SECTION CCXII.. Unproductive Consumption.

UNPRODUCTIVE CONSUMPTION.

Moreover, unproductive consumption embraces not only every economic loss, every outlay for injurious purposes,[212-1] but also every superfluous outlay for useful purposes.[212-2] Yet, not to err in our classification here, it is necessary to possess the impartiality and many-sidedness of the historian, which enable one to put himself in the place of others and feel after them as they felt. The man, for instance, who, in cities like Regensburg and especially Rome, sees numberless churches often, so to speak, elbowing one another, cannot fail to recognize the difference between the buildings of to-day for business, political, educational and recreative purposes, and the medieval, for the satisfaction of spiritual wants. The latter also may, in their own sphere, and in their own time, have, as a rule, operated productively, as the former operate, often enough, by way of exception unproductively; as in the case of railway and canal speculations which have ended in failure. It would be difficult to decide between the relative value of the two kinds of wants, because the parties to the controversy do not, for the most part, share the want (Bedürfniss) of their respective opponents, frequently do not even understand it, and therefore despise it. Thus, there are semi-barbarous nations, who can entertain that respect for the laws which is necessary even from an economic point of view only to the extent that they see the person whose duty it is to cause them to be observed seated on a throne and surrounded by impressive splendor. Hence, such splendor here could not be considered merely unproductive consumption.[212-3]

We must, moreover, remark in this place as we did above, § 54, that it is easiest to pass the boundary line between productive and unproductive consumption in personal services. In 1830, the expenses of the state, in Spain, amounted to 897,000,000 of reals per annum; the outlay of municipal corporations, to 410,000,000, and that for external purposes of religion, 1,680,000,000. (Borrego.) This is certainly no salutary proportion; but it is scarcely evidence of a worse economic condition than the fact that in Prussia it would require a basin one Prussian mile in length, thirty-three and eight-tenths feet broad, and ten feet deep to hold all the brandy drunk in the country (Dieterici); or this other, that the British people spend yearly £68,000,000 sterling for taxes and £100,000,000 yearly for spirituous liquors.[212-4] Berkeley rightly says that the course practiced in Ireland, with its famishing proletarian population, of exporting the means of subsistence and exchanging them against delicate wines, etc., is as if a mother should sell her children's bread to buy dainties and finery for herself with the proceeds.[212-5] [212-6]

The first to zealously advocate and treat the theory of productive consumption was J. B. Say, Traité, III, ch. 2, seq.; Cours pratique, II, 265. But the germs of the doctrine are to be found in Dutot, Réflexions politiques sur le Commerce et les Finances, 1738, 974, éd. Daire. His distinctions are in part drawn with great accuracy. Thus he says that, among others, a manufacturer of cloth, productively consumes the results of his workmen, but that the workmen themselves who exchange these results for bread, consume the latter unproductively. Say is guilty of the inconsistency of claiming that only that consumption is productive which contributes directly to the creation of material exchangeable goods, spite of the fact that he gave the productiveness of labor a much wider scope. Rau, Lehrbuch, I, § 102 ff., 323 seq., is more consistent in so far as he applies the same limitation in both cases. (Compare also § 333, 336.) Hermann, Staatsw. Untersuchungen, 170 seq., 231 ff., would prefer to see the idea of productive consumption banished from the science, for the reason that if the value of the thing alleged to be consumed continues, there can be no such thing as its consumption. But, I would rejoin: in a good national economy, there would be, according to this, scarcely any consumption whatever, because the aggregate value of that which I have called above productive consumption is unquestionably preserved, and continues in the aggregate value of the national products.

Productive consumption is ultimately a stage of production, just as production itself is ultimately a means to an end, consumption, and therefore a preparation for the latter. Both ideas may be rigorously kept apart from each other, just as the expenses and receipts of a private business man, who makes a great portion of his outlay simply with the intention of reaping receipts therefrom, may be. Every one desires his production to be as large as possible, and his productive consumption, so far it does not fail of its object, as small as possible. Riedel rightly says that the theory of reproductive consumption serves Political Economy as the bridge which closes the circle formed by the action of production, distribution and consumption. (Nat. Oek. III, 49.) One of the chief fore-runners of the view we advocate was McCulloch, Principles, IV, 3 ff. Gr. Soden, Nat. Oek., distinguishes economic consumption, un-economic and anti-economic consumption. (Nat. Oek., I, 147.)]