Ideas are in the end what make the personal, family, managerial or national economy fail or succeed. They are the conceptions of the world, the person and the society that move us to the practical performance in one or another direction conditioning the economic results in this way. Ideas guide human behaviour and this is materialized in the economy.

In the economic programmes presented by the three national parties, two very different focuses and alternatives are distinguished. In the PSOE (Socialist party) and in IU (Left-wing party) the State is idolized as the great omniscient benefactor. In the PP (Conservative party) the incentive for initiative and citizens' personal responsibility to reach well-being with a greater protagonism of society is clearly glimpsed. These two visions have their partisans in the history of economic thought. Authors already long passed away are revived in many candidates of one or another party, and their ideas, gestated so long ago, are heard again from the mouths of very well-known people.

The ideas sketched by the utopian Socialists, Marxists, historians, Pigou or especially the Keynesians speak to us through the representatives of the PSOE and IU. All the theories of utopian Socialism are reduced to the elaboration of pure models of what they understand should be society. In most of the cases they are based on some vague philanthropic, not very coherent intentions, the consequence of an insufficient anthropology. It can be said that as a reaction to the present difficulties they devoted themselves to dreaming in a perfect society without difficulties. It is necessary to mention Sismondi as initiator of the currents of social reformation. He recommended that the State acted in the economic field to re-establish the balance between production and demand. One can also hear Rodbertus in the electoral campaign who reached the conclusion that capitalism was not viable, and recommended greater State intervention in the economic process. He was a precursor of State Socialism. Among the lines of the so-called Left wing parties the ideas of List are heard who proposed a dynamic focus based on the strength of the nationalist State able to generate wealth and progress. Free trade, when diminishing the importance of economic barriers, diminishes nationalist feeling, the brute force that was considered essential for the economic progress of a nation.

Pigou can also be heard among the socialist candidates when he spoke about the necessity of introducing some type of social control on economic activity appealing to an appropriate systematizing of taxes and subsidies. Keynes and the Keynesians can also be heard when they proposed measures of economic policy directed towards the immediate recovery of a capitalist economy. Keynes suggested that fiscal policy was the effective spring to unblock a situation of deep depression. He encouraged therefore a policy of public investment based on the employment of the budgetary deficit, which contrasted strongly with the classic point of view, staunch supporter of the balanced budget policy.

However, the combined efforts of econometric techniques and the selfsame economic analysis failed when clarifying the chaos of monetary uncertainty and the drama of recession and unemployment. The simultaneous rise in prices, wages and other production costs are not accountable by means of the Keynesian pattern. Conventional Keynesian policies are translated now in increases in costs and prices instead of increases in the level of activity and employment. Stagnation and inflation, industrial decline, international financial problems, public budget and balance of payments imbalances appear with force.

To solve these problems the candidates of the PP speak one more language in the classic and stimulating but at the same time modern line of trust in initiative and personal creativity, in the most realistic possibilities of society as opposed to the homogenizing State. In order to avoid falling into the Anglo-Saxon complex we can remember the authors of the so-called late scholastic of the School of Salamanca: Francisco de Vitoria, Domingo de Soto, Martin de Azpilcueta, Domingo Báñez, Tomás de Mercado or Pedro Ledesma. They declared that private property was in agreement with other natural rights such as life and freedom. Báñez for example established that it was based on principles which otherwise "the fields will not be well cultivated." Another of the favourite arguments was that private property was an institution that helped to achieve greater social peace and the classic liberal theory also has a parallel with the scholastic arguments that private property stimulates greater production. Recognizing that man is able to do wrong they also noticed that, far from being a solution, common property would increase the existing evil in society. When protected by privileges, property loses its social function.

On the other hand and in connection with the above-mentioned it is necessary to say, regarding the role of the State, that believing in private property means believing in limited government. For that reason they pointed out that governments do not have to be almighty nor superior to the people. Most aspects of human life should be free from state intervention. Also, the rejection of inflation as a method of overcoming financial difficulties opened the road for their proposals of a balanced budget and to accuse the public deficit of being immoral, that is, the one where public expense exceeds revenue. Not only do the government's high debts fail to lead to a reduction in expenses but rather they jeopardize the future of the Kingdom. The objective of taxes was that of collecting resources necessary for the activities of a government and it was declared that taxes should be moderate and proportional, without mentioning them as mechanisms for the redistribution of wealth.

In the classic writings it is also observed that the principle of the budgetary balance is maintained and defended by understanding that the policy of Public Debt, attached to the deficit, would subtract saving from private production, and from this it is deduced that the forgotten principle of balance is based on the necessity of respecting and not curbing expansion of the global offer.

In the current serious situation of our public finances it is easy for a deep rational feeling of nostalgia to arise towards the classic budgetary pattern where the State is politically neutral, in the sense that as for its objectives, it only spends to produce the necessary goods and services for its existence and operation as well as for the organization and public order of society. It is also neutral when faced with the multi-secular market economy. This neutrality is inspired by the assumption of effective private company performance and based on the fact that the determination of the products that it is necessary to manufacture, the services rendered, and the prices and incomes that must be paid are determined by the free enriching game for everyone of supply and demand. It means that the market economy guarantees a balanced growth of national production, in the medium term, in conditions close to those of a situation of full employment of the productive resources that the economy possesses.

This is, I believe, the electoral economic crossroad that the three of three presents us with. It is necessary to choose.

Joseph John Franch Menéu
Professor of Political Economy
Gaceta de los Negocios, 1996 Autonomous University of Madrid