_That the Chief Productive Agent in the modern world
is not Labour, but Ability, or the Faculty which
directs Labour._
[Sidenote ◆1 What was said in the last chapter shows that
productive Human Exertion is of two kinds, and does not
consist only of what is meant by Labour,]
[Sidenote ◆2 As familiar instances will show us.]
◆¹ I said in the last chapter that machinery or Fixed Capital was
congealed Wage Capital. But as Wage Capital is metamorphosed into
machinery only owing to the fact that it is at once the instrument and
the guide of Human Exertion, machinery may be called congealed exertion
also. This description of it is but half original; for Socialistic
writers have for a long time called it “congealed Labour.” But between
the two phrases there is a great and fundamental difference, and I
now bring them thus together to show what the difference is. The
first includes the whole meaning of the second, whereas the second
includes only a part of the meaning of the first. Let us take the
finest bronze statue that was ever made, and also the worst, the
feeblest, the most ridiculous. ◆² Both can with equal accuracy be
called congealed Labour; but to call them this is just as useless a
truism as to call them congealed bronze. It describes the point in
which the two statues resemble each other; it tells us nothing of what
is far more important—the points in which the two statues differ.
They differ because, whilst both are congealed Labour, the one is
also congealed imagination of the highest order, the other is also
congealed imagination of the lowest. The excellence of the metal and
of the casting may be the same in both cases. Or again, let us take
a vessel like the _City of Paris_, and let us take also the vessel
that was known as the _Bessemer Steamer_. The _Bessemer Steamer_ was
fitted with a sort of rocking saloon, which, when the vessel rolled,
was expected to remain level. The contrivance was a complete failure.
The hundreds of thousands of pounds spent on it were practically thrown
away, and the structure ended by being sold as old iron. Now these
two vessels were equally congealed Labour, and congealed Labour of
precisely the same quality; for the workmen employed on the _Bessemer
Steamer_ were as skilful as those employed on the _City of Paris_. And
yet the Labour in the one case was congealed into a piece of lumber,
and in the other case it was congealed into one of the most perfect
of those living links by which the lives of two worlds are united.
To call both the vessels, then, congealed Labour, only tells us how
success resembles failure, not how it differs from it. The _City of
Paris_ differs from the _Bessemer Steamer_ because the _City of Paris_
was congealed judgment, and the _Bessemer Steamer_ was congealed
misjudgment.
It is therefore evident that in _using_ Capital so as to make Labour
more efficacious, as distinct from _wasting_ Capital so as to make
Labour nugatory, some other human faculties are involved distinct from
the faculty of Labour; and I have employed, except when it would have
been mere pedantry to do so, the term “Human Exertion” instead of the
term “Labour,” because the former includes those other faculties, and
the latter does not; or, if it includes them, it entirely fails to
distinguish them, and merely confounds them with faculties from which
they fundamentally differ. Thus, when I pointed out in the last chapter
that Capital, in so far as it increased the productivity of Labour,
was mental and moral energy as applied to muscular energy, I might have
said with equal propriety, had my argument advanced far enough, that it
was one kind of Human Exertion guiding and controlling another kind.
Here we come to the great central fact which forms the key to the whole
economic problem: the fact that in the production of wealth two kinds
of Human Exertion are involved, and not, as economists have hitherto
told us, one—two kinds of exertion absolutely distinct, and, as we
shall see presently, following different laws.
[Sidenote ◆1 Economic writers vaguely recognise this fact, but
have never formally expressed it, or made it a part of
their systems.]
[Sidenote ◆2 They confuse all productive exertion together under
the heading of Labour.]
◆¹ Economic writers, like the world in general, do indeed recognise,
in an unscientific way, that productive exertion exhibits itself under
many various forms; but their admissions and statements with regard to
this point are entirely confused and stultified by the almost ludicrous
persistence with which they classify all these forms under the single
heading of Labour. Mill, for instance, says that a large part of
profits are really wages of the labour of superintendence. He speaks of
“the labour of the invention of industrial processes,” “the labour of
Watt in contriving the steam-engine,” and even of “the labour of the
savant and the speculative thinker.” ◆² He employs the same word to
describe the effort that invented Arkwright’s spinning-frame, and the
commonest muscular movement of any one of the mechanics who assisted
with hammer or screwdriver to construct it under Arkwright’s direction.
He employs the same word to describe the power that perfected the
electric telegraph, and the power that hangs the wires from pole to
pole, like clothes-lines. He confuses under one heading the functions
of the employer and the employed—of the men who lead in industry, and
of the men who follow. He calls them all labourers, and he calls their
work Labour.
[Sidenote ◆1 But practically, Labour means muscular or manual
exertion.]
[Sidenote ◆2 Mental and moral exertion, as applied to production,
must therefore be given another name:]
Now were the question merely one of literary or philosophical
propriety, this inclusive use of the word Labour might be defensible;
but we have nothing to do here with the niceties of such trivial
criticism. We are concerned not with what a word might be made to mean,
but what it practically does mean; and if we appeal to the ordinary
use of language,—not only its use by the mass of ordinary men, but
its most frequent use by economic writers also,—we shall find that
the word Labour has a meaning which is practically settled; and we
shall find that this meaning is not an inclusive one, but exclusive.
◆¹ We shall find that Labour practically means muscular Labour, or
at all events some form of exertion of which men—common men—are as
universally capable, and that it not only never naturally includes any
other idea, but distinctly and emphatically excludes it. For instance,
when Mill in his _Principles of Political Economy_ devotes one of his
chapters to the future of the “Labouring Classes,” he instinctively
uses the phrase as meaning manual labourers. When, as not unfrequently
happens, some opulent politician says to a popular audience, “I, too,
am a labouring man,” he is either understood to be saying something
which is only true metaphorically, or is jeered at as saying something
which is not true at all. Probably no two men in the United Kingdom
have worked harder or for longer hours than Mr. Gladstone and Lord
Salisbury; yet no one could call Mr. Gladstone a labour member, or
say that Lord Salisbury was an instance of a labouring man being a
peer. The Watts, the Stevensons, the Whitworths, the Bessemers, the
Armstrongs, the Brasseys, are, according to the formal definition of
the economists, one and all of them labourers. But what man is there
who, if, in speaking of a strike, he were to say that he supported or
opposed the claims of Labour, would be understood as meaning the claims
of employers and millionaires like these? It is evident that no one
would understand him in such a sense; and if he used the word _Labour_
thus, he would be merely trifling with language. The word, for all
practical purposes, has its meaning unequivocally fixed. It does not
mean all Human Exertion; it emphatically means a part of it only. It
means muscular and manual exertion, or exertion of which the ordinary
man is capable, as distinct from industrial exertion of any other
kind; and not only as distinct from it, but as actively opposed to and
struggling with it. Since, then, we have to deal with distinct and
opposing things, it is idle to attempt to discuss them under one and
the same name. ◆² To do so would be like describing the Franco-Prussian
War with only one name for both armies—the soldiers; or like attempting
to explain the composition of water, with only one name for oxygen and
hydrogen—the gas. Accordingly, for the industrial exertion—exertion
moral and mental—which is distinct from Labour and opposed to it, we
must find some separate and some distinctive name; and the name which I
propose to use for this purpose is Ability.
[Sidenote ◆1 In this book it will be called Ability.]
[Sidenote ◆2 There is, however, a deeper distinction between the
two than the fact of one being mental and the other
muscular.]
◆¹ Human Exertion then, as applied to the production of wealth, is of
two distinct kinds: Ability and Labour—the former being essentially
moral or mental exertion, and only incidentally muscular; the latter
being mainly muscular, and only moral or mental in a comparatively
unimportant sense. ◆² This difference between them, however, though
accidentally it is always present, and is what at first strikes the
observation, is not the fundamental difference. The fundamental
difference is of quite another kind. It lies in the following fact:
That Labour is a kind of exertion on the part of the individual, which
begins and ends with each separate task it is employed upon, whilst
Ability is a kind of exertion on the part of the individual which is
capable of affecting simultaneously the labour of an indefinite number
of individuals, and thus hastening or perfecting the accomplishment of
an indefinite number of tasks.
[Sidenote ◆1 The vital distinction is that the Labour of one man
affects one task only; the Ability of one man may affect
an indefinite number.]
◆¹ This vital distinction, hitherto so entirely neglected, should be
written in letters of fire on the mind of everybody who wishes to
understand, to improve, or even to discuss intelligibly, the economic
conditions of a country such as ours. Unless it is recognised, and
terms are found to express it, it is impossible to think clearly about
the question; much more is it impossible to argue clearly about it: for
men’s thoughts, even if for moments they are correct and clear, will be
presently tripped up and entangled in the language they are obliged to
use. Thus, we constantly find that when men have declared all wealth
to be due to Labour, more or less consciously including Ability in the
term, they go on to speak of Labour and the labouring classes, more
or less consciously excluding it; and we can hardly open a review or
a newspaper, or listen to a speech on any economic problem, without
finding the labouring classes spoken of as “the producers,” to the
obvious and intentional exclusion of the classes who exercise Ability;
whereas it can be demonstrated, as we shall see in another chapter,
that of the wealth enjoyed by this country to-day, Labour produces
little more than a third.
Let us go back then to the definitions I have just now given, and
insist on them and enlarge them and explain them, so as to make them
absolutely clear.
[Sidenote ◆1 Familiar examples will show the truth of this.]
Labour, I said, is a kind of exertion on the part of the individual,
which begins and ends with each separate task it is employed upon;
whilst Ability is a kind of exertion on the part of the individual
which is capable of affecting simultaneously the labour of an
indefinite number of individuals. ◆¹ Here are some examples. An
English navvy, it is said, will do more work in a day than a French
navvy; he will dig or wheel away more barrow-loads of earth; but
the greater power of the one, if the two work together, has no
tendency to communicate itself to the other. The one, let us say,
will wheel twelve barrow-loads, whilst the other will wheel ten. We
will imagine, then, a gang of ten French navvies, who in a given time
wheel a hundred barrow-loads. One of them dies, and his place is
taken by an Englishman. The Englishman wheels twelve loads instead
of ten; but the rest of the gang continue to wheel ten only. Let us
suppose, however, that the Englishman, instead of being a navvy, is
a little cripple who has this kind of ability—that he can show the
navvies how to attack with their picks each separate ton of earth
in the most efficacious way, and how to run their barrows along the
easiest tracks or gradients. He might quite conceivably enable the
nine Frenchmen to wheel fifteen barrow-loads in the time that they
formerly consumed in wheeling ten; and thus, though the gang contained
one labourer less than formerly, yet owing to the presence of one
man of ability, the efficacy of its exertions would be increased by
fifty per cent. Or again, let us take the case of some machine, whose
efficiency is in proportion to the niceness with which certain of its
parts are finished. The skilled workman whose labour finishes such
parts contributes by doing so to the efficiency of that one machine
only; he does nothing to influence the labour of any other workman,
or facilitate the production of any other machine similar to it. But
the man who, by his inventive ability, makes the machine simpler, or
introduces into it some new principle, so that, without requiring so
much or such skilled labour to construct it, it will, when constructed,
be twice as efficient as before, may, by his ability, affect individual
machines without number, and increase the efficiency of the labour
of many millions of workmen. Such a case as this is specially worth
considering, because it exposes an error to which I shall again refer
hereafter—the error often made by economic writers, of treating Ability
as a species of Skilled Labour. For Skilled Labour is itself so far
from being the same thing as Ability, that it is in some respects more
distinct from it than Labour of more common kinds; for the secret
of it is less capable of being communicated to other labourers. For
instance, one of the most perfect chronometers ever made—namely, that
invented by Mudge in the last century—required for its construction
Labour of such unusual nicety, that though two specimens, made under
the direct supervision of the inventor, went with an accuracy that has
not since been surpassed, the difficulty of reproducing them rendered
the invention valueless. But the great example of this particular truth
is to be found in a certain fact connected with the history of the
steam-engine—a fact which is little known, whose significance has never
been realised, and which I shall mention a little later on. It may thus
be said with regard to the production of wealth generally, that it
will be limited in proportion to the exceptionally skilled labour it
requires, whilst it will be increased in proportion to the exceptional
ability that is applied to it.
[Sidenote ◆1 We shall now be able to describe Capital accurately
as _Ability_ controlling _Labour_.]
◆¹ The difference, then, between Ability and Labour must be now
abundantly clear. As a general rule, there is the broad difference
on the surface, that the one is mainly mental and the other mainly
muscular; but to this rule there are many exceptions, and the
difference in question is accidental and superficial. The essential,
the fundamental difference from a practical point of view is, that
whilst Labour is the exertion of a single man applied to a single
task, Ability is the exertion of a single man applied to an indefinite
number of tasks, and an indefinite number of individuals.
[Sidenote ◆1 It is, of course, understood that this definition
applies only to Capital used so as actually to make
Labour more productive, not to Capital wasted.]
◆¹ And now let us go back to the subject of Capital. I have said that
Capital is one kind of Human Exertion guiding and controlling another
kind. We can at last express this with more brevity, and say that
Capital is Ability guiding and controlling Labour. This is no mere
rhetorical or metaphorical statement. It is the accurate expression of
what is at once a theoretical truth and an historical fact; and to show
the reader that it is so, let me remove certain objections which may
very possibly suggest themselves. In the first place, it may be said
that Capital belongs constantly to idle and foolish persons, or even
indeed to idiots, to all of whom it yields a revenue. This is true; but
such an objection altogether ignores the fact that though such persons
own the Capital, they do not administer it. An idiot inherits shares in
a great commercial house; but the men who manage the business are not
idiots. They only pay the idiot a certain sum for allowing his Capital
to be made use of by their Ability. It may, however, be said further
that many men, neither idle nor idiotic, had administered Capital
themselves, and had succeeded merely in wasting it. This again is true;
but where Capital is wasted the productive powers of the nation are
not increased by it. It is, however, a broad historical fact that, by
the application of Capital the productive powers of the nation have
been increasing continually for more than a hundred years, and are
increasing still; and this is the fact, or the phenomenon, which we
are engaged in studying. Capital for us, then, means Capital applied
successfully; and when I say that Capital is Ability guiding and
controlling Labour, it is of Capital applied successfully, and not of
Capital wasted, that I must in every case be understood to be speaking;
just as if it were said that a battle was won by British bayonets, the
bayonets meant would be those that the combatants used, not those that
deserters happened to throw away. The fact, indeed, that in certain
hands so much Capital is thrown away and wasted, is nothing but a proof
of what I say, that as a productive agent Capital represents, and
practically _is_, Ability.
[Sidenote ◆1 Capital is to Ability something like what the brain
is to the mind.]
It may, however, be said—and the objection is worth noticing—that
Capital is a material thing, and Ability a mental thing; and it may be
asked how, except metaphorically, the one can be said to be the other?
◆¹ An answer may be given by the analogy of the mind and brain. So long
as the mind inhabits and directs a human body, mind and matter are
two sides of the same thing. It is only through the brain that mind
has power over the muscles; and the brain is powerful only because
it is the organ of the mind. Now Ability is to Capital what mind is
to the brain; and, like mind and brain, the two terms may be used
interchangeably. Capital is that through which the Ability of one set
of men acts on the muscles—that is to say, the Labour—of another set,
whether by setting Labour to produce machinery, or by so organising
various multitudes of labourers that each multitude becomes a single
machine in itself, or by settling or devising the uses to which these
machines shall be put.
[Sidenote ◆1 And this would be as true of Capital in a Socialistic
State as in any other.]
And it will be well, in case any Socialist should happen to read these
pages, to point out that my insisting on this fact is no piece of
special pleading on behalf of the private capitalist. ◆¹ The whole of
the above argument would apply to Capital, no matter who owned it:
individuals, or the community as a whole. For no matter who owned it,
or who divided the proceeds of it, the entire control of it would
have to be in the hands of Ability. In what, or how many, individuals
Ability may be held to reside; how such individuals are best found,
tested, and brought forward; and how their power over Capital may be
best attained by them—whether as owners, or as borrowers, or as State
officials,—is a totally different question, and is in this place beside
the point.
At present, it will be enough to sum up what we have seen thus far. The
causes of wealth are not, as is commonly said, three: Land, Labour, and
Capital. This analysis omits the most important cause altogether, and
makes it impossible to explain, or even reason about, the phenomenon
of industrial progress. The causes of wealth are four—Land, Labour,
Capital, and Ability: the two first being the indispensable elements in
the production of any wealth whatsoever; the fourth being the cause of
all progress in production; and the third, as it now exists, being the
creation of the fourth, and the means through; which it operates. These
two last, as we shall see presently, may, except for special purposes,
be treated as only one, and will be best included under the one term
Ability.
And now let us turn back to the condition of this country at the close
of the last century, and the reader will see why, at the outset of the
above inquiry, I fixed his attention on that particular period.