Economic self-sufficiency

“ The true valuation of activities is to be determined by their social utility. The employment of working men in the brewing of beer or the manufacture of chewing-gum may give large returns to an individual or a corporation, but the social utility of such activity is small. Business enterprise is naturally self-centred; the first interest of every individual or group is self-preservation, and business must pay for itself and produce a surplus for its owner or it is not worth continuing from the economic standpoint ”

“ The economic system we should ultimately wish to see would be one in which the state would be the sole recipient of economic rent, while private capitalistic enterprises should be replaced by self-governing combinations of those who actually do the work. ”

“ Profit and utility thus go along hand in hand. But the greatest loss from the indiscriminate reward of economical misdoing would be in the actual reduction of savings and diminution of capital.
Then, what is the economical function the rich man performs? He conserves the surplus of production, holding it in trust for the good of all, and without him there would be no civilization. The accumulator, the self-made rich man, usually expends only a percentage, often a small percentage, of his income, on his own gratifications. ”

“ In such cases the decision must rest with that larger economic group to which the involved economic units belong. Thus the aim of economic self-government is to keep the responsibility centered upon those who would normally be the most concerned in getting results. ”

“ When this periodicity is once consolidated, even Political Economy then sees that the production of a relative surplus population—i.e., surplus with regard to the average needs of the self-expansion of capital—is a necessary condition of modern industry. ”

“ The savings by which an addition is made to the national capital usually emanate from the desire of persons to improve what is termed their condition in life, or to make a provision for children or others, independent of their exertions. Now, to the strength of these inclinations it makes a very material difference how much of the desired object can be effected by a given amount and duration of self-denial; which again depends on the rate of profit. ”

“ But this cannot possibly be the case in a system which limits the amount of the estate or hýd. Here a period must unavoidably arise where population advances too rapidly for subsistence, unless a manufacturing effort on an extensive scale is made, and made with perfect freedom from all restraints, but those which prudence and well-regulated views of self-interest impose. ”

“ For example, property even in its worst form—that is, property that puts one man in a position to exploit the labor of another man—has encouraged the intelligent and industrious to accumulate wealth; and the accumulation of wealth makes economic development possible; for if a man produced no more than was necessary for the support of himself and his family, there would be no surplus out of which to support those engaged in the development of national resources—for example, the building of roads, the building of railroads, the building of factories, the exploitation of mines. ”

“ In these new and fertile countries, where the individual, and indeed, the entire group is able to live above the line of bare subsistence, and where surplus is so easily accumulated, the individual devotes himself untiringly to the economic struggle. It is not because they are poor, but because they have a chance to get rich that these people are willing to expend unusual effort. ”

“ Those whose degree of providence is below the usual standard, become impoverished, their capital perishes, and makes room for the savings of those whose effective desire of accumulation exceeds the average. These become the natural purchasers of the lands, manufactories, and other instruments of production owned by their less provident countrymen. ”

“ In fact, so far from the labour required for their production being any guide to their value, it is their value that will determine the amount of labour which will be ventured in their production. A single word may be added in explanation of the conception of social utility. Of course a commodity which is of no use to any one but its owner has no economic value, unless it happens to get lost, and, in any case, it is of no consequence in the present question. ”

“ Most useful of all would be a voluntary renunciation, on the part of the purchasing public, of nine-tenths of the futile luxuries they now insanely demand, coupled with the production by themselves of some of the commodities which are easily producable; in other words, establishing some measure of self-support and so releasing many men and women from the curse of existence under factory conditions and giving them an opportunity of living a normal life under self-supporting circumstances. ”

“ Self-interest, when left uncontrouled, will necessarily lead the proprietors of capitals to prefer that species of employment which is most favourable to national industry, because it is, at the same time, most profitable for themselves—ibid. ”

“ Another consequence of this reasoning, is, that the sale of subsistence implies a superfluity of it in the hands of the seller, and a proper equivalent for it in the hands of the buyer; and when the equivalent is not money, it also implies a superfluity of the produce of some sort of industry; consequently, by the exchange of superfluities upon certain articles, a man procures to himself a sufficiency upon every one. This represents that gentle dependence which unites the members of a free society. ”

“ With natural opportunities thus set free to labour, with capital and improvements exempt from tax and exchange released from restrictions, the spectacle of willing men unable to turn their labour into the things they want would become impossible; the recurring paroxysms which paralyse industry would cease; every wheel of production would be set in motion; trade would increase in every direction and wealth augment on every hand. ”

“ The process of wasting the surplus profits in competition and luxury was slow and protracted, and meanwhile productive industry languished and the workers waited in idleness and want for the surplus to be so far reduced as to make room for more production. ”

“ Nothing can be more chimerical than the fear that the accumulation of capital should produce poverty and not wealth, or that it will ever take place too fast for its own end. Nothing is more true than that it is produce which constitutes the market for produce, and that every increase of production, if distributed without miscalculation among all kinds of produce in the proportion which private interest would dictate, creates, or rather constitutes, its own demand. ”

“ But when we come down to practical economics, and face the task of giving to a certain number of human beings, in an extremely backward industrial condition, the opportunity of placing themselves and their families on a basis of permanent well-being, it will be evident that, so far, at any rate, as this particular community is concerned, the mere provision of an economic holding is after all but a part of an economic existence. ”

“ We have travelled far from the teachings of the older economists often enunciated, seldom accepted. They believed that the true line of progress was to be found in the adequate payment of labour and in the self-restraint and self-reliance of the industrial classes themselves. They regarded relief by the State with the utmost jealousy because they believed it to be antagonistic to both these conditions. ”

“ No longer is the per capita wealth of the nation a real index to the prosperity of the average man. Labor on the other hand has shown an increasing self-consciousness, is combining and increasing its demands. In a word, the old pioneer individualism is disappearing, while the forces of social combination are manifesting themselves as never before. The self-made man has become, in popular speech, the coal baron, the steel king, the oil king, the cattle king, the railroad magnate, the master of high finance, the monarch of trusts. ”

“ If everybody else is equally free the man who offers the best to his neighbor will be preferred. Effort will thus be stimulated, self-reliance encouraged, production increased, improvement attained, and economy guaranteed. Nor should there be any special favor or encouragement given by government or by any other bodies to any special individuals or classes of persons or kinds of industry, for in this way capital and labor will be diverted from the direction which they would naturally take, and the self-reliance and energy of such favored persons diminished. ”

“ It becomes necessary for capital progressively to dispose ever more fully of the whole globe, to acquire an unlimited choice of means of production, with regard to both quality and quantity, so as to find productive employment for the surplus value it has realised. ”

“ And inasmuch as I know what it is to labour with the hands long hours, and for small wages, as well as any workman to whom I address myself, and to practise self-denial withal, I am emboldened to declare from experience that the gain of independence, or rather self-dependence, for which I plead, is worth infinitely more than all the cost of its attainment; and, moreover, that to attain it in a greater or less degree, according to circumstances, is within the power of by far the greater number of skilled workmen engaged in our manufactories. ”

“ Self-evident as the thing is, it is often forgotten that the people of a country are maintained and have their wants supplied, not by the produce of present labour, but of past. They consume what has been produced, not what is about to be produced. Now, of what has been produced, a part only is allotted to the support of productive labour; and there will not and cannot be more of that labour than the portion so allotted (which is the capital of the country) can feed, and provide with the materials and instruments of production. ”

“ So long as there remain any persons not possessed, we do not say of subsistence, but of the most refined luxuries, and who would work to possess them, there is employment for capital; and if the commodities which these persons want are not produced and placed at their disposal, it can only be because capital does not exist, disposable for the purpose of employing, if not any other labourers, those very labourers themselves, in producing the articles for their own consumption. ”

“ But as soon as it becomes a question of obtaining, instead of a certain mass of products, the production at any cost of surplus-value, the incessant multiplication of money, the possessor of the means of production strives relentlessly to make those means of production absorb the greatest possible quantity of surplus-labor. ”

“ Another step in the same direction could be taken by limiting individual ownership to the things that men use, and concentrating in the producing group the ownership of all productive tools.
When economic rewards are withdrawn from possession and given to creation, it will pay better to create than it will to own. ”

“ The more prosperous the nation, the greater is the demand from those who cannot spend their huge incomes for safe, paying investment opportunities.
The immense productivity of the present-day system of industry has added greatly to the amount of surplus seeking investment. Each invention, each labor saving device, each substitution of mechanical power that multiplies the productive capacity of industry at the same time increases the surplus at the disposal of the plutocracy. ”

“ Economy without industry will barely appear in a whole coat; industry without economy will appear in rags. The first is detrimental to the community, by preventing the circulation of property; the last is detrimental to itself. It is a singular remark, that even industry is sometimes the way to poverty. ”

“ The ownership of a natural agent of production will give the power of appropriating so much of the wealth produced by the exertion of labor and capital upon it as exceeds the return which the same application of labor and capital could secure in the least productive occupation in which they freely engage. ”

“ To accomplish these imperative results in the quickest and easiest way has alone been my object in trying to stimulate them to throw themselves, as it were, upon their own resources; that is, combine together on the capital furnished them by men for their domestic expenditures, on such a system as to bring a part, at least, of the retail trade into their hands, and so gain the independent and responsible handling of money, with all its incalculable stimulus to invention, enterprise, and independence of thought. ”

“ It cannot be otherwise in a mode of production in which the labourer exists to satisfy the needs of self-expansion of existing values, instead of on the contrary, material wealth existing to satisfy the needs of development op the part of the labourer. ”

“ Yet, the man who invests capital not only derives, in a majority of cases, a sufficient income to enable [Pg 91] him to live in more than comfort but to have a healthy bank account; while the laborer, who alone makes capital draw interest by giving it employment in developing the resources of nature, derives only a bare subsistence, frequently not sufficient to meet the absolute necessaries of his daily life. ”

“ No man who manages his own affairs well, or those of a household, lives on the capital or income of another man; but every one lives on his own income, by the things he has himself produced; although with every further development of the division of labor, it becomes rarer that any one puts the finishing stroke to his own products, and can satisfy himself by their immediate consumption alone. ”