A primitive man can obtain the necessities of life by giving all his time to it. A civilised man of our day can produce his share of all the necessities of life, in say one-tenth of his time. In the other nine-tenths he can produce comforts, luxuries, all the higher products of human life. Under right conditions, civilised man could produce the necessities in a hundredth part of his time, and could so grow and improve as to lift all the higher products to a far more advanced stage. Fully supplied with all he needs of this social wealth, the producing power of civilised man is far beyond his needs. “His needs” brings us again to the question, “What is legitimate consumption?”
We assume that, unless rigidly kept down by arbitrary forces, man would riotously consume in unending profusion; that he could not possibly supply enough for general consumption; and that since the supply is limited, it should be rigidly confined to those who can pay for it. This is an unwarranted claim. Normal consumption does not increase in any such wild way.
The normal demands of the whole human race for food can be met by the materials at hand. Observe that they are in some measure met now; our millions do live, do eat, even under present conditions. They might live better, have a more improving diet, under better conditions. But if, like Mr. Bounderby, we assume that everyone will wish “to be fed on turtle soup with a gold spoon”—we are wrong. “Have some truffles!” urges Mr. Newrich. “I don’t care for any,” answers Mr. Bornrich. “Not care for truffles?” cries Mr. Newrich; “why, they cost five dollars!” “What of that?” says Mr. Bornrich; “I don’t like ’em!” “Conspicuous consumption” is a feature of leisure-class culture, of illegitimate wealth founded on illegitimate poverty. With consumption on a natural basis, there would be no great demand for nightingales’ tongues.
Observe the existing facts in any department of social supply we have made free to all. Our highroads are free—but we do not therefore run continually up and down on them, just because we can. We travel as we have need of it, that is all. Free roads facilitate normal traffic and promote civilisation. Yet, when it is urged that free railroad travel is a necessity to-day, there is a horrified dissent. “What? let people travel on the railroad without paying for it? Why, they would travel all the time!” You see we do use our imaginations a good deal. These objectors imagine that mankind would desert both business and pleasure, forego the joys of home and the attractions of both city and country, to spend their days in the discomforts of a railroad train, and their nights in those culture tubes of all bacilli, the sleeping cars,—just because travel was free!
Have we never seen the plain and common fact that free provision of anything reduces the demand to the normal at once? Things “common” are not wanted, unless they are really wanted. All artificial demand drops off. There is no pride, no element of “conspicuous waste” in having what everyone can have, in doing what everyone can do. But the normal demand goes on, and the world is enriched, all progress is promoted, by the gratification of that need.
Sometimes people do things merely because they cost money,—to show financial superiority,—but they do not do things merely because they do not cost money. Free consumption would not increase any legitimate human demand, but it would increase our power, and skill, and so our wealth. Recognising that human production is conditioned upon previous supply, upon right inheritance, right education, right environment of all sorts, it follows that the more fully and freely we supply that environment, the more we produce.
Against this clear sequence stand, like a range of mountains, our theories of property rights—of personal ownership. Personal ownership, private property; we believe in these things as we believe in God,—and a good deal more so. These we hold to be basic principles, they underlie all else, nothing can shake them. Whoso questions or criticises them “strikes at the foundations of Society.”
It is not the first time that Society has been challenged in what it held to be foundation principles, has been led to change those principles—and has still survived. Cautiously, and gently, not to jar or strain our unused brain areas too much, let us draw near this mighty pile and see on what it rests. Bear steadily in mind the history of human life and of all life behind it. See all the ages of pre-human evolution going on in their majestic work without any dream of such a thing as property, or ownership. See humanity in its slow beginning, developing the extra-personal medium of life, the garment, shelter, tool. See how these things, detached, yet essential, exchangeable because human, yet had to be connected with the holder for his personal good and social efficiency.
Here, as we have shown in the preceding chapter, arises the true law of ownership, and ownership as natural as that of the beast of his teeth and claws, a true social law. It has no individual basis. Individuals carry their property on their bodies, it grows there. Society evolves detachable material adjuncts, the made things, the social medium. So far as this social medium is usable by all, it should be free to all. So far as it is peculiar to the specialised social functionary, it must be guaranteed to him. Society must guarantee to the individual those things which are essential to his social service. The civilised man has given up his power of caring for himself in order the better to serve Society. Society, to profit by this service, must insure right provision for the individual. In a clumsy, unjust, ill-managed way, it already does so, has always done so, it could not live else. But it has not done so fairly, or well, and, therefore, it is ill served, it suffers and sickens, and in repeated instances has died.
Again and again in history we may see the process: the nascent society developing, growing more and more specialised and interdependent, that development reducing the power of individual constituents to take care of themselves, self-interest weakening in the mass as social interest became increasingly necessary; and then the most primitive members of Society, those still most actuated by pre-social instincts, the surviving savages in civilisation, taking advantage of the immense social productivity, and claiming for themselves the social wealth.