CHAPTER III
CAPITALISM
AND CREATIVE SOCIAL IDEAS
(Capital and Human Labor)
The
only way to get a sound judgment as to what action is needed in
the social field is through insight into the basic forces at
work in the social organism. The basic idea behind the
preceding chapters was an attempt to arrive at such an insight.
The facts of social life show that the social disturbances are
not merely on the surface but are fundamental. Vision that
penetrates to the foundations is needed to cope with
them.
It
is in capital and capitalism that the worker looks for the
cause of his grievances. But to arrive at any fruitful
conclusion as to capital's part, for good or ill, in the
social structure, one has first to be perfectly clear as to how
capital is produced and consumed. One has to learn how this
process takes place as a result of the individual abilities of
people and the effects of the rights system and the forces of
economic life.
One
points to human labor as the factor that, together with
capital and the nature-basis of the economy, creates the
economic values. Through these three factors, the worker
becomes conscious of his social situation. To reach any
conclusion as to the way in which human labor must be placed
into the social organism without injuring the worker's
self-respect, requires keeping in mind the relation of human
labor to the development of individual abilities, and to the
rights-consciousness.
Today, quite rightly, people are asking what the first step
must be (the most immediate action) if the claims presented by
the social movement are to be met. Even a first step will not
succeed unless we first know how it is to be related to the
basic principles of a healthy social order. Once this is known,
then, in whatever part of the social structure one is working,
one will discover the particular thing that requires doing.
What keeps people from this insight is the fact that they take
their opinions from the social institutions themselves. Their
thoughts follow the lead of the facts instead of mastering
them. Today, however, we need to see that no adequate judgment
can be formed without going back to those primal creative
thoughts that underlie all social institutions.
The
body social requires a constant, fresh supply of the forces
residing in these primal thoughts. If the suitable
channels for these thoughts are not there, then social
institutions take on forms that impede life instead of
furthering it. Yet the primal thoughts live on in men's
instinctive impulses, even if their conscious thoughts are
mistaken and build up stumbling blocks. It is these primal
thoughts that come to expression, openly or in a hidden way, in
the revolutionary convulsions of the social order.
Such convulsions will only cease when the body social takes a
form in which two things are possible: First, an inclination to
notice when an institution is beginning to deviate from
its original intention, and second, the counteracting of
every such deviation before it becomes strong enough to
be a danger.
In
our times the actual conditions have come to deviate widely
from the demand of the primal thoughts. We need to turn
vigorously back to these primal thoughts and not dismiss
them as “impractical” generalities. From them
we need to learn the direction in which the actual realities
must now be consciously guided, for the time has gone by in
which the old, instinctive guidance sufficed for mankind.
One
of the basic questions raised by the practical criticism of the
times is how to put a stop to the oppression the worker suffers
under private capitalism. The owner, or manager, of capital is
in a position to put other men's bodily labor into the service
of what he undertakes to produce.
It
is necessary to distinguish three elements in the social
relation that arises in the cooperation of capital and human
labor-power. First, there is the enterprising activity, which
must rest on the individual ability of some person or
group of persons. Second, the relation of the
entrepreneur to the worker, which must be a relation in right.
Third is the production of an object, which acquires a
commodity value in the circuit of economic life.
For
the enterprising activity to come to expression in a healthy
way, there must be forces at work in social life that let
individual abilities function in the best possible way. This
can only happen if the body social includes a sphere that gives
an able person the freedom to use his capacities, and
leaves the judgment of their value to the free and voluntary
understanding of others.
It
is clear that what a man can do socially by means of capital
comes into the sphere of society where the laws and the
administration are taken care of by the spiritual life.
If the political state interferes to influence these
personal activities, the decisions will unavoidably show
a lack of understanding of individual abilities. This is
because the political state is necessarily based on what is
similar and equal in all men's claims on life. It is its
business to translate this equality into practice. Within its
own domain it must make sure that every man has a fair chance
to make his personal opinion count. Its proper work has nothing
to do with understanding individual abilities, so it
ought never to have any influence on the exercise of
these.
Just as little, where capital is needed for something, should
the prospect of economic advantage determine the exercise of
individual abilities. Many, weighing the pros and cons of
capitalism, put great stress on this prospect. In their opinion
it is only this incentive that can induce individual ability to
exert itself. As “practical men,” they refer to the
“imperfections of human nature.” There is no doubt
that in the social order under which the present state of
things developed, the prospect of economic advantage has come
to play a very important part. The fact is that to no small
extent, this is the cause of the state of things today. Thus
there is need for the development of some other, different
incentive. This can only be found in the social sense that will
develop out of a healthy spiritual life. Out of the strength of
the free spiritual life, a man's education and schooling will
send him into activity equipped with impulses that will lead
him, thanks to this social sense, to making real the things
toward which his individual capacities drive him.
Visionary illusions have certainly caused tremendous harm in
social endeavor, as in other fields, but such a point of
view as that expressed above need not come into the
“visionary” category. What is stated here does not
rest on any notion that “the spirit” will work
wonders if only the people who think they are filled with it,
continually speak about it. It comes, on the contrary,
out of observation of how people actually do work when they
work together freely in the spiritual field. This work in
common takes on a social character of its own accord, provided
only that it can develop in real freedom.
It
is only the lack of freedom in spiritual life that has kept its
social character from coming to expression. The spiritual
forces of social life have come to expression among the
leading classes in a way that has, anti-socially, restricted
their use and value to limited circles. What was produced
in these circles could only be brought to the workers in an
artificial way. They could get from it no support for their
souls, because they did not really have any part in it. Schemes
for popular education, for “uplifting the masses”
to appreciation of art, etc., are no way of spreading
spiritual property among “the people,” for
“the people” are not within its life. All that can
be given them is a view of these treasures from a point
outside.
This also applies to those offshoots of spiritual activity that
find their way into economic life on the basis of capital. In a
healthy social order the worker should not merely stand
at his machine while the capitalist alone knows what is going
to become of the products in the circuit of economic life. The
worker should be able to form a conception of the part he is
playing in society through his work on the production line.
Conferences, regarded as much a part of the operation as the
work itself, should be held regularly by the management.
Their aim will be the developing of a common set of ideas for
the employed and the employer. Such activity will bring the
workers to a sense of the fact that control of capital,
properly carried out, benefits the whole community,
including the worker. Also, an approach aimed at promoting a
full understanding, will make the employer careful to keep his
business methods above suspicion.
Only those unable to appreciate the effects of the community of
feeling that arises from sharing a common task will consider
the foregoing to be meaningless. Others will see clearly the
benefits to economic productivity that will come from having
the direction of economic affairs rooted in the free spiritual
life. If this preliminary condition is fulfilled the present
interest in capital and its increase merely for the sake of
profits, would be replaced by a practical interest in
producing something and getting work done.
The
socialistic-minded thinkers of today are struggling to get the
means of production under the control of society. What is
legitimate in their aims can only be achieved if this
control is exercised by the free spiritual sphere of society.
In that way economic compulsion, which goes out from the
capitalist and which is felt as something unworthy of human
beings, will be made impossible. Such compulsion arises when
the capitalist acts out of the forces of economic life. At the
same time the crippling of men's individual abilities, which
results when these abilities are governed by the
political state, will not arise.
Earnings on everything done through capital and individual
ability must result, like the results of all other
spiritual work, from the free initiative of the doer and the
free appreciation of those who wish the work done. A man
himself must estimate what these earnings must be, taking
into consideration preliminary training, incidental
expenses, etc. Whether he finds his claims gratified or not
depends on the appreciation his services meet with.
Social arrangements on such lines will lay the basis for a
really free contractual relationship between the employer
(work-director) and the work-doer. It will rest, not on barter
of commodities, or money, for labor, but on an agreement as to
the share due to each of the two joint producers of the
commodity.
The
sort of service rendered to the body social on the basis of
capital depends, from its very nature, on the way in which
individual human capacities reach into the social
organism. Nothing but the free spiritual life can give men's
abilities the impulse they need for their development. Even in
a society where this development is tied up with the political
state administration or with the forces of economic life, real
productivity in things requiring the expenditure of capital
depends on the extent to which free individual capacities can
force their way through the hindrances imposed on them. Under
such conditions, however, the development is not a healthy one.
This free development of individual ability, using capital as a
basis, is not what has brought about the commodity status of
human labor power, but, rather is it the shackling of
labor-power by the political state or by the circuit of
economic processes.
Recognition of this fact is a necessary preliminary to
everything that has to be done by way of social organization.
For the superstition has grown up that the measures
needed (for the health of society) must come from either
the state or the economy. If we go any farther along the road
on which this superstition has led us, we shall be setting up
all sorts of institutions that will make oppressive conditions
increasingly worse instead of leading man towards the goal he
is striving for.
People learned to think about capitalism at a time when it had
induced a disease in the body social. They experience the
disease, and see that something must be done about it, but they
must see more, namely, that the disease originates in the
absorption into the economic circuit of the forces at work in
capital. If one wants to work in the direction called for by
the forces of human evolution, one must not be deluded into
considering as “impractical idealism” the idea that
the management of capital should be in the sphere of the free
spiritual life.
At
present people are little inclined to connect the idea that is
to lead capitalism in a healthy direction, with the free
spiritual life. Rather they connect it with something in the
circuit of the economic life. They see how production has
led to large scale industry and this, in turn, to the present
form of capitalism. Now they propose to replace this by a
system of syndicates that will work to meet the wants of the
producers themselves. Since, of course, industry must retain
all the modern means of production, the various
industrial concerns are to be united into one big
syndicate. Here, they think, everyone will be producing to meet
the orders of the community, and the community cannot be
an exploiter because it would simply be exploiting itself.
Since they must link onto something that already exists, they
turn their attention to the modern state, with the idea of
converting it into a comprehensive syndicate.
What they leave out of account is that the bigger the
syndicate, the less likelihood of its being able to do what
they expect of it. Unless individual ability finds its place in
the organism of the syndicate, in the manner and the form
already described, the community control of labor cannot
lead to healing of the social organism.
People are unwilling to look without bias at the idea of the
spiritual life taking an active part in the social
organism because they are used to thinking of it as at the
opposite pole from everything material and practical. Many will
find something grotesque in the view presented here, namely,
that a part of the spiritual life should manifest itself in the
activity of capital in the economic life. It is conceivable
that on this point members of what have been up to now the
ruling classes, may find themselves in agreement with
socialistic thinkers. To see what this supposed absurdity
means for the health of the body social requires that we
examine certain present-day currents of thought. These,
springing from impulses in the soul, are quite honest in their
fashion, but they check the development of any really
social way of thinking wherever they find entrance.
These thought currents tend, more or less unconsciously, away
from everything that gives energy and driving power to inner
experience. They aim at a world conception, an inner
life, that strives for scientific knowledge as an island in the
general sea of existence. One finds people who think it
“distinguished” to sit in cloud castles meditating
abstractly on all sorts of ethical and religious problems, such
things as virtue and how best to acquire it, how to find an
“inner significance” for one's life, etc. One sees
how impossible it is to build a bridge between what these
people call good, and everything that is going on in the
outer world. There, in men's everyday surroundings, we see what
is happening with the manipulation of capital, the payment of
labor, the consumption, production and circulation of
commodities, the system of credit, of banking, and the stock
exchange.
One
can see two main streams running side by side even in
people's very habits of thought. One of them remains
aloft, as it were, in divine-spiritual heights, and has no
desire to build a bridge from spiritual impulses to life's
ordinary activities. The other stream runs on, void of thought,
in the everyday world.
But
life is a single whole. It cannot thrive unless the forces that
dwell in all ethical and religious life bring driving power to
the commonplace, everyday things of life — that life that
some people may think a bit beneath them. For if people neglect
building a bridge between the two regions of life, then not
only their religious and moral life, but also their social
thinking degenerates into mere wordy sentiment, far removed
from everyday reality. This reality then has its revenge. Out
of a sort of “spiritual” impulse man goes on
striving after every imaginable ideal, and everything he calls
“good,” but to those instincts that underlie the
ordinary daily needs of life (the ones that need an economic
system for their satisfaction), he devotes himself minus
his “spirit.” He knows no pathway between the two
realms, and so everyday life gets a form that is not even
supposed to have any connection with those ethical impulses.
Then the ordinary things of every day are avenged, for the
ethical, religious life turns to a living lie in men's hearts
because (without this being noticed) it is being separated from
all direct contact with life.
How
many people there are today who, out of a certain ethical or
religious quality of mind, have the will to live on a right
footing with their fellow men. They really want to deal with
others only in the best way imaginable, but they cannot lay
hold of any social conception that expresses itself in
practical habits of life.
It
is people like these who, at this epoch-making moment when
social questions have become so urgent, are actually blocking
the road to a true practice of life. They see themselves as
practical while they are, in fact, visionary obstructionists.
One can hear them making speeches like this:
“What is really needed is for people to rise above all
this materialism, this external material life that drove
us into the disaster of the great war and into all this misery.
People must turn to a spiritual conception of
life.”
To
illustrate man's path to spirituality, they harp on great men
of the past who were venerated for their spiritual way of
thinking. When one tries to bring the talk around to the thing
the spirit has to do for practical life, the creation of daily
bread, one is reminded that the first thing, after all, is to
bring people again to acknowledge the spirit.
At
this moment, however, the urgent thing is to employ the powers
of the spiritual life to discover the right principles of
social health. For this it is not enough that men make a hobby
of the spirit. Everyday existence needs to be brought into line
with the spirit. It was this taste for turning spiritual life
into bypaths that led the classes that have been ruling up to
now, to favor the social conditions that ended in the present
state of affairs.
In
contemporary society, the management of capital for the
production of commodities, and the ownership of the means
of production (thus also of capital) are tightly bound
together. Yet the effects in the social system of these two
relationships between man and capital — management and
ownership — are quite different. The control, the
management, of capital by individual ability is, when suitably
applied, a means — to everybody's interest — of
enriching the body social with goods. Whatever a person's
position in life, it is to his interest that there should be no
waste of those individual abilities that flow from the
springs of human nature. Through them are created goods that
are of use to the life of man. Yet these abilities are never
developed unless the people endowed with them have free
initiative in their exercise. Any check to the free flow from
these sources means a certain measure of loss to human welfare,
but capital is the means for making these abilities available
for wide spheres of social life.
To
administer the total amount of capital in such a way that
specially gifted individuals or qualified groups can get
the use of it to apply it as their particular initiative
prompts them, must be to the true interests of everybody in a
community. Everybody, brain-worker or laborer, must say (if he
steers clear of prejudice and consults his own
interests):
“I not only wish an adequate number of persons, or groups
of people, to have absolutely independent use of capital, but I
should also like them to have access to it on their own
initiative. For they themselves are the best judges of how
their particular abilities can make capital a means of
producing what is useful to the body social.”
It
does not fall within the scope of this work to describe how, as
individual human abilities came to play a part in the social
order, private property grew up out of other forms of
ownership. Up to the present day this form of ownership has,
under the influence of the division of labor, gone on
developing within the body social. It is with present
conditions, and the necessary next stage of their
evolution, that we are concerned here.
In
whatever way private property arose — by the exercise of
power, conquest, etc. — it is an outcome of the social
creativeness that is associated with individual human ability.
Yet Socialists today, with their thoughts bent on social
reconstruction, hold the theory that the only way to get rid of
what is oppressive in private ownership is to turn to communal
ownership. They put the question this way: How can
private possession of the means of production be
prevented, so that its oppressive effect on the un-propertied
masses may cease? In putting the question this way, they
overlook the fact that the social organism is something
that is constantly developing, growing. About a growing
organism one cannot ask: What is the best arrangement for
preserving it in the state one regards as suitable for it? One
can think in that way about something that goes on essentially
unchanged from the point at which it was when it started. That
will not do for the body social. Its life is a continual
changing of each thing that arises in it. To fix on some form
as the best, and expect it to remain in that form, is to
undermine the very conditions of its life.
One
of the requisites for the life of the social organism is that,
as already stated, those who can serve the community through
their individual abilities should not lose the
possibility of doing so on their own initiative. This includes
independent use of the means of production. I shall not
use the common argument that the prospect of the gains
associated with the means of production is needed as a
stimulus. The concept presented here, of a progressive
evolution in social conditions, must lead to the expectation
that this kind of stimulus to social activity can drop away.
This result can come through the setting free of the spiritual
life from the political and the economic social entities.
The
liberated spiritual life will of itself inevitably evolve a
social sense, and out of this will arise stimuli of quite a
different sort from those that lie in the hope of economic
advantage. The question here is not so much concerned with the
kind of impulse that makes men like private ownership of the
means of production. We must ask whether the independent use of
them, or use directed by the community, meets the requirements
for the life of the social organism. We cannot here draw
conclusions from conditions supposed to be found in primitive
communities, but only from what corresponds to man's
present stage of development.
At
this present stage, the fruitful exercise of individual ability
through the use of capital cannot make itself felt in the
economic life unless the access to it is free and independent.
Where there is to be fruitful production, this access must be
possible, not because it will bring advantage to an individual
or group but because, directed by a social sense, such use of
the means of production is the best way of serving the
community.
Man
is connected with what he (alone or with others) is
producing, as he is connected with the skill of his own
arms and legs. Interfering with this free access to the
means of production is like crippling the free exercise of
bodily skill.
Private ownership is simply the means of providing this free
and independent use of the means of production. As far as the
body social is concerned, the only significance of
ownership is that the owner has the right to use his property
on his own free initiative. One sees, joined together in the
life of society, two things of quite different significance for
the social organism. There is the free access to the
capital basis of social production, and on the other hand there
is the rights relationship that arises between the user and
other people. This comes up through the fact that his right of
use keeps these other people from any free activity on the
basis of this same capital.
It
is not the original free use that leads to social harm but the
continuance of the right of use after the conditions that tied
it to his individual abilities have come to an end. One who
sees the social organism as something growing, developing,
cannot fail to understand what is meant. For what is
living, there exists no fruitful arrangement by which a
finished process does not later, in its turn, become
detrimental. The question is entirely one of intervening at the
right moment, when what had been opportune and helpful is
beginning to become detrimental.
There must be the possibility of the free access of individual
capacities to the capital-basis. It must also be possible
to change the right of ownership connected with it in the
moment that this right starts to change into a means for the
unjust acquisition of power. There is an institution,
introduced in our times, that meets this social
requirement, but only partially since it applies simply to
“spiritual property.” I refer to copyrights.
Such property, after the author is dead, passes after a certain
length of time into the ownership of the community, for free
use. Here we have an underlying conception that accords
with the actual nature of life in a human society.
Closely as the production of a purely spiritual (cultural)
possession is bound up with the gifts and capacities of
the individual, it is at the same time a result of the common
social life and must pass, at the right moment, back into this.
It is just the same with other property. By the aid of his
property the individual produces for the service of the
community, but this is only possible in cooperation with the
community. Accordingly, the right to the use of a piece of
property cannot be exercised separately from the interests of
the community. The problem is not how to abolish ownership of
the capital-basis, but how this ownership can be so
administered that it serves the community in the best way
possible.
The
way to do this can be found in the Threefold Order of
Society. The people united in the social organism act as
a totality through the rights state. The exercise of individual
abilities comes under the spiritual organization.
Everything in the body social, viewed from a sense of
actualities (and not from subjective opinions and theories),
indicates the necessity for the three-folding of this
organism. This is especially clear as regards the relation of
individual abilities to the capital-basis and its ownership.
The rights state will not interfere with the formation and
control of private property in capital so long as the
connection of this with personal ability remains such
that the private control represents a service to the whole
social organism. Moreover, it will remain a rights state
in its dealings with private property. It will never,
itself, take over the ownership of private property. It
will only bring it about that the right of use is transferred
at the proper moment to a person, or group of persons, who are,
again, capable of establishing a relation to this ownership
that is based on individual abilities. This will benefit the
body social in two quite different ways. The democratic
foundation of the rights state being concerned with what
touches all men equally, there will be a watch kept to see that
property rights do not in the course of time become property
wrongs. The other benefit is that the individual human
abilities into whose control the property is given (since the
state itself does not administer property), are thus
furnished the means of fructifying the whole social
organism.
Under an organization of this sort, property rights, or their
exercise, can be left attached to a personality for as
long as seems opportune. One can conceive the
representatives of the rights state as laying down quite
different laws at different times concerning the transfer of
property from one person or group to another. Today, when all
private property has come to be regarded with great
distrust, the proposal is to convert it wholesale into
community property. If people go far on this road they
will see that they are strangling the life of the social
organism and, taught by experience, they will then pursue a
different path. It would surely be better now, at this time, to
take measures that would secure social health on the lines here
indicated.
So
long as an individual (alone or with a group) continues to
carry on that productive activity that first procured him a
capital-basis to work on, he shall retain the right to use
accumulations arising as gains on the primary capital, if
these are used for the productive extension of the
business. As soon as this particular personality ceases
to control the work of production, this accumulation of capital
shall pass on to another person or group, to carry on the same
kind of business or some other branch of productive industry
useful to the whole community. Capital accumulating from a
productive industry, that is not used for its extension,
must from the beginning go the same way. Nothing shall
count as the personal property of the individual directing the
business except what he gets in accordance with the claims for
compensation that he made when he first took over the business.
These were claims he felt able to make on the ground of his
personal abilities, and that appear justified by the fact
that he was able to impress people sufficiently with his
abilities for them to trust him with capital. If the capital
has been increased through his personal exertions, then a
portion of this increment will also pass into his private
ownership — this addition to his original earnings
representing a percentage of the increase of the capital. Where
the original person controlling an industry is unable or
unwilling to continue in charge, the capital used to start it
will either pass over to the new person in charge (along with
all its incumbent obligations), or will revert to the original
owners, according to their decision.
In
such an arrangement one is dealing with transfers of a right.
The legal regulation of the terms of such transfers is a matter
for the rights state. It will also be up to the rights state to
see that these transfers are carried out and to administer
them. It is conceivable that details of such regulations
for transfers of a right will vary greatly in accordance with
how the common sense of right (the rights-consciousness) varies
in its view of what is right. No mode of conception,
which, like this one, aims at being true to life, will ever
attempt to do more than indicate the general direction that
such regulation should take. Keeping to this direction and
using one's understanding, one will always discover the
appropriate thing to do in any concrete instance. One must
always judge the right course according to the circumstances
and from the spirit of the thing. For instance, it is obvious
that the rights state must never use its control of
rights-transfers to get any capital into its own hands. Its
only business will be to see that the transfer is made to a
person or group whose individual abilities seem to warrant
it.
This way of thinking also presupposes, as a general rule, that
anyone who has to undertake such a transfer of capital from his
own hands will be free to select his successor in the use of
it. He will be free to select a person or group, or else
transfer the right of use to a corporate body of the spiritual
organization. For anyone who has given practical services to
society through his management of capital is likely, from
native ability and social sense, to be able to judge what
should be done with the capital afterwards. It will be more to
the advantage of the community to abide by what he decides than
to leave the decisions to people who have no direct connection
with the matter.
Some settlement of this kind will be required in the case of
capital accumulations over a certain amount, acquired
through use of the means of production — and land also
comes under this category. The exception is where the gains
become private property by terms of the original agreement for
the exercise of the individual's capacities.
In
the latter case, what is so earned, as well as all savings
coming from the results of a person's own work, will remain in
the earner's private possession until his death, or in the
possession of his descendants until some later date.
Until this time, these savings will draw interest from any
person who gets them to create means of production. The amount
of interest will be the outcome of the general
rights-consciousness and will be fixed by the rights state.
In
a social order based on the principles described here it will
be possible to draw a complete distinction between yields
resulting from the employment of the means of production and
sums accumulated through the earnings of personal labor,
spiritual or physical. It accords with the common sense
of right, as well as being to the general social interest, that
these two things should be kept distinct. What a person
saves and places at the disposal of a productive industry
is a service in the interests of all, since this makes it
possible for personal ability to direct production. Where,
after the rightful interest has been deducted, there is an
increase that arises out of the means of production, that
increase is due to the collective working of the whole social
organism. This must accordingly flow back into it again in the
way described above. All that the rights state will have to do
is to pass a resolution that these capital accumulations
are to be transferred in the way prescribed.
The
state will not decide which material or spiritual branch of
production is to have the disposal of capital so transferred,
or of capital savings. For it to do so would lead to the
tyranny of the state over spiritual and material production.
But anyone who does not want to select his successor to
exercise the right of disposal over capital he has created, may
appoint a corporate body of the spiritual sphere to do
this.
Property acquired through saving, together with the interest on
it, will also pass at the earner's death, or a little while
later, to some person or group actively engaged in spiritual or
material production, but it must only go to a producer; if it
went to an unproductive person, it would simply become
private income. The choice will be made by the earner in his
last will. Here again, no person or group can be chosen direct;
it will be a question of transferring the right of disposal to
a corporation of the spiritual organism. Only when a person
himself makes no disposition of his savings will the rights
state act on his behalf and require the spiritual organization
to dispose of them.
In
a society ordered on these lines, due regard is paid both to
the free initiative of the individual and to the social
interests of the general community. In fact these are
fully met through the setting free of private initiative to
serve them. Whoever has to give his labor over to the direction
of another person can know that under such an order of things
their joint work will bear fruit to the best advantage of the
community, and therefore to that of the worker himself.
The
social order here conceived will establish a proportionate
relation, satisfactory to healthy human feeling, between
the prices of manufactured goods and the two joint factors of
their production. These two factors are, as has been shown,
human labor and the right of use over capital (embodied in the
means of production), which are subject to the common sense of
right.
No
doubt all sorts of imperfections may be found in what is
presented here. Imperfections, however, do not matter.
The important thing, if we want to be true to life, is not to
lay down a perfect and complete program for all time but to
point out the direction for practical work. The special
instances discussed here are simply intended as
illustrations, to map out the direction more clearly. Any
particular illustration may be improved upon, and this will be
all to the good, provided the right direction is not lost.
The
claims of general humanity and justified personal and family
interests can be brought into harmony through social
institutions of this kind. For instance, it may be pointed out
that there will be a great temptation for people to transfer
their property during their lifetime to their descendants or
some one of them. It is quite easy to give such a person the
appearance of a producer while in fact he may be quite
incompetent as compared with others who would be much better in
the place he holds. The temptation to do this can be reduced to
a minimum: the rights state has only to require that property
transferred from one member of a family to another must under
all circumstances be made over to a corporation of the
spiritual system after a certain period of time following
the first owner's death. Or an evasion of the rule may be
prevented in some other way by rights-law. The rights state
will merely see to it that the property is made over in
this fashion. The spiritual organization must make provision
for the choice of the person to inherit it.
Through the fulfilling of these principles there will arise a
general sense that the next generation must be trained
and educated to fit them for the body social, and that one must
not do social damage by passing capital on to non-productive
persons. No one in whom a real social sense is awakened cares
to have his own connection with the capital-basis of his work
carried on by any individual or group whose personal abilities
do not warrant it.
Nobody who has a sense for what is practicable will regard
these proposals as Utopian. For the kind of institutions here
proposed are such as can grow directly out of existing
circumstances anywhere in life. The only thing is that people
will have to make up their minds to give up administering the
spiritual life and industrial economy within the rights
state. This includes not raising opposition when what should
happen really happens — when, for instance, private
schools and colleges are started, and the economy is put on its
own footing. There is no need to abolish state schools and the
state economic undertakings at once. Beginning perhaps in a
small way, it will be found increasingly possible to do away
with the whole structure of state education and state
economy.
The
first necessity is for people who are convinced of the
correctness of these social ideas, or similar ones, to
make it their business to spread them. If such ideas find
understanding, they will arouse in people confidence in the
possibility of a healthy transformation of present conditions
into conditions that do not show the evils we see about us.
Only out of this sort of confidence can a really healthy
evolution come. To achieve such confidence one must be
able to see clearly how new institutions can be connected with
what exists at present. The essential feature of the ideas
being developed here is that they do not propose to bring about
a better future by destroying the present social order
further than has already been done. Their realization builds on
what already exists, and in the process brings about the
falling away of what is unhealthy. A solution that does not
establish confidence in this respect will fail to attain
something that is absolutely necessary: a further
evolution in which the values of the goods already transformed
through human labor, and the human faculties men have
developed, will not be cast away but be preserved.
Even a radical person can acquire confidence in a form of
social reconstruction that includes the preservation of already
accumulated values if he is introduced to ideas capable of
initiating really sane and healthy developments. Even he will
have to recognize that whatever social class gets into power,
it will not be able to get rid of existing evils unless its
impulses are supported by ideas that can put life and health
into the body social. To despair because one cannot believe
there will be enough people with understanding for these ideas
— provided the ideas are spread with the necessary energy
— would be to despair of human nature's capacity for
taking up healthy and purposeful impulses. All one should ask
is, what must be done to give full force to the teaching and
spread of ideas that can awaken men's confidence?
The
first obstacle will be in current habits of thought. It will be
objected that any dismemberment of social life is
inconceivable, that the three branches cannot be torn apart
because, in actual practice, they are everywhere intertwined.
Or else there will be the opinion that it is quite possible to
give each of the branches its necessary independent
character under the One-fold State, and thus these ideas are
mere empty cobweb-spinning. The first objection comes from
unreal thinking. Some people believe that unity of social life
is only possible when it is brought about by law. The facts of
life itself require just the opposite: that unity must be
the result, the final outcome, of all the streams of activity
flowing together from various directions. Recent developments
have run counter to this principle and so men resisted the
“order” brought about from outside. It is this that
has led to present social conditions. The second prejudice (the
idea that these things could be accomplished under the
One-fold State) arises from the inability to distinguish
the radical differences in the operation of the three
organs of the body social. People do not see that man stands in
a separate and peculiar relation to each of the three. They do
not see that each of these relationships needs the chance
to evolve its own form, apart from the other two, so that it
may work together with them.
People think that if one sphere of life follows its own laws,
then everything needed for life must come out of this one
sphere. If, for example, economic life were regulated in such a
way as to meet men's wants, then a proper rights life and
spiritual life would spring out of this economic soil as well.
Only unrealistic thinking could believe this to be possible.
There is nothing whatever in economic life that provides any
motive for guiding what runs through the relations of man
to man and comes from the sense of right. If people insist on
regulating this relationship by economic motives, the
result will be that the human being, his labor and his
control of the means of labor, will all be harnessed to the
economic life. The economy will run like clockwork but man will
be a wheel in this mechanism. Economic life has a tendency
always to go in one direction, a direction that we must
balance from another side. It is not a question of rights
regulations following the course set by economic life, but
rather, economic life should be constantly subject to the rules
of right that concern man simply as man. In this way a human
existence within the economy then becomes possible.
Economic life itself can develop in a way beneficial to
man only when individual ability grows on its own separate soil
(detached from the economic system) and continuously conveys to
it the forces that economics and industry themselves are
powerless to produce.
It
is a curious thing that in purely external matters people can
readily see the advantage of a division of labor. They do not
expect a tailor to keep a cow in order to get milk. When it
comes to a recognition of the individual functions of the
different spheres of human life, however, they think no good
can come of anything but a one-fold system.
* *
*
It
is clear that social ideas that are related to life as it
really is, will stimulate objections from every side. Real life
breeds contradictions, and anyone accepting this fact
will work for social arrangements whose own
contradictions will be balanced out by means of other
arrangements. He dare not believe that an institution that is
“ideally perfect” according to his thinking will
involve no contradictions when it is realized in
practice.
It
is an entirely justified present-day demand that institutions
in which production is carried on for the benefit of the
individual be replaced by institutions in which production is
carried on for the general consumption. Anyone who fully
recognizes this demand will not be able to come to the
conclusion of modern Socialism, that therefore the means of
production must go over from private to common ownership.
Indeed, he will be forced to a quite different conclusion,
namely, that proper methods must be used to convey to the
community what is privately produced by individual energy and
capacity.
The
tendency of the more recent economic impulses has been to
obtain income by mass production. The aim of the future must be
to find out, by means of economic Associations, the best
production methods and distribution channels for the actual
needs of consumption. The rights institutions will see
that a productive industry does not remain tied up with any
individual or group longer than personal ability
warrants. Instead of common ownership, there will be a
circulation of the means of production through the body social.
This will constantly bring them into the hands of those whose
individual ability can employ them best in the service of
the community.
That same connection between personality and the means of
production, which previously existed through private ownership,
will thus be established for periods of time. For the head of a
business and his assistants will have the means of
production to thank for being able to earn, by their personal
abilities, the income they asked. They will not fail to improve
production as far as is possible, since every improvement
brings them, not indeed the whole profit, but nevertheless a
portion of the added returns. For profits, as shown above, go
to the community only to the extent of what is left over after
deducting the percentage due to the producer for
improvements in production. It is in the spirit of the
whole thing that if production falls off, the producer's income
must diminish in the same proportion in which it rises with
increased production, but at all times the manager's income
will come out of the spiritual work he has done. It will not
come out of the profits that are based on the interplay of
forces at work in the life of the community.
One
can see that with the realization of social ideas such as
these, institutions that already exist will acquire an
altogether new significance. Property ceases to be what
it has been up until now, and it will not be forced back to an
obsolete form, such as that of communal ownership. It is,
rather, taken forward, to become something quite new. The
objects of ownership will be brought into the stream of social
life. The individual cannot, motivated by his private
interests, control them to the injury of the general public.
Neither can the general public control them
bureaucratically to the injury of the individual. It is
rather that the qualified individual will have access to them
as a means of serving the public.
A
sense for the general public interest will have a chance to
develop when social impulses of this sort are realized,
with approaches that place production on a sound basis and
safeguard the social organism from the danger of sudden
(economic) crises. Also, an Administrative Body occupied
solely with the processes of economic life, will be able to
bring these back into balance when this appears to be
necessary. Suppose, for instance, that a concern were not in a
position to pay its creditors the interest due them on their
invested personal savings. Then, if the firm is nevertheless
recognized as meeting a need, it will be possible to get other
business concerns, by free agreement, to make up the shortage
in what is due to these investors.
A
self-contained economic life that gets its rights basis from
outside, and is supplied from without by a constant flow
of fresh human ability as it comes on the scene, will, itself,
have to do only with economic matters. Through this fact it
will be able to facilitate a distribution of goods that
procures for everyone what he can rightfully have in relation
to the general state of prosperity of the community. If one
person seemingly has more income than another, this will
only be because this “more” resulting from the
individual's talents benefits the general public.
* *
*
In
a social organism that shapes itself in the light of these
conceptions, the taxes needed for the rights life can be
regulated through agreement between the leaders of the rights
life and those of the economic life. Everything needed for the
maintenance of the cultural-spiritual life will come as
remuneration resulting from voluntary appreciation on the
part of individuals active in the body social. This
spiritual life rests on a healthy basis of individual
initiative, exercised in free competition among the
private individuals suited to spiritual-cultural work.
Only in the kind of social organism meant here will the rights
administration develop the necessary understanding for
administering a just distribution of goods. In an
economic life that does not have the claim on men's labor
prescribed by the single branches of production, but rather has
to carry on business with the amount of labor power the
rights-law allows it, the value of goods will be
determined by what men actually put into it in the way of
work. It will not allow the work men do to be determined by the
goods-values, into the formation of which human welfare and
human dignity do not enter. Such a social organism will keep in
view rights that arise from purely human conditions.
Children will have the right to education. The father of a
family will be able to have a higher income as a worker than
the single man. The “more” that he gets will come
to him through agreement among all three branches of the
body social. Such arrangements could meet the right to
education in the following way. The administration of the
economic organization estimates the amount of revenue that can
be given to education, in line with general economic
conditions, and the rights state determines the rights of the
individual in this regard, in accord with the opinion of the
spiritual organization. Here again, since we are thinking in
line with reality, this instance is merely intended to indicate
the direction in which such arrangements can go. It is quite
possible that for a specific instance quite other
arrangements may be found to be the right thing. In any case,
this “right thing” will only be found through the
working together of all three independent members of the
social organism. For the purposes of this presentation,
our concern is merely to discover the really practical thing
— unlike so much that passes for practical today. We
refer to such a membering of the social organism as shall
give people the basis on which to bring about what is socially
useful.
On
a par with the right of children to education is the right of
the aged, of invalids and widows to a maintenance. The capital
basis for this will flow to it through the circulatory system
of the social organism in much the same way as the
capital contributed for the education of those who are not yet
capable of working. The essential point in all this is
that the income received by anyone who is not personally an
earner should not be determined by the economic life. Rather
should it be the other way round: the economic life must be
dependent on what develops in this respect out of the rights
consciousness. The people working in an economic organism will
have so much the less from what is produced through their
labor, the more that has to go to the non-earners. Only, this
“less” will be borne fairly by all the members of
the body social when the social impulses meant here are really
put into practice. The education and the support of those
who cannot work, concerns all mankind in common. Under a
rights state, detached from economic life, it will become the
common concern in actual practice. For in the rights state
there works what in every grown human being must have a
voice.
A
social organism so arranged will bring the surplus that a
person produces as a result of his individual capacities
into the general community. It will do it in just the same way
as it takes from the general community the just amount needed
for the support of those less capable. “Surplus
value” will not be created for the unjustified enjoyment
of the individual, but for the enhancement of what can give
wealth of soul and body to the whole social organism, and to
foster whatever is born of this organism even though it is not
of immediate service to it.
Someone might incline to the thought that the careful
separation of the three members of the body social only has a
value in the realm of ideas (ideal value), and that it would
come about “by itself” under a one-fold state
or under a cooperative economic society that includes the state
and rests on communal ownership of the means of production. He
should, however, consider the special sorts of social
institutions that must come into being if the three-folding is
made a reality. For instance, the political government will no
longer have to recognize the money as a legal medium of
exchange. Money will, rather, owe its recognition to the
measures taken by the various administrative bodies within the
economic organization. For money, in a healthy social
organism, can be nothing but an order for commodities
that other people have produced and that one can draw out of
the total economic life because of the commodities that one has
oneself produced and given over to this sphere. It is the
circulation of money that makes a sphere of economic
activity into an economic unit. Everyone produces, on the
roundabout path of the whole economic life, for everyone
else.
Within the economic sphere one is concerned only with
economic values. Within this sphere, the deeds that arise
out of the spiritual and the state spheres also take on the
character of a commodity. What a teacher does for his
pupil is, for the economic circuit, a commodity. The
teacher's individual ability is no more paid for than is the
worker's labor-power. All that can possibly be paid for in
either case is what, proceeding from them, can pass as a
commodity or commodities into the economic circuit. How
free initiative, and how rights, must act so that the
commodity can come into being, lies as much outside the
economic circuit itself as does the action of the forces
of nature on the grain crop in a bountiful or a barren
year. For the economic circuit, both the spiritual sphere
— as regards its claim on economic returns —
and the state, are simply producers of commodities. Only, what
they produce is not a commodity within their own spheres.
It first becomes one when it is taken up into the economic
circuit.
The
purely economic value of a commodity (or an
accomplishment), as far as it is expressed in money
terms, will depend on the efficiency, in the economic organism,
that is developed by the management of the economy. On
the measures taken by management, will depend the progress of
economic life — always on the basis of the spiritual and
the rights foundation developed by those other members of the
social organism. The money-value of a commodity will then
indicate that the economic organization is producing the
commodity in a quantity corresponding to the demand for it. If
the premises laid down in this book are realized, then the body
economic will not be dominated by the impulse to amass
wealth through sheer quantity of production. Rather will the
production of goods adapt itself to the wants, through the
agency of the Associations that will spring up in all
manner of connections. In this way the proportion,
corresponding in each case to the actual demand, will become
established between the money-value of an article and the
arrangements made in the body social for producing it.
[Authors Note. A sound proportion between the prices of
the various goods produced can only be achieved in economic
life as an outcome of a social administration that springs up
in this way from the free cooperation of the three branches of
the body social. The proportion between prices of various goods
must be such that anyone working receives as counter-value for
what he has produced as much as is necessary to satisfy his
total wants and the wants of his dependents until he has again
turned out a product requiring the equivalent labor. It is
impossible to fix such a price relation officially in advance.
It must come as the result of the living cooperation 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 cooperation between the three members of the
social organization. It must develop with the same
sureness that a safe bridge must come into being 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. No one, however, will make
this objection who is able to recognize that it is
primarily the laws of life and not those of mathematics
that, throughout this book, are conceived as underlying social
life.]
In
the healthy society, money will really be nothing but a
measure of value, since behind every coin or bill there
stands the tangible piece of production, on the strength of
which alone the owner of the money could acquire it. The nature
of these conditions will necessarily bring about
arrangements that will deprive money of its value for its
possessor when once it has lost the significance just pointed
out. Arrangements of this sort have already been alluded to.
Money property passes back, after a fixed period, into the
common pool, in whatever the proper form may be. To
prevent money that is not working in industry from being held
back by its possessors through evasion of the provisions
made by the economic organization, there can be a new
coinage, or new printing of bills, from time to time. One
result of this will no doubt be that the interest derived from
any capital sum will gradually diminish. Money will wear out,
just as commodities wear out. Nevertheless, such a
measure will be a right and just one for the state to
enact.
There can be no compound interest. If a person puts aside
savings, he has certainly rendered past services that
gave him a claim on future counter-service in terms of
commodities. This is in the same way as present services claim
present services in exchange. Nevertheless, his claims cannot
go beyond a certain limit. For claims that date from the past
require the productions of labor in the present to satisfy
them. Such claims must not be turned into a means of economic
coercion. The practical realization of these principles
will put the problem of the currency standard on a sound basis.
For no matter what form money may take owing to other
conditions, its standard will lie in the intelligent
arrangement of the whole economic body through its
administration. The problems of safeguarding the currency
standard will never be satisfactorily solved by any state by
means of laws. Present governments will only solve it when they
give up attempting the solution on their own account and leave
the economic organism — which will have been detached
from the state — to do what is needful.
* *
*
There is a lot of talk about the modern division of labor in
connection with its results in time-saving, in perfecting
the manufacture and facilitating the exchange of
commodities. Little attention is paid to its effect on the
relation of the human individual to his work. Nobody working in
a social organism based on the division of labor really earns
his income himself. He earns it through the work of all those
who have a part in the social organism. A tailor who makes a
coat for his own use does not have the same relationship
to it as does a person who, under primitive conditions, still
has all the other necessities of life to provide for himself.
The tailor makes the coat in order to enable him to make
clothing for other people, and its value for him depends
entirely on what other people produce. The coat is really a
means of production. Many people will say this is
hair-splitting. They won't say this when they come to consider
the formation of values in the economic process. Then they will
see that in an economic organism based on the division of labor
one simply cannot work for oneself. All a person can do is work
for others and let others work for him. One can as little work
for oneself as one can eat oneself up. One can, however,
establish arrangements that are in direct opposition to the
very essence of the division of labor. That happens when the
production of goods only takes place in order to transfer to
the individual as private property what he can only produce
because of his place in the social organism.
The
division of labor makes for a social organism in which the
individual lives in accordance with the conditions of the whole
body of the organism. Economically it precludes egoism. If,
then, egoism nevertheless persists in the form of class
privileges and the like, a condition of social instability sets
in, leading to disturbances in the social organism. We are
living under such conditions today. There may be people who
think it futile to insist that rights conditions and
other things must bring themselves into line with the
non-egoistic production resulting from the division of labor.
Such a person may as well conclude, from his own premises, that
one cannot do anything at all, that the social movement
can lead nowhere. As regards the social movement, one can
certainly do no good unless one is willing to give
reality its due. It is inherent in the mode of thought
underlying what is written here, that man's activities within
the body social must be in line with the conditions of its
organic life.
* *
*
Anyone who is only capable of forming his ideas by the system
he is accustomed to, will be uneasy when he is told that the
relation between the employer (work director) and the worker is
to be separated from the economic organism. For he will
believe that such a separation is bound to lead to the
depreciation of money and a return to primitive
conditions of industrial economy. (Dr. Rathenau takes this view
in his book, After the Flood, and from his standpoint it
is a defensible one.) This danger is, however, counteracted by
the three-folding of the social organism.
The
autonomous economic organism, working jointly with the rights
organism, completely detaches the money relationships from the
labor conditions, which rest on the rights laws. The rights
conditions cannot have any direct influence on money
conditions, for these latter are the result of the
administration of the economic organism. The rights
relationship between employer and worker will not one-sidedly
show itself in money values at all. For with the elimination of
wages, which represent a relation of exchange between
commodities and labor, money value remains simply a
measure of the value of one commodity, or piece of work,
as against another. If one studies the effects of the
three-folding upon the social organism, one will become
convinced that it will lead to institutions that do not as yet
exist in the forms of the state as we have experienced
them up to now.
These arrangements can be swept clear of all that today is felt
as class straggle, for this straggle is based on the wages of
labor being tied up in the economic processes. Here, we are
describing a form of the social organism in which the concept
of the wages of labor undergoes a transformation, no less than
does the old concept of property. Through this transformation
there is created a social relationship between human
beings that is vital, is related to life.
Only a superficial judgment would find that these proposals
amount in practice merely to converting hourly wages into piece
wages. One might be led to this conclusion by a one-sided view
of the matter, but this one-sided view is not what we are
considering here. Rather, the point is the elimination of the
wage-relation altogether and its replacement by a
share-relation (based on contract) between employer and
workers. We approach this in terms of its connection with the
whole organization of the body social. It may seem to a person
that the portion of the product of labor that falls to the
worker is a piece wage. This is because one fails to see that
this “piece wage,” which is not a
“wage” at all, finds expression in the value of the
product. Furthermore, it does so in a way that puts the worker
in a position with relation to other members of the
social organism that is quite different from the one that
arose out of class supremacy based one-sidedly on economic
factors. Therewith, the demand for elimination of the class
straggle is satisfied.
To
those who hold the theory (heard also in Socialist circles)
that evolution must bring the solution of the social question
and that it is impossible to present views and say they ought
to be realized, we must reply: Certainly evolution will
bring about what must be, but in the social organism men's
idea-impulses are realities. When time has moved on a little
and what today can only be thought, can be realized, then this
will be present in the evolution. If one waits until then, it
will be too late to accomplish certain things that are required
now by today's facts. It is not possible to observe evolution
in the social organism objectively, from outside, as one does
in nature. One must bring about the evolution. That is why
views bent on “proving” social requirements as one
“proves” something in natural science are so
disastrous for healthy social thinking. A “proof”
in social matters can only exist if it takes into account not
only what is existing but also what is present in human
impulses like a seed (often unknown to the people themselves)
that will realize itself.
* *
*
One
of the ways in which the three-folding of the social organism
will prove that it is founded on what is essential in human
social life will be the removal of the judicial function from
the sphere of the state. It will be up to the state
institutions to determine the rights that are to be observed
between individuals or groups of men. The passing of judgment,
however, is the function of institutions developed out of the
spiritual organization. In passing judgment, a great deal
depends on the opportunity the judge has for perceiving and
understanding the particular circumstances of the person he is
trying. Nothing can assure this except those ties of trust and
confidence that draw men together in the institutions of
the spiritual sphere. These must be the main consideration in
setting up the courts of law.
Possibly the administration of the spiritual organization might
nominate a panel of judges who could be drawn from the widest
range of spiritual professions and would return to their own
calling at the expiration of a certain period. Within definite
limits, everybody would then have the opportunity of
selecting a particular person on the panel for five or
ten years. This would be someone in whom he feels sufficient
confidence to be willing to accept his verdict in a civil
or criminal suit, if it should come to that. There would always
be enough judges in the neighborhood where anyone was living,
to give significance to this power of choice. A
complainant would always have to apply to the defendant's
judge.
Only consider the importance such an institution would have had
for the territories of Austria-Hungary. In districts of mixed
language, the member of any nationality would have been
able to choose a judge of his own people. Apart from
nationality, there are many fields of life where such an
arrangement can be of benefit to healthy development.
For
more detailed acquaintance with points of law, the judges and
courts will have the help of officials (also selected by the
spiritual administration) who will, however, not
themselves decide cases. The same administration will also have
to set up courts of appeal. The kind of life that will go on in
society through a realization in practice of the conditions we
are presuming here will bring it about that a judge is in touch
with the life and feelings of the ones brought before him. His
own life — outside the brief period of his judgeship
— will make him familiar with their lives and the circles
they move in. The social sense developed in such a society will
also show in the judicial activity.
The
carrying out of a sentence is the affair of the rights
state.
* *
*
It
is not necessary at this time to go into arrangements that will
be necessitated in other fields of life by the realization of
what has been presented here. This would obviously take up
unlimited space.
The
instances of social arrangements given here make clear that
this is not an attempt to revive the three old
“estates” of the Plough, the Sword and the Book.
The intention is the very opposite of such a division
into classes. It is the social organism itself that will be
functionally membered, and just through this fact man will be
able to be truly man. He himself will have his own life's roots
in each of the three members. He will have a practical footing
in that member in which he stands by way of occupation. His
relation to the other two will be actual and living,
developing out of his connection with their institutions.
Threefold will be the social organism as apart from man,
forming the groundwork of his life, and each man as a man will
unite the three members.
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