In the sequence of cultural evolution the emergence of a leisure class
coincides with the beginning of ownership. This is necessarily the case,
for these two institutions result from the same set of economic forces.
In the inchoate phase of their development they are but different
aspects of the same general facts of social structure.
It is as elements of social structure--conventional facts--that leisure
and ownership are matters of interest for the purpose in hand. An
habitual neglect of work does not constitute a leisure class; neither
does the mechanical fact of use and consumption constitute ownership.
The present inquiry, therefore, is not concerned with the beginning
of indolence, nor with the beginning of the appropriation of useful
articles to individual consumption. The point in question is the origin
and nature of a conventional leisure class on the one hand and the
beginnings of individual ownership as a conventional right or equitable
claim on the other hand.
The early differentiation out of which the distinction between a leisure
and a working class arises is a division maintained between men's and
women's work in the lower stages of barbarism. Likewise the earliest
form of ownership is an ownership of the women by the able bodied men
of the community. The facts may be expressed in more general terms, and
truer to the import of the barbarian theory of life, by saying that it
is an ownership of the woman by the man.
There was undoubtedly some appropriation of useful articles before the
custom of appropriating women arose. The usages of existing archaic
communities in which there is no ownership of women is warrant for such
a view. In all communities the members, both male and female, habitually
appropriate to their individual use a variety of useful things; but
these useful things are not thought of as owned by the person who
appropriates and consumes them. The habitual appropriation and
consumption of certain slight personal effects goes on without
raising the question of ownership; that is to say, the question of a
conventional, equitable claim to extraneous things.
The ownership of women begins in the lower barbarian stages of culture,
apparently with the seizure of female captives. The original reason
for the seizure and appropriation of women seems to have been their
usefulness as trophies. The practice of seizing women from the enemy
as trophies, gave rise to a form of ownership-marriage, resulting in a
household with a male head. This was followed by an extension of slavery
to other captives and inferiors, besides women, and by an extension of
ownership-marriage to other women than those seized from the enemy.
The outcome of emulation under the circumstances of a predatory life,
therefore, has been on the one hand a form of marriage resting on
coercion, and on the other hand the custom of ownership. The two
institutions are not distinguishable in the initial phase of their
development; both arise from the desire of the successful men to put
their prowess in evidence by exhibiting some durable result of their
exploits. Both also minister to that propensity for mastery which
pervades all predatory communities. From the ownership of women the
concept of ownership extends itself to include the products of their
industry, and so there arises the ownership of things as well as of
persons.
In this way a consistent system of property in goods is gradually
installed. And although in the latest stages of the development,
the serviceability of goods for consumption has come to be the most
obtrusive element of their value, still, wealth has by no means yet lost
its utility as a honorific evidence of the owner's prepotence.
Wherever the institution of private property is found, even in a
slightly developed form, the economic process bears the character of a
struggle between men for the possession of goods. It has been customary
in economic theory, and especially among those economists who adhere
with least faltering to the body of modernised classical doctrines, to
construe this struggle for wealth as being substantially a struggle for
subsistence. Such is, no doubt, its character in large part during
the earlier and less efficient phases of industry. Such is also its
character in all cases where the "niggardliness of nature" is so strict
as to afford but a scanty livelihood to the community in return for
strenuous and unremitting application to the business of getting the
means of subsistence. But in all progressing communities an advance is
presently made beyond this early stage of technological development.
Industrial efficiency is presently carried to such a pitch as to afford
something appreciably more than a bare livelihood to those engaged in
the industrial process. It has not been unusual for economic theory to
speak of the further struggle for wealth on this new industrial basis as
a competition for an increase of the comforts of life,--primarily for
an increase of the physical comforts which the consumption of goods
affords.
The end of acquisition and accumulation is conventionally held to be the
consumption of the goods accumulated--whether it is consumption directly
by the owner of the goods or by the household attached to him and for
this purpose identified with him in theory. This is at least felt to
be the economically legitimate end of acquisition, which alone it is
incumbent on the theory to take account of. Such consumption may of
course be conceived to serve the consumer's physical wants--his
physical comfort--or his so-called higher wants--spiritual, aesthetic,
intellectual, or what not; the latter class of wants being served
indirectly by an expenditure of goods, after the fashion familiar to all
economic readers.
But it is only when taken in a sense far removed from its naive meaning
that consumption of goods can be said to afford the incentive from which
accumulation invariably proceeds. The motive that lies at the root
of ownership is emulation; and the same motive of emulation continues
active in the further development of the institution to which it has
given rise and in the development of all those features of the social
structure which this institution of ownership touches. The possession of
wealth confers honour; it is an invidious distinction. Nothing equally
cogent can be said for the consumption of goods, nor for any other
conceivable incentive to acquisition, and especially not for any
incentive to accumulation of wealth.
It is of course not to be overlooked that in a community where nearly
all goods are private property the necessity of earning a livelihood
is a powerful and ever present incentive for the poorer members of
the community. The need of subsistence and of an increase of physical
comfort may for a time be the dominant motive of acquisition for those
classes who are habitually employed at manual labour, whose subsistence
is on a precarious footing, who possess little and ordinarily accumulate
little; but it will appear in the course of the discussion that even in
the case of these impecunious classes the predominance of the motive of
physical want is not so decided as has sometimes been assumed. On the
other hand, so far as regards those members and classes of the community
who are chiefly concerned in the accumulation of wealth, the incentive
of subsistence or of physical comfort never plays a considerable part.
Ownership began and grew into a human institution on grounds unrelated
to the subsistence minimum. The dominant incentive was from the outset
the invidious distinction attaching to wealth, and, save temporarily and
by exception, no other motive has usurped the primacy at any later stage
of the development.
Property set out with being booty held as trophies of the successful
raid. So long as the group had departed and so long as it still stood
in close contact with other hostile groups, the utility of things or
persons owned lay chiefly in an invidious comparison between their
possessor and the enemy from whom they were taken. The habit of
distinguishing between the interests of the individual and those of
the group to which he belongs is apparently a later growth. Invidious
comparison between the possessor of the honorific booty and his less
successful neighbours within the group was no doubt present early as an
element of the utility of the things possessed, though this was not at
the outset the chief element of their value. The man's prowess was
still primarily the group's prowess, and the possessor of the booty
felt himself to be primarily the keeper of the honour of his group. This
appreciation of exploit from the communal point of view is met with also
at later stages of social growth, especially as regards the laurels of
war.
But as soon as the custom of individual ownership begins to gain
consistency, the point of view taken in making the invidious comparison
on which private property rests will begin to change. Indeed, the one
change is but the reflex of the other. The initial phase of ownership,
the phase of acquisition by naive seizure and conversion, begins to pass
into the subsequent stage of an incipient organization of industry on
the basis of private property (in slaves); the horde develops into a
more or less self-sufficing industrial community; possessions then come
to be valued not so much as evidence of successful foray, but rather as
evidence of the prepotence of the possessor of these goods over other
individuals within the community. The invidious comparison now becomes
primarily a comparison of the owner with the other members of the
group. Property is still of the nature of trophy, but, with the cultural
advance, it becomes more and more a trophy of successes scored in the
game of ownership carried on between the members of the group under the
quasi-peaceable methods of nomadic life.
Gradually, as industrial activity further displaced predatory activity
in the community's everyday life and in men's habits of thought,
accumulated property more and more replaces trophies of predatory
exploit as the conventional exponent of prepotence and success. With the
growth of settled industry, therefore, the possession of wealth gains in
relative importance and effectiveness as a customary basis of repute and
esteem. Not that esteem ceases to be awarded on the basis of other, more
direct evidence of prowess; not that successful predatory aggression or
warlike exploit ceases to call out the approval and admiration of the
crowd, or to stir the envy of the less successful competitors; but
the opportunities for gaining distinction by means of this direct
manifestation of superior force grow less available both in scope and
frequency. At the same time opportunities for industrial aggression, and
for the accumulation of property, increase in scope and availability.
And it is even more to the point that property now becomes the
most easily recognised evidence of a reputable degree of success as
distinguished from heroic or signal achievement. It therefore becomes
the conventional basis of esteem. Its possession in some amount becomes
necessary in order to any reputable standing in the community. It
becomes indispensable to accumulate, to acquire property, in order to
retain one's good name. When accumulated goods have in this way once
become the accepted badge of efficiency, the possession of wealth
presently assumes the character of an independent and definitive basis
of esteem. The possession of goods, whether acquired aggressively by
one's own exertion or passively by transmission through inheritance from
others, becomes a conventional basis of reputability. The possession
of wealth, which was at the outset valued simply as an evidence of
efficiency, becomes, in popular apprehension, itself a meritorious act.
Wealth is now itself intrinsically honourable and confers honour on
its possessor. By a further refinement, wealth acquired passively by
transmission from ancestors or other antecedents presently becomes even
more honorific than wealth acquired by the possessor's own effort;
but this distinction belongs at a later stage in the evolution of the
pecuniary culture and will be spoken of in its place.
Prowess and exploit may still remain the basis of award of the highest
popular esteem, although the possession of wealth has become the basis
of common place reputability and of a blameless social standing.
The predatory instinct and the consequent approbation of predatory
efficiency are deeply ingrained in the habits of thought of those
peoples who have passed under the discipline of a protracted predatory
culture. According to popular award, the highest honours within human
reach may, even yet, be those gained by an unfolding of extraordinary
predatory efficiency in war, or by a quasi-predatory efficiency in
statecraft; but for the purposes of a commonplace decent standing in the
community these means of repute have been replaced by the acquisition
and accumulation of goods. In order to stand well in the eyes of the
community, it is necessary to come up to a certain, somewhat indefinite,
conventional standard of wealth; just as in the earlier predatory stage
it is necessary for the barbarian man to come up to the tribe's standard
of physical endurance, cunning, and skill at arms. A certain standard
of wealth in the one case, and of prowess in the other, is a necessary
condition of reputability, and anything in excess of this normal amount
is meritorious.
Those members of the community who fall short of this, somewhat
indefinite, normal degree of prowess or of property suffer in the esteem
of their fellow-men; and consequently they suffer also in their own
esteem, since the usual basis of self-respect is the respect accorded by
one's neighbours. Only individuals with an aberrant temperament can in
the long run retain their self-esteem in the face of the disesteem of
their fellows. Apparent exceptions to the rule are met with, especially
among people with strong religious convictions. But these apparent
exceptions are scarcely real exceptions, since such persons commonly
fall back on the putative approbation of some supernatural witness of
their deeds.
So soon as the possession of property becomes the basis of popular
esteem, therefore, it becomes also a requisite to the complacency which
we call self-respect. In any community where goods are held in severalty
it is necessary, in order to his own peace of mind, that an individual
should possess as large a portion of goods as others with whom he is
accustomed to class himself; and it is extremely gratifying to
possess something more than others. But as fast as a person makes new
acquisitions, and becomes accustomed to the resulting new standard of
wealth, the new standard forthwith ceases to afford appreciably greater
satisfaction than the earlier standard did. The tendency in any case is
constantly to make the present pecuniary standard the point of departure
for a fresh increase of wealth; and this in turn gives rise to a new
standard of sufficiency and a new pecuniary classification of one's
self as compared with one's neighbours. So far as concerns the present
question, the end sought by accumulation is to rank high in comparison
with the rest of the community in point of pecuniary strength. So long
as the comparison is distinctly unfavourable to himself, the normal,
average individual will live in chronic dissatisfaction with his present
lot; and when he has reached what may be called the normal pecuniary
standard of the community, or of his class in the community, this
chronic dissatisfaction will give place to a restless straining to place
a wider and ever-widening pecuniary interval between himself and
this average standard. The invidious comparison can never become so
favourable to the individual making it that he would not gladly rate
himself still higher relatively to his competitors in the struggle for
pecuniary reputability.
In the nature of the case, the desire for wealth can scarcely be
satiated in any individual instance, and evidently a satiation of the
average or general desire for wealth is out of the question. However
widely, or equally, or "fairly", it may be distributed, no general
increase of the community's wealth can make any approach to satiating
this need, the ground of which is the desire of every one to excel every
one else in the accumulation of goods. If, as is sometimes assumed, the
incentive to accumulation were the want of subsistence or of physical
comfort, then the aggregate economic wants of a community might
conceivably be satisfied at some point in the advance of industrial
efficiency; but since the struggle is substantially a race for
reputability on the basis of an invidious comparison, no approach to
a definitive attainment is possible.
What has just been said must not be taken to mean that there are no
other incentives to acquisition and accumulation than this desire to
excel in pecuniary standing and so gain the esteem and envy of one's
fellow-men. The desire for added comfort and security from want is
present as a motive at every stage of the process of accumulation in
a modern industrial community; although the standard of sufficiency in
these respects is in turn greatly affected by the habit of pecuniary
emulation. To a great extent this emulation shapes the methods and
selects the objects of expenditure for personal comfort and decent
livelihood.
Besides this, the power conferred by wealth also affords a motive
to accumulation. That propensity for purposeful activity and that
repugnance to all futility of effort which belong to man by virtue of
his character as an agent do not desert him when he emerges from the
naive communal culture where the dominant note of life is the unanalysed
and undifferentiated solidarity of the individual with the group with
which his life is bound up. When he enters upon the predatory stage,
where self-seeking in the narrower sense becomes the dominant note, this
propensity goes with him still, as the pervasive trait that shapes his
scheme of life. The propensity for achievement and the repugnance to
futility remain the underlying economic motive. The propensity changes
only in the form of its expression and in the proximate objects to which
it directs the man's activity. Under the regime of individual ownership
the most available means of visibly achieving a purpose is that afforded
by the acquisition and accumulation of goods; and as the self-regarding
antithesis between man and man reaches fuller consciousness, the
propensity for achievement--the instinct of workmanship--tends more
and more to shape itself into a straining to excel others in pecuniary
achievement. Relative success, tested by an invidious pecuniary
comparison with other men, becomes the conventional end of action. The
currently accepted legitimate end of effort becomes the achievement of
a favourable comparison with other men; and therefore the repugnance to
futility to a good extent coalesces with the incentive of emulation. It
acts to accentuate the struggle for pecuniary reputability by visiting
with a sharper disapproval all shortcoming and all evidence of
shortcoming in point of pecuniary success. Purposeful effort comes to
mean, primarily, effort directed to or resulting in a more creditable
showing of accumulated wealth. Among the motives which lead men to
accumulate wealth, the primacy, both in scope and intensity, therefore,
continues to belong to this motive of pecuniary emulation.
In making use of the term "invidious", it may perhaps be unnecessary to
remark, there is no intention to extol or depreciate, or to commend or
deplore any of the phenomena which the word is used to characterise. The
term is used in a technical sense as describing a comparison of persons
with a view to rating and grading them in respect of relative worth or
value--in an aesthetic or moral sense--and so awarding and defining
the relative degrees of complacency with which they may legitimately be
contemplated by themselves and by others. An invidious comparison is a
process of valuation of persons in respect of worth.