CHAPTER V
That the Chief Productive Agent in the modern world is not Labour, but Ability, or the Faculty which directs Labour.
◆1 What was said in the last chapter shows that productive Human Exertion is of two kinds, and does not consist only of what is meant by Labour,
◆2 As familiar instances will show us.
◆¹I saidin the last chapter that machinery or Fixed Capital was congealed Wage Capital. But as Wage Capital is metamorphosed into machinery only owing to the fact that it is at once the instrument and the guide of Human Exertion, machinery may be called congealed exertion also. This description of it is but half original; for Socialistic writers have for a long time called it “congealed Labour.” But between the two phrases there is a great and fundamental difference, and I now bring them thus together to show what the difference is. The first includes the whole meaning of the second, whereas the second includes only a part of the meaning of the first. Let us take the finest bronze statue that was ever made, and also the worst, thefeeblest, the most ridiculous. ◆² Both can with equal accuracy be called congealed Labour; but to call them this is just as useless a truism as to call them congealed bronze. It describes the point in which the two statues resemble each other; it tells us nothing of what is far more important—the points in which the two statues differ. They differ because, whilst both are congealed Labour, the one is also congealed imagination of the highest order, the other is also congealed imagination of the lowest. The excellence of the metal and of the casting may be the same in both cases. Or again, let us take a vessel like theCity of Paris, and let us take also the vessel that was known as theBessemer Steamer. TheBessemer Steamerwas fitted with a sort of rocking saloon, which, when the vessel rolled, was expected to remain level. The contrivance was a complete failure. The hundreds of thousands of pounds spent on it were practically thrown away, and the structure ended by being sold as old iron. Now these two vessels were equally congealed Labour, and congealed Labour of precisely the same quality; for the workmen employed on theBessemer Steamerwere as skilful as thoseemployed on theCity of Paris. And yet the Labour in the one case was congealed into a piece of lumber, and in the other case it was congealed into one of the most perfect of those living links by which the lives of two worlds are united. To call both the vessels, then, congealed Labour, only tells us how success resembles failure, not how it differs from it. TheCity of Parisdiffers from theBessemer Steamerbecause theCity of Pariswas congealed judgment, and theBessemer Steamerwas congealed misjudgment.
It is therefore evident that inusingCapital so as to make Labour more efficacious, as distinct fromwastingCapital so as to make Labour nugatory, some other human faculties are involved distinct from the faculty of Labour; and I have employed, except when it would have been mere pedantry to do so, the term “Human Exertion” instead of the term “Labour,” because the former includes those other faculties, and the latter does not; or, if it includes them, it entirely fails to distinguish them, and merely confounds them with faculties from which they fundamentally differ. Thus, when I pointed out in the last chapter thatCapital, in so far as it increased the productivity of Labour, was mental and moral energy as applied to muscular energy, I might have said with equal propriety, had my argument advanced far enough, that it was one kind of Human Exertion guiding and controlling another kind. Here we come to the great central fact which forms the key to the whole economic problem: the fact that in the production of wealth two kinds of Human Exertion are involved, and not, as economists have hitherto told us, one—two kinds of exertion absolutely distinct, and, as we shall see presently, following different laws.
◆1 Economic writers vaguely recognise this fact, but have never formally expressed it, or made it a part of their systems.
◆2 They confuse all productive exertion together under the heading of Labour.
◆¹ Economic writers, like the world in general, do indeed recognise, in an unscientific way, that productive exertion exhibits itself under many various forms; but their admissions and statements with regard to this point are entirely confused and stultified by the almost ludicrous persistence with which they classify all these forms under the single heading of Labour. Mill, for instance, says that a large part of profits are really wages of the labour of superintendence. He speaks of “the labour of the invention of industrial processes,” “the labourof Watt in contriving the steam-engine,” and even of “the labour of the savant and the speculative thinker.” ◆² He employs the same word to describe the effort that invented Arkwright’s spinning-frame, and the commonest muscular movement of any one of the mechanics who assisted with hammer or screwdriver to construct it under Arkwright’s direction. He employs the same word to describe the power that perfected the electric telegraph, and the power that hangs the wires from pole to pole, like clothes-lines. He confuses under one heading the functions of the employer and the employed—of the men who lead in industry, and of the men who follow. He calls them all labourers, and he calls their work Labour.
◆1 But practically, Labour means muscular or manual exertion.
◆2 Mental and moral exertion, as applied to production, must therefore be given another name:
Now were the question merely one of literary or philosophical propriety, this inclusive use of the word Labour might be defensible; but we have nothing to do here with the niceties of such trivial criticism. We are concerned not with what a word might be made to mean, but what it practically does mean; and if we appeal to the ordinary use of language,—not only its use by the mass of ordinary men, but its most frequent use by economicwriters also,—we shall find that the word Labour has a meaning which is practically settled; and we shall find that this meaning is not an inclusive one, but exclusive. ◆¹ We shall find that Labour practically means muscular Labour, or at all events some form of exertion of which men—common men—are as universally capable, and that it not only never naturally includes any other idea, but distinctly and emphatically excludes it. For instance, when Mill in hisPrinciples of Political Economydevotes one of his chapters to the future of the “Labouring Classes,” he instinctively uses the phrase as meaning manual labourers. When, as not unfrequently happens, some opulent politician says to a popular audience, “I, too, am a labouring man,” he is either understood to be saying something which is only true metaphorically, or is jeered at as saying something which is not true at all. Probably no two men in the United Kingdom have worked harder or for longer hours than Mr. Gladstone and Lord Salisbury; yet no one could call Mr. Gladstone a labour member, or say that Lord Salisbury was an instance of a labouring man being a peer. The Watts, the Stevensons, theWhitworths, the Bessemers, the Armstrongs, the Brasseys, are, according to the formal definition of the economists, one and all of them labourers. But what man is there who, if, in speaking of a strike, he were to say that he supported or opposed the claims of Labour, would be understood as meaning the claims of employers and millionaires like these? It is evident that no one would understand him in such a sense; and if he used the wordLabourthus, he would be merely trifling with language. The word, for all practical purposes, has its meaning unequivocally fixed. It does not mean all Human Exertion; it emphatically means a part of it only. It means muscular and manual exertion, or exertion of which the ordinary man is capable, as distinct from industrial exertion of any other kind; and not only as distinct from it, but as actively opposed to and struggling with it. Since, then, we have to deal with distinct and opposing things, it is idle to attempt to discuss them under one and the same name. ◆² To do so would be like describing the Franco-Prussian War with only one name for both armies—the soldiers; or like attempting to explain the composition ofwater, with only one name for oxygen and hydrogen—the gas. Accordingly, for the industrial exertion—exertion moral and mental—which is distinct from Labour and opposed to it, we must find some separate and some distinctive name; and the name which I propose to use for this purpose is Ability.
◆1 In this book it will be called Ability.
◆2 There is, however, a deeper distinction between the two than the fact of one being mental and the other muscular.
◆¹ Human Exertion then, as applied to the production of wealth, is of two distinct kinds: Ability and Labour—the former being essentially moral or mental exertion, and only incidentally muscular; the latter being mainly muscular, and only moral or mental in a comparatively unimportant sense. ◆² This difference between them, however, though accidentally it is always present, and is what at first strikes the observation, is not the fundamental difference. The fundamental difference is of quite another kind. It lies in the following fact: That Labour is a kind of exertion on the part of the individual, which begins and ends with each separate task it is employed upon, whilst Ability is a kind of exertion on the part of the individual which is capable of affecting simultaneously the labour of an indefinite number of individuals, and thus hastening or perfecting theaccomplishment of an indefinite number of tasks.
◆1 The vital distinction is that the Labour of one man affects one task only; the Ability of one man may affect an indefinite number.
◆¹ This vital distinction, hitherto so entirely neglected, should be written in letters of fire on the mind of everybody who wishes to understand, to improve, or even to discuss intelligibly, the economic conditions of a country such as ours. Unless it is recognised, and terms are found to express it, it is impossible to think clearly about the question; much more is it impossible to argue clearly about it: for men’s thoughts, even if for moments they are correct and clear, will be presently tripped up and entangled in the language they are obliged to use. Thus, we constantly find that when men have declared all wealth to be due to Labour, more or less consciously including Ability in the term, they go on to speak of Labour and the labouring classes, more or less consciously excluding it; and we can hardly open a review or a newspaper, or listen to a speech on any economic problem, without finding the labouring classes spoken of as “the producers,” to the obvious and intentional exclusion of the classes who exercise Ability; whereas it can be demonstrated,as we shall see in another chapter, that of the wealth enjoyed by this country to-day, Labour produces little more than a third.
Let us go back then to the definitions I have just now given, and insist on them and enlarge them and explain them, so as to make them absolutely clear.
◆1 Familiar examples will show the truth of this.
Labour, I said, is a kind of exertion on the part of the individual, which begins and ends with each separate task it is employed upon; whilst Ability is a kind of exertion on the part of the individual which is capable of affecting simultaneously the labour of an indefinite number of individuals. ◆¹ Here are some examples. An English navvy, it is said, will do more work in a day than a French navvy; he will dig or wheel away more barrow-loads of earth; but the greater power of the one, if the two work together, has no tendency to communicate itself to the other. The one, let us say, will wheel twelve barrow-loads, whilst the other will wheel ten. We will imagine, then, a gang of ten French navvies, who in a given time wheel a hundred barrow-loads. One of them dies, and his place istaken by an Englishman. The Englishman wheels twelve loads instead of ten; but the rest of the gang continue to wheel ten only. Let us suppose, however, that the Englishman, instead of being a navvy, is a little cripple who has this kind of ability—that he can show the navvies how to attack with their picks each separate ton of earth in the most efficacious way, and how to run their barrows along the easiest tracks or gradients. He might quite conceivably enable the nine Frenchmen to wheel fifteen barrow-loads in the time that they formerly consumed in wheeling ten; and thus, though the gang contained one labourer less than formerly, yet owing to the presence of one man of ability, the efficacy of its exertions would be increased by fifty per cent. Or again, let us take the case of some machine, whose efficiency is in proportion to the niceness with which certain of its parts are finished. The skilled workman whose labour finishes such parts contributes by doing so to the efficiency of that one machine only; he does nothing to influence the labour of any other workman, or facilitate the production of any othermachine similar to it. But the man who, by his inventive ability, makes the machine simpler, or introduces into it some new principle, so that, without requiring so much or such skilled labour to construct it, it will, when constructed, be twice as efficient as before, may, by his ability, affect individual machines without number, and increase the efficiency of the labour of many millions of workmen. Such a case as this is specially worth considering, because it exposes an error to which I shall again refer hereafter—the error often made by economic writers, of treating Ability as a species of Skilled Labour. For Skilled Labour is itself so far from being the same thing as Ability, that it is in some respects more distinct from it than Labour of more common kinds; for the secret of it is less capable of being communicated to other labourers. For instance, one of the most perfect chronometers ever made—namely, that invented by Mudge in the last century—required for its construction Labour of such unusual nicety, that though two specimens, made under the direct supervision of the inventor, went with an accuracy that hasnot since been surpassed, the difficulty of reproducing them rendered the invention valueless. But the great example of this particular truth is to be found in a certain fact connected with the history of the steam-engine—a fact which is little known, whose significance has never been realised, and which I shall mention a little later on. It may thus be said with regard to the production of wealth generally, that it will be limited in proportion to the exceptionally skilled labour it requires, whilst it will be increased in proportion to the exceptional ability that is applied to it.
◆1 We shall now be able to describe Capital accurately asAbilitycontrollingLabour.
◆¹ The difference, then, between Ability and Labour must be now abundantly clear. As a general rule, there is the broad difference on the surface, that the one is mainly mental and the other mainly muscular; but to this rule there are many exceptions, and the difference in question is accidental and superficial. The essential, the fundamental difference from a practical point of view is, that whilst Labour is the exertion of a single man applied to a single task, Ability is the exertion of a single man applied to an indefinite numberof tasks, and an indefinite number of individuals.
◆1 It is, of course, understood that this definition applies only to Capital used so as actually to make Labour more productive, not to Capital wasted.
◆¹ And now let us go back to the subject of Capital. I have said that Capital is one kind of Human Exertion guiding and controlling another kind. We can at last express this with more brevity, and say that Capital is Ability guiding and controlling Labour. This is no mere rhetorical or metaphorical statement. It is the accurate expression of what is at once a theoretical truth and an historical fact; and to show the reader that it is so, let me remove certain objections which may very possibly suggest themselves. In the first place, it may be said that Capital belongs constantly to idle and foolish persons, or even indeed to idiots, to all of whom it yields a revenue. This is true; but such an objection altogether ignores the fact that though such persons own the Capital, they do not administer it. An idiot inherits shares in a great commercial house; but the men who manage the business are not idiots. They only pay the idiot a certain sum for allowing his Capital to be made use of by their Ability. It may, however, be said further that manymen, neither idle nor idiotic, had administered Capital themselves, and had succeeded merely in wasting it. This again is true; but where Capital is wasted the productive powers of the nation are not increased by it. It is, however, a broad historical fact that, by the application of Capital the productive powers of the nation have been increasing continually for more than a hundred years, and are increasing still; and this is the fact, or the phenomenon, which we are engaged in studying. Capital for us, then, means Capital applied successfully; and when I say that Capital is Ability guiding and controlling Labour, it is of Capital applied successfully, and not of Capital wasted, that I must in every case be understood to be speaking; just as if it were said that a battle was won by British bayonets, the bayonets meant would be those that the combatants used, not those that deserters happened to throw away. The fact, indeed, that in certain hands so much Capital is thrown away and wasted, is nothing but a proof of what I say, that as a productive agent Capital represents, and practicallyis, Ability.
◆1 Capital is to Ability something like what the brain is to the mind.
It may, however, be said—and the objection is worth noticing—that Capital is a material thing, and Ability a mental thing; and it may be asked how, except metaphorically, the one can be said to be the other? ◆¹ An answer may be given by the analogy of the mind and brain. So long as the mind inhabits and directs a human body, mind and matter are two sides of the same thing. It is only through the brain that mind has power over the muscles; and the brain is powerful only because it is the organ of the mind. Now Ability is to Capital what mind is to the brain; and, like mind and brain, the two terms may be used interchangeably. Capital is that through which the Ability of one set of men acts on the muscles—that is to say, the Labour—of another set, whether by setting Labour to produce machinery, or by so organising various multitudes of labourers that each multitude becomes a single machine in itself, or by settling or devising the uses to which these machines shall be put.
◆1 And this would be as true of Capital in a Socialistic State as in any other.
And it will be well, in case any Socialist should happen to read these pages, to point out that my insisting on this fact is nopiece of special pleading on behalf of the private capitalist. ◆¹ The whole of the above argument would apply to Capital, no matter who owned it: individuals, or the community as a whole. For no matter who owned it, or who divided the proceeds of it, the entire control of it would have to be in the hands of Ability. In what, or how many, individuals Ability may be held to reside; how such individuals are best found, tested, and brought forward; and how their power over Capital may be best attained by them—whether as owners, or as borrowers, or as State officials,—is a totally different question, and is in this place beside the point.
At present, it will be enough to sum up what we have seen thus far. The causes of wealth are not, as is commonly said, three: Land, Labour, and Capital. This analysis omits the most important cause altogether, and makes it impossible to explain, or even reason about, the phenomenon of industrial progress. The causes of wealth are four—Land, Labour, Capital, and Ability: the two first being the indispensable elements in the production of any wealth whatsoever; the fourthbeing the cause of all progress in production; and the third, as it now exists, being the creation of the fourth, and the means through; which it operates. These two last, as we shall see presently, may, except for special purposes, be treated as only one, and will be best included under the one term Ability.
And now let us turn back to the condition of this country at the close of the last century, and the reader will see why, at the outset of the above inquiry, I fixed his attention on that particular period.