They are not the world’s best servants. Their power is not the power of highly specialised talent or genius. It is a truism that the more ability a man has to serve Society in its advanced needs, as in the arts and sciences, the less ability he has to “make money,” as we call the process of individual absorption.
The gold miners and the mint “make money,” all productive labour makes wealth; but those who secure the most of it for themselves are of quite another class. The verb “to make” and the verb “to take” have not the same root.
This illegitimate development of ownership is injurious to Society. Wealth, in normal circulation, is productive, is a social advantage. Wealth, in abnormal secretion, is not only unproductive of good, but absolutely evil in its influence. Yet, the whole process, with all its mischievous results, is conditioned upon our false concept as to personal property and the right of ownership. Its glaring heights of evil are most conspicuous; but the mischief lies not in the special extreme instance, but in the general condition.
See the effect of a belief in unchecked polygamy. Under economic pressure, the mass of the people have but one wife, and so are saved the worst effects. But the crowded harems of the great show most shameful results—sensuality, cruelty, idleness, physical deterioration, conspiracy, murder. Are we then to blame the polygamist in proportion to the number of his wives; or merely to recognise the principle as wrong,—and the one-wived believer as much in error as Solomon? It is our common concept of ownership that is to blame, not Carnegie and Rockefeller.
See how the true principle would work out. Society is a unit, we are but parts. Social life develops the power to make things—the things which are essential to social life. Increase in these things is increase in social wealth and social power—a ceaseless line of development. The good of Society requires the best development of all its parts—that they may so produce more. The best development of all the parts requires the full supply of social goods.
The social goods belong to Society, are made by Society, for Society; and should be distributed to Society as widely, swiftly, and freely as possible; so adding to the social good. Now this line of talk, to the general mind, means a wallowing sea of communism. We see visions of a flat and uniform world, of no ambition, no distinction, no privacy, no private property, and therefore no life worth having. This is because we do not know what private property really is.
Legitimate private property includes all that the individual needs to consume. All the food he needs, all the clothes he needs, all the education he needs, all the tools he needs; to each person what he separately needs, and to each group what they separately need of the great fund of social advantages. Is not that property enough? All that a man can legitimately consume is his own, but not what he produces. That is his return to Society. What he produces is of no use to him, his dentistry, or surgery, or masonry, his teaching or acting, his manufacturing or transporting,—this belongs to Society.
We have erred in attaching the claim of ownership to the goods produced. It belongs only to the goods consumed. The property rights of the individual to his own food, his own shelter, his own clothing, his own tools of production,—be they paint brushes, books, or chisels,—need never be questioned. So fast as production becomes collective, the means of production become collective. Where a separate weaver had a right to own the separate loom with which he produced cloth, now the group of operators, from “hand” to “head,” have a right to own the mill with which they produce cloth, but not the cloth.
To whom then does the cloth belong, if not the maker? To the wearer, of course. Cloth, as we have shown before, is a social tissue, it is evolved for social advantage. It has to be worn by members of Society. We recognise this so clearly as to have laws commanding people to wear clothes, punishing them if they do not. Such laws might be justly applied to silkworms, but hardly to human beings, unless their clothes are also provided. No doubt a position like this seems impossible to our minds, so used are we to the other, to the present belief that a man owns what he produces, and no one has a right to it; but that he has no right whatever to the necessities of life—to the means of production.
Let us think fairly and courageously about it. Here is a man born. This product of his is yet potential, he cannot produce until he is grown. What he produces when he is grown, in kind and quantity, depends on what he consumes as a baby, boy, and youth. Now since Society needs his product,—not he, mind you, he has no use for the bricks or the books he will make,—since Society needs his product, and since that product is conditioned upon his previous consumption of previous product, Society, in its own interests, must see that he is supplied with all proper provision,—he has a right to it.