CHAPTER VII

THE ECONOMIC QUESTION FROM THE MORAL POINT OF VIEW

I

If individuals and nations learnt to value the national peculiarities

of foreign peoples as much as they value their own; if within each

nation individual criminals were, as far as possible, reformed by

re-education and rational guardianship, from which all vestige of

legal ferocity were eliminated,--this moral solution of the national

and the penal questions would still leave untouched an important cause

both of national hostility and of criminality, namely, the economic

cause. The chief reason why Americans hate the Chinese is certainly

not that the Chinese wear plaits and follow the moral teaching of

Confucius, but that they are dangerous rivals in the economic sphere.

Chinese labourers in California are persecuted for the same cause

for which Italians are ill-treated in southern France, Switzerland,

and Brazil. In exactly the same way the feeling against the Jews,

whatever the inmost causes of it may be, clearly rests upon and is

obviously due to economic considerations. Individual criminality is not

created by environment, but it is largely kept up and encouraged by

pauperism, excessive mechanical labour, and the inevitable coarsening

that follows therefrom. The influence of the most rational and humane

penal system upon individual criminals would have but little general

effect so long as these conditions prevailed. The bad effect of the

economic conditions of the present day upon the national and the

criminal questions is obviously due to the fact that these conditions

are in themselves morally wrong. Their abnormality is manifested in

the economic sphere itself, since the struggle between the different

classes of society for the possession of material goods is becoming

more and more acute, and in many countries of Western Europe and

America threatens to become a deadly strife.

For a man who takes the moral point of view it is as impossible to

take part in this socially-economic struggle as to participate in

the hostility between races and nations. But at the same time it is

impossible for him to remain indifferent to the material position of

his neighbours. If the elementary moral feeling of pity, which has

received its highest sanction in the Gospel, demands that we should

feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, and warm the cold, this

demand does not, of course, lose its force when the cold and hungry

number millions instead of dozens. And if _alone_ I cannot help these

millions, and am not therefore morally bound to do so, I can and must

help them _together with others_. My personal duty becomes a collective

one--it still remains my own, although it becomes wider in so far as

I participate in the collective whole and its universal task. The

very fact of economic distress proves that economic conditions are

not connected with the principle of the good as they should be, that

they are not morally organised. A whole pseudo-scientific school of

conservative anarchists in economics directly denied, and still denies,

though without the old self-confidence, all ethical principles and all

organisation in the sphere of economic relations. The prevalence of

this school had much to do with the birth of revolutionary anarchism.

On the other hand, the many varieties of socialism, both radical and

conservative, do more to detect the presence of the disease than to

offer a real cure for it.

The defect of the orthodox school of political economy--the liberal

or, more exactly, the anarchical school--is that it _separates_ on

principle the economic sphere from the moral. The defect of socialism

is that it more or less _confuses_ or wrongly identifies these two

distinct, though indivisible, spheres.

II

All practical affirmation of a thing apart from its due connection or

correlation with everything else is essentially immoral. To affirm a

particular, conditional, and relative activity as a thing by itself,

as absolutely independent and self-contained, is wrong in theory and

immoral in practice, and can lead to nothing but disaster and sin.

To regard man as merely an economic agent--a producer, owner, and

consumer of material goods--is a wrong and immoral point of view. These

functions have in themselves no significance for man, and do not in

any way express his essential nature and worth. Productive labour,

possession and enjoyment of its results, is one of the aspects of

human life or one of the spheres of human activity. The truly human

interest lies only in the fact as to _how_ and _with what object_ man

acts in this particular domain. Free play of chemical processes can

only take place in a corpse; in a living body these processes are

connected and determined by organic purposes. Similarly, free play of

economic factors and laws is only possible in a community that is dead

and is decomposing, while in a living community that has a future,

economic elements are correlated with and determined by moral ends. To

proclaim _laissez faire, laissez passer_ is to say to society ‘die and

decompose.’

No doubt economic relations as a whole are based upon a simple

and ultimate fact, which cannot as such be deduced from the moral

principle--the fact, namely, that work, labour, is necessary to the

maintenance of life. There has never been, however, a stage in the

life of humanity at which this material necessity was not complicated

by moral considerations--not even at the very lowest stage. Necessity

compels the half-brutal savage to procure means of livelihood; but in

doing so he may either think of himself alone or include in his need

the need of his mate and his young. If the hunt has been unsuccessful

he can either share his scarce booty with them, hardly satisfying his

own hunger, or can take everything for himself, leaving them to fare

as best they can; or, finally, he may kill them so as to satisfy his

hunger with their flesh. Whichever course he adopts, even the most

orthodox devotee of political economy would not be likely to ascribe

his action to the effect of inexorable economic ‘laws.’

The necessity to work in order to obtain the means of livelihood is

indeed a matter of fate and is independent of human will. But it is

merely an impetus which spurs man to activity, the further course of

that activity being determined by psychological and moral, and not by

economic, causes. When social structure becomes somewhat more complex,

not only the distribution of the products of labour and the manner of

enjoying them, or ‘consumption,’ but the labour itself is determined

by motives other than those of physical need--motives which have no

element of compulsion or natural necessity about them. It is sufficient

to name as an instance the most prevalent among them--the greed for

acquisition and the thirst for pleasure. There is no economic law

which determines the degree of cupidity or voluptuousness for all men,

and there is indeed no law that these passions should be necessarily

inherent in man at all, as inevitable motives of his actions. Therefore

in so far as economic activities and relations are determined by these

mental propensities they do _not_ belong to the domain of economics and

do _not_ obey any ‘economic laws’ with necessity.

Take the most elementary and the least disputable of these so-called

laws, namely, the law that the price of goods is determined by the

relation between supply and demand. This means that the more demand

there is for a particular article and the less there is of it, the more

it costs--and _vice versa_.

Suppose, however, that a rich but benevolent trader who has a constant

supply of some article of the first necessity decides, in spite of

the increased demand for that article, not to raise his prices or

even decides to lower them for the good of his needy neighbours. This

will be a violation of the supposed economic ‘law,’ and yet, however

unusual the case may be, certainly no one would think it impossible or

supernatural.

Let us grant that if everything depended upon the good will of private

individuals, we might, in the domain of economics, regard magnanimous

motives as a negligible quantity, and build everything upon the secure

foundation of self-interest. Every society, however, has a central

government, a necessary function of which is to limit private cupidity.

There are a good many historical instances in which the state made the

habitual and--from the point of view of self-interest--the natural

order of things unnatural and unusual, sometimes indeed rendering

it altogether impossible, and transforming the former exceptions

into a universal rule. Thus, for instance, in Russia for two and a

half centuries landowners who set all their serfs free and, in doing

so, gave them land were the most rare and extraordinary exception,

the usual order or ‘law’ of relations between the landed gentry and

the peasants being that the latter, together with the land on which

they lived, were the property of the former. But with remarkable

completeness and rapidity this universal law was, by the good will of

the government, made illegal and impossible in practice, while the

former rare exceptions were transformed into an absolutely binding

rule, admitting of no exception at all. Similarly, the exceptional case

of the tradesman who does not put up the price of the articles of first

necessity with the increase in demand, becomes a universal rule as soon

as the government deems it necessary to regulate the price of goods. In

that case this direct violation of the supposed ‘law’ actually becomes

law,--not a ‘natural’ one, but positive law or law of the state.

It should be noted that notwithstanding the difference between the two

conceptions of the law of nature and the man-made law of the state,

the latter resembles the former in that within the sphere of its

application it has a universal force and admits of _no_ unforeseen

exception.[150] But the alleged economic laws never have such a

significance and can at any moment be freely violated and annulled by

the moral will of man. _In virtue of_ the law of 1861 _not a single_

landowner in Russia may buy or sell peasants otherwise than in his

dreams. On the other hand, _in spite of_ the ‘law’ of supply and

demand, nothing prevents any virtuous Petersburg landlord, even when

fully awake, from lowering the rent of his flats out of philanthropic

motives. The fact that only a very few take the opportunity of doing

so, proves not the power of the economic factors, but the weakness of

individual virtue. For as soon as this lack of personal benevolence

is supplanted by the demand of the law of the state, rents will be

immediately lowered, and the ‘iron’ necessity of economic laws will at

once prove to be as fragile as glass. This self-evident truth is at

the present time admitted by writers altogether foreign to socialism,

such as Laveleye, for instance. In earlier days, J. S. Mill, anxious

to preserve to political economy the character of an exact science

and at the same time to avoid too obvious a contradiction with

reality, invented the following compromise. Admitting that the economic

_distribution_ of the products of labour depends upon the human will

and may be subordinated to moral purposes, he insisted that the

_production_ is entirely determined by economic laws which have in this

case the force of the laws of nature--as if production did not take

place in the same general conditions and depend upon the same human

powers and agents as distribution! This anti-scientific and scholastic

distinction met, indeed, with no success, and was equally rejected by

both opposed camps which Mill had sought to reconcile by means of it.

Freedom of the individual and society from the supposed natural laws

of the materially-economic order stands, of course, in no immediate

connection with the metaphysical question of free-will. When I say,

_e.g._, that Petersburg landlords are free from the supposed law

which determines the price by the relation of supply and demand, I am

far from maintaining that any one of these landlords _whatever his

character may be_ can at any given moment lower the rent of his flats

in spite of the increased demand for them. I only urge the obvious

truth that given a _sufficiently strong_ moral impulse, no alleged

economic necessity can prevent the individual, especially in his public

capacity, from subordinating material considerations to the moral

in this or in that instance. Hence it logically follows that in the

realm of economics there exist no natural laws acting independently of

the individual will of the given agents. I do not deny the presence

of law in human activity; I only argue against a special kind of

materially-economic necessity invented a hundred years ago, and taken

to be independent of the general conditions that determine volition

through psychological and moral motives. The character of objects

and events which fall within the province of economics is on the one

hand due to physical nature, and is therefore subject to material

necessity (to the mechanical, chemical, and biological laws), and on

the other hand is determined by human activity, which is subject to the

moral and psychological necessity. And since no further causality, in

addition to the natural and the human, can be found in the phenomena

of the economic order, it follows that there can be in that domain no

independent necessity and uniformity of its own.

It has been pointed out that the lack of moral initiative in private

individuals is successfully supplemented by state legislation, which

regulates economic relations in the moral sense with a view to the

common good. Reference to this fact does not prejudge the question as

to the extent to which such regulation may be desirable in the future

and as to the form it should take. Of one thing only there can be no

doubt: the very fact of state interference in the domain of economics

(_e.g._ the legislative regulation of prices) unmistakably proves that

the given economic relations do not express any natural necessity. For

it is clear that laws of nature could not be cancelled by laws of the

state.

III

Subordination of material interests and relations in human society

to some special economic laws _acting on their own account_ is

the fiction of a bad metaphysic, and has not the least foundation

in reality. Therefore the general demand of reason and conscience

remains in force--the demand, namely, that this province too should

be subordinated to the supreme principle of morality, and that in its

economic life society should be the organised realisation of the good.

There are not and there cannot be any independent economic laws, any

economic necessity, for economic phenomena can only be thought of as

activities of man who is a moral being, and is capable of subordinating

all his actions to the pure idea of the good. There is only one

absolute and independent law for man as such--the moral law, and only

one necessity, namely, the moral. The peculiarity and independence of

the economic sphere of relations lies, not in the fact that it has

ultimate laws of its own, but in the fact that from its very nature

it presents a special and peculiar _field for the application_ of the

one moral law. Thus earth differs from other planets, not by having

an independent source of light all to itself, but by receiving and

reflecting the one universal light of the sun in a special and definite

way, dependent upon its place in the solar system.

This truth is fatal both to the theories of the orthodox economists and

to the socialist doctrine which seems at first sight to be opposed to

them. When the socialists denounce the existing economic system and

declaim against the unequal distribution of property, the cupidity and

callousness of the rich, they appear to adopt the moral point of view,

and to be inspired by the good feeling of pity towards those who labour

and are heavy laden. The positive side of their doctrine, however,

clearly shows that they take up, to begin with, an ambiguous and,

subsequently, a directly hostile attitude to the moral principle.

The inmost essence of socialism has for the first time found expression

in the remarkable doctrine of the followers of St. Simon, who

proclaimed as their motto the rehabilitation of matter in the life of

humanity. There is no doubt that matter has its rights, and the less

they are respected in principle the more they assert themselves in

practice. The nature of these rights, however, may be interpreted in

two different and, indeed, directly contradictory ways. According to

the first meaning--a perfectly true and an extremely important one--the

sphere of material relations (more immediately of the economic ones)

has a right to become the object of man’s moral activity. It has a

right to have the supreme spiritual principle realised or incarnate

in it--_matter has a right to be spiritualised_. It would be unjust

to maintain that this meaning was entirely foreign to the early

socialistic systems. But they did not dwell upon it or develop it, and

very soon this glimmer of a higher consciousness proved to be merely a

deceptive light over the quagmire of carnal passions which gradually

sucked in so many noble and inspired minds.

The other and more prevalent meaning given to the principle of

the rehabilitation of matter justifies the degradation of the St.

Simonists, and indeed makes it into a principle. The material life

of humanity is not regarded as merely a special province of human

activity or of the application of the moral principles. It is said to

have an entirely independent material principle of its own, existing

in its own right both in and for man, namely, the principle of

instinct or passion. This element must be given full scope so that the

normal social order should naturally follow from personal passions

and interests supplementing and replacing one another (Fourier’s

fundamental conception). This ‘normal’ order neither need nor can

be moral. Alienation from the higher spiritual interests becomes

inevitable as soon as the material side of human life is recognised

to have an independent and unconditional value. One cannot serve two

masters; and socialism naturally gives predominance to the principle

under the banner of which the whole movement had first originated,

_i.e._ to the material principle. The domain of economic relations

is entirely subordinated to it, and is recognised as the chief, the

fundamental, the only real and decisive factor in the life of humanity.

At this point the _inner_ opposition between socialism and the

bourgeois political economy disappears.

In truth, the morally abnormal condition of the civilised world at

the present day is due, not to this or that particular institution,

but to the general conception and trend of life in modern society.

Material wealth is becoming all-important, and social structure itself

is distinctly degenerating into a _plutocracy_. It is not personal and

hereditary property, division of labour and capital, or inequality of

material possessions that is immoral. What is immoral is plutocracy,

which distorts the true social order, raising the lower and the

essentially subservient factor--the economic one--to the supreme and

dominant position, and relegating all other things to be the means and

instruments of material gain. Socialism leads to a similar distortion,

though in a different way. From the plutocratic point of view the

normal man is in the first place a capitalist and then, _per accidens_,

a citizen, head of a family, an educated man, member of some religious

union, etc. Similarly from the socialist point of view all other

interests become insignificant and retreat into the background--if they

don’t disappear altogether--before the economic interest. In socialism,

too, the essentially lower, material sphere of life--the industrial

activity--becomes decidedly predominant and overshadows all else. Even

in its most idealistic forms socialism has from the first insisted

that the moral perfection of society wholly and directly depends upon

its economic structure, and sought to attain moral reformation or

regeneration exclusively by means of an economic revolution. This fact

clearly shows that socialism really stands on the same ground as the

bourgeois régime hostile to it, namely, the supremacy of the material

interest. Both have the same motto: ‘man liveth by bread alone.’ For a

plutocrat the worth of man depends upon his possessing or being capable

of acquiring material wealth. For a consistent socialist the worth of

man depends upon his producing material wealth. In both cases man is

taken as an economic agent, apart from other aspects of his being.

In both cases economic welfare is taken to be the final end and the

highest good. The struggle between the two hostile camps is not one of

principle; or, rather, the struggle is waged, not about the content of

a principle, but only about the extent of its realisation. One party

is concerned with the material welfare of the capitalist minority, and

the other with the also material welfare of the labour majority. And

in so far as that majority, the working classes themselves, begin to

care exclusively about their material welfare they obviously prove to

be as selfish as their adversaries, and lose all moral advantage over

the latter. In certain respects indeed socialism applies the principle

of material interest more fully and consistently than its opponents.

Although plutocracy really cares for the economic interest alone, it

admits the existence, though in a subordinate sense only, of other

spheres of life, with independent institutions--such as the state and

the Church--corresponding to them. Socialism in its pure form, however,

rejects all this. For it man is exclusively a producer and consumer,

and human society is merely an economic union--a union of workmen

proprietors involving no substantial distinctions. And since the

_predominance_ of the material interests--of the economic, industrial

and financial elements--constitutes the characteristic feature of the

bourgeois régime, consistent socialism which intends finally to limit

the life of humanity to these lower interests alone is certainly not an

antithesis to, but the extreme expression, the crowning stage of the

one-sided bourgeois civilisation.

Socialists and their apparent opponents--the plutocrats--unconsciously

join hands on the most essential point. Plutocracy subjugates the

masses of the people to its own selfish interests, disposes of them to

its own advantage, for it regards them merely as labour, as producers

of material wealth. Socialism protests against such ‘exploiting,’ but

its protest is superficial and is not based upon principles, since

socialism itself in the long-run regards man as _merely_ (or in any

case as mainly and primarily) an economic agent--and if he is only

that, there is no _inherent_ reason why he should not be exploited. On

the other hand, the exclusive importance which attaches to material

wealth, in the commercial state of the present day, naturally leads

those who directly produce this wealth, the working classes, to demand

an equal share in the enjoyment of the goods which, but for them,

could not exist and which they are brought up to regard as the chief

thing in life. Thus the practical materialism of the ruling classes

themselves calls forth and justifies socialistic tendencies in the

subjugated working classes. And when fear of social revolution brings

about an insincere conversion of the plutocrats to the idealistic

principles, it proves to be a useless game. The masks of morality and

religion hastily put on do not deceive the masses, who know perfectly

well what the true worship of their masters is.[151] And having learnt

this cult from their superiors, working people naturally want to be the

priests and not the victims.

The two hostile parties mutually presuppose one another and cannot

escape from the vicious circle until they acknowledge and adopt

in practice the unquestionable truth, forgotten by them, that the

significance of man, and therefore of human society, is not essentially

determined by economic relations, that man is not primarily the

producer of material goods or market values, but is something

infinitely more important, and that consequently society, too, is more

than an economic union.[152]

IV

For the true solution of the so-called ‘social question’ it must in

the first place be recognised that the economic relations contain no

special norm of their own, but are subject to the universal moral norm

as a special realm in which it finds its application. The triple moral

principle which determines our due relation towards God, men, and the

material nature is wholly and entirely applicable in the domain of

economics. The peculiar character of the economic relations gives a

special importance to the last member of the moral trinity, namely, the

relation to the material nature or _earth_ (in the wide sense of the

term). This third relation can only have a moral character if it is not

isolated from the first two but is conditioned by them in their normal

position.

The realm of economic relations is exhaustively described by the

general ideas of _production_ (labour and capital), _distribution_ of

property, and _exchange_ of values. Let us consider these fundamental

ideas from the moral point of view, beginning with the most fundamental

of them--the idea of _labour_. We know that the first impulse to labour

is given by the material necessity. But for a man who recognises above

himself the absolutely perfect principle of reality, or the will of

God, all necessity is an expression of that will. From this point of

view labour is a _commandment_ of God. This commandment requires us

to work hard (‘in the sweat of thy face’) to cultivate the ground,

_i.e._ to perfect material nature. For whose sake? In the first place

for our own and that of our neighbours. This answer, clear at the most

elementary stages of moral development, no doubt remains in force as

humanity progresses, the only change being that the denotation of the

term ‘neighbour’ becomes more and more wide. Originally my neighbours

were only those to whom I was related by the blood tie or by personal

feeling; finally it is all mankind. When Bastiat, the most gifted

representative of economic individualism, advocated the principle ‘each

for himself’ he defended himself against the charge of selfishness

by pointing to the economic harmony in virtue of which each man in

working solely for himself (and his family), unconsciously, from the

very nature of social relations, works also for the benefit of all, so

that the interest of each harmonises in truth with the interest of all.

In any case, however, this would be merely a natural harmony, similar

to that which obtains in the non-human world where certain insects,

seeking nothing but sweet food for themselves, unconsciously bring

about the fertilisation of plants by transferring the pollen from one

flower to another. Such harmony testifies, of course, to the wisdom of

the Creator, but does not make insects into moral beings. Man, however,

_is_ a moral being and natural solidarity is not sufficient for him;

he ought not merely to labour for all and participate in the common

work, but _to know_ that he does so and _to wish_ to do it. Those who

refuse to recognise this truth as a matter of principle will feel its

force as a fact in financial smashes and economic crises. Men who are

the cause of such anomalies and men who are the victims of them, both

belong to the class of people who work for themselves, and yet the

natural harmony neither reconciles their interests nor secures their

prosperity. The merely natural unity of economic interests is not

sufficient to secure the result that each, in working for himself,

should also work for all. To bring this about economic relations must

be _consciously directed towards the common good_.

To take selfishness or self-interest as the fundamental motive of

labour means to deprive labour of the significance of a universal

commandment, to make it into something accidental. If I work solely for

the sake of my own and my family’s welfare, then as soon as I am able

to attain that welfare by other means I must lose my only motive for

work. And if it were proved that a whole class or group of persons can

prosper by means of robbery, fraud, and exploitation of other people’s

labour, no theoretically valid objection could be urged against this

from the point of view of unrestrained self-interest. Is it for the

natural harmony of interests to abolish such abuses? But where was the

natural harmony in the long ages of slavery, feudalism, serfdom? Or

perhaps the fierce intestine wars which abolished feudalism in Europe

and slavery in America were the expression--though somewhat a belated

one--of natural harmony? In that case it is difficult to see in what

way such harmony differs from disharmony, and in what way the freedom

of the guillotine is better than the restrictions of state socialism.

If, however, natural harmony of interests, seriously understood,

proves to be powerless against economic abuses due to the unrestrained

selfishness of individuals and classes whose freedom in this respect

has to be restricted in the name of higher justice, it is unfair and

unpermissible to appeal to justice in the last resort only, and to put

it at the end and not at the beginning of social structure. In addition

to being unfair and unpermissible it is also quite useless. For such

morality _ex machina_ has no power to attract or to inspire. No one

will believe in it or be restrained by it from anything, and the only

thing left will be bare compulsion--one day in one direction, and the

next in another.

When the principle of the individualistic freedom of interests is

adopted by the strong, it does not make them work more but gives rise

to the slavery of ancient times, to the seigniorial right of the Middle

Ages, and to modern economic slavery or plutocracy. When adopted by the

weak, who, however, are strong as the majority, as the masses, this

principle of unrestrained selfishness does not make them more _united_

in their work, but merely creates an atmosphere of envious discontent,

which produces in the end the bombs of the anarchists. Had Bastiat,

who was fond of expressing his ideas in the form of popular dialogues,

lived to our day, he might have played the chief part in the following

conversation:

_Anarchist._ Out of especial friendliness for you, Mr. Bastiat, I warn

you take yourself away from here, as far as ever you can--I am just

going to blow up all this neighbourhood, for there are lots of tyrants

and exploiters about.

_Bastiat._ What a terrible position! But consider: you are doing

irreparable damage to the principle of human liberty!

_Anarchist._ On the contrary--we are putting it into practice.

_Bastiat._ Who has put these devilish ideas into your mind?

_Anarchist._ You yourself.

_Bastiat._ What an absurd slander!

_Anarchist._ It is perfectly true. We are your pupils. Have you

not proved that the root of all evil is the interference of public

authority with the free play of individual interests? Have you not

ruthlessly condemned all intentional organisation of labour, all

compulsory social order? And that which is condemned as evil must be

destroyed. We translate your words into practice and are saving you

from dirty work.

_Bastiat._ I struggled only against the interference of the state in

the economic life, and against the artificial organisation of labour

advocated by socialists.

_Anarchist._ Socialists are no concern of ours; if they are deluded by

fancies, so much the worse for them. _We_ are not deluded. We fight

against one organisation only--one which really exists and is called

social order. Towns and factories, stock exchanges and academies,

administration, police, army, Church--all these did not spring from the

ground of themselves; they are the product of artificial organisation.

Therefore on your own premisses they are an evil and ought to be

destroyed.

_Bastiat._ Even if this were true, things ought not to be destroyed by

violent and disastrous means.

_Anarchist._ What is disaster? You have yourself beautifully explained

that apparent calamities lead to the real good of all, and you have

always very subtly distinguished between the unimportant things

that are _evident_ and the important that _cannot be seen_. In the

present case what is evident are the flying sardine boxes, demolished

buildings, disfigured corpses--this is evident but unimportant.

And that which is not seen and which alone is important is the

future humanity which will be free from all ‘interference’ and all

‘organisation’--since the persons, classes, and institutions which

might interfere and organise will be exterminated. You preached the

principle of anarchy, we carry out anarchy in practice.

_Bastiat._ Policeman! policeman! seize him quick before he blows us up.

What are you thinking about?

_Policeman._ Well, I was wondering whether, from the point of view of

self-interest, which I too have adopted after reading your eloquent

arguments, it is of more advantage to me to seize this fellow by the

scruff of the neck or to make haste and establish a natural harmony of

interests between us.

V

In opposition to the alleged economic harmony, facts compel us to admit

that starting with private material interest as the purpose of labour

we arrive at universal discord and destruction instead of universal

happiness. If, however, the principle and the purpose of labour is

found in the idea of the common good, understood in the true moral

sense--_i.e._ as the good of all and each and not of the majority

only--that idea will also contain the satisfaction of every private

interest within proper limits.

From the moral point of view every man, whether he be an agricultural

labourer, a writer, or a banker, ought to work with a feeling that his

work is useful to all, and with a desire for it to be so; he ought to

regard it as a duty, as a fulfilment of the law of God and a service to

the universal welfare of his fellow-men. But just because this duty is

universal, it presupposes that every one else must regard the person

in question in the same way, _i.e._ to treat him not as a means only

but as an end or purpose of the activity of all. The duty of society is

to recognise and to secure to each of its members the _right_ to enjoy

unmolested _worthy_ human existence both for himself and his family.

Worthy existence is compatible with voluntary poverty, such as St.

Francis preached and as is practised by our wandering pilgrims; but it

is incompatible with work which reduces all the significance of man to

being simply a means for producing or transferring material wealth.

Here are some instances.

“We watch the _kriuchniks_ at work: the poor half-naked Tatars strain

every nerve. It is painful to see the bent back flatten out all of a

sudden under a weight of eight to eighteen puds[153] (the last figure

is not exaggerated). This terrible work is paid at the rate of five

roubles per thousand puds.[154] The most a _kriuchnik_ can earn in

the twenty-four hours is one rouble, and that if he works like an

ox and overstrains himself. Few can endure more than ten years of

such labour, and the two-legged beasts of burden become deformed or

paralytic” (_Novoe Vremya_, N. 7356). Those who have not seen the

Volga _kriuchniks_ are sure to have seen the porters in big hotels

who, breathless and exhausted, drag to the fourth or fifth floor boxes

weighing several hundredweight. And this in our age of machines and

all sorts of contrivances! No one seems to be struck by the obvious

absurdity. A visitor arrives at an hotel with luggage. To walk up the

stairs would be a useful exercise for him, but instead he gets into a

lift, while his things, for which, one would have thought, the lift was

expressly meant, are loaded on the back of the porter, who thus proves

to be not even an instrument of another man but an instrument of his

things--the means of a means!

Labour which is exclusively and crudely mechanical and involves too

great a strain of the muscular force is incompatible with human

dignity. But equally incompatible with it and equally immoral is work

which, though in itself not heavy or degrading, lasts all day long and

takes up _all_ the time and _all_ the forces of the person, so that

the few hours of leisure are necessarily devoted to physical rest, and

neither time nor energy is left for thoughts and interests of the ideal

or spiritual order.[155] In addition to hours of leisure, there are,

of course, entire days of rest--Sundays and other holidays. But the

exhausting and stupefying physical work of the week produces in holiday

time a natural reaction--a craving to plunge into dissipation and to

forget oneself, and the days of rest are devoted to the satisfaction of

that craving.

“Let us not, however, dwell on the impression which individual facts

susceptible of observation produce upon us, even though such facts be

numerous. Let us turn to statistics and inquire as to how far wages

satisfy the necessary wants of the workers. Leaving aside the rate of

wages in the different industries, the quality of food, the size of the

dwelling, etc., we will only ask of statistics the question as to the

relation between the length of human life and the occupation pursued.

The answer is as follows: Shoemakers live on the average to the age

of 49; printers, 48.3; tailors, 46.6; joiners, 44.7; blacksmiths,

41.8; turners, 41.6; masons, 33. And the average length of life of

civil servants, capitalists, clergymen, wholesale merchants, is 60-69

years.[156] Now take the figures referring to the death-rate in

relation to the size of the dwellings and the amount of rent in the

different parts of town. It will be seen that in parts of the town

with a poor population, belonging chiefly to the working class and

paying low rents, mortality is far higher than in the neighbourhood

with a relatively larger number of rich people. For Paris this relation

was established by Villarmé as early as the twenties of the present

century. He calculated that during the five years from 1822 to 1826,

in the II. arrondissement of Paris, where the average rent per flat

was 605 francs, there was one death per 71 inhabitants, while in the

arrondissement XII., where the average rent was 148 francs, there was

one death per 44 inhabitants. Similar data are to hand for many other

towns, Petersburg among them.[157] Hence the following true conclusion

is deduced: ‘If a workman is not regarded as a means of production,

but is recognised, like every other human being, to be a free agent and

an end in himself, the average forty years of life cannot be regarded

as normal, while men belonging to richer classes live on the average

till sixty or seventy years. This life, the longest possible under

the social conditions of the present day, must be regarded as normal.

All deviation below this average, unless it can be ascribed to the

peculiarities of the particular work in question, must be entirely put

down to excessive labour and insufficient income which does not allow

to satisfy the most essential needs and the minimum demands of hygiene

with regard to food, clothing, and housing.[158]

The absolute value of man is based, as we know, upon the _possibility_

inherent in his reason and his will of infinitely approaching

perfection or, according to the patristic expression, the possibility

of becoming divine (θέωσις). This possibility does not pass into

actuality completely and immediately, for if it did man would be

already equal to God--which is not the case. The inner potentiality

_becomes_ more and more actual, and can only do so under definite real

conditions. If an ordinary man is left for many years on an uninhabited

island or in strict solitary confinement he cannot improve morally

or intellectually, and indeed, exhibits rapid and obvious regress

towards the brutal stage. Strictly speaking, the same is true of a man

wholly absorbed in physical labour. Even if he does not deteriorate

he is certainly unable to think of actively realising his highest

significance as man. The moral point of view demands, then, that every

one should have the means of existence (_e.g._ clothes and a warm and

airy dwelling) and sufficient physical _rest_ secured to him, and that

he should also be able to enjoy _leisure_ for the sake of his spiritual

development. This and _this alone_ is _absolutely_ essential for every

peasant and workman; _anything above this is from the evil one_.

Those who are opposed to improving the social and economic relations

in accordance with the demands of morality urge the following

consideration. They maintain that the only way in which the working

people can, in addition to a secured material existence, have leisure

to pursue their moral and intellectual development, is by reducing the

number of hours of work, without reducing the wages. And this, they

argue, will lead to a decrease of output, _i.e._ to economic loss or

regress. Let it be _provisionally_ granted that shorter hours of work

with no reduction in wages will indeed inevitably lead to a diminution

in productiveness. But a _temporary_ diminution of output does not

necessarily mean regress or loss. When the hours of work have been

reduced to a certain norm, positive reasons conditioning the increase

of productiveness will continue to operate. Such causes are to be

found in technical improvements, greater proximity between different

districts and countries owing to new means of communication, a closer

intercourse between the different classes--causes all of which are

wholly or partly independent of wages and hours of work. Thus the

general quantity of output will again begin to increase; and even

at the time when the increase will not yet have attained the former

level, production of the objects of first necessity for individuals

and the state will obviously not be decreased at all, and the decrease

will entirely affect objects of luxury. It will be no great hardship

to society if gold watches, satin skirts, and velvet chairs become

twice or even three times as dear as they are now. It may be said

that shorter hours of work with the same pay means a direct loss to

the factory owners. It is impossible, however, to do anything without

loss to some one or other; and it could hardly be called a calamity

or an injustice if certain manufacturers were to get half a million

instead of a million, or fifty instead of a hundred thousand dividend.

This social class, no doubt an important and necessary one, does not

inevitably consist of avaricious, greedy, and selfish men. I know

several capitalists entirely free from these vices; and those of them

who are not have a right to demand that society should pity them and

not condone their abnormal and dangerous state of mind.

The hackneyed philippics, prompted by low envy, that socialists indulge

in against the rich are perfectly sickening; demands for equalisation

of property are unreasonable to the point of absurdity.[159] But it

is one thing to attack private wealth as though that in itself were

an evil, and another--to demand that wealth, as a relative good,

should harmonise with the common good understood in the light of

the unconditional moral principle. It is one thing to strive for an

impossible and unnecessary equalisation of property, and another, while

preserving the advantages of larger property to those who have it, to

recognise the right of every one to the necessary means of worthy human

existence.

Apart from the false conclusions which the opponents of the moral

regulation of economic relations deduce from their fundamental

assertion, they are wrong in that assertion itself. Regulation of the

hours of work and of the amount of wages need not necessarily curtail

the production at all (not even of the articles of luxury) or cause

corresponding losses to the factory owners. This would be the case

if the quantity--not to speak of quality--of the production entirely

depended upon the number of hours expended upon it. No thoughtful and

conscientious economist would, however, venture to maintain such a

crying absurdity. It is easy to see that a worker exhausted, dulled,

and embittered by excessive labour can produce in sixteen hours

less than he can produce in eight hours if he works zealously and

cheerfully, with a consciousness of his human dignity and a faith in

his moral connection with the society or the state which looks after

his interests instead of exploiting him. Thus a moral adjustment of

economic relations would at the same time make for economic progress.

VI

In considering the organisation of human relations--in this case, of

the economic ones--moral philosophy is not concerned with the concrete

particular forms and determinations. These are dictated by life itself,

and find realisation through the work of specialists and of men endowed

with authority--men of theory and men of practice. Moral philosophy is

only concerned with the immutable _conditions_ which follow from the

very nature of the good, and apart from which no concrete organisation

could be moral. From the ethical point of view every social

organisation is valuable and desirable only in so far as it embodies

the moral principle, only in so far as it _justifies the good_. To

make projects or prophecies is not the business of philosophy. It can

neither offer definite plans of social organisation, nor even know

whether individuals and nations will seek to adjust their relations

according to the demands of the absolute moral principle at all. Its

problem is as clear and as independent of any external circumstances as

the problems of pure mathematics. Under what conditions is a fragment

of a three-sided prism equal to three pyramids? Under what conditions

do social relations in a given sphere correspond to the demands of

the moral principle and ensure the stability and the constant moral

progress of a given community?

We already know under what conditions social relations in the domain

of material labour become moral. The first general condition is, that

the sphere of economic activity should not be isolated or affirmed as

independent and self-contained. The second, more special condition is

that production should not be at the expense of the human dignity of

the producers; that not one of them should become merely a means of

production, and that each should have secured to him material means

necessary for worthy existence and development. The first demand has

a religious character: not to put Mammon in the place of God, not to

regard material wealth as an independent good, and the final purpose of

human activity,[160] not even in the economic sphere. The second is a

demand of humane feeling: to pity those who labour and are heavy laden,

and not to set a lower value upon them than upon soulless things. To

these two a third condition is necessarily added, which, so far as I

am aware, has never yet been insisted upon in this connection. I am

referring to the duties of man as an economic agent towards material

nature itself, which he is called upon to cultivate. This duty is

directly indicated in the commandment of labour: Till the ground.[161]

To cultivate the ground means not to misuse, exhaust, or devastate it,

but to improve it, to bring it to greater power and fulness of being.

Neither our fellow-men nor material nature must be a mere passive or

impersonal instrument of economic production or exploitation. Taken in

itself or in isolation it is not the end of our activity, but it is a

distinct and independent part of that end. Its subordinate position in

relation to the Deity and humanity does not render it rightless: it

has a right to our help in transforming and uplifting it. Things are

rightless, but nature or earth is not merely a thing but an objectified

essence, which we can and therefore must help to become spiritualised.

The end of labour, so far as material nature is concerned, is not to

make it an instrument for obtaining things and money, but to perfect

it--to revive the lifeless, to spiritualise the material in it. The

_methods_ whereby this can be achieved cannot be indicated here; they

fall within the province of _art_ (in the broad sense of the Greek

τέχνη). But what is essential is the point of view, the inner attitude

and the direction of activity that results from it. _Without loving

nature for its own sake it is impossible to organise material life in a

moral way._

Man’s relation to material nature may be of three kinds: passive

submission to it as it now exists; active struggle with it, its

subjugation and the using of it as an indifferent instrument; and

finally, the affirmation of it in its ideal state--of that _which it

ought to become through man_. The first relation is wholly unjust both

to man and to nature--to man, because it deprives him of his spiritual

dignity by making him the slave of matter; to nature, because, in

worshipping it in its present imperfect and perverted condition,

man deprives it of the hope of perfection. The second, the negative

relation to nature is relatively normal, as a transitory and temporary

stage; for it is clear that in order to make nature what it ought to

be, we must first condemn it as it is, as it ought _not_ to be. But

absolutely normal and final is of course only the third, the positive

relation, in which man uses his superiority over nature for the sake

of uplifting it as well as of raising himself. It will be easily noted

that man’s threefold relation to earthly nature is a repetition, though

on a wider scale, of his relation to his own material nature. Here,

too, we necessarily distinguish the abnormal (passive) and the normal

(positively active) relation and the transition from the first to

the second (negatively active). The carnal man submits and surrenders

himself to the material life in its undue, perverted state. The ascetic

struggles with the flesh in order to conquer it. The perfect man,

having passed through such a struggle, does not destroy his bodily

life but attains to its transfiguration, resurrection, and ascension.

Asceticism or the subjugation of the flesh in individual life, struggle

with external earthly nature and the subjugation of it in the common

life of humanity, is merely a necessary transition and not the ideal

form of activity. The ideal is to cultivate the earth, _to minister to

it_, so that it might be renewed and regenerated.

VII

_The efficient or producing cause_ of labour is found in the _needs_

of man. This cause holds good for all the factors of production which

appear now as the subjects and now as the objects of needs. The worker,

as a living being, has need of the means of livelihood, and, as

labour, he is the object of need to the capitalist, who in his turn,

as employer, is an object of need to the worker, and in this sense

is the immediate efficient cause of his labour. The same persons, as

producers, stand in a similar relation to consumers, etc.

The _material_ (and instrumental) cause of labour and production is

found on the one hand in the forces of nature, and on the other in

the various faculties and forces of man. But these twofold (efficient

and material) economic causes, studied by political economy and

statistics from different points of view, are physically unlimited and

morally indefinite. The needs may increase in number and complexity

_ad infinitum_; both needs and faculties may be of different worth,

and, finally, the forces of nature may be used in the most various

directions. All this leads to practical questions to which political

economy, as a science limited to the material and existent aspect of

things, can give no answer. Many persons have a _need_ of pornography.

Should this need be satisfied by the production of indecent books,

pictures, immoral spectacles? Some demands, as well as some faculties,

are obviously perverted in character; thus in the case of many persons

certain positive qualities of intellect and will degenerate into a

peculiar capacity for clever swindling within the limits of legality.

Should we allow this capacity to develop freely and become a special

profession or branch of work? Political economy as such can obviously

answer nothing to questions such as these--they in no wise concern it.

They directly concern, however, the recognised interests of society

which cannot confine itself to matters of fact alone, but must submit

them to a higher causality, by drawing a distinction between the

normal and abnormal needs and faculties, the normal and abnormal use

of the forces of nature. Since the fact of the existence of needs on

the one hand and of forces and faculties on the other does not solve

the practical question as to the extent to which the first should be

satisfied and the manner in which the latter should be used, appeal has

to be made to the moral principle as determining that which _ought_

to be. It does not create the factors and elements of labour, but

indicates how those already in existence should be used. Hence follows

a new conception of labour, both more general and more definite than

that given by political economy as such. For political economy labour

is an activity of man ensuing from his needs, conditioned by his

faculties, applied to the forces of nature, and having for its purpose

the production of the greatest possible wealth. From the moral point

of view _labour is interaction between men in the material world; it

must, in accordance with the moral demands, secure to each and all

the necessary means of worthy existence, enabling man to bring to

perfection all his powers, and ts finally destined to transfigure

and spiritualise material nature_. Such is the essence of labour

from the point of view of the higher causality--of the formal and

final cause--apart from which the two lower causes remain practically

indefinite.

Further conditions of the normal economic life become clear in

analysing the conceptions of _property_ and _exchange_.

VIII

All the acute questions of the economic life are closely connected with

the idea of property, which in itself, however, belongs to the sphere

of jurisprudence, morality, and psychology rather than to that of

economic relations. This fact alone clearly shows how mistaken is the

attempt to conceive of the economic phenomena as entirely independent

and self-contained.

The ultimate basis of property, as all serious philosophers of modern

times rightly recognise, is to be found in the very nature of man.

Even in the contents of inner psychical experience we necessarily

distinguish _ourselves_ from what is _ours_: all our thoughts,

feelings, desires, we regard as belonging to us, in contradistinction

to ourselves as thinking, feeling, desiring. The relation is twofold.

On the one hand, we necessarily put ourselves above what is ours, for

we recognise that our existence is not by any means exhausted by or

limited to any particular mental states--that _this_ thought, _this_

desire may disappear while we ourselves remain. This is the fundamental

expression of human personality as formally unconditional, quite apart

from the metaphysical question of the soul as substance. On the other

hand, however, we are aware that if we are deprived of all mental

states altogether we shall become a blank; so that for the reality

and fulness of being it is insufficient to be ‘oneself,’ but it is

necessary to have ‘one’s own.’ Even in the inner psychical sphere that

which belongs to the self is not always the absolute property of the

person and is not always connected with him to the same extent.

Some mental states express by their content in the most intimate,

direct, and immediate way that which is essential and fundamental

to the given individual, and are in a sense inseparable from him.

Thus, for instance, when a person has an implicit steadfast faith in

God, such faith is his unalienable property--not in the sense that

he must always actually have in mind a positive thought of God with

corresponding thoughts and impulses, but only in the sense that every

time the idea of God actually arises in his mind, or that he is faced

with a question concerning God, a definite positive answer accompanied

by corresponding states of feeling and will is bound to follow. Other

mental states are, on the contrary, merely superficial and transitory

reactions of the person to external influences--accidental both in

content and in origin, though conditioned by a more or less complex

association of ideas and other mental and bodily processes. Thus when a

person happens to think of the advantages or disadvantages of cycling,

or to wish for a drink of beer, or to feel indignation at some lie in

the newspapers, etc., it is obvious that such accidental states are

but feebly connected with the person to whom they belong, that he

loses nothing and experiences no essential change when they disappear.

Finally, some mental states cannot, apart from their content and manner

of origin, be regarded as reactions on the part of the individual

who experiences them at all, so that their belonging to him must be

recognised as fictitious. To this category belong the _suggested_

(_hypnotically_ or otherwise) ideas, desires and feelings, and actions

ensuing therefrom. It is very difficult to offer a theoretical account

of them, but they unquestionably exist. Without going into these

exceptional phenomena, however, it is sufficient to indicate the fact

that both in theory and in practice certain actions are not laid to

the responsibility of the persons who commit them. In view of the

circumstance that, for the most part, these actions are conditioned

by corresponding ideas, feelings, and impulses on the part of the

agent, the recognition that he is not responsible for them implies that

certain mental states do not belong to or form the property of the

person who experiences them.

Thus even in the sphere of the inner psychical life we find that

property is but relative and different in degree, beginning with the

‘treasure’ in which man ‘puts his very soul’ and which may nevertheless

be taken from him, and ending with states which prove to belong to him

in an utterly fictitious sense. Similar relativity obtains with regard

to external property. The immediate object of it is man’s own body,

which, however, belongs to man only more or less. This is true, first,

in the natural sense that the individual himself cannot regard as

equally his own those organs or parts of the body without which earthly

life is altogether impossible (_e.g._ the head or the heart), those

without which it is possible but not enjoyable (_e.g._ ‘the apple of

the eye’), and those the loss of which is no misfortune at all (_e.g._

an amputated finger or an extracted tooth, not to speak of nails, hair,

etc.). If, however, the real connection of the person with his body is

thus relative and unequal, there is no natural ground for regarding

the body as his absolute property or as absolutely inviolable. And

from the point of view of the unconditional moral principle the bodily

inviolability of a person is not anything distinct and on its own

account, but is connected with universal and generally binding norms,

and is therefore incompatible with the violation of these norms. If it

is both my right and my duty forcibly to prevent a man from injuring a

defenceless being, it must be the right and the duty of other persons

to exercise such bodily compulsion over myself too in a similar case.

If, on the other hand, property is understood in the strict sense as

the ‘jus utendi and _abutendi_ re sua’ (the right to use and to _abuse_

of one’s own thing), such a right is not absolute so far as one’s body

is concerned. On this side too it is limited by just considerations

of the common good which have found expression in legal codes of all

epochs and nations. If the whole of man’s physical powers are needed,

for instance, for the defence of his country, even so slight an ‘abuse’

of one’s body as cutting off a finger is recognised as criminal. And

even apart from such special conditions, not by any means every use

that man may make of his body is regarded as permissible.

But whatever the moral and social limitations of man’s rights over his

own body may be, in any case it unquestionably belongs to him, just as

his mental states do, in virtue of a direct and natural connection,

independent of his will, between _himself_ and _what is his_. As to

external things, the ground upon which they belong to this or that

person, or are appropriated by him, is not immediately given and calls

for explanation. Even when there appears to be the closest connection

between a person and a thing, as for instance between necessary

clothing and the person who is wearing it, the question as to property

still remains open, for the clothes may not be his own but may have

been stolen from somebody else. On the other hand, a person living in

Petersburg or London may have immovable property in East Siberia which

he has never seen nor ever will see. If, then, the presence of the

closest real connection between a person and a thing (as in the first

case) is in no sense a guarantee of property, while the absence of any

real connection (as in the second instance) is no obstacle to property,

it follows that the real connection is altogether irrelevant and that

the right of property must have an ideal basis. According to a current

philosophical definition, property is the ideal continuation of the

person in things or the extension of the person to things. In what

way, however, and upon what ground is the self thus extended to what

is other than it and appropriates that other? Such extension cannot be

due to the act of personal will alone; an act of will can transfer the

already existing right of property (through gift or legacy, etc.), but

it cannot create the right itself. The right of property is usually

held to arise in two ways only, through possession and work. Possession

in the strict sense, _i.e._ apart from any special work (such as the

military), through simple seizure resulting from a direct act of will

gives rise to a special right of property, ‘the right of the first

occupier’ (‘_jus primi occupantis_’), but does so only in exceptional

cases, more and more rarely met with, when that which is seized belongs

to no one (‘_res nullius_’).

Work thus remains, in the general opinion, the essential basis of

property. The product of one’s work and effort naturally becomes one’s

own, one’s property. This ground, however, also proves to be insecure.

If it were sufficient, children would have to be recognised as the

property of the mother who brought them into the world with no little

labour and effort. Reservations have to be made and human beings

must be _a priori_ excluded from the class of objects of property;

and this can only be done in virtue of principles utterly foreign to

the economic sphere as such. At this point, however, a new and more

important difficulty arises. It has been granted that things alone

can be objects of property, and that the ground of property is labour

which produces them. This would be all very well if labour could

produce things; but in truth labour produces not things but _utility_

in things. Utility, however, is a relation and not a thing and cannot

therefore be the object of property. In common parlance, dating from

primitive times, it is usual to speak of workmen making things; but

even persons ignorant of political economy understand that workmen

merely produce in the given material changes which communicate to it

some relatively new qualities corresponding to certain human needs.

There is no doubt that they work for their own sake as well as for

other people’s, and that their work must give satisfaction to their own

needs. “The workman is worthy of his meat,”[162]--this is a moral axiom

which no one would honestly challenge. The question, however, is what

can be the ground of the workman’s ownership of the so-called products

of labour. Labour which does not produce a thing, but only a certain

particular quality in it, inseparable from the thing itself, cannot

justify the ownership of that which it did not produce, and which does

not depend upon it. The employer is responsible for the workman’s

labour but not for the reality of its products, and is therefore in the

same position as the workman with regard to the latter.

Thus there exists no real ground why the product of labour should

be the property of any one, and we must therefore turn to the ideal

grounds.

IX

In virtue of the absolute significance of personality every man has

a right to the means of a worthy existence. Since, however, the

individual as such has this right potentially only, and it depends

upon society actually to realise or to secure it, it follows that the

individual has a corresponding duty towards society--the duty to be

useful to it or to work for the common good. In this sense work is the

source of property: the worker has an unquestionable right of property

over what he has _earned_. Within certain limits demanded by the moral

principle, wages may be regulated by society--_i.e._ by the central

authority or the Government--and not be allowed to fall below a certain

minimum, but they cannot be prescribed with absolute exactness. On the

other hand, the needs and the conditions of a worthy existence are

even in a normal society only an _approximately_ constant and definite

quantity. Hence it becomes possible for individual persons to save or

to accumulate material means, _i.e._ to form _capital_. There is, of

course, still less visible and real connection between capital and the

person who has saved it than there is between the workman and the thing

he has made, but the close and complete ideal connection is obvious.

Capital as such, in its general nature--apart from the circumstances

owing to which it may in individual cases have been built up--is a

pure product of human will, for originally it depended upon that will

to save a part of the earnings or to use it too for current needs.

Capital, therefore, ought in justice to be recognised as property _par

excellence_.[163]

The conception of property involves the conception of freely disposing

of the object of property. Ought this freedom to be absolute and

include both the use and the abuse of property? Since the realisation

of any right at all is only possible if society guarantees it, there is

no reason why society should guarantee personal misuse of a right that

conflicts with the common good. From the fact that, according to the

moral principle, the individual has absolute and inalienable rights,

it by no means follows that every act of his will is the expression

of such an inalienable right. Apart from being irrational such a

supposition would be practically self-destructive, since a will which

trespasses upon all rights would also in that case be inviolable, and

therefore there would be no inalienable right left. And if it is both

permissible and obligatory to prevent a person from misusing his hands

(for instance, from committing a murder), it is also permissible and

obligatory to prevent him from misusing his property to the detriment

of the common good or social justice.[164]

The only question is as to what we are to understand by misuse that

calls for the intervention of the state. Socialism recognises as

misuse all transfer of earned property to another person by legacy or

testament. This transference of economic advantages to persons who have

not personally deserved them is alleged to be the main wrong and the

source of all social evils. But although inheritance of property has

some real drawbacks, they disappear in the face of the positive side

of this institution, which necessarily follows from the very nature

of man. The continuous chain of progress in humanity is kept together

by the conscious successiveness of its links. While the all-embracing

unity of the future is still in the making, the very process whereby

it comes about demands mutual moral dependence between generations,

in virtue of which one does not merely follow the other but also

_inherits_ from it. If it were not for the intentional and voluntary

handing down of what has been acquired, we should have only a physical

succession of generations, the later repeating the life of the former,

as is the case with animals. The most important thing, of course, is

the continuous accumulation of spiritual inheritance; but since it

is only given to a few to hand down to universal posterity permanent

spiritual acquisitions, and since moral demands are the same for all,

it is the right and the duty of the majority of men to try and improve

the material conditions of life for their immediate successors. Those

who wholly devote themselves to the service of the universal future

and already anticipate it as an ideal have a right to refer to the

precept of taking no thought for the morrow advocated in the Gospels.

To imitate the lilies of the field one must be as pure as they are, and

to be like the fowls of the air one must be able to fly as high. But if

either purity or loftiness be lacking, practical carelessness likens

us not to the lilies or the birds of the air, but to the animal which,

careless of the future, grubs up the roots of the kindly oak tree, and

even, on occasion, devours its own offspring instead of acorns.

When dealing with an institution which is not immoral and is based upon

ideal foundations though it corresponds only to the medium level of

morality, no serious moralist ought to forget the unquestionable truth

that it is far more difficult for society to rise above this level

than to sink below it. Even if socialism and theories akin to it did

intend to turn every human being into an angel, they would certainly

fail to do so; but to bring the human mass down to the brutal stage

is not at all difficult. To reject in the name of the absolute moral

ideal the necessary social conditions of moral progress means, in the

first place, in defiance of logic, to confuse the absolute and eternal

value of that _which is being realised_ with the relative value of

the degree of realisation as a process in time. Secondly, it means

a thoughtless attitude towards the absolute ideal which, apart from

the concrete conditions of its realisation, becomes for man an empty

phrase. Thirdly, this pseudo-moral uncompromising straightforwardness

means the absence of the most fundamental and elementary moral

impulse--_pity_, and pity precisely to those who are most in need of

it--to the ‘least of these.’ To preach absolute morality and reject

all moralising institutions, to lay burdens too heavy to be borne upon

the weak and helpless shoulders of average humanity, _is illogical,

thoughtless, and immoral_.

Inherited property is the abiding realisation of moral interaction in

the most intimate and the most fundamental social group--namely, in the

family. Inherited wealth is, on the one hand, the embodiment of pity,

reaching beyond the grave, of the parents for their children, and, on

the other, a concrete point of departure for a pious memory of the

departed parents. With these two is connected, at any rate with regard

to the most important kind of property--the property in land, a third

moral factor, viz. man’s relation to the external nature, _i.e._ to

the earth. For the majority of men this relation can become moral only

on condition of their having inherited landed property. To understand

earthly nature and to love it for its own sake is given to a few only;

but every one becomes naturally attached to his own native spot, to the

graves of his fathers and the haunts of his childhood. It is a moral

bond, and one which extends human solidarity to material nature, thus

making a beginning of its spiritualisation. This fact both justifies

the institution of inherited property in land and serves as a basis

for making it more conformable to the demands of morality. It is not

sufficient to recognise the ideal character which obviously attaches

to such property: it is necessary to strengthen and develop this

character, protecting it from the low and selfish motives which are

natural enough at the present stage of human progress and may easily

gain the upper hand. Decisive check must be put upon the treatment of

the earth as a lifeless instrument of rapacious exploitation; the plots

of land handed down from one generation to another must, in principle,

be made inalienable and sufficient to maintain in each person a moral

attitude towards the earth. It will be said that, with the population

constantly increasing, enough land cannot be found both to preserve to

each what he has got, or even a part of it, and to give some to those

who have not got any. This objection appears to be a serious one, but

is in truth either thoughtless or unfair. It would certainly be very

absurd to suggest as an absolute, separate, and independent measure

that an inalienable plot of land should be secured to each and all.

This measure may and ought to be taken only in connection with another

reform--the cessation, namely, of that rapacious method of cultivation

which will end in there not being enough land for any one, let alone

for all. And if land is treated in the moral way and _looked after_

like a being whom one loves, the minimum amount of land sufficient for

each person may become so small that there will be enough for those who

have not got any, without doing injustice to those who have.

As to the unlimited increase of population, it is not ordained by any

physical, and, still less, by any moral law. It is understood, of

course, that normal economics are only possible in connection with

the normal family, which is based upon rational asceticism and not

upon unchecked carnal instincts. The immoral exploitation of land

cannot stop so long as there is immoral exploitation of woman. If

man’s relation to his inner _house_ (this is the name applied by the

Scriptures to the wife) is wrong, his relation to his external house

cannot be right either. A man who beats his wife cannot care for the

earth as he should. Speaking generally, the moral solution of the

economic question is intimately connected with the whole problem of

life in the individual and the race.

X

Just as there can be no physiological life without the interchange of

substances, so there can be no social life without the interchange of

things (and of signs representing them). This important section of

human material relations is studied on its technical side by political

economy, financial and commercial law, and falls within the scope of

moral philosophy only in so far as _exchange_ becomes _fraud_. To judge

economic phenomena and relations as such--to affirm, _e.g._, as some

moralists do, that money is an evil, that there must be no commerce,

that banks ought to be abolished, etc.--is unpardonable childishness.

It is obvious that objects which are thus condemned are morally

indifferent or neutral, and become good or evil only according to the

quality and direction of the will that uses them. If we are to give up

money as an evil because many people use money for evil purposes, we

ought also to give up the power of articulate speech, since many use it

for swearing, idle talk, and slander; we should also have to give up

using fire for fear of conflagrations, and water for fear of persons

committing suicide by drowning. In truth, however, money, commerce,

and banks are not in themselves an evil but become an evil, or, more

exactly, become the consequence of an already existing evil and the

cause of a new one, when, instead of necessary interchange, they serve

the purposes of selfish fraud.

The root of evil in this case, as in the whole of the economic sphere,

is one and the same, namely, that the material interest is made

dominant instead of subservient, independent instead of dependent, an

end instead of a means. From this poisonous root three noxious stems

spring in the domain of exchange--falsification, speculation, and usury.

A modern text-book of political economy gives as a current definition

of commerce that it is a trade “consisting in the buying and selling

of goods with the object of gain.” The description of commerce as the

buying and selling of goods is purely verbal; the important thing is

the purpose which is here said to consist entirely in the gain of the

trader.[165] If, however, the one object of commerce is gain, all

profitable falsification of goods and all successful speculation is

justified. And if gain is the purpose of commerce, it is certainly also

the purpose of money-lending; and since the latter is more profitable

the higher the rate of interest, unlimited usury is also justified. If,

on the other hand, such facts are recognised as inconsistent with the

moral norm, it must also be recognised that commerce and exchange in

general may only be a means of private gain _on condition_ that they

should in the first place serve the community as a whole and fulfil a

social function for the good of all.

From this point of view the economic anomalies indicated can only be

abolished if their immoral root is destroyed. But every one understands

that the unchecked growth of a plant strengthens its roots and extends

them in breadth and in depth, and that if the roots are very deep, the

stem must be cut down first. To speak without metaphors: apart from

the inner, purely ideal and verbal struggle with the vice of cupidity,

normal society can and ought decisively to oppose by means of concrete

external measures such luxurious growths of unlimited cupidity as

commercial falsification, speculation, and usury.

Falsification of goods, especially of the objects of necessary

consumption, is a menace to public welfare and is not merely immoral

but positively criminal. In some cases it is regarded as such even at

the present day, but this view must be worked out more consistently.

When the whole legal procedure and system of penalties[166] is

reformed, increased persecution of these special offences will not be

an act of cruelty but of justice. Two things ought to be remembered in

this connection: in the first place, that people who suffer most from

this evil are the poor and ignorant, who are unfortunate enough as it

is; and secondly, that the unchecked performance of these crimes, as of

all others, is injurious not only to the victims but to the criminals

themselves, who may feel that their immorality is justified and

encouraged by the condonation of society.

Financial operations with fictitious values (the so-called

‘speculations’) are certainly a social disease rather than a personal

crime, and the first remedy is absolute prohibition of institutions

whereby this disease is nurtured. As to usury, the only sure method of

abolishing it is, obviously, universal development of normal credit,

not with the object of gain but as a charitable institution.

In discussing economic relations which ought to hold in the domain of

labour, property, and exchange, I have spoken throughout of justice and

right, conceptions which have also been presupposed in the treatment

of the penal question. For the most part the terms ‘justice’ and

‘right’ carry the same meaning. The idea of justice, however, expresses

a purely moral demand, and therefore belongs to the ethical sphere,

while right determines a special sphere of relations--namely, the legal

one. Is this distinction merely a misunderstanding or, if it is well

grounded, what is the meaning and the degree of it? Turning now to the

question as to the relation of morality and legal justice or right,

we may note, without prejudging the content of our inquiry, that the

question is an extremely wide one, for the idea of right inevitably

involves a series of other ideas--law, authority, legal compulsion,

state. In discussing the _organisation_ of just social relations I took

these ideas for granted, since such an organisation can obviously not

be realised through moral preaching alone.

FOOTNOTES:

[150] Direct violation of the law by the evil will is foreseen by the

law itself and is treated as a crime which calls forth a corresponding

punishment.

[151] A remarkably characteristic specimen of plutocratic hypocrisy

is an article by the well-known Jules Simon (now deceased) which

appeared some years ago without attracting notice. The article deals

with the three chief evils of modern society: the decline of religion,

of family, and of ... _rentes_! The treatment of religion and family

is dull and vague, but the lines dealing with the fall of interest on

capital (from 4 per cent to 2½ per cent, if I remember rightly) are

written with the blood of the heart.

[152] The contention that socialism and plutocracy are based upon one

and the same materialistic principle was put forward by me eighteen

years ago (in chapter xiv. of the _Kritika otvletchonnih natchal_

(_Critique of Abstract Principles_), first published in the _Russky

Viestnik_ in 1878) and led my critics to accuse me of having a wrong

conception of socialism and of misjudging its value. I need no longer

answer these criticisms, for they have been brilliantly disproved by

the history of the socialistic movement itself, the main current of

which has decidedly evinced itself as _economic materialism_.

[153] 2½ cwt. and 5¾ cwt.

[154] 16⅒ tons.

[155] Tram conductors in Petersburg work more than eighteen hours a day

for twenty-five or thirty roubles a month (see _Novoe Vremya_, N. 7357).

[156] The author quoted refers here to Hanshofer’s book, _Lehrbuch der

Statistik_. All the figures quoted are apparently for the countries of

Western Europe.

[157] A. A. Isaev, _Natchala polititcheskoi economii_ (_Principles of

Political Economy_), 2nd ed. pp. 254-255.

[158] A. A. Isaev, _Natchala polititcheskoi economii_ (_Principles of

Political Economy_), 2nd ed. p. 226.

[159] The diametrical opposition between socialism and Christianity

has often been noted, but the essence of it is generally wrongly

understood. The popular saying that socialism demands that the poor

should take from the rich, while Christianity wants the rich to give

to the poor, is more witty than profound. The opposition is far deeper

than this, and lies in the moral attitude towards the rich. Socialism

_envies_ them and Christianity _pities_ them--pities them because of

the obstacles which connection with Mammon puts in the way of moral

perfection: it is hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven.

But socialism takes that kingdom itself--_i.e._ the highest good and

blessedness--to consist in nothing other than wealth, provided it is

differently distributed. That which for Christianity is an obstacle,

for socialism is an end; if this is not an antithesis I do not know

what else to call by that name.

[160] The recognition of material wealth as the _end_ of economic

activity may be called the original sin of political economy, since it

dates back to Adam Smith.

[161] The Hebrew words _laobod ef gaadàma_ (Gen. iii. 23) literally

mean ‘to serve the earth’--not, of course, to serve in the sense of a

religious cult (although the word _obod_ is used in this sense also)

but in the sense in which angels serve humanity or a teacher serves the

children, etc.

[162] ‘Meat’ should, of course, be understood in the wide sense

explained above.

[163] I have indicated the source of capital in the simplest normal

scheme. But whatever anomalies may accompany the formation and growth

of capital in actual life, the part played by the will or the strength

of spirit remains in any case essential. Since there is no doubt

that all wealth may be squandered, the mere fact of _saving_ it is

an obvious _merit of will_ on the part of the saver; it is null in

comparison with merits of a different and higher order, but in their

absence it undoubtedly has an importance of its own.

[164] Even Roman law, thoroughly individualistic as it was in this

respect, introduced an important reservation into the formula quoted

above: proprietas est jus utendi et abutendi re sua _quatenus juris

ratio patitur_--property is the right to use and to abuse of one’s

thing in so far as it is compatible with the meaning (or the rational

basis) of justice. But the meaning of justice demands precisely that

private caprice should be limited by the common good.

[165] I do not, of course, hold the author of the book responsible for

this definition, since he only gives expression to the popular idea.

[166] See above, Part III., Chap. VI.