significant indication of what may be looked for under a régime of peace
at large, with due allowance for what is obviously necessary to be
allowed for, then what is held in promise would appear to be an era of
unexampled commercial prosperity, of investment and business enterprise
on a scale hitherto not experienced. These developments will bring their
necessary consequences affecting the life of the community, and some of
the consequences it should be possible to foresee. The circumstances
conditioning this prospective era of peace and prosperity will
necessarily differ from the corresponding circumstances that
conditioned the Victorian peace, and many of these points of difference
it is also possible to forecast in outline with a fair degree of
confidence. It is in the main these economic factors going to condition
the civilisation of the promised future that will have to be depended on
to give the cue to any student interested in the prospective unfolding
of events.
The scheme of law and order governing all modern nations, both in the
conduct of their domestic affairs and in their national policies, is in
its controlling elements the scheme worked out through British (and
French) experience in the eighteenth century and earlier, as revised and
further accommodated in the nineteenth century. Other peoples,
particularly the Dutch, have of course had their part in the derivation
and development of this modern scheme of institutional principles, but
it has after all been a minor part; so that the scheme at large would
not differ very materially, if indeed it should differ sensibly, from
what it is, even if the contribution of these others had not been had.
The backward nations, as e.g., Germany, Russia, Spain, etc., have of
course contributed substantially nothing but retardation and
maladjustment to this modern scheme of civil life; whatever may be due
to students resident in those countries, in the way of scholarly
formulation. This nineteenth century scheme it is proposed to carry over
into the new era; and the responsible spokesmen of the projected new
order appear to contemplate no provision touching this scheme of law and
order, beyond the keeping of it intact in all substantial respects.
When and in so far as the projected peace at large takes effect,
international interests will necessarily fall somewhat into the
background, as being no longer a matter of precarious equilibration,
with heavy penalties in the balance; and diplomacy will consequently
become even more of a make-believe than today--something after the
fashion of a game of bluff played with irredeemable "chips." Commercial,
that is to say business, enterprise will consequently come in for a more
undivided attention and be carried on under conditions of greater
security and of more comprehensive trade relations. The population of
the pacified world may be expected to go on increasing somewhat as in
the recent past; in which connection it is to be remarked that not more
than one-half, presumably something less than one-half, of the available
agricultural resources have been turned to account for the civilised
world hitherto. The state of the industrial arts, including means of
transport and communication, may be expected to develop farther in the
same general direction as before, assuming always that peace conditions
continue to hold. Popular intelligence, as it is called,--more properly
popular education,--may be expected to suffer a further advance;
necessarily so, since it is a necessary condition of any effectual
advance in the industrial arts,--every appreciable technological advance
presumes, as a requisite to its working-out in industry, an augmented
state of information and of logical facility in the workmen under whose
hands it is to take effect.
Of the prescriptive rights carried over into the new era, under the
received law and order, the rights of ownership alone may be expected to
have any material significance for the routine of workday life; the
other personal rights that once seemed urgent will for everyday purposes
have passed into a state of half-forgotten matter-of-course. As now, but
in an accentuated degree, the rights of ownership will, in effect,
coincide and coalesce with the rights of investment and business
management. The market--that is to say the rule of the price-system in
all matters of production and livelihood--may be expected to gain in
volume and inclusiveness; so that virtually all matters of industry and
livelihood will turn on questions of market price, even beyond the
degree in which that proposition holds today. The progressive extension
and consolidation of investments, corporate solidarity, and business
management may be expected to go forward on the accustomed lines, as
illustrated by the course of things during the past few decades. Market
conditions should accordingly, in a progressively increased degree, fall
under the legitimate discretionary control of businessmen, or syndicates
of businessmen, who have the disposal of large blocks of invested
wealth,--"big business," as it is called, should reasonably be expected
to grow bigger and to exercise an increasingly more unhampered control
of market conditions, including the money market and the labor market.
With such improvements in the industrial arts as may fairly be expected
to come forward, and with the possible enhancement of industrial
efficiency which should follow from a larger scale of organisation, a
wider reach of transport and communication, and an increased
population,--with these increasing advantages on the side of productive
industry, the per-capita product as well as the total product should be
increased in a notable degree, and the conditions of life should
possibly become notably easier and more attractive, or at least more
conducive to efficiency and personal comfort, for all concerned. Such
would be the first and unguarded inference to be drawn from the premises
of the case as they offer themselves in the large; and something of that
kind is apparently what floats before the prophetic vision of the
advocates of a league of nations for the maintenance of peace at large.
These premises, and the inferences so drawn from them, may be further
fortified and amplified in the same sense on considering that certain
very material economies also become practicable, and should take effect
"in the absence of disturbing causes," on the establishment of such a
peace at large. It will of course occur to all thoughtful persons that
armaments must be reduced, perhaps to a minimum, and that the cost of
these things, in point of expenditures as well as of man-power spent in
the service, would consequently fall off in a corresponding measure. So
also, as slight further reflection will show, would the cost of the
civil service presumably fall off very appreciably; more particularly
the cost of this service per unit of service rendered. Some such climax
of felicities might be looked for by hopeful persons, in the absence of
disturbing causes.
Under the new dispensation the standard of living, that is to say the
standard of expenditure, would reasonably be expected to advance in a
very appreciable degree, at least among the wealthy and well-to-do; and
by pressure of imitative necessity a like effect would doubtless also be
had among the undistinguished mass. It is not a question of the standard
of living considered as a matter of the subsistence minimum, or even a
standard of habitually prevalent creature comfort, particularly not
among the wealthy and well-to-do. These latter classes have long since
left all question of material comfort behind in their accepted standards
of living and in the continued advance of these standards. For these
classes who are often spoken of euphemistically as being "in easy
circumstances," it is altogether a question of a standard of reputable
expenditure, to be observed on pain of lost self-respect and of lost
reputation at large. As has been remarked in an earlier passage, wants
of this kind are indefinitely extensible. So that some doubt may well be
entertained as to whether the higher productive efficiency spoken of
will necessarily make the way of life easier, in view of this need of a
higher standard of expenditure, even when due account is taken of the
many economies which the new dispensation is expected to make
practicable.
One of the effects to be looked for would apparently be an increased
pressure on the part of aspiring men to get into some line of business
enterprise; since it is only in business, as contrasted with the
industrial occupations, that anyone can hope to find the relatively
large income required for such an expensive manner of life as will bring
any degree of content to aspirants for pecuniary good repute. So it
should follow that the number of businessmen and business concerns would
increase up to the limit of what the traffic could support, and that the
competition between these rival, and in a sense over-numerous, concerns
would push the costs of competition to the like limit. In this respect
the situation would be of much the same character as what it now is,
with the difference that the limit of competitive expenditures would be
rather higher than at present, to answer to the greater available margin
of product that could be devoted to this use; and that the competing
concerns would be somewhat more numerous, or at least that the aggregate
expenditure on competitive enterprise would be somewhat larger; as,
e.g., costs of advertising, salesmanship, strategic litigation,
procuration of legislative and municipal grants and connivance, and the
like.
It is always conceivable, though it may scarcely seem probable, that
these incidents of increased pressure of competition in business traffic
might eventually take up all the slack, and leave no net margin of
product over what is available under the less favorable conditions of
industry that prevail today; more particularly when this increased
competition for business gains is backed by an increased pressure of
competitive spending for purposes of a reputable appearance. All this
applies in retail trade and in such lines of industry and public service
as partakes of the nature of retail trade, in the respect that
salesmanship and the costs of salesmanship enter into their case in an
appreciable measure; this is an extensive field, it is true, and
incontinently growing more extensive with the later changes in the
customary methods of marketing products; but it is by no means anything
like the whole domain of industrial business, and by no means a field in
which business is carried on without interference of a higher control
from outside its own immediate limits.
All this generously large and highly expensive and profitable field of
trade and of trade-like industry, in which the businessmen in charge
deal somewhat directly with a large body of customers, is always subject
to limitations imposed by the condition of the market; and the condition
of the market is in part not under the control of these businessmen, but
is also in part controlled by large concerns in the background; which in
their turn are after all also not precisely free agents; in fact not
much more so than their cousins in the retail trade, being confined in
all their motions by the constraint of the price-system that dominates
the whole and gathers them all in its impersonal and inexorable net.
There is a colloquial saying among businessmen, that they are not doing
business for their health; which being interpreted means that they are
doing business for a price. It is out of a discrepancy in price, between
purchase and sale, or between transactions which come to the same result
as purchase and sale, that the gains of business are drawn; and it is in
terms of price that these gains are rated, amassed and funded. It is
necessary, for a business concern to achieve a favorable balance in
terms of price; and the larger the balance in terms of price the more
successful the enterprise. Such a balance can not be achieved except by
due regard to the conditions of the market, to the effect that dealings
must not go on beyond what will yield a favorable balance in terms of
price between income and outgo. As has already been remarked above, the
prescriptive and indispensable recourse in all this conduct of business
is sabotage, limitation of supply to bring a remunerative price result.
The new dispensation offers two new factors bearing on this businesslike
need of a sagacious sabotage, or rather it brings a change of
coefficients in two factors already familiar in business management: a
greater need, for gainful business, of resorting to such limitation of
traffic; and a greater facility of ways and means for enforcing the
needed restriction. So, it is confidently to be expected that in the
prospective piping time of peace the advance in the industrial arts will
continue at an accelerated rate; which may confidently be expected to
affect the practicable increased production of merchantable goods; from
which it follows that it will act to depress the prices of these goods;
from which it follows that if a profitable business is to be done in the
conduct of productive industry a greater degree of continence than
before will have to be exercised in order not to let prices fall to an
unprofitable figure; that is to say, the permissible output must be held
short of the productive capacity of such industry by a wider margin than
before. On the other hand, it is well known out of the experience of the
past few decades that a larger coalition of invested capital,
controlling a larger proportion of the output, can more effectually
limit the supply to a salutary maximum, such as will afford reasonable
profits. And with the new dispensation affording a freer scope for
business enterprise on conditions of greater security, larger coalitions
than before are due to come into bearing. So that the means will be at
hand competently to meet this more urgent need of a stricter limitation
of the output, in spite of any increased productive capacity conferred
on the industrial community by any conceivable advance in the industrial
arts. The outcome to be looked for should apparently be such an
effectual recourse to capitalistic sabotage as will neutralise any added
advantage that might otherwise accrue to the community from its
continued improvements in technology.
In spite of this singularly untoward conjuncture of circumstances to be
looked for, there need be no serious apprehension that capitalistic
sabotage, with a view to maintaining prices and the rate of profits,
will go all the way, to the result indicated, at least not on the
grounds so indicated alone. There is in the modern development of
technology, and confidently to be counted on, a continued flow of new
contrivances and expedients designed to supersede the old; and these are
in fact successful, in greater or less measure, in finding their way
into profitable use, on such terms as to displace older appliances,
underbid them in the market, and render them obsolete or subject to
recapitalisation on a lowered earning-capacity. So far as this
unremitting flow of innovations has its effect, that is to say so far as
it can not be hindered from having an effect, it acts to lower the
effectual cost of products to the consumer. This effect is but a partial
and somewhat uncertain one, but it is always to be counted in as a
persistent factor, of uncertain magnitude, that will affect the results
in the long run.
As has just been spoken of above, large coalitions of invested wealth
are more competent to maintain, or if need be to advance, prices than
smaller coalitions acting in severalty, or even when acting in
collusion. This state of the case has been well illustrated by the very
successful conduct of such large business organisations during the past
few decades; successful, that is, in earning large returns on the
investments engaged. Under the new dispensation, as has already been
remarked, coalitions should reasonably be expected to grow to a larger
size and achieve a greater efficiency for the same purpose.
The large gains of the large corporate coalitions are commonly ascribed
by their promoters, and by sympathetic theoreticians of the ancient
line, to economies of production made practicable by a larger scale of
production; an explanation which is disingenuous only so far as it needs
be. What is more visibly true on looking into the workings of these
coalitions in detail is that they are enabled to maintain prices at a
profitable, indeed at a strikingly profitable, level by such a control
of the output as would be called sabotage if it were put in practice by
interested workmen with a view to maintain wages. The effects of this
sagacious sabotage become visible in the large earnings of these
investments and the large gains which, now and again, accrue to their
managers. Large fortunes commonly are of this derivation.
In cases where no recapitalisation has been effected for a considerable
series of years the yearly earnings of such businesslike coalitions have
been known to approach fifty percent on the capitalised value. Commonly,
however, when earnings rise to a striking figure, the business will be
recapitalised on the basis of its earning-capacity, by issue of a stock
dividend, by reincorporation in a new combination with an increased
capitalisation, and the like. Such augmentation of capital not unusually
has been spoken of by theoretical writers and publicists as an increase
of the community's wealth, due to savings; an analysis of any given case
is likely to show that its increased capital value represents an
increasingly profitable procedure for securing a high price above cost,
by stopping the available output short of the productive capacity of the
industries involved. Loosely speaking, and within the limits of what the
traffic will bear, the gains in such a case are proportioned to the
deficiency by which the production or supply under control falls short
of productive capacity. So that the capitalisation in the case comes to
bear a rough proportion to the material loss which this organisation of
sabotage is enabled to inflict on the community at large; and instead of
its being a capitalisation of serviceable means of production it may,
now and again, come to little else than a capitalisation of chartered
sabotage.
Under the new dispensation of peace and security at large this manner of
capitalisation and business enterprise might reasonably be expected to
gain something in scope and security of operation. Indeed, there are few
things within the range of human interest on which an opinion may more
confidently be formed beforehand. If the rights of property, in their
extent and amplitude, are maintained intact as they are before the law
today, the hold which business enterprise on the large scale now has on
the affairs and fortunes of the community at large is bound to grow
firmer and to be used more unreservedly for private advantage under the
new conditions contemplated.
The logical result should be an accelerated rate of accumulation of the
country's wealth in the hands of a relatively very small class of
wealthy owners, with a relatively inconsiderable semi-dependent middle
class of the well-to-do, and with the mass of the population even more
nearly destitute than they are today. At the same time it is scarcely to
be avoided that this wholly dependent and impecunious mass of the
population must be given an appreciably better education than they have
today. The argument will return to the difficulties that are liable to
arise out of this conjuncture of facts, in the way of discontent and
possible disturbance.
* * * * *
Meantime, looking to the promise of the pacific future in the light of
the pacific past, certain further consequences, particularly
consequences of the economic order, that may reasonably be expected to
follow will also merit attention. The experience of the Victorian peace
is almost as pointed in its suggestion on this head as if it had been an
experiment made _ad hoc_; but with the reservation that the scale of
economic life, after all, was small in the Victorian era, and its pace
was slack, compared with what the twentieth century should have to offer
under suitable conditions of peace and pecuniary security. In the light
of this most instructive modern instance, there should appear to be in
prospect a growth of well-bred families resting on invested wealth and
so living on unearned incomes; larger incomes and consequently a more
imposingly well-bred body of gentlefolk, sustained and vouched for by a
more munificent expenditure on superfluities, than the modern world has
witnessed hitherto. Doubtless the resulting growth of gentlemen and
gentlewomen would be as perfect after their kind as these unexampled
opportunities of gentle breeding might be expected to engender; so that
even their British precursors on the trail of respectability would fall
somewhat into insignificance by comparison, whether in respect of
gentlemanly qualities or in point of cost per unit.
The moral, and even more particularly the aesthetic, value of such a
line of gentlefolk, and of the culture which they may be expected to
place on view,--this cultural side of the case, of course, is what one
would prefer to dwell on, and on the spiritual gains that might be
expected to accrue to humanity at large from the steady contemplation of
this meritorious respectability so displayed at such a cost.
But the prosaic necessity of the argument turns back to the economic and
civil bearing of this prospective development, this virtual bifurcation
of the pacified nation into a small number of gentlemen who own the
community's wealth and consume its net product in the pursuit of
gentility, on the one hand, and an unblest mass of the populace who do
the community's work on a meager livelihood tapering down toward the
subsistence minimum, on the other hand. Evidently, this prospective
posture of affairs may seem "fraught with danger to the common weal," as
a public spirited citizen might phrase it. Or, as it would be expressed
in less eloquent words, it appears to comprise elements that should
make for a change. At the same time it should be recalled, and the
statement will command assent on slight reflection, that there is no
avoiding substantially such a posture of affairs under the promised
régime of peace and security, provided only that the price-system stands
over intact, and the current rights of property continue to be held
inviolate. If the known principles of competitive gain and competitive
spending should need enforcement to that effect by an illustrative
instance, the familiar history of the Victorian peace is sufficient to
quiet all doubts.
Of course, the resulting articulation of classes in the community will
not be expected to fall into such simple lines of sheer contrast as this
scheme would indicate. The class of gentlefolk, the legally constituted
wasters, as they would be rated from the economic point of view, can not
be expected personally to take care of so large a consumption of
superfluities as this posture of affairs requires at their hands. They
would, as the Victorian peace teaches, necessarily have the assistance
of a trained corps of experts in unproductive consumption, the first and
most immediate of whom would be those whom the genial phrasing of Adam
Smith designates "menial servants." Beyond these would come the
purveyors of superfluities, properly speaking, and the large, indeed
redundant, class of tradespeople of high and low degree,--dependent in
fact but with an illusion of semi-dependence; and farther out again the
legal and other professional classes of the order of stewards, whose
duty it will be to administer the sources of income and receive,
apportion and disburse the revenues so devoted to a traceless
extinguishment.
There would, in other words, be something of a "substantial middle
class," dependent on the wealthy and on their expenditure of wealth, but
presumably imbued with the Victorian middle-class illusion that they are
of some account in their own right. Under the due legal forms and
sanctions this, somewhat voluminous, middle-class population would
engage in the traffic which is their perquisite, and would continue to
believe, in some passable fashion, that they touch the substance of
things at something nearer than the second remove. They would in great
part appear to be people of "independent means," and more particularly
would they continue in the hope of so appearing and of some time making
good the appearance. Hence their fancied, and therefore their
sentimental, interest would fall out on the side of the established law
and order; and they would accordingly be an element of stability in the
commonwealth, and would throw in their weight, and their voice, to
safeguard that private property and that fabric of prices and credit
through which the "income stream" flows to the owners of preponderant
invested wealth.
Judged on the state of the situation as it runs in our time, and
allowing for the heightened efficiency of large-scale investment and
consolidated management under the prospective conditions of added
pecuniary security, it is to be expected that the middle-class
population with "independent means" should come in for a somewhat meager
livelihood, provided that they work faithfully at their business of
managing pecuniary traffic to the advantage of their pecuniary
betters,--meager, that is to say, when allowance is made for the
conventionally large expenditure on reputable appearances which is
necessarily to be included in their standard of living. It lies in the
nature of this system of large-scale investment and enterprise that the
(pecuniarily) minor agencies engaged on a footing of ostensible
independence will come in for only such a share in the aggregate gains
of the community as it is expedient for the greater business interests
to allow them as an incentive to go on with their work as purveyors of
traffic to these greater business interests.
The current, and still more this prospective, case of the
quasi-self-directing middle class may fairly be illustrated by the case
of the American farmers, of the past and present. The American farmer
rejoices to be called "The Independent Farmer." He once was independent,
in a meager and toil-worn fashion, in the days before the price-system
had brought him and all his works into the compass of the market; but
that was some time ago. He now works for the market, ordinarily at
something like what is called a "living wage," provided he has
"independent means" enough to enable him by steady application to earn a
living wage; and of course, the market being controlled by the paramount
investment interests in the background, his work, in effect, inures to
their benefit; except so much as it may seem necessary to allow him as
incentive to go on. Also of course, these paramount investment interests
are in turn controlled in all their manoeuvres by the impersonal
exigencies of the price-system, which permits no vagaries in violation
of the rule that all traffic must show a balance of profit in terms of
price.
The Independent Farmer still continues to believe that in some occult
sense he still is independent in what he will do and what not; or
perhaps rather that he can by shrewd management retain or regain a
tolerable measure of such independence, after the fashion of what is
held to have been the posture of affairs in the days before the coming
of corporation finance; or at least he believes that he ought to have,
or to regain or reclaim, some appreciable measure of such independence;
which ought then, by help of the "independent means" which he still
treasures, to procure him an honest and assured livelihood in return for
an honest year's work. Latterly he, that is the common run of the
farmers, has been taking note of the fact that he is, as he apprehends
it, at a disadvantage in the market; and he is now taking recourse to
concerted action for the purpose of what might be called "rigging the
market" to his own advantage. In this he overlooks the impregnable
position which the party of the second part, the great investment
interests, occupy; in fact, he is counting without his host. Hitherto he
has not been convinced of his own helplessness. And with a fine fancy he
still imagines that his own interest is on the side of the propertied
and privileged classes; so that the farmer constituency is the chief
pillar of conservative law and order, particularly in all that touches
the inviolable rights of property and at every juncture where a division
comes on between those who live by investment and those who live by
work. In pecuniary effect, the ordinary American farmer, who legally
owns a moderate farm of the common sort, belongs among those who work
for a livelihood; such a livelihood as the investment interests find it
worth while to allow him under the rule of what the traffic will bear;
but in point of sentiment and class consciousness he clings to a belated
stand on the side of those who draw a profit from his work.
So it is also with the menial servants and the middle-class people of
"independent means," who are, however, in a position to see more clearly
their dependence on the owners of predominant wealth. And such, with a
further accentuation of the anomaly, may reasonably be expected to be
the further run of these relations under the promised régime of peace
and security. The class of well-kept gentlefolk will scarcely be called
on to stand alone, in case of a division between those who live by
investment and those who live by work; inasmuch as, for the calculable
future, it should seem a reasonable expectation that this very
considerable fringe of dependents and pseudo-independents will abide by
their time-tried principles of right and honest living, through good
days and evil, and cast in their lot unreservedly with that reputable
body to whom the control of trade and industry by investment assigns the
usufruct of the community's productive powers.
* * * * *
Something has already been said of the prospective breeding of pedigreed
gentlefolk under the projected régime of peace. Pedigree, for the
purpose in hand, is a pecuniary attribute and is, of course, a product
of funded wealth, more or less ancient. Virtually ancient pedigree can
be procured by well-advised expenditure on the conspicuous amenities;
that is to say pedigree effectually competent as a background of current
gentility. Gentlefolk of such syncopated pedigree may have to walk
circumspectly, of course; but their being in this manner put on their
good behavior should tend to heighten their effectual serviceability as
gentlefolk, by inducing a single-mindedness of gentility beyond what can
fairly be expected of those who are already secure in their tenure.
Except conventionally, there is no hereditary difference between the
standard gentlefolk and, say, their "menial servants," or the general
population of the farms and the industrial towns. This is a
well-established commonplace among ethnological students; which has, of
course, nothing to say with respect to the conventionally distinct lines
of descent of the "Best Families." These Best Families are nowise
distinguishable from the common run in point of hereditary traits; the
difference that makes the gentleman and the gentlewoman being wholly a
matter of habituation during the individual's life-time. It is something
of a distasteful necessity to call attention to this total absence of
native difference between the well-born and the common, but it is a
necessity of the argument in hand, and the recalling of it may,
therefore, be overlooked for once in a way. There is no harm and no
annoyance intended. The point of it all is that, on the premises which
this state of the case affords, the body of gentlefolk created by such
an accumulation of invested wealth will have no less of an effectual
cultural value than they would have had if their virtually ancient
pedigree had been actual.
At this point, again, the experience of the Victorian peace and the
functioning of its gentlefolk come in to indicate what may fairly be
hoped for in this way under this prospective régime of peace at large.
But with the difference that the scale of things is to be larger, the
pace swifter, and the volume and dispersion of this prospective leisure
class somewhat wider. The work of this leisure class--and there is
neither paradox nor inconsistency in the phrase--should be patterned on
the lines worked out by their prototypes of the Victorian time, but with
some appreciable accentuation in the direction of what chiefly
characterised the leisure class of that era of tranquility. The
characteristic feature to which attention naturally turns at this
suggestion is the tranquility that has marked that body of gentlefolk
and their code of clean and honest living. Another word than
"tranquility" might be hit upon to designate this characteristic animus,
but any other word that should at all adequately serve the turn would
carry a less felicitous suggestion of those upper-class virtues that
have constituted the substantial worth of the Victorian gentleman. The
conscious worth of these gentlefolk has been a beautifully complete
achievement. It has been an achievement of "faith without works," of
course; but, needless to say, that is as it should be, also of course.
The place of gentlefolk in the economy of Nature is tracelessly to
consume the community's net product, and in doing so to set a standard
of decent expenditure for the others emulatively to work up to as near
as may be. It is scarcely conceivable that this could have been done in
a more unobtrusively efficient manner, or with a more austerely virtuous
conviction of well-doing, than by the gentlefolk bred of the Victorian
peace. So also, in turn, it is not to be believed that the prospective
breed of gentlefolk derivable from the net product of the pacific
nations under the promised régime of peace at large will prove in any
degree less effective for the like ends. More will be required of them
in the way of a traceless consumption of superfluities and an unexampled
expensive standard of living. But this situation that so faces them may
be construed as a larger opportunity, quite as well as a more difficult
task.
A theoretical exposition of the place and cultural value of a leisure
class in modern life would scarcely be in place here; and it has also
been set out in some detail elsewhere.[10] For the purpose in hand it
may be sufficient to recall that the canons of taste and the standards
of valuation worked out and inculcated by leisure-class life have in all
ages run, with unbroken consistency, to pecuniary waste and personal
futility. In its economic bearing, and particularly in its immediate
bearing on the material well-being of the community at large, the
leadership of the leisure class can scarcely be called by a less
derogatory epithet than "untoward." But that is not the whole of the
case, and the other side should be heard. The leisure-class life of
tranquility, running detached as it does above the turmoil out of which
the material of their sustenance is derived, enables a growth of all
those virtues that mark, or make, the gentleman; and that affect the
life of the underlying community throughout, pervasively, by imitation;
leading to a standardisation of the everyday proprieties on a
presumably, higher level of urbanity and integrity than might be
expected to result in the absence of this prescriptive model.
[Footnote 10: Cf. _The Theory of the Leisure Class_, especially ch.
v.-ix. and xiv.]
_Integer vitae scelerisque purus_, the gentleman of assured station
turns a placid countenance to all those petty vexations of breadwinning
that touch him not. Serenely and with an impassive fortitude he faces
those common vicissitudes of life that are impotent to make or mar his
material fortunes and that can neither impair his creature comforts nor
put a slur on his good repute. So that without afterthought he deals
fairly in all everyday conjunctures of give and take; for they are at
the most inconsequential episodes to him, although the like might spell
irremediable disaster to his impecunious counterfoil among the common
men who have the community's work to do. In short, he is a gentleman, in
the best acceptation of the word,--unavoidably, by force of
circumstance. As such his example is of invaluable consequence to the
underlying community of common folk, in that it keeps before their eyes
an object lesson in habitual fortitude and visible integrity such as
could scarcely have been created except under such shelter from those
disturbances that would go to mar habitual fortitude and integrity.
There can be little doubt but the high example of the Victorian
gentlefolk has had much to do with stabilising the animus of the British
common man on lines of integrity and fair play. What else and more in
the way of habitual preconceptions he may, by competitive imitation, owe
to the same high source is not immediately in question here.
* * * * *
Recalling once more that the canon of life whereby folk are gentlefolk
sums itself up in the requirements of pecuniary waste and personal
futility, and that these requirements are indefinitely extensible, at
the same time that the management of the community's industry by
investment for a profit enables the owners of invested wealth to divert
to their own use the community's net product, wherewith to meet these
requirements, it follows that the community at large which provides this
output of product will be allowed so much as is required by their
necessary standard of living,--with an unstable margin of error in the
adjustment. This margin of error should tend continually to grow
narrower as the businesslike management of industry grows more efficient
with experience; but it will also continually be disturbed in the
contrary sense by innovations of a technological nature that require
continual readjustment. This margin is probably not to be got rid of,
though it may be expected to become less considerable under more settled
conditions.
It should also not be overlooked that the standard of living here spoken
of as necessarily to be allowed the working population by no means
coincides with the "physical subsistence minimum," from which in fact it
always departs by something appreciable. The necessary standard of
living of the working community is in fact made up of two
distinguishable factors: the subsistence minimum, and the requirements
of decorously wasteful consumption--the "decencies of life." These
decencies are no less requisite than the physical necessaries, in point
of workday urgency, and their amount is a matter of use and wont. This
composite standard of living is a practical minimum, below which
consumption will not fall, except by a fluctuating margin of error; the
effect being the same, in point of necessary consumption, as if it were
all of the nature of a physical subsistence minimum.
Loosely speaking, the arrangement should leave nothing appreciable over,
after the requirements of genteel waste and of the workday standard of
consumption have been met. From which in turn it should follow that the
rest of what is comprised under the general caption of "culture" will
find a place only in the interstices of leisure-class expenditure and
only at the hands of aberrant members of the class of the gently-bred.
The working population should have no effectual margin of time, energy
or means for other pursuits than the day's work in the service of the
price-system; so that aberrant individuals in this class, who might by
native propensity incline, e.g., to pursue the sciences or the fine
arts, should have (virtually) no chance to make good. It would be a
virtual suppression of such native gifts among the common folk, not a
definitive and all-inclusive suppression. The state of the case under
the Victorian peace may, again, be taken in illustration of the point;
although under the presumably more effectual control to be looked for in
the pacific future the margin might reasonably be expected to run
somewhat narrower, so that this virtual suppression of cultural talent
among the common men should come nearer a complete suppression.
The working of that free initiative that makes the advance of
civilisation, and also the greater part of its conservation, would in
effect be allowed only in the erratic members of the kept classes; where
at the same time it would have to work against the side-draught of
conventional usage, which discountenances any pursuit that is not
visibly futile according to some accepted manner of futility. Now under
the prospective perfect working of the price-system, bearers of the
banners of civilisation could effectually be drawn only from the kept
classes, the gentlefolk who alone would have the disposal of such free
income as is required for work that has no pecuniary value. And
numerically the gentlefolk are an inconsiderable fraction of the
population. The supply of competently gifted bearers of the community's
culture would accordingly be limited to such as could be drawn by
self-selection from among this inconsiderable proportion of the
community at large.
It may be recalled that in point of heredity, and therefore in point of
native fitness for the maintenance and advance of civilisation, there is
no difference between the gentlefolk and the populace at large; or at
least there is no difference of such a nature as to count in abatement
of the proposition set down above. Some slight, but after all
inconsequential, difference there may be, but such difference as there
is, if any, rather counts against the gentlefolk as keepers of the
cultural advance. The gentlefolk are derived from business; the
gentleman represents a filial generation of the businessman; and if the
class typically is gifted with any peculiar hereditary traits,
therefore, they should presumably be such as typically mark the
successful businessman--astute, prehensile, unscrupulous. For a
generation or two, perhaps to the scriptural third and fourth
generation, it is possible that a diluted rapacity and cunning may
continue to mark the businessman's well-born descendants; but these are
not serviceable traits for the conservation and advancement of the
community's cultural heritage. So that no consideration of special
hereditary fitness in the well-born need be entertained in this
connection.
As to the limitation imposed by the price-system on the supply of
candidates suited by native gift for the human work of civilisation; it
would no doubt, be putting the figure extravagantly high to say that the
gentlefolk, properly speaking, comprise as much as ten percent of the
total population; perhaps something less than one-half of that
percentage would still seem a gross overstatement. But, to cover loose
ends and vagrant cases, the gentlefolk may for the purpose be credited
with so high a percentage of the total population. If ten percent be
allowed, as an outside figure, it follows that the community's
scientists, artists, scholars, and the like individuals given over to
the workday pursuits of the human spirit, are by conventional
restriction to be drawn from one-tenth of the current supply of persons
suited by native gift for these pursuits. Or as it may also be
expressed, in so far as the projected scheme takes effect it should
result in the suppression of nine (or more) out of every ten persons
available for the constructive work of civilisation. The cultural
consequences to be looked for, therefore, should be quite markedly of
the conservative order.
Of course, in actual effect, the retardation or repression of
civilisation by this means, as calculated on these premises, should
reasonably be expected to count up to something appreciably more than
nine-tenths of the gains that might presumably be achieved in the
conceivable absence of the price-system and the régime of investment.
All work of this kind has much of the character of teamwork; so that the
efforts of isolated individuals count for little, and a few working in
more or less of concert and understanding will count for proportionally
much less than many working in concert. The endeavours of the
individuals engaged count cumulatively, to such effect that doubling
their forces will more than double the aggregate efficiency; and
conversely, reducing the number will reduce the effectiveness of their
work by something more than the simple numerical proportion. Indeed, an
undue reduction of numbers in such a case may lead to the total defeat
of the few that are left, and the best endeavours of a dwindling remnant
may be wholly nugatory. There is needed a sense of community and
solidarity, without which the assurance necessary to the work is bound
to falter and dwindle out; and there is also needed a degree of popular
countenance, not to be had by isolated individuals engaged in an
unconventional pursuit of things that are neither to be classed as
spendthrift decorum nor as merchantable goods. In this connection an
isolated one does not count for one, and more than the critical minimum
will count for several per capita. It is a case where the "minimal dose"
is wholly inoperative.
There is not a little reason to believe that consequent upon the
installation of the projected régime of peace at large and secure
investment the critical point in the repression of talent will very
shortly be reached and passed, so that the principle of the "minimal
dose" will come to apply. The point may readily be illustrated by the
case of many British and American towns and neighbourhoods during the
past few decades; where the dominant price-system and its commercial
standards of truth and beauty have over-ruled all inclination to
cultural sanity and put it definitively in abeyance. The cultural, or
perhaps the conventional, residue left over in these cases where
civilisation has gone stale through inefficiency of the minimal dose is
not properly to be found fault with; it is of a blameless character,
conventionally; nor is there any intention here to cast aspersion on the
desolate. The like effects of the like causes are to be seen in the
American colleges and universities, where business principles have
supplanted the pursuit of learning, and where the commercialisation of
aims, ideals, tastes, occupations and personnel is following much the
same lines that have led so many of the country towns effectually
outside the cultural pale. The American university or college is coming
to be an outlier of the price-system, in point of aims, standards and
personnel; hitherto the tradition of learning as a trait of
civilisation, as distinct from business, has not been fully displaced,
although it is now coming to face the passage of the minimal dose. The
like, in a degree, is apparently true latterly for many English, and
still more evidently for many German schools.
In these various instances of what may be called dry-rot or local blight
on the civilised world's culture the decline appears to be due not to a
positive infection of a malignant sort, so much as to a failure of the
active cultural ferment, which has fallen below the critical point of
efficacy; perhaps through an unintended refusal of a livelihood to
persons given over to cultivating the elements of civilisation; perhaps
through the conventional disallowance of the pursuit of any other ends
than competitive gain and competitive spending. Evidently it is
something much more comprehensive in this nature that is reasonably to
be looked for under the prospective régime of peace, in case the
price-system gains that farther impetus and warrant which it should come
in for if the rights of ownership and investment stand over intact, and
so come to enjoy the benefit of a further improved state of the
industrial arts and a further enlarged scale of operation and enhanced
rate of turnover.
* * * * *
To turn back to the point from which this excursion branched off. It has
been presumed all the while that the technological equipment, or the
state of the industrial arts, must continue to advance under the
conditions offered by this régime of peace at large. But the last few
paragraphs will doubtless suggest that such a single-minded addiction to
competitive gain and competitive spending as the stabilised and
amplified price-system would enjoin, must lead to an effectual
retardation, perhaps to a decline, of those material sciences on which
modern technology draws; and that the state of the industrial arts
should therefore cease to advance, if only the scheme of investment and
businesslike sabotage can be made sufficiently secure. That such may be
the outcome is a contingency which the argument will have to meet and to
allow for; but it is after all a contingency that need not be expected
to derange the sequence of events, except in the way of retardation.
Even without further advance in technological expedients or in the
relevant material sciences, there will still necessarily ensue an
effectual advance in the industrial arts, in the sense that further
organisation and enlargement of the material equipment and industrial
processes on lines already securely known and not to be forgotten must
bring an effectually enhanced efficiency of the industrial process as a
whole.
In illustration, it is scarcely to be assumed even as a tentative
hypothesis that the system of transport and communication will not
undergo extension and improvement on the lines already familiar, even in
the absence of new technological contrivances. At the same time a
continued increase of population is to be counted on; which has, for the
purpose in hand, much the same effect as an advance in the industrial
arts. Human contact and mutual understanding will necessarily grow wider
and closer, and will have its effect on the habits of thought prevalent
in the communities that are to live under the promised régime of peace.
The system of transport and communication having to handle a more
voluminous and exacting traffic, in the service of a larger and more
compact population, will have to be organised and administered on
mechanically drawn schedules of time, place, volume, velocity, and
price, of a still more exacting accuracy than hitherto. The like will
necessarily apply throughout the industrial occupations that employ
extensive plant or processes, or that articulate with industrial
processes of that nature; which will necessarily comprise a larger
proportion of the industrial process at large than hitherto.
As has already been remarked more than once in the course of the
argument, a population that lives and does its work, and such play as is
allowed it, in and by an exactingly articulate mechanical system of this
kind will necessarily be an "intelligent" people, in the colloquial
sense of the word; that is to say it will necessarily be a people that
uses printed matter freely and that has some familiarity with the
elements of those material sciences that underlie this mechanically
organised system of appliances and processes. Such a population lives by
and within the framework of the mechanistic logic, and is in a fair way
to lose faith in any proposition that can not be stated convincingly in
terms of this mechanistic logic. Superstitions are liable to lapse by
neglect or disuse in such a community; that is to say propositions of a
non-mechanistic complexion are liable to insensible disestablishment in
such a case; "superstition" in these premises coming to signify whatever
is not of this mechanistic, or "materialistic" character. An exception
to this broad characterisation of non-mechanistic propositions as
"superstition" would be matters that are of the nature of an immediate
deliverance of the senses or of the aesthetic sensibilities.
By a simile it might be said that what so falls under the caption of
"superstition" in such a case is subject to decay by inanition. It
should not be difficult to conceive the general course of such a decay
of superstitions under this unremitting discipline of mechanistic habits
of life. The recent past offers an illustration, in the unemotional
progress of decay that has overtaken religious beliefs in the more
civilised countries, and more particularly among the intellectually
trained workmen of the mechanical industries. The elimination of such
non-mechanistic propositions of the faith has been visibly going on, but
it has not worked out on any uniform plan, nor has it overtaken any
large or compact body of people consistently or abruptly, being of the
nature of obsolescence rather than of set repudiation. But in a slack
and unreflecting fashion the divestment has gone on until the aggregate
effect is unmistakable.
A similar divestment of superstitions is reasonably to be looked for
also in that domain of preconceptions that lies between the supernatural
and the mechanistic. Chief among these time-warped preconceptions--or
superstitions--that so stand over out of the alien past among these
democratic peoples is the institution of property. As is true of
preconceptions touching the supernatural verities, so here too the
article of use and wont in question will not bear formulation in
mechanistic terms and is not congruous with that mechanistic logic that
is incontinently bending the habits of thought of the common man more
and more consistently to its own bent. There is, of course, the
difference that while no class--apart from the servants of the
church--have a material interest in the continued integrity of the
articles of the supernatural faith, there is a strong and stubborn
material interest bound up with the maintenance of this article of the
pecuniary faith; and the class in whom this material interest vests are
also, in effect, invested with the coercive powers of the law.
The law, and the popular preconceptions that give the law its binding
force, go to uphold the established usage and the established
prerogatives on this head; and the disestablishment of the rights of
property and investment therefore is not a simple matter of obsolescence
through neglect. It may confidently be counted on that all the apparatus
of the law and all the coercive agencies of law and order, will be
brought in requisition to uphold the ancient rights of ownership,
whenever any move is made toward their disallowance or restriction. But
then, on the other hand, the movement to disallow or diminish the
prerogatives of ownership is also not to take the innocuous shape of
unstudied neglect. So soon, or rather so far, as the common man comes to
realise that these rights of ownership and investment uniformly work to
his material detriment, at the same time that he has lost the "will to
believe" in any argument that does not run in terms of the mechanistic
logic, it is reasonable to expect that he will take a stand on this
matter; and it is more than likely that the stand taken will be of an
uncompromising kind,--presumably something in the nature of the stand
once taken by recalcitrant Englishmen in protest against the
irresponsible rule of the Stuart sovereign. It is also not likely that
the beneficiaries under these proprietary rights will yield their ground
at all amicably; all the more since they are patently within their
authentic rights in insisting on full discretion in the disposal of
their own possessions; very much as Charles I or James II once were
within their prescriptive right,--which had little to say in the
outcome.
Even apart from "time immemorial" and the patent authenticity of the
institution, there were and are many cogent arguments to be alleged in
favor of the position for which the Stuart sovereigns and their
spokesmen contended. So there are and will be many, perhaps more, cogent
reasons to be alleged for the maintenance of the established law and
order in respect of the rights of ownership and investment. Not least
urgent, nor least real, among these arguments is the puzzling question
of what to put in the place of these rights and of the methods of
control based on them, very much as the analogous question puzzled the
public-spirited men of the Stuart times. All of which goes to argue that
there may be expected to arise a conjuncture of perplexities and
complications, as well as a division of interests and claims. To which
should be added that the division is likely to come to a head so soon as
the balance of forces between the two parties in interest becomes
doubtful, so that either party comes to surmise that the success of its
own aims may depend on its own efforts. And as happens where two
antagonistic parties are each convinced of the justice of its cause, and
in the absence of an umpire, the logical recourse is the wager of
battle.
Granting the premises, there should be no reasonable doubt as to this
eventual cleavage between those who own and those who do not; and of the
premises the only item that is not already an accomplished fact is the
installation of peace at large. The rest of what goes into the argument
is the well-known modern state of the industrial arts, and the equally
well-known price-system; which, in combination, give its character to
the modern state of business enterprise. It is only an unusually broad
instance of an institutional arrangement which has in the course of time
and changing conditions come to work at cross purposes with that
underlying ground of institutional arrangements that takes form in the
commonplace aphorism, Live and let live. With change setting in the
direction familiar to all men today, it is only a question of limited
time when the discrepancy will reach a critical pass, and the
installation of peace may be counted on to hasten this course of things.
That a decision will be sought by recourse to forcible measures, is also
scarcely open to question; since the established law and order provides
for a resort to coercion in the enforcement of these prescriptive
rights, and since both parties in interest, in this as in other cases,
are persuaded of the justice of their claims. A decision either way is
an intolerable iniquity in the eyes of the losing side. History teaches
that in such a quarrel the recourse has always been to force.
History teaches also, but with an inflection of doubt, that the outworn
institution in such a conjuncture faces disestablishment. At least, so
men like to believe. What the experience of history does not leave in
doubt is the grave damage, discomfort and shame incident to the
displacement of such an institutional discrepancy by such recourse to
force. What further appears to be clear in the premises, at least to the
point of a strong presumption, is that in the present case the decision,
or the choice, lies between two alternatives: either the price-system
and its attendant business enterprise will yield and pass out; or the
pacific nations will conserve their pecuniary scheme of law and order at
the cost of returning to a war footing and letting their owners preserve
the rights of ownership by force of arms.
The reflection obviously suggests itself that this prospect of
consequences to follow from the installation of peace at large might
well be taken into account beforehand by those who are aiming to work
out an enduring peace. It has appeared in the course of the argument
that the preservation of the present pecuniary law and order, with all
its incidents of ownership and investment, is incompatible with an
unwarlike state of peace and security. This current scheme of
investment, business, and sabotage, should have an appreciably better
chance of survival in the long run if the present conditions of warlike
preparation and national insecurity were maintained, or if the projected
peace were left in a somewhat problematical state, sufficiently
precarious to keep national animosities alert, and thereby to the
neglect of domestic interests, particularly of such interests as touch
the popular well-being. On the other hand, it has also appeared that the
cause of peace and its perpetuation might be materially advanced if
precautions were taken beforehand to put out of the way as much as may
be of those discrepancies of interest and sentiment between nations and
between classes which make for dissension and eventual hostilities.
So, if the projectors of this peace at large are in any degree inclined
to seek concessive terms on which the peace might hopefully be made
enduring, it should evidently be part of their endeavours from the
outset to put events in train for the present abatement and eventual
abrogation of the rights of ownership and of the price-system in which
these rights take effect. A hopeful beginning along this line would
manifestly be the neutralisation of all pecuniary rights of citizenship,
as has been indicated in an earlier passage. On the other hand, if peace
is not desired at the cost of relinquishing the scheme of competitive
gain and competitive spending, the promoters of peace should logically
observe due precaution and move only so far in the direction of a
peaceable settlement as would result in a sufficiently unstable
equilibrium of mutual jealousies; such as might expeditiously be upset
whenever discontent with pecuniary affairs should come to threaten this
established scheme of pecuniary prerogatives.
BOOKS BY THORSTEIN VEBLEN
THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLASS
THE THEORY OF BUSINESS ENTERPRISE
THE INSTINCT OF WORKMANSHIP
IMPERIAL GERMANY
AND THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
THE NATURE OF PEACE
AND THE TERMS OF ITS PERPETUATION
THE HIGHER LEARNING IN AMERICA