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The article examines the methodologies and philosophies underlying modern economics. A history of modern economics is provided, beginning with the rise of capitalism during the Industrial Revolution. The author focuses upon the postulations of the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, particularly evaluating how his theory of utilitarianism applies to macroeconomics. A correlation between the development of capitalism and the implementation of parliamentary democracy is examined, and the author criticizes the tenets of demand-based economics.

A reprint of the article "The Essentials of Socialization," by G. D. H. Cole, which appeared in the July 1931 issue, is presented. Topics include methods for a transition from capitalism to socialism, the introduction of state ownership of transportation services in Great Britain in relation to the Railways Act of 1921, and the fixing of interest rates.

This article deals with the relationship between sociology and social policy. Social policy is directly concerned with what ought to be done, or at any rate with the choice of what is on some sense the best among possible alternative ways of collective action. If sociology is concerned solely with the collection and analysis of social facts and is concerned with value judgments only as facts and not at all with their validity, the sociologist can be in no position to advise on social policy because he is precluded from regarding any one policy as superior to others, in any sense other than that of fitting harmoniously into an actual social pattern. It is, no doubt, easiest to study the impact of one culture on another where a primitive pattern of living is being sharply disrupted by the impact of external forces. The involvement in social policy is indeed a characteristic of a very wide range of studies which, if denied the title to be called sociology, are beyond doubt social in their content and call for a large amount of fact-finding social investigation as an aid towards the formation of practical judgments about what should be done. Sociology and social policy are intimately bound together and it is well for humanity that this is so. For man, in order to live well, needs knowledge of good and evil as well as of the factually true and false.

This article examines the concept of the middle class. The concept of the middle class is exceedingly elusive, by whatever route one approaches it. Clearly, membership of the middle class, or classes, is not simply a matter of income, either absolutely or of relative income within a particular social structure. Nor is it exclusively a matter of the nature and source of the income received, or of profession or calling. Nor again is it exclusively a matter of education, or of manners; for no definition based on these will avail to mark off one part of the middle classes from the upper class or another from the working class. Nor will it serve to treat the family as a unit; for it is nowadays very common for one child from a working-class household to enter a profession, while another becomes a manual worker, and yet another marries a local shopkeeper, after a spell of either factory or clerical employment. In modem fluid societies, the family ceases in more and more instances to be a unit assignable to a single class. This, of course, is not new, for priesthoods have usually been recruited from a wide variety of social groups; but it is commoner now than ever before, except in pioneering societies such as the U.S. and the British Dominions, not only for the family to be made up of varying class elements, but also for individuals to shift from class to class on their way through life. This does not mean that classes lose reality.

A record output power of 16.1 W with a direct-bonded dual-SiC-heatspreader distributed Bragg reflector (DBR)-free active region at 10.5°C coolant temperature is reported. A comparison in laser performance confirms the dual-heatspreader DBR-free configuration dissipates heat more effectively than the single-heatspreader geometry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]