But we must admit that although the arguments used by Rodbertus are scarcely more reliable than Bastiat’s, his theory itself is nearer the facts as judged by statistics. No amount of a priori reasoning without some recourse to statistics can ever solve the problem. Statistics themselves seem to prove that labour’s portion, in some countries at least, has shown signs of diminishing since the beginning of the present century.
This does not necessarily mean that the worker must be worse off, for it may well happen that a diminution in the general share obtained by labour is accompanied by a growth of individual wages. All that we can conclude is that wages have not increased as rapidly as has capital’s share,[917] but this has not prevented the workers sharing in the general growth of prosperity.
Logically enough, Rodbertus proceeds to draw certain practical conclusions, including the necessity for the suppression of private property and of individual production. The community should be the sole owner of the means of production. Unearned income must go. Everyone should contribute something to the national dividend, and each should share in the total produce in proportion to his labour. The value of all commodities will depend upon the amount of time spent on them and effort put into them; and since the supply will always adapt itself to the needs of society the measure will be constant and exact, and equal distribution will be assured.
But Rodbertus recoils from his own solution, and the ardent socialist becomes a simple State Socialist. What frightens him is not the terrible tyranny of a system under which production and even consumption would be strictly regulated. “There would be as much personal freedom under a system of this kind as in any other form of society,” he remarks,[918] “society” evidently always implying some measure of restraint. His apprehension was of a different kind. He had a perfect horror of any revolutionary change, and stood aghast at the lack of education displayed by the masses. He realised how unwilling they were to sacrifice even a part of their wages in order to enable other men to have the necessary leisure to pursue the study of the arts and sciences—the noblest fruits of civilisation. Finally it seemed to him that illegal appropriation and the rightful ownership which results from vigorous toil are too often confused by being indiscriminately spoken of as private property. “There is,” says he, “so much that is right mixed up with what is wrong that one goads the lawful owner into revolt in trying to lay hold of the unlawful possessor.”[919]
Some kind of compromise should at all costs be effected. If private property—one of the great evils of the present day—cannot be got rid of without some inconvenience, cannot we possibly dispense with freedom of contract, the other source of inequality? Let us assume, then, that we have got rid of free contract while retaining the institution of private property. By doing this, although we are not immediately able to clear away unearned income, we shall have removed some of the greatest inconveniences that result from it. We shall arrest the downward trend of labour’s remuneration, and poverty and crises will disappear together.[920]
Such an attempt might be made even now. Let the State estimate the total value of the social product in terms of labour and determine the fraction that should go to the workers. Let it give to each entrepreneur in accordance with the number of workers he employs a number of wage coupons, in return for which the entrepreneur shall be obliged to put on the market a quantity of commodities equal in value. Lastly, let the said workers, paid in wage coupons, supply themselves with whatever they want from the public stores in return for these coupons. The national estimate would from time to time be subject to revision; and in order that the proportions should always be the same, the number of coupons given to labour would have to be increased if the number of commodities produced ever happened to increase. Rodbertus’s aim was to give the workers a share in the general progress made, and such was the plan which he laid down.[921]
There is no need to emphasise its theoretical, let alone its practical difficulties. We were led to mention it for a double reason. In the first place, it is interesting as an attempt to effect a compromise between the society of the present and the collectivism of the future. Marx regards the growing servility of the worker with a certain measure of equanimity as a necessary preliminary to his final emancipation. Rodbertus would speed the process of amelioration and would better his lot here and now.[922] It also throws an interesting light upon his extraordinary confidence in the all-powerful sovereignty of the State, and the ability of government to bend every individual will, even the most recalcitrant, to the general will. At the same time it reveals his utter indifference to individual liberty as an economic motive.
This indifference gradually merges into extreme hostility, while his confidence in the centralised executive becomes all the more thoroughly established. His later historical works contain an exposition of an organic theory of the State which is meant to justify such confidence. Just as in the animal world the higher animals are found to possess the most highly differentiated organs as well as the most closely co-ordinated, so in history as we pass from the lower social strata to the higher ones “the State advances both in magnitude and efficiency; and its action, while increasing in scope, grows in intensity as well. The State in its passage from one evolutionary stage to another presents us not merely with a greater degree of complexity, each function being to a greater and greater extent discharged by some special organ, but also with an increasing degree of harmony. The social organisms, despite their ever-increasing variation, are placed in growing dependence upon one another by being linked to some central organ. In other words, the particular grade that a social organism occupies in the organic hierarchy depends upon the degree to which division of labour and centralisation have been carried.”[923]
We are thus driven back upon the fundamental question set by Rodbertus at the outset of his inquiry: Can the various social functions, acting spontaneously, efficiently further the good of the social body, or should these functions be discharged by the mediation of a special organ, the State or Government? There is also the further question as to whether the reply which he gives is entirely satisfactory.
We are immediately struck by a preliminary contradiction: the economic boundaries of the community do not coincide with its political boundaries. The one is the result of division of labour and is coextensive with the limits set by division of labour, while the second is the product of the changing conditions of history. It is only logical that the economic functions of the State should be performed by other organs than those of the political Government, since its sphere of action is necessarily different. But it is to the State, as evolved in the course of a long historical process, that Rodbertus would entrust this directing power. Between Rodbertus’s description of the State’s economic activity and his final recourse to a national monarchical State is an element of contradiction which strikes us rather forcibly, especially when he comes to speak of “national” socialism.