Part 18

Now see how our wrong ideas work against this advantage. The individual producer, shutting his eyes to the collectivity of the process, considers that he “owns” the wheat, and that he “raised it himself.” Therefore, instead of facilitating its distribution with the least expense of social energy, he seeks to obstruct it by demanding as much social energy as he can get,—_i. e._, the price,—the first step in the exchange. Of course, being largely isolated, he does not succeed in getting much, and, equally of course, he is at present not supplied with his fair share of social energy beforehand; but admitting these facts, it remains true that his mental attitude is the same as that of the larger dealer: he looks on the world’s wheat as a source of profit to him to any extent that he can reach.

Then come the great army of transporters. Thanks to the high organisation of this social function, the distribution of the wheat goes on with great facility and dispatch as far as mechanical convenience is concerned, and, by the concentration of the business in a few hands, much of the dribbling man-to-man subtraction is saved; but alas—the little subtractions of many small private carriers are only exchanged for the enormous subtractions of the few great public carriers.

Even at this extremely developed stage of evolution in the social process, even in a business so public as to require public grants of land and privilege, and designated as “a common carrier,” in the very face of these flaring facts, this weird survival of a remote past, this prehistoric Ego, with its Want theory, sits gobbling in the stream of social distribution, like some dinotherium mysteriously preserved to do mischief. This Common Carrier, managed by a few men, seriously believes the distribution of the world’s wheat to be intended for the private aggrandisement of the Carrier, and sucks from that life-giving stream as large a supply of racial nourishment as “the traffic will bear”—sometimes more! Of course the Carrier must be provided with his share of social nutrition in order that he may carry, but why he should claim this vastly disproportionate amount is not so clear. It is not clear, that is, in the light of social laws to-day, but it is clear enough as a logical deduction from the antique premisses so devoutly believed in.

The stream of wheat, robbed of much of its value, pours on and reaches the final stationary points of distribution, and there again the dealers, wholesale and retail, imagine that this mass of food was brought across the world for _their_ benefit, and proceed to extract from it as much as they are able. Thus the food reaches fewer people in smaller quantities, and those who get it are obliged to give back a large proportion of its nourishing power in payment. The circulation of the world is very seriously interfered with by this morbid action.

Conceive now for a moment of wheat as a means of promoting the social good. Of a Bureau of Agriculture carefully posting from year to year the amount needed in different localities. Of a Bureau of Transportation carefully arranging from year to year for the most prompt and easy transfer to those localities. And of a Bureau of Local Distribution seeing to it that the wheat was as promptly and easily spread among the consumers.

That would mean the greatest gain and the least waste and expense. That would be business sense on the part of the world. To reduce the outlay of effort and increase the income of nourishment, with a commensurate increase in social productivity,—that is the line of economic advantage for the Society of our time, as it was in the physical economy of the Individual of the Palæolithic Past.

But this Palæolithic Individual with his pre-Palæolithic ideas is a great nuisance to-day.

XIV: CONSUMPTION (I) _Summary_

_Previous propositions. Alleged selfishness. Social instincts as natural as individual. Root error on Consumption shown in Heaven, Utopia, etc. Honour in acting. Contentment theory. Limit of happiness in getting, limited; in doing, unlimited. Pleasure in eating, result of idea. Effect of this concept on Society. Impression merely incentive to expression. Transmitters, not vats. Collecting mania. Nature of ownership. Right of property. Social relations psychic. Movable rights. Law of property rights. Consumption means to production. Consumption must precede production. Natural limits of Consumption. Cause of excesses. Ill effect of morbid Consumption on producer. Must produce more than consume. Ten houses. List of propositions. Existing economic concepts. Influence of position of women. Women natural producers. Men natural destroyers. Men have monopolised production. Women made purely consumers. Women’s powers, confined to family, breed selfishness. Generosity bred outside home. Feminine consumption become morbid. Vampire. Parasite. Hired matrimony. Woman as excessive consumer came of “Society.” A disease not a “function.” “Society columns,” medical bulletins. Effect on consumption._

XIV CONSUMPTION (I)

We have laid down certain propositions in the preceding chapters, namely, that men are part of a great Social Organism; that as parts of it they are continually supplied with its stimulus and nourishment; that as parts of it so nourished and so stimulated, they must discharge the swelling current of social energy in social action, which is Work; and that the business of a conscious and intelligent Society is so to produce and distribute social wealth as to maintain and increase this flood of energy, the discharge of which in our highly specialised industries is supreme delight. Against these propositions will be at once erected that common bulwark of ancient superstition, man’s selfishness. We generally believe, and as generally act on the belief, that the individual selfishness of man is such that nothing would induce him to act for the good of society, even though that good plainly included himself.

This theory of our selfishness is not borne out either by the scientific facts of our sociological position or the everyday facts of life about us.

The theory dates from a time when men were still mainly individual animals, when it was true. Being imbedded in that heavy, slow-going, ancient brain, and hammered in by each subsequent generation, it has remained with us until to-day. What we need to realise is that social development has brought with it other feelings, quite the opposite of selfishness, but equally natural, which are found in us all in varying degree; which we see at work about us, and yet which we refuse to admit into our “minds” as facts. On the contrary, we sturdily maintain in our minds the false ideas and act upon them, working much evil thereby.

The organic connection of human beings develops among them those social instincts which are necessary to promote their common good, a class which we, seeing their pre-eminent value, have classed as “virtues,” calling the disproportionate action of more primitive individual instincts “vices.” Neither term is true. Egoism was a virtue in the individual status; altruism, or rather, omniism, is a virtue in the social status; both are natural. Our misinterpretation and false naming have prevented our easy assumption of the new qualities, that is all, the past concept being more potent to our minds than the present fact.

Among the group of root errors still retarding our development, none is more mischievous than that wherein we assume pleasure to lie mainly in impression rather than expression. We believe that what we get makes us happy rather than what we do, and therefore consider our doing as a means of getting. Perhaps this idea antedates even the Want theory; but it is needless to grope too critically among the errors of the remote past, they are all old enough.

The utmost extreme of this early error of ours is found in our general scheme of Heaven or even of an earthly Utopia. When we give free rein to fancy in seeking to portray happiness we arrange that an individual may have everything he wants, and be provided with some eternal miracle in the way of appetite, it is to be hoped, that he may keep on wanting it!

The Happy Hunting Grounds of our American savages and the old Norse Walhalla had some action in them, probably because the savage believers knew of no other way to procure food save by hunting for it. With the red man and the brawny slayer of Scandinavia, action was so intimately connected with gratification and with honour that their future state had something doing as well as eternal banqueting. But observe the more sophisticated Mohammedan Paradise, with its ecstatic debauchery, and our own Hebrew Heaven, with its music and jewelry and the chorused adoration of an oriental court,—no action is predicated of these, save that necessary to get there. We postulate rest, peace, plenty, rich and beautiful surroundings, things to have for eternal joy, not things to do.

Some of our seers and philosophers have often perceived the fallacy of this belief, and have preached in various voices to the effect that man should “Act well his part—there all the honour lies.”

Moreover, most of us practically find that there is more pleasure in doing what we are best fitted for than in having anything whatever; but still the dominant governing theory of humanity holds that a man’s real business is to get such and such good and that “he won’t be happy till he gets it”! I heard this theory well expressed in passing by two men in the street recently; well-dressed, important-looking, elderly men:

“Yes,” said one of them, shaking a handsome cane, “they get their money all over the world and come here to spend it, to live!”

A better expression of this dominant belief it would be hard to find. The immense world-wide activities of the business men alluded to were defined merely as “getting money,” and the spending of that money, the obtaining all manner of materials for consumption, was defined as “living.” Acting under this belief we see the majority of mankind using continual effort to get things for themselves and their families, and, when the things they desired are attained, yet no resultant satisfaction follows, they merely transfer the ideal and seek to get more, other, and different things. Against this tendency a minor line of philosophy has been levelled, preaching contentment, but this philosophy is still on the wrong basis, for it is still _the things_ we are told to be contented with—those we have instead of those we have not, that’s all.

In practical truth the happiness of man in what he gets is limited, extremely limited, but the happiness of man in what he does is unlimited. The receiving capacity of our nervous system is soon exhausted, but the discharging capacity has no limit but that of natural periods of rest. The pleasure in expression increases with use, the pleasure in impression decreases with use.

It is interesting, pathetic, and absurd, to see the spasmodic contortion of nature under the effort to enjoy having things. We enjoy food, naturally. The use of food is, plainly, to enable us to do things, and if we do enough we always enjoy food. But the foolish person ignores doing things and seeks to enjoy food as an end in itself. The enjoyment soon palling, and even decreasing as the natural appetite decreases, the foolish person then pushes on in a line of artificial enhancements of this natural function, bringing in an elaborate convocation of other senses, with various luxuries and arts, so as to prolong and increase his enjoyment. The enjoyment receding vaguely before him, he adds eccentricities to his luxuries, runs the gamut of elaborate changes, and plays Hob with his internal organs, all in the persistent endeavour to hold on to the enjoyment of eating.

In this particular field of enjoyment no animal alive has attained such subtle, exquisite, and long-drawn pain as we have achieved withal. Our array of alimentary diseases is really instructive, yet does not seem really to instruct us. We still persist in putting the cart before the horse and looking for pleasure in what we get. In the field of economic action, this fallacy exerts a constant evil influence not only by checking the output, but by degrading and distorting that output to suit the growing vitiation of taste which always results from this belief.

The governing concepts of any society at any period tend inevitably to such and such results, but their effect is modified by interaction and by many external circumstances. As the society grows and circumstances change we may see one and another root-thought working to its special result; checked by this, modified by that, but always tending to its own end. So this one thought, acting with all our others, right and wrong, may be followed in the ever-present social tendency to luxury and excess.

If you believe that happiness lies in the impressions you receive, you naturally modify your action to the purpose of securing the desired impression. Seeing the impressions fail to produce the expected happiness, but still believing in the theory, you simply strive to secure further impressions. Finding, as jaded emperors have found, that to have everything in the world you want does not make you happy, you still hold on to the theory and merely sigh for new worlds to conquer; or, if your religion is also built on this theory, look forward to an eternity of having things to make you happy.

The demand for happiness is perfectly healthy and right, but we are mistaken as to the means. Every possible impression receivable by the human sensorium is merely an incentive to _expression_. We are transmitters of energy, not vats for storage. Our capacity for storage is merely to give us wider and longer range in our discharge. The living force of the Universe is pushing through man, and as that force is greater than he, so is the joy of doing greater than the joy of having. “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Of _course_!

Let us study some of the practical results of this false concept of ours. One of the most exquisitely sublimated extremes of its action is seen in our distinctively human practice of what is called “collecting.” It is bewildering at first. That a squirrel should collect nuts, and, on the same line, that Pharaoh should collect wheat, or that the housewife should collect food in advance, is all “natural.” That anyone should collect that “greatest common denominator,” money, is the same tendency as above. But that a human creature should collect a vast supply of objects which he does not use, never intends to use, and could not use if he wanted to, is truly remarkable.

The objects may be of use to other people—if they had them—as in innumerable pieces of china, but of no use to him; or they may be of no use to anybody, like defaced postage-stamps—but that does not affect the collecting instinct. This depraved appetite, seeking to acquire for personal “ownership” without even the excuse of consumption, frankly waiving the pleasure of using the things and affixing that pleasure solely to the getting and having of them, is as morbid a process as could well be imagined. It is “the mania for owning things” in full delirium.

What is the normal law of ownership? It is simple, like all natural laws.

Social processes are served through the social body, through a great number of detached mechanical structures. The social functionaries, in order to carry on their functions, must have a certain extra-physical environment. The family and the individuals therein must have homes, the body must have its clothes, the worker of all sorts must have his tools, his shop, all that is necessary for his work. Society requires of the individual the performance of certain functions. That performance requires the continuous use of certain mechanical adjuncts. Society must guarantee to the individual the continuous possession of those adjuncts, of the things necessary for him to do his work. That is the social “right of property.”

All property is a social product, evolved in the course of social development, needed by society for the social service. Any social factor, a carpenter, for instance, is a working agent consisting of a human animal specially skilled and specially tooled. Without the skill and the tools he is not a carpenter. Society having evolved the skill and the tools, certain members of Society then become carpenters. Since their skill is essential to the social service, Society must educate them; since their tools are essential to the social service, Society must _secure the tools to the man_. This is ownership, a social right, quite just, and perfectly natural.

Social relations are psychic. Property rights are psychic relations. We agree that such men shall own such things, and they do. We deny that such men own such things, and they don’t! Men once owned slaves—everywhere. This “right” was gradually withdrawn by the givers, until it now only exists in certain localities of low social development. Parents once “owned” their children, could kill or sell them. This right has been withdrawn.

There is no ultimate basis for human rights but the best interests of Society, and our conscious recognition of human right depends on our knowledge of those interests. Thus our rights change from age to age, as Society changes, and our laws and customs slowly follow the new developments in social consciousness. In our time we are in the active throes of change on two great subjects, the rights of women and the rights of property.

On the latter head this formula is advanced as a safe one: The individual has a right to those things necessary for him to best serve Society. That is, the carpenter has a right to his tools, and the musician to his instrument, both to their special education, and they and all men to the food, shelter, clothing, and other things necessary to their _best social service_.

Not a return _equivalent_ to, as we try to arrange our system of payment, but a supply _necessary_ to, in advance. If a man is to write books for humanity he has a right to his pen, ink, and paper; and to such other conditions as are essential to his best productivity; but because one man’s books are worth ten times as much as another’s, is no reason why he should have ten times as much pen, ink, and paper.

Consumption is a _means to production_—impression is of value as it conduces to expression. The pleasure and the duty are in Doing. Having is merely contributory.

Our mistake about consumption is what our payment system rests on; we work merely to obtain something; and that something is rigorously measured according to our previous labour. In changing the ground of our thought, we shall recognise that production is the main issue of life; that consumption is essential to it; that each social factor has a right to such supplies as shall best promote his productivity, and that they shall be provided him in advance.

“The mill will never grind with the water that”—hasn’t come!

If this position be reluctantly admitted, there follows the alarmed demand: “But if the consumption of the individual is not measured by his previous output, how shall we measure it—how shall we prevent him from an inordinate, a disproportionate, socially wasteful consumption?”

How do you measure the dinner for your family and friends? What prevents them from eating a bushel apiece? The natural limit of consumption is capacity, the natural measure is necessity and appetite. A constant and sufficient supply of anything does not provoke inordinate consumption—quite the contrary. A refined and moderate selection is the result of full and adequate provision. Inordinate consumption is the result of a deranged supply. People who customarily do not have certain things cannot develop taste and judgment in selecting them.

People who generally have too little, are quite apt to take too much when occasion offers. Knowing that the supply is uncertain leads to taking more than is wanted, so as to store for future use; and the “pecuniary canons of taste,” so ably described by Veblen (“Theory of the Leisure Class”), lead to that meretricious display and cultivated wastefulness which form another phase of our abnormal consumption.

Natural production tends to fill the world with constantly improving supplies. Natural distribution tends to place those supplies where they will do the most good. Natural consumption tends to appropriate all that is good and beneficial, and thereby promotes production—a spiral of social progress.

We have seen how production and distribution are injuriously affected by our misbeliefs, notably by the attitude of the obsequious caterer to the desires of the purchaser. The reason these desires are so deteriorating to the world’s production is in our false attitude toward consumption. The combined effect of our popular economic superstitions reaches a considerable height of injury to society.

Here is the producer limiting his output, as far as possible, to something well within his income, each man striving to get out of the world more than he puts in: whereas all our wealth and progress is conditioned upon our putting in more than we take out—and thanks to the marvellous productivity of the race, we do, we must, so put in, in spite of our ego-centric struggles. Here is the producer, again, guiding the kind and quality of his output, not by real human needs, or by the laws of improvement inherent in the product, but by the weaknesses and artificially fomented tastes, as well as by the purchasing power of “the market.”

If “the market” has a small purchasing power, that means, under our economic system, that the human beings composing it are low-grade stock, cannot produce much themselves. Under sociological law it would follow that they be supplied with the best things, in order to improve their productive power, in order, again, so to add to the social wealth. But in our method, measuring what a man shall have by what he can do, we give the least to those who need the most! Surely anyone can see how stupid this is—to limit consumption to the value of previous output, and so steadily to maintain a low output. Conversely, by seeking to increase consumption in proportion to output, we again do evil; for consumption has its own inexorable limits, bearing no relation whatever to output, _after the needs of the producer are really supplied_.

Surely, this too, is plain.

So much fertiliser to the acre will increase the crop—but not indefinitely. So much fuel to the fire will increase the steam pressure—but not indefinitely. So much oats to the horse will increase his speed—but not indefinitely. And so much of our great stock of social goods will increase a man’s social value, his health, happiness, and working power—but _not_ indefinitely. Because I am the better worker for a house suited to my needs, I am not therefore ten times the better worker for ten houses suited to my needs.

Food, clothing, education, painting, literature, music, entertainment,—a certain amount is good for a man, improves a man, belongs to a man; but the indefinite multiplication of that amount merely injures the man.

Now suppose we change our minds about consumption. Suppose we do fairly recognise these plain, natural facts:

(_a_) Man lives by virtue of social relation.

(_b_) Social relation consists in specialised interservice.

(_c_) That interservice consists in the production and distribution of all our human goods—from potatoes to poetry.

(_d_) The advantage to Society lies in the constant development of its processes, a better and easier production and distribution.