Part 9

There was a view held in time past by the physiocrats, that,--Either men make artificial government regulations for economic life, which check its free expansion,--and then these regulations are harmful;--Or else, the laws tend in the same direction as economic life does when left to itself,--and then they are superfluous. As an academic theory, this view has had its day; but it still crops up everywhere as a habit of thought, and plays havoc in men's brains. People think, that if one department of life is guided by its own laws, then everything else whatever that is needed in life must follow as a consequence out of this one department. That if, for instance, economic life were regulated in a way to satisfy men's wants, that then this well-ordered economic soil would infallibly produce the right sort of spiritual life and "rights" life as well. But it is not possible; and only a way of thinking foreign to all reality can believe it possible. In the circuit of economic life there is nothing whatever that affords of itself any motive to guide that which runs all through the relation of man to man and proceeds from the sense of right. And if people insist on regulating this relation by economic motive the result will be, that the human being, with his labour and his control of the means of labour, will be bound hand and foot to the economic life. Economic life will go on like clockwork, and man will be a wheel in it,--Economic life has a tendency always to go on in one course, which needs rectifying from another side. It is neither, that the "rights" regulations are good, provided they move in the course set by economic life--nor, that when they run counter to it, they are bad. But rather, that if the course taken by economic life is constantly under the influence of those rules of "right" which concern man simply as man, then a human existence within the economic life becomes possible. And not till individual ability grows on its own ground, quite detached from the economic system, conveying ever afresh to economic life those forces that economics and industry are powerless to produce, can economic life itself develope in a way beneficial to men. It is a curious thing:--in purely external matters, people are ready enough to see the advantage of a division of labour. They do not expect a tailor to milk his own cow. But when it comes to a general division and co-ordination of human life, then they think that no good can come of anything but a onefold system.

That social ideas which follow the line of real life will rouse objections on every side, is a matter of course. For real life breeds contradictions. And anyone, who is thinking in accordance with life, will determine on realising arrangements that involve living contradictions, needing again other arrangements to reconcile them. He must not suppose, that an institution which is demonstrably, to his thinking, an "ideally perfect" one, will involve no contradictions when realised in practice. The socialism of the present day is absolutely justified in laying down the proposition, that the institutions of the modern age, in which production is carried on for individual profit, must be replaced by a different system, under which production shall be carried on for the general consumption. But anyone, who fully and wholly accepts this proposition will not arrive at the deduction drawn by modern socialism: Ergo, the means of production must be transferred from private to communal ownership. Indeed, he will be forced to a very different conclusion, namely, that right methods must be taken for conveying to the general community that which is privately produced on the strength of individual energy and capacity. The tendency of the economic impulses of the new age has been to obtain revenue by manufacturing in mass. The aim of the future must be, to find out, by means of Associations, what, in view of the actual needs of consumption, is the best method of production, and what channels are open from producer to consumer. The "rights" institutions will take care, that a productive industry does not remain tied up with any individual or group of people longer than their personal ability warrants. Instead of communal ownership of the means of production, there will be a circulation of the means of production throughout the body social, bringing them constantly afresh into the hands of those persons whose individual ability can employ them to the best service of the community. That connection between personality and the means of production, which hitherto has been effected by private ownership, will thus be established for periods of time. For it will be thanks to the means of production that the head of a business and his subordinates are enabled by their personal abilities to earn the income that they asked. They will not fail to make production as perfect as possible, since every improvement brings them, not indeed the whole profits, but a portion of the returns. For profits,--as shewn above,--go to the community only to the extent of what is over, after deducting the quota due to the producer for improvements in production. And it is in the spirit of the whole thing, that, if production falls off, the producer's income must diminish in proportion as it rises with the enhancement of production. But always, in every case, the manager's income will come out of the spiritual work he has done. It will not come out of profits, depending on conditions that do not rest with the spiritual work of the directing personality, but with the interplay of the forces at work in the communal life.

It will be seen, that with the realisation of social ideas such as these, institutions that we already have will acquire an altogether new significance. The ownership of property ceases to be what it has been up till now. But instead of going back to an obsolete form, such as communal ownership would be, it is carried on a step further to something quite new. The objects of ownership are brought into the stream of social life. No private owner, for his own personal interests, can control them to the injury of the general public;--neither, again, can the general public control them bureaucratically to the injury of the private person;--but private persons, who are suitable, will have access to them, as a means of serving the public.

A sense for the general public interest will have a chance to grow up, when impulses of this sort are realised, which place production on a sound basis, and safeguards the body social from sudden crises. An administrature too, which occupies itself solely with the processes of economic life, will be able to bring about any adjustments for which necessity may arise in the course of these processes. Suppose, for instance, a business concern were not in a position to pay its creditors the interest due on the savings of their labour, then,--if it is a business that is nevertheless recognised as meeting a want,--it will be possible to arrange for other industrial concerns to subsidise it by the voluntary agreement of everyone concerned in them.

Self-contained, on a basis of "rights" determined from outside itself, and supplied from without by a constant flow of fresh human ability as it comes on the scenes, the economic life, within its own circuit, will concern itself with nothing but its proper work. Accordingly it will be possible for it to facilitate a distribution of wealth that will ensure each person receiving that which he is rightfully entitled to receive, according to the community's general prosperity. And, if one person appears to have more income than another, it will only be because his individual abilities make this More, this "surplus," of advantage to the community.

The taxes which are needed for the "rights" system can be settled between the leaders of the "rights" life and the economic life in a social organism shaped by the light of such conceptions as these. Whilst everything needed for the maintenance of the spiritual organisation will come as good-will from the voluntary appreciation of the private members of the body social. The spiritual organisation will rest on a healthy basis of individual initiative, exercised in free competition amongst the private individuals suited to spiritual work.

But it is only in a social organism of this form, that the "rights" administration will find the understanding necessary to a right and just distribution of wealth. In an economic life, where the claim upon men's labour is not prescribed by the stresses in single branches of production, but which has to carry on business with as much as the "rights-law" allows it, the value of goods will be determined by what men actually put into it in the way of work. It will not allow the work men do to be determined by goods-values into whose formation human welfare and human dignity do not enter. An order of economy such as this, will not be blind to rights that arise from purely human relations. Children will have a right to education. The father of a family will be able to have a higher income than a single man. He will get his "surplus" through a system instituted by agreement between all three social organisations. The right to education might be met, under these arrangements, in the following way. The managing body of the economic organisation estimates the amount of revenue that can be given to education, according to the general economic conditions; and the "rights-state" fixes the rights of individual persons, according to the spiritual organisation's opinion in each case.

Here again, since we are thinking on lines of reality, this instance is merely intended to indicate the direction in which such arrangements might be worked. In detail, it is possible that quite a different sort of arrangement may be found to be the right thing. But, in any case, the "right thing" will be found only through all three independent branches of the body social conjointly, in working together for a common end. For the purposes of this sketch, the underlying mode of thought is merely concerned to discover the really practical thing, (unlike so much to-day that passes for practical),--namely, a functional division of the body social, such as shall give man a basis on which to work socially to some purpose.

On a par with a child's right to education, is the right of the aged, of invalids, widows and sick persons, to a maintenance; and the capital-basis for their support will be passed through the three systems of the body social in much the same way as the capital contributed for the education of those who are not yet come to their working powers. The essential point in all this is, that the income received by anyone who is not personally an earner, should not be an outcome of the economic life; but the other way about:--economic life must be dependent on what is the outcome of the common sense of right. The people working in any economic organism will have all the less from their work, the more has to go to the non-earners; only the "less" will be borne fairly by all the members of the body social, when social impulses, of the kind here meant, are really put into practice. The education and maintenance of those who cannot work concerns all mankind in common; and under a "rights-state" detached from economic life it will become the common concern in actual practice. For the "rights" organisation is the field for realising those things in which every grown human being has a voice.

Under a social order, that follows this line of conception, the surplus that a man performs on the strength of his individual ability will pass on to the community; and the just maintenance for the deficiency of the less able will also come from the community. "Surplus value" will not be created for the unjustified enjoyment of private individuals, but to enhance everything that can give wealth of soul and body to the whole social organism, and to foster whatever is born of it, even though not directly serviceable.

It may be thought, that, after all, except for the idea of it, there is no practical value in keeping the three members of the body social thus carefully distinct, and that the same result would come about "of itself" inside a uniform constitution of State, or an economic guild covering the same ground as the state, and based on communal ownership of the means of production. One needs, however, only to look at the special form of social institution that must result from realising the threefold division. For instance, the use of money as a mode of payment will not have to be legally recognised by the state administrature. It will owe its recognition to the measures taken by the various administrative bodies within the economic organisation. For money, in a healthy social organism, can be nothing except an order on commodities that other people have produced, and which one can draw out of the common economic pool, because of the commodities that oneself has produced and paid in. It is the money currency that makes a sphere of economic activity into an economic unit. The whole economic life is a roundabout way of everyone producing for everyone else. Within the sphere of economic activity, commodity-values are the only things dealt with; and in this sphere, not only anything made, but also anything done, originating in the spiritual or State organisations, also takes on the character of a commodity. What a teacher does for his pupils, is, for the economic circuit, a commodity. The teacher's individual ability is no more paid for, than the worker's labour-power is paid for. All that can possibly be paid for in either, is that which proceeds from them and can pass as a commodity or commodities into the economic circuit. How free initiative, and what the "rights-law" must act, in order to bring the commodity into existence, lies as much outside the economic circuit itself as the action of the forces of nature upon the corn yield in a bountiful or barren year. For the economic circuit, both the spiritual organisation,--as regards its claim on economic returns,--and the State also, are simply producers of commodities. Only, what they produce is not a commodity within their own spheres; it first becomes a commodity, when it is taken up into the economic circuit. Within their own domains, the spiritual organisation and the state have no business dealings;--the economic body, through its administrature, carries on business with their work when it is done.

The purely economic value of any commodity (or work done, in so far as it finds expression in the money that represents its equivalent value), will depend on the efficiency in economic administration developed by the body economic. It will depend on the measures taken by the economic administration, how fertile economic life can become on the basis afforded by the spiritual and "rights" systems of the body social. The money-value of a commodity will then indicate, that the economic organisation is producing the commodity in a quantity corresponding to the want for it. Supposing the premises laid down in this book to be realised, the body economic will not be dominated by the impulse to amass wealth through sheer quantity of production; but the production of goods will adapt itself to wants, through the agency of the associative guilds that will spring up in all manner of connections. In this way, the proportion, that in each case corresponds to the actual want, will become established between the money-value of an article and the arrangements made in the body social for producing it. [6] In the healthy social organism, money will really be nothing but a measure of value; since, behind every money piece, or money token, there stands the tangible piece of production, on the strength of which alone the owner of the money could come by it. These conditions will, of their nature, necessitate arrangements being made, which will deprive money of its value for its possessor, when once it has lost its original significance. Arrangements of this sort have already been alluded to. Money property passes back, after a fixed period, into the common pool, in whatever the proper form may be; and to prevent money, withdrawn from use in industry, being held back by its possessors to the evasion of the provisions made by the economic organisation, there can be a new coinage, or re-stamping, from time to time. One result of this will no doubt be, that the interest derived from any capital sum will diminish as years go on. Money will wear out, just as commodities wear out. Nevertheless, such a measure will be a right and just one for the State to enact. There can be no compound interest. If a person lays by savings, he has certainly rendered past services that gave him a claim on future counter-service in commodities,--just as present services claim present service in exchange. But his claims cannot go beyond a certain limit; for claims, that date from the past, require present labour-services to satisfy them; and they must not be turned into a means of economic coercion. The practical realisation of these principles will put the problem of safeguarding the money standard upon a sound basis. For, no matter what form money may take owing to other conditions, the safeguard of its standard lies in the intelligent organisation of the whole body economic through its administrature. The problem of safeguarding the money standard will never be satisfactorily solved through any State by means of law. The present States will only solve it, when they give up attempting the solution on their own account, and leave the body economic to do what is needful, after it is detached from the State.

There is much talk of the modern division of labour, of its results in time-saving, in perfecting the manufacture and facilitating the exchange of commodities. Little attention is paid to its effect on the relation of the human worker to what he is doing. In a social order that is based on division of labour, no person at work is ever really earning his income himself, he is earning it through the work of everybody employed in the body social. When a tailor makes a coat for his own use, the relation of himself to the coat he is making is not the same as that of a man living under primitive conditions, who has all the other necessaries of life to provide for himself. The tailor makes the coat in order to enable him to make clothes for other people; and its value for him depends solely and entirely on what services other people render. The coat is, really, a means of production. Many people may call this "splitting hairs";--but one sees that it is not so, when one comes to consider the formation of commodity-values in the economic process. It then becomes obvious, that in an economic organism based on division of labour it is absolutely impossible to work for oneself. All one can do, is to work for others, and set others to work for one. One can no more work for oneself, than one can eat oneself. One can, however, establish practices, that are in direct opposition to the very essence of division of labour;--as, for instance, when the whole system of goods-production is based on transferring to the individual as private property what he is only able to produce through occupying a place in the social organism. Division of labour makes for a social organism in which the individual shall live in accordance with the conditions of the whole body of the community. Economically, division of labour precludes egoism. And if, in spite of this, egoism persists, in the form of class privilege and such things, then a State of instability sets in, leading to disturbances in the body social. We are living under such conditions to-day. To insist that the conditions in the "rights-State," amongst other things, must bring themselves into line with the system of divided labour and its non-egotistic method of production, may appear to many people futile. In this case, they may as well draw the deduction from their premises: There is no doing anything. The social movement can lead to nothing. As respects the social movement, one can certainly do no good, unless one is willing to give Reality her due. It is inherent in the mode of thought underlying the whole treatment of the subject, throughout these pages, that man's doings within the body social must be brought into line with the conditions of its organic life.

Anyone, who can only form his notions by the system he is accustomed to, will be uneasy when he is told, that the relation between the work-director and the worker is to be separated out from the economic process. He will believe that such a separation is bound to lead to depreciation of money and a return to primitive conditions of industrial economy.--(Dr. Rathenau takes this view in his "After the Flood"; and from his standpoint it is a defensible one.)--The threefolding of the social order, however, prevents any risk of this. The autonomous economic system, working conjointly with the "rights" system, completely detaches the whole state of money conditions from labour conditions, which latter rest entirely on the rights-law. The "rights" conditions cannot have any direct influence on the money conditions, for these are the result of the economic administration. The "relation in right" between work-director and worker will not upset the balance or shew itself in money-values at all. For, when wages are eliminated, (which represent a relation of exchange between commodities and labour-power), money-value remains simply a measure of the value of one commodity (or piece of work) as against another. If one studies the threefold division in its actual effects upon the body social, one must become convinced that such a division will lead to institutions unknown to the forms of State that have existed up till now.

These new institutions can be cleared of all that to-day has an atmosphere of class-struggle. For this struggle comes from the wages of labour being tied up with the economic processes. Here, we are describing a form of social organism, in which the conception of wages of labour undergoes a transformation no less complete than the old conception of property. But the social relation of human-beings becomes thereby a much more living and healthy one. One must not jump to the conclusion, that these proposals amount in practice merely to converting time-wages into piece-wages. One might be led to this conclusion by a one-sided view of the matter. But this one-sided view is not that which is put forward as the right one here. Here, we are considering, in its connection with the whole organisation of the body social, the elimination of the wage-relation altogether, and the adoption of a share-relation, based on contract in respect to the common work performed by the work-director and the workers. It may seem to somebody, that the portion of the proceeds which falls to the worker's share is a "piece-wage"; but if so, it is because he fails to see, that this kind of "piece-wage" (which, properly speaking, is not a "wage" at all) finds expression in the value of the product in a way, that puts the worker socially into a position as regards the other members of the body social very different from that relation between him and them, which has sprung out of class supremacy in which economics are the only factor. Class struggle finds no place here; and this requirement is satisfied.