Personally, I am perplexed every time that the spirit of Chapter I of the fifth book of The Wealth of the Nations by Adam Smith on the State's role in the Economy, speaks in different national and international forums through the Secretary of Economy of the Spanish Socialist Government. More than two hundred years after, the echo of those writings is heard, with more technical and sophisticated terminology but with the same background, by way of modern microphones and television cameras before experts of the political, managerial and financial world, and before public opinion in general. The strength and intensity of those words has been accentuated since the beginning of the campaign for preparation of the necessary social climate to face the Convergence Plan's inevitable demands for full integration in European Economic and Monetary Union.

In that extensive chapter, the father of economic liberalism meditates on the functions of public expenditure and he says that the fundamental obligation is that of protecting society against violence and the invasion of other independent societies. The second duty consists of protecting, wherever possible, members of society from injustices and oppressions of any other component of it, that is to say the duty of establishing direct administration of justice.

The third and final State obligation is that of establishing and sustaining those institutions and public works that are of such a nature that their utility could never compensate their cost to an individual or a small number of them. For the same reason it should not be expected that these venture to found or maintain them. To sum up there should be Defence, Justice (respecting their independence meticulously) and full subsidising in the rest of activities.

The spirit of those one hundred pages also coincides with the liberalism of Solchaga's declarations: "where there is free competition, the rivalry of the competitors - that are always trying to displace others from the positions that they possess - forces each individual to fulfil his obligations with a certain degree of accuracy."

The perplexity begins to disappear when a certain schizophrenia or double life is confirmed between the words and the facts or real decisions of economic policy. It is important to remember, in this matter as in so many others that "works are loves and not good reasons." Good intentions and the right words are not enough. In economic policy ideas have to be materialized, expressed, made specific, put onto the wagon of effective decisions and the legal framework that makes them reality.

What happened in 1992 and 1993 with the good exemplary first intentions of eliminating the Public Deficit, and later presenting and approving deficit budgets should not occur. To give another example, there cannot be a liberalization of capitals and, as a senior bank director commented, memorization of a disjointed 500-page regulation. This brilliant executive wondered what he would have had to read if instead of liberalization there had been a regulation. Such two-faced attitudes can also extend to the "almost" free dismissal, the Strike Law, privatisations, the transfer to the social agents of unemployment administration,...

The astonishment and perplexity disappear completely when the explanatory electoral variable is introduced with tinges of modernity trying to avoid the escape of centre and centre-right votes from the current socio-political spectrum.

Joseph John Franch Menéu
Gaceta de los Negocios, Monday February 8th 1993