PRIVATE CAPITAL STOLEN FROM THE SOCIAL FUND.
"I observe," pursued the doctor, "that Edith is getting very impatient
with these dry disquisitions, and thinks it high time we passed from
wealth in the abstract to wealth in the concrete, as illustrated by the
contents of your safe. I will delay the company only while I say a very
few words more; but really this question of the restoration of your
million, raised half in jest as it was, so vitally touches the central
and fundamental principle of our social order that I want to give you at
least an outline idea of the modern ethics of wealth distribution.
"The essential difference between the new and the old point of view you
fully possess by this time. The old ethics conceived of the question of
what a man might rightfully possess as one which began and ended with the
relation of individuals to things. Things have no rights as against moral
beings, and there was no reason, therefore, in the nature of the case as
thus stated, why individuals should not acquire an unlimited ownership of
things so far as their abilities permitted. But this view absolutely
ignored the social consequences which result from an unequal distribution
of material things in a world where everybody absolutely depends for life
and all its uses on their share of those things. That is to say, the old
so-called ethics of property absolutely overlooked the whole ethical side
of the subject--namely, its bearing on human relations. It is precisely
this consideration which furnishes the whole basis of the modern ethics
of property. All human beings are equal in rights and dignity, and only
such a system of wealth distribution can therefore be defensible as
respects and secures those equalities. But while this is the principle
which you will hear most generally stated as the moral ground of our
economic equality, there is another quite sufficient and wholly different
ground on which, even if the rights of life and liberty were not
involved, we should yet maintain that equal sharing of the total product
of industry was the only just plan, and that any other was robbery.
"The main factor in the production of wealth among civilized men is the
social organism, the machinery of associated labor and exchange by which
hundreds of millions of individuals provide the demand for one another's
product and mutually complement one another's labors, thereby making the
productive and distributive systems of a nation and of the world one
great machine. This was true even under private capitalism, despite the
prodigious waste and friction of its methods; but of course it is a far
more important truth now when the machinery of co-operation runs with
absolute smoothness and every ounce of energy is utilized to the utmost
effect. The element in the total industrial product which is due to the
social organism is represented by the difference between the value of
what one man produces as a worker in connection with the social
organization and what he could produce in a condition of isolation.
Working in concert with his fellows by aid of the social organism, he and
they produce enough to support all in the highest luxury and refinement.
Toiling in isolation, human experience has proved that he would be
fortunate if he could at the utmost produce enough to keep himself alive.
It is estimated, I believe, that the average daily product of a worker in
America to-day is some fifty dollars. The product of the same man working
in isolation would probably be highly estimated on the same basis of
calculation if put at a quarter of a dollar. Now tell me, Julian, to whom
belongs the social organism, this vast machinery of human association,
which enhances some two hundredfold the product of every one's labor?"
"Manifestly," I replied, "it can belong to no one in particular, but to
nothing less than society collectively. Society collectively can be the
only heir to the social inheritance of intellect and discovery, and it is
society collectively which furnishes the continuous daily concourse by
which alone that inheritance is made effective."
"Exactly so. The social organism, with all that it is and all it makes
possible, is the indivisible inheritance of all in common. To whom, then,
properly belongs that two hundredfold enhancement of the value of every
one's labor which is owing to the social organism?"
"Manifestly to society collectively--to the general fund."
"Previous to the great Revolution," pursued the doctor. "Although there
seems to have been a vague idea of some such social fund as this, which
belonged to society collectively, there was no clear conception of its
vastness, and no custodian of it, or possible provision to see that it
was collected and applied for the common use. A public organization of
industry, a nationalized economic system, was necessary before the social
fund could be properly protected and administered. Until then it must
needs be the subject of universal plunder and embezzlement. The social
machinery was seized upon by adventurers and made a means of enriching
themselves by collecting tribute from the people to whom it belonged and
whom it should have enriched. It would be one way of describing the
effect of the Revolution to say that it was only the taking possession by
the people collectively of the social machinery which had always belonged
to them, thenceforth to be conducted as a public plant, the returns of
which were to go to the owners as the equal proprietors and no longer to
buccaneers.
"You will readily see," the doctor went on, "how this analysis of the
product of industry must needs tend to minimize the importance of the
personal equation of performance as between individual workers. If the
modern man, by aid of the social machinery, can produce fifty dollars'
worth of product where he could produce not over a quarter of a dollar's
worth without society, then forty-nine dollars and three quarters out of
every fifty dollars must be credited to the social fund to be equally
distributed. The industrial efficiency of two men working without society
might have differed as two to one--that is, while one man was able to
produce a full quarter dollar's worth of work a day, the other could
produce only twelve and a half cents' worth. This was a very great
difference under those circumstances, but twelve and a half cents is so
slight a proportion of fifty dollars as not to be worth mentioning. That
is to say, the difference in individual endowments between the two men
would remain the same, but that difference would be reduced to relative
unimportance by the prodigious equal addition made to the product of both
alike by the social organism. Or again, before gunpowder was invented one
man might easily be worth two as a warrior. The difference between the
men as individuals remained what it was; yet the overwhelming factor
added to the power of both alike by the gun practically equalized them as
fighters. Speaking of guns, take a still better illustration--the
relation of the individual soldiers in a square of infantry to the
formation. There might be large differences in the fighting power of the
individual soldiers singly outside the ranks. Once in the ranks, however,
the formation added to the fighting efficiency of every soldier equally
an element so overwhelming as to dwarf the difference between the
individual efficiency of different men. Say, for instance, that the
formation added ten to the fighting force of every member, then the man
who outside the ranks was as two to one in power compared with his
comrade would, when they both stood in the ranks, compare with him only
as twelve to eleven--an inconsiderable difference.
"I need scarcely point out to you, Julian, the bearing of the principle
of the social fund on economic equality when the industrial system was
nationalized. It made it obvious that even if it were possible to figure
out in a satisfactory manner the difference in the industrial products
which in an accounting with the social fund could be respectively
credited to differences in individual performance, the result would not
be worth the trouble. Even the worker of special ability, who might hope
to gain most by it, could not hope to gain so much as he would lose in
common with others by sacrificing the increased efficiency of the
industrial machinery that would result from the sentiment of solidarity
and public spirit among the workers arising from a feeling of complete
unity of interest."
"Doctor," I exclaimed, "I like that idea of the social fund immensely! It
makes me understand, among other things, the completeness with which you
seem to have outgrown the wages notion, which in one form or other was
fundamental to all economic thought in my day. It is because you are
accustomed to regarding the social capital rather than your day-to-day
specific exertions as the main source of your wealth. It is, in a word,
the difference between the attitude of the capitalist and the
proletarian."
"Even so," said the doctor. "The Revolution made us all capitalists, and
the idea of the dividend has driven out that of the stipend. We take
wages only in honor. From our point of view as to the collective
ownership of the economic machinery of the social system, and the
absolute claim of society collectively to its product, there is something
amusing in the laborious disputations by which your contemporaries used
to try to settle just how much or little wages or compensation for
services this or that individual or group was entitled to. Why, dear me,
Julian, if the cleverest worker were limited to his own product, strictly
separated and distinguished from the elements by which the use of the
social machinery had multiplied it, he would fare no better than a
half-starved savage. Everybody is entitled not only to his own product,
but to vastly more--namely, to his share of the product of the social
organism, in addition to his personal product, but he is entitled to this
share not on the grab-as-grab-can plan of your day, by which some made
themselves millionaires and others were left beggars, but on equal terms
with all his fellow-capitalists."
"The idea of an unearned increment given to private properties by the
social organism was talked of in my day," I said, "but only, as I
remember, with reference to land values. There were reformers who held
that society had the right to take in taxes all increase in value of land
that resulted from social factors, such as increased population or public
improvements, but they seemed to think the doctrine applicable to land
only."
"Yes," said the doctor, "and it is rather odd that, having hold of the
clew, they did not follow it up."