Introduction

Reading economics philosophically, or, the

With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life
around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at
my feet.
Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

The ‘subject’ is not a creature newly conceived, nor is it really that old; neither
eternal, nor the heritage of some kind of essential or immutable humanity, the
subject is a problem, a conceptual dilemma, and not a person. And yet,
the subject is the legacy around which our modern age revolves, grounded in the
edifice of Cartesian thought and later solidified in the transcendental figure of the
Kantian architectonic. When man first became a subject, a modern problem, he
lost his substantive Greek origins. He became the focus and centre of thought
instead of retaining his material and embedded role as hypokeimenon; he was no
longer a part of the ground of all that had come before.1 The modern subject is
not just an object of fascination, nor simply an object of scientific and philo-
sophical study, but has come to be both subject as object and subject as knower,
as thinker.

When man becomes the primary and only real subiectum, that means: Man
becomes the being upon which all that is, is grounded as regards the manner
of its Being and its truth. Man becomes the relational center of that which is
as such.

Martin Heidegger further explains that ‘this is possible only when the compre-
hension of what is as a whole changes’ (1977, 128).2 The transformation of man
into subject could not be complete, paradoxically enough, until the world, as
conceived by man-­as-subject, had taken on a distinctly new character. I am con-
cerned precisely with these two objects, the subject and the conceptual system
through which the subject both conceives the whole and is in turn conceived
within the whole. My concern is with the economic subject specifically, and the
systems of economic thought employed to describe the world in which this
subject lives.
2   Introduction
This study addresses two intertwined objects of the Western imagination, two
dialectically interconnected and often confused problems: subjectivity and
systems of economic thought. Subjectivity is taken up in the sense of the logical
and epistemological prescription to which the purported ‘people’ that economics
describes are subjected. Along this trajectory, subjectivity reflects the creative
act of the political economist. The system of economic thought, by contrast, is
that which always already implicates the modern subject and, as such, is under-
stood as a problem outlining the relationship between the subject and the world
as it follows from the philosophical lineage of the Kantian architectonic. Here I
will employ the Kantian transcendental subject as it appears in the Critique of
Pure Reason (1781), as both a conceptual starting point and basis of comparison.
In Kant’s text there is a palpable tension between the thinking subject and the
embodied subject. Through a study of the geographical metaphors of subjective
uncertainty in the face of the noumenal realm,3 I have come to understand that
the transcendental subject is always constituted by and through knowledge.
Moreover, not only is this thinking subject conceived as an elaborate extension
of the Cartesian subject, but this Kantian subject is a subject that only comes to
exist within the structure of an intricate and elaborate philosophical architec-
tonic. And yet, upon scrutiny, allusions to any sort of embodied material being
in the world (at least the most poignant illusions) always come in the Critique of
Pure Reason when the subject faces error in the aims of his knowledge – in the
Paralogisms and in the Antimonies – the limit point of thought as permitted by
the Transcendental Analytic.4 In much the same way that the peril of the tran-
scendental subject comes in bodily form as a result of the misdirection of know-
ledge, we see in economic thought that the bodily peril of the economic subject
(this time with more literal reference than rhetorical intent) often comes with a
misalignment with the knowledge of the logic of capital. Despite its develop-
ment in the idealist world of the Kantian Transcendental Analytic, every modern
subject seeks its own home. For us, this home lies within economic thought.
It is in this context, therefore, that what follows is the development of an
extended meditation on the place and function of subjectivity in economic
thought. Specifically, this is a study about the epistemological constitution of
subjectivity in the history of economic thought. As we explore texts drawn from
the canon of European economic thought, we will encounter very specific forms
of economic subjectivity that make up the foundation of the systems used to
explain the complex workings of the economy, even in cases where these
systems are primarily mathematical or positivist in nature. Because subjectivity,
as a building block for coherent theorizations of the economy, has been defined
primarily in and through relations of knowledge, our focus will be biased
towards the epistemological aspect of the economic subject. Accordingly, three
primary themes guide this examination of the history of economic thought: (1)
the architectonic structure of economic thought; (2) the temporality of economic
subjectivity; and (3) the political economist as subject.
To begin, the question of the economic architectonic both frames and struc-
tures this study. Here, as throughout my work, I intend the term architectonic to
 Introduction   3
signify something more than mere system, though system is most certainly the
essence of any architectonic. In a broad sense, the architectonic denotes the
attempt to create a coherent theoretical unity within a system of economic
thought. It attempts to create an enclosure, much like a field of internal contain-
ment, around the concepts, subjects and logic that comprise the unity. This
understanding of the architectonic is grounded primarily in Kant’s formulation.
The architectonic appears in varying manifestations as the structure of the work
of each of the economists with whom I engage (with the very notable exception
of Adam Smith and the rather incidental exception of Ludwig von Mises). I
present David Ricardo’s Principles of Political Economy and Taxation as my
starting point, precisely because it is my contention that it is the first veritable
architectonic, the first coherent and self-­contained theorization of the economy.
Ricardo’s Principles allows us to see the way in which subjectivity, or particular
economic subjects, both enable and operate within the architectonic itself. In a
sense the architectonic is both the most general and the most particular theme of
this book. It presents a general and coherent frame within which economists
might contain the logic of their respective systems. And yet at the same time, the
way in which economists choose to orient this containment, this internal struc-
ture, will vary depending on their assumptions about the nature of value, about
human nature, about the temporality of capital, and their own position as a
knowing subject with the capacity to hold authority, create laws and predict.
Along these lines, the architectonic serves as the medium for economic theory. It
is within this very architecture that the subsequent themes – the temporality of
economic subjectivity, and the ‘political economist as subject’ – reside.
My use of the term architectonic stems quite specifically from Kant’s Cri-
tique of Pure Reason. I use the term architectonic as a term which is more philo-
sophically precise than architecture as it has a more rigorous demand for internal
logical consistency. While this Kantian architectonic5 may indeed represent, at
least from an idealist perspective, a certain form of philosophical perfection, I
argue throughout the course of my work that the economic architectonic faces
particular problems and pressures, especially given the often poor philosophical
foundations upon which its many economic structures are so precariously built,
and the unfortunately postulated a posteriori conditions that are often assumed to
be a priori by the economist. The economic architectonic, in the hands of the
economists I explore, is a sort of imperfect architecture within which theories of
the economy, conceptions of subjectivity and even entire schools of thought are
housed.
Just as the subject reflects a shift to the modern world in philosophy, just as
man becomes a knowing subject endeavouring to think through the very cat-
egory of ‘the subject’, so too does the economic subject represent a radical shift
towards the modern in economic thought. This shift, both in terms of the eco-
nomic subject described by the economist, and in terms of the subjectivity of the
economist as ‘knower’, is best exemplified in the transition between Adam
Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) and
David Ricardo’s Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1816). While
4   Introduction
both thinkers are undoubtedly intellectual benefactors of the Enlightenment, we
see in the forty years that span between their seminal texts the beginning of a
movement away from Smith’s quotidian and custom-­oriented vocational sub-
jects, to Ricardo’s more rigidly delineated labouring and capitalist subjects. This
shift in epistemological parameters makes historical sense in terms of the rise
and solidification of industrial capitalism. As Smith’s text was in many ways a
great tome of premonition, describing a capitalist mode of production that was
still yet to come in predominant and generalized form, we surely could not
expect Smith’s subjects to truly embody what it is to be a subject of capitalism,
or even a capitalist or labouring subject for that matter. For example, if we look
at Smith’s account of the ‘component parts of the price of commodities’, (Book
I, Ch. 6) where he employs the figures of the hunter and fisherman to draw out
the transition from early or ‘rude’ states of society and the composition of price,
to ‘civilized’ society where the component parts of price are more difficult to
ascertain, we see that he is reaching beyond the grasp of the current economic
climate in order to explain a modern industrial phenomenon, albeit with ‘rude’
or ‘primitive’ examples.
Ricardo, on the other hand, historically located in a flourishing industrial
capitalism and a recently urbanized England, was loathe to accept Smith’s
account of the component price of commodities, not because the figures of the
hunter and fisherman were in any way too antiquated to be valid examples, but
rather because Smith had not embedded these figures within a coherent theoriza-
tion of the structure of capitalism itself. In other words, Smith could not account
for the composition of commodity price because he had not located a single
source of value (the a priori ground of the economic architectonic), nor had he
figured the way in which capital would behave, by means of the logic of accu-
mulation, and subsequently the way in which subjects in their relation to capital
would behave, within a capitalist economy. In the first and second editions of the
Principles Ricardo writes that,

Adam Smith, however, has no where analyzed the effects of the accumula-
tion of capital, and the appropriation of land, on relative value. It is of
importance, therefore, to determine how far the effects which are avowedly
produced on the exchangeable value of commodities, by the comparative
quantity of labour bestowed on their production, are modified or altered by
the accumulation of capital and the payment of rent.
(22–3 fn3)

There can be no doubt that Ricardo, in his account of capitalism and the subjects
who inhabit it, does not succeed in creating a perfect architectonic. He does
begin, however, with his focus on the labour theory of value and the subsequent
relations of the distribution of capital within the economy, to create a structure
that binds subjects to a certain logic. This structure begins to draw out the episte-
mological nature of relationships within the economic sphere. At times Ricardo
succumbs to the lasting influence of Smith’s reliance upon the codes of tradition
 Introduction   5
and customary roles in his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). Nonetheless, he
sheds these customary roles in economic activity in favour of an abstract account
of a subject who aligns himself with capital in the economic world.
The second theme which guides this study, the question of temporality and
economic subjectivity, is pertinent to all economic architectonics as it determines
the laws and movement of capital, along with the psychological and epistemo-
logical position of the economic subjects who purportedly live in the imagined
economy. With the desire to posit coherent laws of the economy comes the
assertion of a certain inherent economic temporality, often in the form of smooth
and quantifiable rhythms, or predictable and knowable cycles. Indeed the impor-
tance of the question of temporality in political economy, as in philosophical
inquiry, cannot be overstated. The relationship between the temporality of the
economy and the consideration given to the temporality of the subjects who
inhabit it reveals the philosophical foundations used to make up the ‘economic
subject’, or the economic subjectivity of the archetypal figures in economic
thought such as the infamous ‘rational economic man’. Historically, Ricardo’s
work represents a key moment, as his understanding of time shifts to encapsulate
the time of industrialization, the rise of the work day, and the predominance of
the clock over seasonal or agricultural time. Once this truly abstract capitalist
time has taken hold of the economic imagination in later schools of thought,
however, we must consider the ways in which temporal prescriptions have signi-
ficant consequences for economic subjects in terms of the way in which they are
presented textually in their relationship to the movement of capital through
knowledge. But the time of capitalism, at this historical juncture best represented
materially in the modernization inherent to industrialism, has real consequences
on subjects outside of the text and in the world, and applies to their material and
embodied conditions within the economy. Just as time evokes the question of
space in philosophical thought, temporality demands that we consider the ques-
tion of embodiment for economic subjects.
These temporal concerns are manifest in each and every architectonic
explored in this book. Most strikingly it becomes the dominant concern in
Walras’ theory of general equilibrium and the rise of the mathematization of
economics (Walras, Jevons, Menger). But inevitably, the desire to create a math-
ematical system that likens the economic universe to a cosmos with universal
laws runs up against a problem. The subjectivity inherent to marginal utility
theory is quite unique. The individual is contained by theory within a static
moment where knowledge is nothing more than a decision about price, pleasure
and rational advantage, as though this fictional and frozen present were somehow
the same thing as a certain future. As I will demonstrate, these static moments of
analysis, where Walras locates and grounds his economic subjects most firmly,
fail to adequately explain the dynamic temporality assumed by general equilib-
rium theory. As a result, we see economists such as Marshall and Keynes chal-
lenge general equilibrium theory on both methodological grounds and on the
basis of subjectivity. Marshall proceeds by problematizing the temporally com-
partmentalized nature of mathematical economics and then developing a theory
6   Introduction
of continuous and evolutionary temporality. In so doing he highlights the impor-
tance of temporality within the methodology needed to establish sound theoret-
ical structures. Keynes pushes the assessment of temporality yet further by
challenging the myth of perfect equilibrium (i.e. the myth of full employment)
and engaging with the growing complexity of the individual’s epistemological
negotiation between present and future. Keynes then demonstrates that there is a
degree of irrationality (best described by what he terms the fetish of liquidity) in
the social and psychological maintenance of the economic subject’s security in
the face of time and ignorance.
Finally, in the third thematic of this work, one which is bound up with both
the structure of the architectonic and the nature of the capitalist temporality pre-
scribed therein, I address the problem of the (political) economist as subject. The
economist has a very particular type of subjectivity, I argue, one which cannot
be ignored in a study on economic subjectivity. The subjectivity of the econo-
mist is enshrouded in claims to knowledge, while at the same time bound up in
the language of ideology that at once reflects out of and projects on to the partic-
ularity of this subject’s historical and social context. Ricardo first brings into
question his own subjective authority as a knower and coherent thinker when he
confronts the conundrum of the invariable standard of value, the elusive hinge
upon which his entire theory relies. In this light I examine the claims that each
subsequent economist makes to truth, to the authority of knowledge, to the
capacity to create laws, to predict outcomes, to dictate policy. In each instance I
endeavour to find the relationship between these claims and the structure of the
architectonics in question, as claims to knowledge are the enabling factor in the
construction of contained systems. As a result, all of these claims come to bear
on the subjects that the economist houses within his system of thought. Through
my exploration of the work of Mises and Hayek, the political economist as
subject becomes the primary and most explicit focus of my inquiry. This is
because within the Austrian School the a priori science of human action is the
authoritative philosophical ground for the economist’s universal and absolute
claims about economic reality. The relationship between the very subjectivity of
the economist and the internal structure and coherence of the architectonic that
he creates reveals the great tension between epistemological authority and the
theoretical unity of the architectonic.

The chapters which follow represent an unusual trajectory through the history of
economic thought, but one which is most fruitful for an exploration of the nature
of economic architectonics and the role of subjectivity within them. I do not
wish, in this study, to merely reproduce the canon of economic thought which
has been presented so many times before. I hope instead to expose both the
changing structure and subjective implications of the architectonic form at
various moments of economic thought. As a result, the texts which I explore are
not presented in a strict chronological order, and they do not always represent
the most canonical or influential text written by their particular author, especially
in the case of Hayek’s Pure Theory of Capital. They do represent, however, with
 Introduction   7
the exception of Smith and von Mises, economic architectonics, and it is this
very specific criterion which has guided my selection of economic texts through
the development of this project. The texts of David Ricardo, Adam Smith, Leon
Walras, Alfred Marshall, John Maynard Keynes, Ludwig von Mises and Frie-
drich Hayek are the edifices used for this investigation of the architectures of
economic subjectivity.
The first two chapters of this book explore the nature of the economic archi-
tectonic and its subjective implications. In Chapter 1 I address what I believe to
be the first veritable economic architectonic, that of Ricardo’s Principles of
Political Economy and Taxation (1816). This examination involves four parts.
First, I elaborate upon the rational yet naturalized foundations of Ricardo’s
architectonic insofar as they allow him to create a coherent set of laws of distri-
bution. These laws of distribution are the formal framework within which not
only the concepts of value, rent, wages and taxation are housed, but also where
hierarchically differentiated subjectivities are established. The structure of Ricar-
do’s architectonic demands the existence of specific economic subjectivities.
They are addressed in his work according to the relation that each subject has to
knowledge, to their potential for knowing and operating within the economy.
Ricardo’s subjects – appearing as three distinct figures – are thus the labouring
subject, the political economist as subject and the capitalist subject. The remain-
der of the chapter contains three sections in which each of these three figures is
assessed in terms of their epistemological positions and relationship to the struc-
ture and coherence of the architectonic itself.
In an anachronistic turn, Chapter 2 addresses Adam Smith and The Wealth of
Nations (1776). I argue that this text is not an architectonic, and that its resultant
depiction of economic subjectivity is scattered, subject to various dissonant
forms of categorization, and often filled with contradiction. This is not an inher-
ent criticism of the text, nor is it an assessment of the worth or validity of
Smith’s thought. Rather, it is an examination of the complexity of The Wealth of
Nations, of its various forms of economic reasoning, and of the implications of
its breadth and scope. By looking back at Smith through the lens of Ricardo’s
Principles, I will show the seeds of the architectonic form insofar as they are
tentatively contained within the first two books of Smith’s text. And while many
important conceptualizations and configurations emerge, ultimately I will argue
that tangential reasoning, influenced by digressions of historical reasoning, the
logic of his Theory of Moral Sentiments, and an attempt to reconcile the errors of
mercantilism and physiocracy, disrupts the potential crystallization of the archi-
tectonic form and its attendant economic subjects.
Chapters 3 and 4 focus primarily on subjectivity and temporality within the
architectonic form as popularized by Ricardo’s Principles. Chapter 3 deals with
the architectonic in perhaps its most contained and intensive formulation by
means of Léon Walras’ Elements of Pure Economics (1874). In this text Walras
renovates economic theory with a subjectivist understanding of value (as posited
in marginal utility theory), mathematizes economic thought within an almost
completely enclosed system of reasoning, and relies upon the mythic force of
8   Introduction
general equilibrium. In so doing, despite his departure from Ricardian principles,
Walras pays homage to Ricardo in the very construction of his ‘pure’ architec-
tonic of economic thought. The purported universality of this architectonic
formulation brings the question of temporality to the fore as Walras must cope
with the difficulties of subjectivity in the face of static and dynamic analysis.
Several important temporal concepts and figures, such as tâtonnement and the
auctioneer, are explored in order to understand the reconciliation between the
demands placed upon the subject by marginal utility theory and the breadth
granted to the economic universe by general equilibrium theory.
Chapter 4 continues the investigation of subjectivity and temporality within the
architectonic form in both the work of Marshall and Keynes. I will first explore the
way in which Marshall’s Principles of Economics serves as an attempt to deal with
the complexity of time, favouring an evolutionary and biological conception of
time (as developed by Herbert Spencer in his evolutionary theory) over the math-
ematical and astronomical conception of time held by Walras in the creation of his
static and self-­regulating universe of general equilibrium. Marshall addresses the
violence often enacted by the economist who renders economic analysis timeless,
and forces us to contend with the temporal limits of economic theory. Keynes
takes us well beyond this initial concern in the General Theory, and implicates the
subjects within the architectonic as well. In the second part of this chapter I will
explore the temporally charged question of the relationship between subjectivity
and knowledge. Next, I deal with the question of ‘animal spirits’ in what I argue
are their Cartesian origins, insofar as they provide a glimpse into the irrationality,
or non-­rationality, that often accompanies economic subjectivity and the fetish of
liquidity. Finally, I show that despite Keynes’ decisive break away from the limita-
tions of general equilibrium theory, his architectonic is still bound by a type of
subject who is defined epistemologically by his role as a consumer, by his know-
ledge of the realm of consumption.
Chapter 5 deals with the question of the economist-­as-subject in the work of
Mises and Hayek. Because these two Austrian thinkers were deeply committed
to a priori reasoning while at the same time engaged in an ideological battle
against socialism, their work is particularly interesting as an intersection between
the Ricardian tradition, the Marginalist Revolution and Keynesian thought. It is
the philosophical groundwork that underlies their positions, the a priori theory of
human action – that gives direction to this chapter. Exploring the repeated claims
to anti-­elitism in the work of Mises, I call into question the equivalence that he
establishes between the economist as knowing subject and economic subjects as
actors who know. I then trace out the result of Mises’ subjectivist premises in
the work of Hayek. The economist-­as-subject, within the skeleton of Hayek’s
architectonic (The Pure Theory of Capital) ultimately provides us with insight
into the philosophical difficulty with assuming epistemological identity between
economic subjects and economist-­as-subject.

While my work engages specifically with the history of economic thought, and
draws out these investigations of subjectivity through some major texts from the
 Introduction   9
European canon, this book provides a primarily philosophical study of this tradi-
tion. I believe there is a certain urgency to this project, to this type of examina-
tion of economic thought, because it aims to penetrate the very subjective
foundations of economic theory that are still accepted and promulgated in main-
stream economics today. The movements which challenge the use and validity
of the contemporary mainstream, such as heterodox economics, social ontology
and post-­autistic economics, go well beyond the architectonic form, beyond the
internally contained systems that hold little relation to the actual lived experi-
ence of economic subjects.6 An indispensable part of this contemporary move-
ment away from mainstream economics is the systematic and rigorous
exploration of the philosophical underpinnings of the type of subjectivity that,
while developed over a century ago, still constitutes the dangerous ground of the
vast majority of economic thinking today. ‘The task of development and recon-
struction in economics and the other social sciences cannot be fulfilled without a
more adequate knowledge of past intellectual history’ (Hodgson 2001, xiv). This
intellectual history includes not only the explicit intentions of the (political)
economists that we will examine, but also the underlying philosophical currents
in the structure of their thought.
This philosophical excavation of the origins of the economic subject within
the architectonic form is by no means a simple task. And so a brief detour is first
necessary before beginning the inquiry proper. In order to elaborate upon the
philosophical complexities that underlie the description of economic phenom-
ena, I will engage in a philosophical reading of political economy (or ‘eco-
nomics’ in the post-­Ricardian context), as well as a reading of economic
philosophy. The distinction between these two practices, which are always inti-
mately related, will become clear throughout the proceeding analysis. In other
words, my aim will be to show that political economy is not simply a matter of a
model based on philosophical and economic premises followed by a valid (or
incongruous, as the case may be) line of argumentation about the nature of our
real, material world, but rather an interaction between explicit philosophical or
even simply methodological assumptions and implicit, often contradictory philo-
sophical practices that exist within the seemingly valid chain of arguments con-
cerning economic phenomena and categories. So while there are clearly
delineated goals that every (political) economist understands to exist for his own
system of thought, there are tremendous, often unforeseen consequences for the
philosophy of the knowing subject, for our notions of human nature and ontol-
ogy and, ultimately, for the aspect of epistemology that enables the theoretical
existence of homo oeconomicus. This is a method of reading economics that I
developed when I first came to recognize the philosophical complexity of the
structure of Ricardo’s Principles. Its use, however, extends well beyond Ricard-
ian thought and allows us to pull back the veil from the architectonic form itself.
A philosophical reading of political economy will likely reveal more about
the conceptual birth of the modern liberal subject living in a modern liberal (or
neoliberal) social framework than a reading of Ricardo’s, or any other econo-
mist’s, explicit economic philosophy ever could. This is in part because political
10   Introduction
economy, when freed of the need to justify its aims, shows its relationship to
humanity, to the suffering of living beings, to the general order of things, without
disguise. We can see this occur in a foundational manner in Ricardo’s Princi-
ples. In this text we do not find many explicit philosophical intentions. Instead
there are a myriad of postulations about and explanations of an economic system
as a totality. Further, there is a continuous quest to find an absolute and invaria-
ble measure of value. This in itself reveals a great many things about Ricardo’s
approach, but it does not reveal the relationship between his explicit intent and
the nature of his economic explanations. The written correspondence between
Ricardo and James Mill, on the other hand, provides much of the basis of Ricar-
do’s economic philosophy, and the most fundamental ground of his methodol-
ogy. In their letters we see the influence of British empiricism and continental
philosophy on Ricardo’s thought. And to this extent we might locate his work
within a philosophical tradition, though it is not here that we find evidence of the
profound epistemological shift that occurs in this moment of political economy.
The process of reading his political economy philosophically alongside his eco-
nomic philosophy will disclose the role of the political economist as philosopher,
as a thinker, even if that was never his goal. In this dynamic relationship between
philosophical method and recommended economic practice we shall see the
emergence of a truly new and revitalized thinking subject, one who believes
himself capable not only of creating systems of thought, but also a new material
world with specific social, economic and technical relations.
From Ricardo onward we are really dealing with a new discipline – political
economy – that is radical not only for its capacity to explain, predict and create
economic structures, but also for the new role it has given the political econo-
mist as a thinker, as a lawmaker and, in the most material of senses, as an eco-
nomic subject operating within a given economic structure. I would like to
argue, however, that these are the perceived roles of knowledge and individual
rationality, and that while this idealist privileging of the actualization of the
intellectual labour of the individual thinker may in fact be fundamental to most
schools of economic thought, it is not a position universally held, nor is it
capable of explaining the many complexities of economic activity. Something
always remains underneath the strokes of epistemological domination, the domi-
nation of the quasi-­transcendental subject, and the structures created to explain
the nature and functioning of the economic world are often violent, and bring
suffering and impotence to supposedly rational and empowered economic sub-
jects. And while I do not pretend to present any elaborate theory of ontological
economic subjectivity in this book, I do hope, by means of critique, to unmask
the economist as the creator of a most curious modern Prometheus, of the eco-
nomic subject contained in a house not of his own making.