showing how smoothly and beautifully great London is provided for by the
working of this “law.” He points out the immense numbers of people to be
supplied daily, and the immense amount of materials brought in daily, by
ship, by rail, by horse and cart, under the wise guidance of individual
self-interest and this governing “law of demand and supply.” It sounds
very attractive! and when stated by so great a thinker it seems as if it
were so. But is it? Are the millions of inhabitants in London thus
accurately provided for? Do none starve and freeze? Do none dwindle and
sicken, and become hopeless cripples and invalids for lack of proper
supplies? Or again, do none waste and spoil, receiving far more than
they need? Are the demands of the human body, of the human mind, of the
human heart, really supplied in London, or anywhere else, by this
alleged law?
What do the words really mean, if they mean anything? For “demand” read
“purchasing power”; “the law of supply and purchasing power.” What does
“supply” mean? It means the product of human industry. The product of
human industry is equal to the purchasing power. This does not sound so
smooth, but is more accurate. And what does it mean now? That those who
have purchasing power can get what they want. Can they—always?
Why, yes—_if there is any_. But if all the purchasing power in the world
should happen to demand a few more of the works of Phidias—they would
not be forthcoming. There is frequent complaint even among the very rich
of their inability to get some things they want; such as ideal servants.
This is a very common demand, and the air is filled with protest
because, at any price, the supply does _not_ equal the demand. This law
is a common vagrant—“having no visible means of support.” All it amounts
to is that if you demand a thing—and can pay for it—and there is any
such thing—the previous owner will sell it to you—if he wants to.
On the other hand, nothing is more frequent than our upsetting this
supposed equilibrium by what we call “overproduction.” If the supply
were equal to the demand the demand is certainly not alleged to be equal
to the supply. “It’s a poor rule that doesn’t work both ways.”
What does govern the supply, if demand does not?
“Supply” is human production—the output of our social energies. If it
can be called “equal” to anything, it is equal to the combined action of
heredity and environment, modified by our volition. The product of a
race depends on its stock, its inherited characteristics; on its
education, physical and mental, on its nutrition and stimulus, on its
governing concepts.
To make such and such a product forthcoming you must have such and such
a producer; he must have the capacity and the wish to produce such a
“supply.” If he has not the capacity, no power on earth—be it a reward
of the princess and half the kingdom, or a penalty of thumbscrews and
boiling oil—can get it out of him.
Turn your “supply” round and apply it to the producer. Supply him with
all the necessary conditions for rich production. Then we might say in a
general way “the supply is equal to the supply.” But “demand” is not a
producing agent. It does not make people create, invent, or discover. It
does not make them sell unless they want to—see Ahab demanding Naboth’s
vineyard—or Frederic and his Miller of Sans Souci. It does not make them
work even, unless they are able and willing. Demand what you please of
the tramp and pauper—he cannot produce it.
A natural law is a series of observed phenomena. Such things always
happen, so we say it is a law. The observed phenomena in this case are
those of a past stage of economic development; and at no time “natural”
but purely arbitrary. A parallel may be drawn from similar observed
phenomena in the system of slave labour. The “supply” then was the work
of the slave. The “demand” was a command, and was enforced by the whip;
no whip no work, more whip more work, and behold “a law”! The work
equals the whip! So it did, in most cases—granting the man was a slave.
But it was no law of social economics; it was a law of slavery. Neither
is this theory of ours that “The work equals the pay” a law of social
economics—it is only a law of wagery.
Among free men, the whip would not produce work but merely a fight.
Among independent gentlemen an offer of pay does not produce service of
any sort—it is regarded as an insult. The crucial condition of the
work-and-whip law is that you shall hold the whip and have power to use
it; in the work-and-pay law, that you shall hold the pay and have a
right to withhold it.
These are the root errors most especially discussed in this book:
1. The Ego Concept.
2. The Pleasure-in-Impression Theory.
3. The Pay Concept.
4. The Want Theory.
5. The Self-Interest Theory.
6. The Pain Concept.
7. The Law of Supply and Demand;
with the derivative scorn for work; here only enumerated and briefly set
forth for convenience in reference.
V: THE NATURE OF SOCIETY (I)
_Summary_
_Idea of social organism, not new. Proposition stated. Proof advanced on
three main lines. First, nutritive processes of collective and organic
society. Men do not support themselves. World-wide production and
distribution of food. Individual could not become baker or tailor, they
are social functionaries. Organic evolution along line of modification
to food supply. Man the only creature who has mastered his food supply,
he makes that which makes him, he produces food. Production of food a
collective function, never found in individual animals. Physical
conditions of agriculture essential to social progress, agricultural
unit a village. Second, specialised activities of society collective and
organic. Social evolution of trades, arts, businesses. Increasing
interdependence. Instance of teacher. Evolution of social functions.
Third, the brain a collective organ, a social organ, thought a social
function. Effect of isolation on human brain, partial or complete.
Difficulty of retaining mental stimulus. Individual animal’s brain in
relation to his own activities. Human brain in relation to common
activities._
V
THE NATURE OF SOCIETY (I)
The concept that society is an organic form of life is not new to the
world.
The popular mind, confronted with many conspicuous proofs of human
solidarity, admitted the idea to one of those thought-tight compartments
in which we keep such concepts as we are unable or unwilling to _think
through_ and hold in logical relation to our others. There it has
remained, enlarging somewhat in course of time and loud events, and
tending to modify such conduct as came its way to the social benefit.
But since a much larger brain era was governed by the egoistic concept,
and vital affairs far more directed by it, we still consciously act as
individualists, and still construe Human life in terms of the
individual. Let us now use the temporary power of the brain to think in
defiance of its own previously held ideas; and study the organic nature
of Society.
The proposition is that Society is the whole and we are the parts: that
that degree of organic development known as human life is never found in
isolated individuals, and that it progresses to higher development in
proportion to the evolution of the social relation; that a man is,
individually, a complete animal, with sufficient ability to attain the
necessities of an animal existence; but that as a human being he is but
a minute fraction of a great entity, the necessities of whose existence
are only to be attained by the complex interdependent activities of many
men.
That this relation is strictly organic, involving the high
specialisation of the individual man to the social service in activities
which are of no possible benefit to his separate animal life—(as the
activities of a dentist or a teacher); but which are of visible benefit
to his community, his community in turn supporting him.
That these common and composite activities have developed a life-form
quite above and beyond that of its constituent men; with a structure and
functions outside of and including theirs. That whereas the life
processes of the constituent individuals must of course be insured and
improved by the higher life inclosing them; yet that a greater or less
sacrifice of individual interests may at any time be necessary—and is
naturally made—the greater including the less.
That this Social Organisation tends to make safe and happy its
constituent organisms in their separate animal lives, yet their greatest
happiness lies in their recognition and fulfilment of the social life.
That an increasing social consciousness and social activity is the most
healthful and happy growth for the human race; and further, that “the
riddle of human life” is made quite simple by this purely natural and
evolutionary position.
In proof and illustration let us consider certain facts, most of them
commonly known to us all, but not commonly considered in this
connection. We will observe in turn the organic nature of Society as
shown in its nutritive processes, in its high and personally sacrificial
specialisations, and in its patently collective mental life.
First, and most visible, come the physical life processes; those daily
activities in which our energies find expression, by the products of
which our lives are maintained. Among facts suitable for nursery
education is the glaring one that in plainest economic relation “no man
liveth to himself nor dieth to himself.”
Each man does not support himself by his own efforts, as an individual
animal does, but pools his efforts with those of others and shares in
the common good as a collective animal does; as the bee or ant. This
does not refer to any consciously advocated plan of collectivism; but to
the present fact that our coffee comes from one country and our tea from
another; that the Californian gives us oranges and the Kansan beef; that
the carpenter and mason build our houses and the tailor makes our coats.
The daily necessities of one man are met by the activities of countless
other men. If they were gone, the one man could not supply himself with
any of these things; but would, if he lived, sink to the level of the
savage hunter,—who is indeed “self-supporting.” We have, it is true, a
system of exchange in which it is endeavoured to make each man’s share
in the common product proportionate to his personal efforts; but even if
this system worked successfully it would not alter the fact that the
supplies are really made by the others—and the one—alone—could not make
them.
Lay aside for the moment the confusion of idea naturally arising from
our system of interpersonal exchange and its convenient medium, money.
Suppose that money were entirely out of the world; or that we were so
flooded with it that it lost its value as a medium of exchange. Great
confusion as to how much of anything should be demanded for something
else would of course ensue; but the most conspicuous result would be the
unavoidable perception that it was _the thing_ we needed to live on—not
the money.
The purchasing power of money varies continually, but the nourishing
power of wheat or the heat-retaining power of wool does not vary. We eat
the bread and are kept warm by the coat; and the wheat and wool are
prepared for us by many strangers. It may be for a moment supposed that
an individual man could, if he chose, make his own bread and coat from
his own wheat and wool, but follow back the evolution of these processes
and see if he ever did.
The more nearly alone you find a man—as the Bushmen—the more nearly
naked he is, the more absolutely a hunter and an eater of raw food. To
raise wheat and bake bread requires a stationary group of long standing.
It is a social process. So with the coat—the man who lives really alone
wears at most the skin of another animal.
To keep sheep, to shear, and card, and spin, and weave, and cut, and
sew—all these processes require a stationary group of still longer
standing; they are social processes. A man alone can catch another
animal, can “eat his fat and wear his hair”; but the baker and the
tailor are slowly evolved social functionaries. Everywhere we see the
present proof that the wants of man are not supplied by his own efforts
and cannot be; that his life processes are essentially collective.
Now let us approach these facts from behind, watch their inception and
growth, and see how unavoidable is the conclusion.
The life of any creature is primarily dependent on the regular renewal
of its constituent particles. The process of living uses up the
materials lived in. Living involves dying, and to postpone the dying the
structure is continually supplied with fresh materials. This continuous
supply of fresh materials we call nutrition. It is an increasingly
elaborate process, with “many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip”; and
the main line of organic evolution is in development of these nutritive
processes.
Conditions of the environment modify a creature, as in hide and hair;
conditions of inter-animal competition modify him, as in horns and
stings; conditions of reproduction modify him, developing an elaborate
physical mechanism and a more elaborate scheme of decoration; but the
most distinctive modification of a creature is that produced by its
nutritive conditions. “Order Mammalia,” with all its towering
superiority, is founded merely on a new way of feeding the baby. The
food supply of the world is subject to fluctuating influences—climatic,
geographic, and other; and as we watch the widening panorama of animal
forms changing and growing up the ages, we see the whole procession to
be moving always in one line—in pursuit of its dinner. We think of our
dinners as a pleasing series of events, but we do not appreciate their
awful importance.
The life of any creature absolutely depends on getting together a
certain group of chemical constituents and keeping them reinforced.
While those constituents, massed in certain proportions, are cunningly
poured through a certain small orifice called a mouth, the creature
lives. A procession of dinners passing a given point—that is the
physical condition of life. _We_ are the given point. If the procession
goes another way—or stops awhile—“we” cease to live.
And since there is no law of nature calling on the proper constituents
to arise, to detach themselves from their undesirable comrades, to form
into rightly proportioned groups, appear at proper intervals and to
enter the “given point,”—therefore the principal machinery of every
living form is developed to discover, pursue, seize, and gather in these
constituents. To obtain what we want from the air, gills and lungs are
invented; that supply is so instantly imperative and so plentiful and
easy of access, that an unconscious organic motion sucks it in. If food
were as simple and common as oxygen we should be spared much exertion.
But food is anything but this. In its crude forms it is thinly scattered
in the water, and small early beast-lets float around and grab it as
they can. “You get food when it drops and you die when it stops—you
helpless free agent of sorrow!”
Food in vegetable forms is also widespread and thin. The creatures
that live on grass have had to develop the most cumbrous and involved
of alimentary canals; huge barrels filled with many stomachs,
supported by sturdy legs, as of tables, to hold the eating machine up,
and carry it eternally about after its plentiful but highly diluted
dinner. A concentrated vegetable food, like the fruit, brings out
quite other qualities; as seen in all light swift arboreal animals, as
the monkey; and between ground and tree rises the long neck of the
giraffe—stretching, ever stretching, after his ascending dinner.
The humming-bird has slowly acquired a very special tongue to get his
dinner, so has the butterfly; the tooth of the squirrel is necessitated
by the stubborn nut; and the poor thirsting camel has his private
portable food-and-water supply to meet the demands of life between
far-scattered oases.
But when it appeared that food in predigested ready-to-eat packages was
specially desirable; when the carnivorous habit was developed, then
indeed we find a wild variety of adaptation to one’s dinner. Food in
this form was not only widely scattered and difficult of access, but
actively reluctant, sometimes even contentious. But means were found to
encompass it. Was it small and hidden like the ant, yet numerous enough
to pay for eating? Lo! the ant-eater’s slender snout and slenderer
tongue pursue and capture it. Is it a fat grub, deep boring in the bark?
The ingenious Javan monkey develops a special finger for his
extradition. Does the insect fly waveringly from flower to flower? The
bird flies more accurately and swiftly from insect to insect, and the
hawk swoops still more efficiently from bird to bird.
Whatever form the dinner took, wherever the dinner went, there followed
the fluent, ever-changing animal organism, producing tooth or claw,
tongue or proboscis, seven stomachs or a private fish-pole—whatever was
necessary to lure, catch, hold, inclose, and assimilate, this
ever-receding and sometimes actively resisting, but always indispensable
dinner. The evolution of animal organisms is conditioned mainly upon the
food supply.
How does humanity figure in this transformation scene?
Man alone, of the whole animal kingdom, has attained a complete new
stage in this imperative process of nutrition. Where the most primitive
ameboid cell can but receive food; where the whole machinery of later
organisms can but seize food; man, and man alone, produces food. Through
all the ages, through every conceivable modification of structure and
function, the animal has pursued its dinner. Man has caught it.
Man alone has permanently mastered his food supply; instead of an
endless chase it is a closed circle—he makes that which makes him. That
is why physical evolution stops with man—and psychical evolution begins.
No longer at the mercy of thin grass, man makes the fat-grained corn; no
longer endlessly chasing the buffalo, he raises the big steer. His
prairie in the garden, his prey in the barnyard, the animal can rest at
last, and man can grow. By what strange new power is this immense step
taken, which has enabled this one out of all created forms to apply
productive force, instead of mere destructive force, to his food supply?
By the power of organisation. By entering upon that new life, the social
life, which raises us above all lower forms.
The cell groups with others into the organ, the organs group again and
form organisms; the organisms, once more combined, form an organisation.
Society is the fourth power of the cell.
A low and limited form of social life began with the temporary union of
hunters; loose fluctuating hordes, like those of wild dogs or wolves.
When cattle were kept instead of killed, were milked and sheared and
bred with care and forecast, there arose a higher group form, the
family. With an insured food supply at hand man sat quiet, watching his
cattle; and with food to spare and time to spare, he began to grow. The
family, our physical nucleus, grew too; grew as it had never grown
before.
The limits of cattle-fed life were sharp and clear. There was no
permanent home, no village, no extra-familiar intercourse, only warfare
over pasture and water between tribe and tribe. But the hour came when
corn was planted and eaten; and then our human life was indeed
established.
The conditions of permanent physical juxtaposition, so essential to
social growth, were met for the first time. The Hunter, requiring forty
square miles of land per capita to chase at hazard his laborious prey,
had no chance for social growth. Any other man on his forty miles was a
competitor and reduced the supply of food, so he killed him if possible;
and this habit also did not conduce to social growth. Families, too,
were small when each man “did his own work” as these did. When came the
Shepherd and his plenteous food, came larger families; but there was
still a need of some five square miles per capita to feed the beasts; as
the family grew the miles increased; and on the “free land” with its
“equal opportunities” the families met at the edges and warred with one
another as competitors. This, again, was not conducive to social growth.
But the Farmer, with far more food on far less land, food more richly
and rapidly reproductive, and taking far less time to mature; with the
family growing faster than ever, but taking up less room for its food
supply; the Farmer is the base of the true social structure. Surplus
nutrition and surplus time meant accumulated energy and frequent
opportunity which, with the permanent home, allowed the birth and
nurture of the industries and arts. The physical nearness of the
people—acres instead of miles for their nutritive base—allowed of larger
growth of language; and so in and with and following these conditions
the social life became possible.
Note the absolute collectivity of this productive food process. The
lowest food-producing unit is a village; not a separate man, or even a
family. Agriculture is not found below a certain human group form.
Social life is born with agriculture. The distinctive food processes of
humanity are collective.
A second field of proof of our organic relation, and one as patent as
the first, is the complex specialisation of humanity.
If you find a lump of protoplasm you cannot tell whether it is a whole
or a part; if you divide it, its parts make wholes and prosper as
before. Very low life-forms may be cut into fragments, and each develops
whatever it lacks and makes a new whole. There is little differentiation
here. But if you find an eye, a tooth, a claw, you are at no loss as to
whether it is a whole or a part.
If it were a whole, it would be able to maintain and reproduce itself.
Being a part, it can do neither. The eye is a remote, highly developed
special organ, _of no use to itself_; able only to serve the complex
organism of which it is a part; and nourished and maintained only by
that organism. This condition is absolute proof of organic life as
distinguished from individual.
Apply this proof to society. Society consists of numbers of interrelated
and highly specialised functions, the functionaries being individual
human animals. Society develops them—they could never have been evolved
in solitude. As easily conceive of independent eyes, rolling around and
doing business by themselves, as of independent teachers, carpenters,
dentists. Society maintains them, as the body does the eye; intricate
labours of many others feeding, warming, housing, protecting the
teacher, while he teaches.
Alone he might hunt, and “support himself” as a separate animal; as if,
conceivably, the eye could return to a protoplasmic condition and soak
up a living somehow; but as an eye it would cease to exist; and he would
cease to exist as a teacher. The teacher, teaching, cannot support
himself. His time, his strength, his enormously specialised skill, are
spent in teaching, and the society which made him and which needs him,
necessarily supports him. Teaching as an activity is not predicable of
individuals. It is a power to transmit the social gain in intelligence
and knowledge among the social constituents. No solitary individual
could have attained this knowledge and experience; and, if he had it, he
could _not teach it to himself_. Teaching is a social function; a very
elaborate and long-developed social function. The teacher is an extreme
instance of the social functionary. Other than as a social functionary
he does not exist.
This test may be applied far and wide, in every trade, art, science, or
business; no human occupation escapes it. Whatever a man can do
separately for himself, an ape can imitate. Whatever a man does which is
worth falling human is done collectively and for others, it is a social
function. He may work alone at his business, but the tools he works with
are the fruit of slow social evolution, and the work he does is done for
others. He may retire to the forest and think alone, but he thinks on
the problems of human life; no personal affairs can occupy the energies
of a human brain; and the brain he thinks with is a slow social product
too.