CHAPTER II
That the Ability which at any given period is a Producing Agent, is a Faculty residing in and belonging to living Men.
Itmay amuse the reader to hear this argument stated—forcibly, if not very fully—by an American Socialist, in an anonymous letter to myself. I had published an article inThe North American Review, giving a short summary of what I have said in the preceding chapters with regard to the part played by Ability in production; and the letter which I will now give was sent me as a criticism on this:
◆1 The objection is thus put by an American Socialist: that it is absurd to say that primæval inventors, such as the inventor of the plough, are still producing wealth by their ability; and if absurd in this case, then in all cases.
◆¹ Sir—Your article in the current number ofThe North American Reviewon “Who are the Chief Wealth Producers?” in my judgment is the crowning absurdity of the various effusions that parade under the self-assumed title of politicaleconomy. In the vulgar parlance of some newspapers, it is hog-wash. It is utterly senseless, and wholly absurd and worthless. You propose to publish a book in which you will elaborate your theory. Well, if the book has a large sale, it will not be because the author has any ability as a writer on economical subjects, but rather that the buyers are either dupes or fools. All the increase in wealth that has resulted by reason of men using ploughs was produced by the man who invented the plough—eh? The total amount of the wealth produced by men by reason of their using certain appliances in the form of tools or machines is produced by the man who invented the tool or machine—eh? perhaps some one in Egypt thousands of years ago? Such stuff is not only worthless hog-wash: it is nauseating, is worthy of the inmate of Bedlam.
◆¹ Sir—Your article in the current number ofThe North American Reviewon “Who are the Chief Wealth Producers?” in my judgment is the crowning absurdity of the various effusions that parade under the self-assumed title of politicaleconomy. In the vulgar parlance of some newspapers, it is hog-wash. It is utterly senseless, and wholly absurd and worthless. You propose to publish a book in which you will elaborate your theory. Well, if the book has a large sale, it will not be because the author has any ability as a writer on economical subjects, but rather that the buyers are either dupes or fools. All the increase in wealth that has resulted by reason of men using ploughs was produced by the man who invented the plough—eh? The total amount of the wealth produced by men by reason of their using certain appliances in the form of tools or machines is produced by the man who invented the tool or machine—eh? perhaps some one in Egypt thousands of years ago? Such stuff is not only worthless hog-wash: it is nauseating, is worthy of the inmate of Bedlam.
◆1 To this there are two answers. The first is that the simpler inventions are probably due, not to Ability at all, but to the common experience of the average man;
◆2 And, like Labour itself, they have remained unchanged up till quite recent times.
◆3 But even if invented by Ability, we should still attribute the wealth now produced by them to Labour;
Now the argument implied in this charming letter, so far as it goes, is sound; and I will put it presently in a more comprehensive form. Its fault is that it goes a very little way, and does not even approach the position it is adduced to combat. To say that if one man who lived thousands of years ago could be shown to be the sole and only inventor of the plough, then all the increase of wealth that has since been produced by ploughingought to be credited to the Ability of this one man, is practically no doubt as absurd[41]as the writer of the letter thinks it; and were such the result of the reasoning in this volume, it would reduce that reasoning to an absurdity. ◆¹ That reasoning, however, leads to no result of the kind; and it is necessary to explain to the reader exactly why it fails to do so. It fails to do so because ploughs, and other implements equally simple, instead of representing those conditions of production to which alone the reasoning in this volume applies, represent conditions which are altogether opposed to them. The plough, or at least such a plough as was in use in ancient Egypt, is the very type and embodiment of the non-progressive nature of Labour, as opposed to, and contrasted with, the progressive nature of Ability. The plough, indeed, in its simplest form, was probably not the result of Ability at all, but rather of the experience of multitudes of common men, acting on the intelligence which commonmen possess; just as, even more obviously, was the use of a stick to walk with, or of a flail for thrashing corn. It will perhaps, however, be said that in that case, according to the definition given by me, the plough would be the result of Ability all the same, only that it would prove Ability to be a faculty almost as universal as Labour. And no doubt it would prove this of Ability of a low kind; indeed, we may admit that it does prove it. Everybody has a little Ability in him, just as everybody has a little poetry; but in cases of this kind everything is a question of degree; and for practical purposes we are compelled to classify men not according to faculties which, strictly speaking, they possess, but according to the degree in which they possess them. Cold, strictly speaking, is merely a low degree of heat; but for all practical purposes winter is opposed to summer. Similarly, a man who has just enough poetry in him to be able—as most men can—to scribble a verse of doggerel, is for all practical purposes opposed to a Shakespeare or a Dante; and similarly also the man who has just enough Ability in him to discover the use ofa stick, a flail, or a plough, is for all practical purposes opposed to the men who are capable of inventing implements of a higher and more complicated order. Nor is the line which we thus draw drawn arbitrarily. It is a line drawn for us by the whole industrial history of mankind; ◆² and never was there a division more striking and more persistent. For the simpler implements in question, from the first days when they were invented,—“thousands of years ago,” as my American correspondent says,—remained what they then were up to the beginning of the modern epoch; and in many countries, such as India, they remain the same to-day. The simpler industrial arts, then, and the simpler implements of industry are sharply marked off from the higher and more complicated by the fact that, whilst the latter are demonstrably due to individuals, have flourished only within the area of their influence, and have constituted a sudden and distinct advance on the former, the former have apparently been due to the average faculties of mankind, and have remained practically unchanged from the days of their first discovery.Accordingly, the distinction between the two being so marked and enormous, the faculties to which they are respectively due, even if differing only in degree, yet differ in degree so much that they are for practical purposes different faculties, and must be called by different names. ◆³ The simple inventions, then, to which my correspondent refers, together with the wealth produced by them, are to be credited to Labour, the non-progressive character of which they embody and represent, and have nothing to do with that Ability which is the cause of industrial progress.
My correspondent’s letter, however, whether he saw it himself or not, really raises a point far more important than this. For even if the invention of the plough had been the work of one man only, if it had involved as much knowledge and genius as the invention of the steam-engine, and if, but for this one man, ploughs would never have existed, yet to attribute to the Ability of this one man all the wealth that has been subsequently produced by ploughing would still be practically as absurd as my correspondent implies it would be.
◆1 Because the commonest labourer, when once he has seen them, can make and use them.
◆¹ Now why is this? The reason why is as follows. Although, according to such an hypothesis, if a plough had not been made by this one able man, no ploughs would ever have been made by anybody, yet when such a simple implement has once been made and used, anybody who has seen it can make and use others like it; so that the Ability of the inventor of the plough increases the productivity of every labourer who uses it, not by co-operating with him, but by actually passing into him. Thus, so far as this particular operation is concerned, the simplest labourer becomes endowed with all the powers of the inventor; and the inventor thenceforward is, in no practical sense, the producer of the increased product of what he has enabled the labourer to produce, any more than a father is the producer of what is produced by his son.
◆1 But the inventions by which Ability in the modern world has increased production are the very opposite of these inventions of earlier days; for they require as much Ability to use them to the best advantage as they required to make them.
And if the productivity of Labour were increased by inventions alone, and if all inventions were as simple as the primæval plough—if, when once seen, anybody were able to make them, and, having once made them, to use them to the utmost advantage—then, though Ability might still be the solecause of every fresh addition to the productive powers of exertion, these added powers would be all made over to Labour, and be absorbed and appropriated by it, just as Lear’s kingdom was made over to his daughters; and whatever increased wealth might be produced thenceforward through their agency would be the true product of Labour, which had in itself become more effective. ◆¹ But, as a matter of fact, this is not the case; and it is not so for two reasons. In the first place, such implements as the primæval plough differ from the implements on which modern industry depends, in the complexity alike of their structure, and of the principles involved in it; so that without the guidance of Ability of many kinds, Labour alone would be powerless to reproduce them; and, in the second place, as these implements multiply, not only is Ability more and more necessary for their manufacture, but is more and more necessary also for the use of them when manufactured. One of the principal results of the modern development of machinery, or of the use, by new processes, of newly discovered powers of Nature, is the increasing division and subdivisionof Labour; so that the labourers, as I have said before, by the introduction of this mass of machinery, become themselves the most complicated machine of all, each labourer being a single minute wheel, and Ability being the framework which alone keeps them in their places. It may be said, therefore, that each modern invention or discovery by which the productivity of human exertion is increased has upon Labour an effect exactly opposite to that which was produced on it by such inventions as the primæval plough. Instead of making Labour more efficacious in itself, they make it less and less efficacious, unless it is assisted by Ability.
◆1 They do not become, as is vulgarly said, common property. They belong to those who can use them;
◆2 And more and more is living Ability required to maintain and use the powers left to it by the Ability of the past.
◆¹ And here we have the answer to the real argument which lies at the bottom of my American correspondent’s letter—an argument which, in some such words as the following, is to be found repeated in every Socialistic treatise: “When once an invention is made, it becomes common property.” So it does in a certain theoretical sense; but only in the sense in which a knowledge of Chinese becomes common property in England on the publication of a Chinese grammar. Forall practical purposes, such a statement is about as true as to say that because anybody can buy a book on military tactics, everybody is possessed of the genius of the Duke of Wellington. ◆² The real truth is, that to utilise modern inventions, and to maintain the conditions of industry which these inventions subserve, as much Ability is required as was required to invent them; though, as I shall have occasion to point out later on, the Ability is of a different kind.
◆1 We must, then, here note that when Ability is said to produce so much of the national income, what is meant is the Ability of men alive at the time,
These considerations bring us to another important point, which must indeed from the beginning have been more or less obvious, but which must now be stated explicitly. ◆¹ That point is, that when we speak of Ability as producing at any given time such and such a portion of the national income, as distinguished from the portion which is produced by Labour, we are speaking of Ability possessed by living men, who possess it either in the form of their own superior faculties, assimilating, utilising, and adding to the inventions and discoveries of their predecessors; or in the form of inherited Capital, which those predecessorshave produced and left to them. Thus, though dead men like Arkwright, or Watt, or Stevenson may, in a certain theoretical sense, be considered as continuing to produce wealth still, they cannot be considered to do so in any sense that is practical; because they cannot as individuals put forward any practical claims, or influence the situation any further by their actions. For all practical purposes, then, their Ability as a productive force exists only in those living men who inherit or give effect to its results. Now, of the externalised or congealed Ability which is inherited in the form of Capital, as distinguished from the personal Ability by which Capital is utilised, we need not speak here, though we shall have to do so presently. For this inherited Capital would not only be useless in production, but would actually disappear and evaporate like a lump of camphor, if it were not constantly used, and, in being used, renewed, by that personal Ability which inherits it, and is inseparable from the living individual; and, though it will be necessary to consider Capital apart from this when we come to deal with the problem of distribution,all that we need consider when we are dealing with the problem of production is this personal Ability, which alone makes Capital live.
◆1 Who are practically the monopolists not only of their own special powers, but of the complicated discoveries of their predecessors.
◆¹ So far, then, as modern production is concerned, all the results of past Ability, instead of becoming the common property of Labour, become on the whole, with allowance for many exceptions, more and more strictly the monopoly of living Ability; because these results becoming more and more complicated, Ability becomes more and more essential to the power of mastering and of using them. As, however, I shall point out by and by, in more than one connection, the Ability that masters and uses them differs much in kind from the Ability that originally produced them: one difference being that, whereas to invent and perfect some new machine requires Ability of the highest class in, let us say, one man, and Ability of the second class in a few other men, his partners; to use this machine to the best advantage, and control and maintain the industry which its use has inaugurated or developed, may require perhaps Ability of only the second class in one man,but will require Ability of the third and fourth class in a large number of men.
◆1 And the monopoly of Ability grows stricter at each fresh stage of progress.
◆¹ Ability therefore—the Ability of living men—constantly tends, as the income of the nation grows, to play a larger part in its production, or to produce a larger part of it; whilst Labour, though without it no income could be produced at all, tends to produce a part which is both relatively and absolutely smaller. We assume, for instance, that the Labour of this country a hundred years ago was capable of producing the whole of what was the national income then. If it could by itself, without any Ability to guide it, have succeeded then, when production was so much simpler, in just producing the yearly amount in question,—which, as a matter of fact, it could not have done even then,—the same amount of Labour, without any Ability to guide it, could certainly not succeed in producing so much now, when all the conditions of production have become so much more complicated, and when elaborate organisation is necessary to make almost any effort effective.
◆1 Thus the argument above quoted against the claims of Ability, when examined, only throws additional light on their strength.
◆¹ Thus the argument, which was fermentingin my American correspondent’s mind, and which he regarded as reducing the claims of Ability to “hog-wash,” really affords the means, if examined carefully and minutely, of establishing yet more firmly the position it was invoked to shatter, and of making the claims of Ability not only clearer but more extensive.