Part 33

Fortunately for us the working of natural law is that of the first creed; and our personally misguided conduct of affairs cannot wholly crush back the social growth belonging to our time.

In this connection it is important to note the influence of women, in their artificially restricted position, upon the world’s consumption, not only in economic fact, but in our inherited feeling and education on that subject.

Women, as we have repeatedly seen, were the first producers. Creative industry is theirs by the deepest laws of nature. The female is the original reproductive stream of life; and in the higher stages of her development she still manifests the larger range of race-activities. In the human species for by far the longest period of our life, the proto-social, she was the main—almost the sole—producer, men being mostly destroyers. But for the most of our historic period, all the time that is best known to us, women have been prevented from taking part in progressive human production and restricted to the duties of a house servant.

What tendency to specialised social service they might manifest was promptly banned as “unwomanly,” belonging only to men. The man elected himself to be sole producer, in the large social sense; and the woman was to be only a consumer, to depend on him for her maintenance and take what he gave her.

The position is acutely abnormal—quite opposite to the inherent nature of the female. It is her instinct to give—not to take; ably to do, not feebly to be done for.

This unnatural attitude was forced upon her, however, with two results, inevitable results, as regards consumption.

One is that all her flood of power and patience and infinite service being confined to her one master and their children, she has developed in them inordinate appetites and morbid tastes. The productive force that should flow broad and smooth in Society at large, being bottled up at home, with no consumer but the family, necessarily accustomed the family to receiving more than was good for it; thus maintaining in the world the ancient selfishness of the primitive individual, which real social life tends steadily to reduce. The social instincts, those large and outflowing feelings we call generosity, justice, altruism, are bred in the mutual service of specialised social industry; but the individual instincts, once virtues, now become vices if too prominent, are nursed and fed continually in that hotbed of all personal indulgence, the wife-served home.

Thus the position of woman promotes the tendency to inordinate and morbid consumption in man and child.

But it has also a direct influence on her. She is born and reared in this same atmosphere; she inherits from father as well as mother; the habits of many generations have a gradual effect upon her, and all old civilisations show one monstrous sight, the bottomless greed of the artificially bred women.

As Cleopatra outdid Antony in “conspicuous consumption”—swallowing a dissolved pearl worth more than all his gobbled delicacies; as Nana destroyed expensive furnishings just to amuse herself; so have these horse-leech’s daughters outdone any sons that estimable sucker may have had, in the cry of Give! Give!

Burne-Jones’ picture of “The Vampire” typifies well man’s opinion of this horror which he has so carefully made. Our instinctive dislike of greed in a woman is based on its unnaturalness, it is essentially foreign to her sex. But the fact remains that women, in their false position, have become greedy beyond description. The bountiful producer, aborted, has become a destructive parasite.

The boundless pouring love, compressed to primitive limits, becomes morbid and works evil; and the habit of always taking, and never doing, has produced its unavoidable result, and given us the woman we all know, who takes, greedily, from a childhood of wheedling, through a youth of coquetry, and a lifetime of hired matrimony. When it is not matrimony, language fails to express our horror; but when it is, the commercial basis discolours the relation; and the plump and beautiful creature in the costly surroundings she never thought of giving a return for, is in the same category as a consumer with her less respectable but no less plump and expensively surrounded sister.

To find the pleasure of life in getting and having, to feel no honourable impulse to do, to give, to work, to return to labouring humanity your quota of service,—this is the degraded position into which we have forced our women, and which expresses itself not only in them, but in their children, who are all the world.

Such women play the game we call “Society,” whose trivial performances are celebrated so respectfully in our newspapers in their record of dinners and dresses and dances, as if where these people ate, or what they wore, or how they hopped about, was of any earthly importance. The seriousness with which this class of people who have cut themselves off from human life by refusing to take part in its active processes, who neither produce nor distribute, but consume in ever-increasing ratio, take upon themselves the distinctive name of “Society” is one of the most paralysing jokes of history. They even designate their pitiful amusements as “social functions,” a misnomer as consummately absurd as “Christian Science.”

For a lot of richly caparisoned human animals to get together and eat, or embrace one another and caper about to the sound of music, has no more relation to a social function than St. Vitus’s dance has to chopping wood. A disease is not a function. This fatty degeneration of the social tissues is a sad and important fact, deserving careful study; but its importance lies in its danger to the rest of the body politic, not in any inherent dignity.

If we take our “Society Columns” as medical bulletins, they have some value perhaps; but vulgarly to enlarge on our forms of disease is at least bad taste. What we commonly call “Society” is a morbid growth in the real social structure, developed to meet the artificial needs of these misplaced women; and such a society, influencing as it does, through widening ranks of imitators, the markets of the world, has a most evil effect on our habits of consumption.

If we saw clearly on these lines, recognising production as a law of Human, i. e., Social Nature, then our women, as our men, would take part in the healthy processes of real social life. If we saw that this constantly increasing expression of a constantly increasing fund of social energy was limitless happiness, we should turn our competition another way, cease this painful effort to show who can get the most, and begin to run races to show who shall do the most, with the result that there will be more for everyone to have.

Meanwhile, under the action of this special delusion about consumption, we continue to fill the world with false products, and to spend strenuous lives trying to get them away from one another. Can we not recognise this one thing, that consumption is but a means to an end; that production, Work, is the end to which a legitimate consumption is a necessary means, and that the only natural and practical measure of consumption is the need of the consumer.

XV: CONSUMPTION (II) Summary

Resistance of false concepts to true. Spread of literature. Use of imagination. Hypothesis as to natural laws in consumption—free clothing—Veblen. An unnatural market. Commodity money a check to distribution and production. Real conditions. Enormous producing power of civilised man. Legitimate consumption. Truffles. Free transportation. Free provision reduces demand and increases productivity. Property rights and personal ownership. Evolution of ownership, ownership a psychic relation, a social condition, based on social needs. True law of ownership: “Society must insure to the individual those things which are essential to his social service.” Decrease of self-interest. Success of our surviving savages. “Making money.” Normal wealth must circulate. Belief in polygamy. Natural relation not Communism. Legitimate personal property is in goods consumed—not in goods produced. Normal ownership inheres in normal consumption. Production belongs to Society. Man does not consume his own product, but that of Society. Human rights social—essential conditions of true social relation. Previous position, based on Ego concept and Want theory, does not work well. Compulsory production not normal. Owner and Employer. “Iron law of wages.” Want not a productive force,—tends only to consumption. Organic action of Society. America’s productivity does not show commensurate greed, but fuller supply of social nourishment and stimulus. Parent’s relation to child, and Society’s. Social duty.

XV CONSUMPTION (II)

Our minds are so thoroughly accustomed to thinking along false lines in economics that true and natural social processes, when described to them, seem but fantastic dreams.

This is only according to the brain’s working habits; it takes time to change it, and we need much patience with ourselves and one another while changing. Fortunately for the age we live in, there has been so much change in so many lines that further progress is easy, compared to what it was a few centuries ago. Fortunately in especial for the country we live in, its national attitude is that of welcome to the new, suspicion of the old.

In the wonderful spread of the great art, Literature, and particularly the branch art, Fiction, as distributed so universally among us by our libraries, our periodicals, and the daily press, we have far more general use of the imagination-our brains will stretch. This faculty of imagination is no mere factor in telling fairy-tales; it is that power of seeing over and under and around and through, of foreseeing, of constructing hypotheses, by which science and invention profit as much as art. Distance, perspective, proportion, these are obtained, in our consideration of facts, by use of the imagination. The rocks and stars confronted the savage as they did the beast, and with little more result; they were visible facts, that is all. He could not imagine any further content in his observation. We observe, similarly unmoved, the facts in economics.

Now let us use this common faculty of imagination; and, judging by man’s behaviour in conditions we do know, try to measure what it would be in other conditions. Let us take one concrete instance in this process of consumption, a perfectly conceivable hypothesis, and see for ourselves how it would work out.

We will now assume that clothing was free to all. This does not mean that it was dropped from the sky; we are still to produce and distribute it; but the final absorption by the individual is unchecked. What would be the consequence? At first there would be a rushing seizure by the people who have never been satisfied in clothing—they would take and take again—greedily—inordinately—sacking the shops and stuffing their houses. But suppose the supply is maintained, steadily. They would soon find it was inconvenient to stuff their houses, if the stores remained always to draw from. The hoarding instinct does not spring from continued plenty, and becomes foolish in the face of it.

Then, though not carrying off so much, they would perhaps choose the most beautiful and expensive fabrics. Finding that all wore the same, these distinctions would cease to distinguish; if everybody was wearing velvet at will, the result would be that those who did not really like it would leave it off. If everybody was wearing lace, they would find it was too frail for outing costumes. If there was no artificial glamour on one stuff more than another; if the supply was steady and free; then, slowly, gradually, timidly, would appear for the first time among us true personal choice! People would at least know what they personally preferred and have it; clothing would be adapted to genuine need and genuine taste.

Our habits of consumption are so complicated by long deprivation on the one hand, and by “the pecuniary canons of taste” (Veblen) on the other, that most of us live and die without ever knowing what we really want. “The Market” for which our producers competitively cater is an unnatural one. What we call “the demand” is not a healthy, legitimate demand; it is uncertain, capricious, subject to strange fluctuations and reactions; and in endeavouring to “supply” it, the most experienced and far-sighted producer often fails.