[1] Beginning of April, 1919.
The author in the following pages has deliberately avoided confining
himself to the terms in common use in standard treatises on political
economy. He knows quite well the places which a technical economist
will pick out as being amateurish. But he has selected his mode of
expression, partly because he desires to address himself also to
persons who are not familiar with the literature of sociology and
economics, but chiefly, because it is his opinion, that most of what
is peculiarly technical in such writings will be shewn by a new age
to be partial and defective, even in the very form of its expression.
It may also be thought, that some reference should have been made by
the author to other persons, whose social ideas bear an incidental
resemblance to his own. It must however be remembered, that in the
whole conception here put forward,--a conception which the author
believes he owes to long years of practical experience,--the essential
point is not whether a particular thought has taken this or that form,
but what one takes as one's starting-ground, and the road one pursues
in giving practical realisation to the impulses which underlie this
conception. As may be seen from Chapter IV, the author was already
doing what he could to get these ideas practically realised, at a
time when ideas that look in some respect similar had as yet attracted
no attention.
[2] An English translation of this supplementary volume is in
preparation. (Translator's note.)
[3] Author's Note. For the purposes of life, what is wanted in
an explanation is not definitions drawn from theory, but ideas
that give a picture of a real live process. As used in this sense,
"commodity" denotes something that plays an actual part in man's life
and experience. Any other concept of it either omits or adds to this,
and so fails to tally exactly with what really and truly goes on
in life.
[4] Author's note. It is quite possible in life for a transaction not
only to be interpreted unreally, but also to take place unreally. Money
and labour are not interchangeable values, but only money and the
products of labour. Accordingly, if I give money for labour, I am
doing something that is unreal. I am making a sham transaction. For
in reality I can only give money for the product of labour.
[5] Author's Note. The "rights of the matter" becomes the axiomatic
basis for all economic activity under this relation of labour to the
"rights" system; and the associations will have to accept these as
a given premise in economic life. What this does, however, is to
make economic organisation dependent upon man, instead of man being
dependent upon the system of economics.
[6] Author's Note. A sound proportion between the prices of made
goods can only be achieved in economic life as an outcome of social
administration, that springs up in this way from the free co-operation
of the three branches of the body social. The proportion between
prices must be such, that anyone working receives as counter-value
for what he has produced so much as is necessary to satisfy his
total wants and the wants of those belonging to him, until he has
again turned out a product of equivalent labour. It is impossible to
fix such a price-relation officially in advance; it must come as the
resultant of living co-operation between the associations actively
at work in the body social. Prices will however certainly settle
down into such a normal relationship, provided the joint work of
the associations rests on a healthy co-operation between the three
divisions of social life. One may rely on the result as securely as
on having a safe bridge, when it is built according to the proper
laws of mathematics and mechanics. It may be said, that social life
does not invariably obey its own laws, like a bridge. This facile
objection however will not be made by anyone able to recognise, that
it is primarily the laws of life, and not the laws of mathematics,
which all through this book are conceived as underlying social life.
[7] Author's Note. It may be urged, that the "rights" relations and the
economic relations form one indivisible whole in actual reality. This
however misses the point of what is meant by the threefold division. Of
course, in the mutual intercourse and exchange that goes on between
the various social organisms, taken as a collective process, the
two different sorts of relations,--between their "rights" systems
and their economic systems,--work together as a single whole. But it
is a different matter, whether one makes rights regulations to suit
the requirements of economic intercourse, or whether one first shapes
them by the common sense of right, and then takes the combined result,
whatever it may be.
[8] Author's Note. Some people think these things "Utopias," because
they fail to see that, in reality, actual life itself is struggling
towards the very kind of arrangement which seems to them so Utopian,
and that the actual mischief going on in real life is due precisely
to the fact that these arrangements are nowhere to be found.