Part 34

What is legitimate consumption? Is there any measure by which the world’s market could be regulated? No measure is needed. Our mistake here is due to continually seeking to govern production by an arbitrary system of payment. On the theory that a man will not work except for pay, it follows that his work will be strictly adjusted to the pay; and thus the tendency to a constantly increased productivity is held rigidly in check by our existing means of payment. Commodity money adds the last straw to this heap of folly.

Men will work only for pay.

Pay must be money.

Money must be gold.

So the amount of human productivity must be measured not by the muscular power, brain power, and machine power of society; nor even by the amount of corn and wool, wine and oil, wood and stone, and other necessaries; but by the amount of one particular metal. It is fortunate we have not elected to measure human production by radium!

It was bad enough to try to check our vast output by an arbitrary equivalent in goods; but it is so much worse to squeeze and strain it through this tiny gauge that it does seem as if we might have seen our foolishness long since. But that is where the power of a concept is so much greater than that of a fact. As a matter of fact, the bulk of the world’s business is done on credit; and its material vehicle is paper-a mere matter of record of transaction; but in our minds we still deal only in gold; and every once in a while we must interrupt the course of production and distribution to see if all accounts can be balanced in gold. As the business is necessarily in advance of the gold—always and always—we have to exert ourselves to get more gold—even if we must go to war for it.

Try the imagination again—see the consequence, if gold suddenly grew common as dirt—and lost its supposed “purchasing power.” Talk of “fiat money”—never was any fiat more purely arbitrary than this solemn assumption of ours that a hungry world cannot eat—a strong world cannot work—a vast and intricate organism in full swing of vigorous life cannot perform its functions—without every act of mutual service being measured in gold. The vital facts in the case have no more connection with gold than with wampum. Production and consumption go on as conditions of our organic life; distribution facilitates both; and we, governed by this Punch and Judy troupe of primitive ideas, check and pervert all these great functions.

What are the facts in true social economics as concerning this question? They are these. The earth furnishes us with the raw materials for living. Civilised man is able to combine those materials in consumable form, and to distribute them to all, with increasing facility. Even under all our obstructions, the rate of production and distribution increases with rapid strides; if free—it is impossible to estimate the gain.

Put it something like this:

A primitive man can obtain the necessities of life by giving all his time to it. A civilised man of our day can produce his share of all the necessities of life, in say one-tenth of his time. In the other nine-tenths he can produce comforts, luxuries, all the higher products of human life. Under right conditions, civilised man could produce the necessities in a hundredth part of his time, and could so grow and improve as to lift all the higher products to a far more advanced stage. Fully supplied with all he needs of this social wealth, the producing power of civilised man is far beyond his needs. “His needs” brings us again to the question, “What is legitimate consumption?”

We assume that, unless rigidly kept down by arbitrary forces, man would riotously consume in unending profusion; that he could not possibly supply enough for general consumption; and that since the supply is limited, it should be rigidly confined to those who can pay for it. This is an unwarranted claim. Normal consumption does not increase in any such wild way.

The normal demands of the whole human race for food can be met by the materials at hand. Observe that they are in some measure met now; our millions do live, do eat, even under present conditions. They might live better, have a more improving diet, under better conditions. But if, like Mr. Bounderby, we assume that everyone will wish “to be fed on turtle soup with a gold spoon”—we are wrong. “Have some truffles!” urges Mr. Newrich. “I don’t care for any,” answers Mr. Bornrich. “Not care for truffles?” cries Mr. Newrich; “why, they cost five dollars!” “What of that?” says Mr. Bornrich; “I don’t like ’em!” “Conspicuous consumption” is a feature of leisure-class culture, of illegitimate wealth founded on illegitimate poverty. With consumption on a natural basis, there would be no great demand for nightingales’ tongues.

Observe the existing facts in any department of social supply we have made free to all. Our highroads are free—but we do not therefore run continually up and down on them, just because we can. We travel as we have need of it, that is all. Free roads facilitate normal traffic and promote civilisation. Yet, when it is urged that free railroad travel is a necessity to-day, there is a horrified dissent. “What? let people travel on the railroad without paying for it? Why, they would travel all the time!” You see we do use our imaginations a good deal. These objectors imagine that mankind would desert both business and pleasure, forego the joys of home and the attractions of both city and country, to spend their days in the discomforts of a railroad train, and their nights in those culture tubes of all bacilli, the sleeping cars,—just because travel was free!

Have we never seen the plain and common fact that free provision of anything reduces the demand to the normal at once? Things “common” are not wanted, unless they are really wanted. All artificial demand drops off. There is no pride, no element of “conspicuous waste” in having what everyone can have, in doing what everyone can do. But the normal demand goes on, and the world is enriched, all progress is promoted, by the gratification of that need.

Sometimes people do things merely because they cost money,—to show financial superiority,—but they do not do things merely because they do not cost money. Free consumption would not increase any legitimate human demand, but it would increase our power, and skill, and so our wealth. Recognising that human production is conditioned upon previous supply, upon right inheritance, right education, right environment of all sorts, it follows that the more fully and freely we supply that environment, the more we produce.

Against this clear sequence stand, like a range of mountains, our theories of property rights—of personal ownership. Personal ownership, private property; we believe in these things as we believe in God,—and a good deal more so. These we hold to be basic principles, they underlie all else, nothing can shake them. Whoso questions or criticises them “strikes at the foundations of Society.”

It is not the first time that Society has been challenged in what it held to be foundation principles, has been led to change those principles—and has still survived. Cautiously, and gently, not to jar or strain our unused brain areas too much, let us draw near this mighty pile and see on what it rests. Bear steadily in mind the history of human life and of all life behind it. See all the ages of pre-human evolution going on in their majestic work without any dream of such a thing as property, or ownership. See humanity in its slow beginning, developing the extra-personal medium of life, the garment, shelter, tool. See how these things, detached, yet essential, exchangeable because human, yet had to be connected with the holder for his personal good and social efficiency.

Here, as we have shown in the preceding chapter, arises the true law of ownership, and ownership as natural as that of the beast of his teeth and claws, a true social law. It has no individual basis. Individuals carry their property on their bodies, it grows there. Society evolves detachable material adjuncts, the made things, the social medium. So far as this social medium is usable by all, it should be free to all. So far as it is peculiar to the specialised social functionary, it must be guaranteed to him. Society must guarantee to the individual those things which are essential to his social service. The civilised man has given up his power of caring for himself in order the better to serve Society. Society, to profit by this service, must insure right provision for the individual. In a clumsy, unjust, ill-managed way, it already does so, has always done so, it could not live else. But it has not done so fairly, or well, and, therefore, it is ill served, it suffers and sickens, and in repeated instances has died.

Again and again in history we may see the process: the nascent society developing, growing more and more specialised and interdependent, that development reducing the power of individual constituents to take care of themselves, self-interest weakening in the mass as social interest became increasingly necessary; and then the most primitive members of Society, those still most actuated by pre-social instincts, the surviving savages in civilisation, taking advantage of the immense social productivity, and claiming for themselves the social wealth.

They are not the world’s best servants. Their power is not the power of highly specialised talent or genius. It is a truism that the more ability a man has to serve Society in its advanced needs, as in the arts and sciences, the less ability he has to “make money,” as we call the process of individual absorption.

The gold miners and the mint “make money,” all productive labour makes wealth; but those who secure the most of it for themselves are of quite another class. The verb “to make” and the verb “to take” have not the same root.

This illegitimate development of ownership is injurious to Society. Wealth, in normal circulation, is productive, is a social advantage. Wealth, in abnormal secretion, is not only unproductive of good, but absolutely evil in its influence. Yet, the whole process, with all its mischievous results, is conditioned upon our false concept as to personal property and the right of ownership. Its glaring heights of evil are most conspicuous; but the mischief lies not in the special extreme instance, but in the general condition.

See the effect of a belief in unchecked polygamy. Under economic pressure, the mass of the people have but one wife, and so are saved the worst effects. But the crowded harems of the great show most shameful results—sensuality, cruelty, idleness, physical deterioration, conspiracy, murder. Are we then to blame the polygamist in proportion to the number of his wives; or merely to recognise the principle as wrong,—and the one-wived believer as much in error as Solomon? It is our common concept of ownership that is to blame, not Carnegie and Rockefeller.

See how the true principle would work out. Society is a unit, we are but parts. Social life develops the power to make things—the things which are essential to social life. Increase in these things is increase in social wealth and social power—a ceaseless line of development. The good of Society requires the best development of all its parts—that they may so produce more. The best development of all the parts requires the full supply of social goods.

The social goods belong to Society, are made by Society, for Society; and should be distributed to Society as widely, swiftly, and freely as possible; so adding to the social good. Now this line of talk, to the general mind, means a wallowing sea of communism. We see visions of a flat and uniform world, of no ambition, no distinction, no privacy, no private property, and therefore no life worth having. This is because we do not know what private property really is.

Legitimate private property includes all that the individual needs to consume. All the food he needs, all the clothes he needs, all the education he needs, all the tools he needs; to each person what he separately needs, and to each group what they separately need of the great fund of social advantages. Is not that property enough? All that a man can legitimately consume is his own, but not what he produces. That is his return to Society. What he produces is of no use to him, his dentistry, or surgery, or masonry, his teaching or acting, his manufacturing or transporting,—this belongs to Society.

We have erred in attaching the claim of ownership to the goods produced. It belongs only to the goods consumed. The property rights of the individual to his own food, his own shelter, his own clothing, his own tools of production,—be they paint brushes, books, or chisels,—need never be questioned. So fast as production becomes collective, the means of production become collective. Where a separate weaver had a right to own the separate loom with which he produced cloth, now the group of operators, from “hand” to “head,” have a right to own the mill with which they produce cloth, but not the cloth.

To whom then does the cloth belong, if not the maker? To the wearer, of course. Cloth, as we have shown before, is a social tissue, it is evolved for social advantage. It has to be worn by members of Society. We recognise this so clearly as to have laws commanding people to wear clothes, punishing them if they do not. Such laws might be justly applied to silkworms, but hardly to human beings, unless their clothes are also provided. No doubt a position like this seems impossible to our minds, so used are we to the other, to the present belief that a man owns what he produces, and no one has a right to it; but that he has no right whatever to the necessities of life—to the means of production.