there would be no progress. However these advantages with one were bought "enormous Verschwendung by human life and human work, which could be avoided by adjustment ". It suggests differentiating between competition in production on the one hand and in the distribution of goods on the other hand: "The fight of humans to exceed each other in production is useful; their fight for the allocation of the common produced goods is not it. The stronger side will dictate its conditions; and in the early days of the competition the capitalists used actually all their power to suppress over the workers and pressed the wages to to the hunger border. This kind competition must be contained; there is no historical example for the fact that he would have for a long time outlasted, without he would have been limited either by union [the worker] or by legislation. In England both remedies are the used, first by the trade unions, the latter by the industrial law ". Free market competition actually neither good nor badly is to canalize but like a river, whose natural direction and river speed would have to be studied, in order it by embankments into a useful direction. In the early phase of the industrialization he was seen however like "a gospel ", in which one has to believe, and of which to deviate "nearly already as immoral one regarded ".

Social commitment

Toynbee busy academically with the social question, but did not only engage itself actively for the improvement of the living conditions of the Proletariats. Among other things it regarded lectures as workers in large British industrial cities and supported the establishment of trade unions and cooperatives. An emphasis of its activity was the arm quarter of Whitechapel in the east of London, where it supported e.g. the mechanism of public libraries for the workers.

Briefly after his death (1884) to project in the east of London, existing today, after Toynbee one designated - which resound] (: EN: To Toynbee resound), which to the important model] up to the today's quarter work became. Important element of the project was the fact that students and university teachers did not only inform honorary workers but together with them lived and worked. At the Toynbee resound project above all member of the Balliol, Toynbees of earlier working place engaged themselves college.