2. No one has a property right in harmful or superfluous luxuries, since property is the control of external things for the maintenance and development of personality; and luxury, so far from maintaining, undermines personality, and hinders its development.
No one has ethically a right of property in great fortunes like those accumulated under the modern system of industry. Whatever is in excess of one’s needs, rightly estimated, is not appropriate to one, not proper to one, not his property. Since the present system of ownership cannot be changed abruptly, the idea of the stewardship of wealth has been suggested to quiet the consciences of those who have come to realize that they have no moral right to excessive wealth. But the idea of stewardship should be held with fear and trembling. It is at best a makeshift, a bridge leading over to something more sound. It may be so taught and received as to seem to justify by philanthropic use the possession of great fortunes. But the power to dispose of vast funds for philanthropic uses may come to be itself a badge of superiority. And even if this be not so, if surplus wealth be used modestly, and with a sincere intention to apply it in the best possible way, there is yet no surety that any individual owner will have the breadth of vision, the experience, the insight, to discharge adequately the function of distributor. The defects of his early education, habits ingrained in him in the course of his business career, may lead him to bestow lavishly in one direction while turning a deaf ear to the appeal of other needs even more urgent and fundamental. Nothing short of the collective wisdom of the community, the collaboration of the best, can safely direct the surplus wealth available for social benefaction.
3. Everyone is ethically entitled to a share of the products furnished by nature and worked up into usable shape by his fellows, and also to the direct services of fellow human beings, in so far as that share and those services are necessary in order to enable him to perform in the best possible way the specific service which he in turn is capable of rendering. Our ethical theory here supplies us with a principle which takes the place of remuneration. There is no such thing as a just remuneration of labor, there is no such thing as a fair wage, if the wage be considered as the equivalent of, or the reward for the work done. It is not possible by any process of calculation to construct an equation between labor and reward. The laborer is assuredly not entitled to the product of his labor, as the current formula awkwardly puts it, for it is an entirely hopeless undertaking to try to ascertain what the product of any man’s labor is. In the modern forms of industry, the contributions of the different factors engaged in production are intimately intermingled, play into one another, and are inseparable. Neither the so-called workers alone are the producers of wealth, nor the employers and capitalists, nor yet both together irrespective of the labors of past generations of which they enjoy the usufruct. The question, what is a fair wage, or a fair profit, is badly posed. There is no such thing as a fair wage or profit in the sense of a fair compensation for the work performed.
The proper payment of the human factors engaged in production is unascertainable genetically, i.e., if one goes back to the origin of the product. It can only be approximately determined by fixing attention on the end to be served. And the end in each case is the maintenance and development of personality. In other words, that is a fair wage which suffices to enable the different functionaries coöperating in production each to perform his function, or render his service, in the most efficient possible manner. The solution of the labor question must be along teleological not genetic lines. Adequate nourishment as to quantity and quality, suitable dwellings, educational opportunities, etc., are all indispensable to the rendering of service, even by “common laborers.” Specific requirements come up for consideration with respect to the different special functions, and those who perform them.
My intention in this chapter is to indicate the bearings of the ethical theory on living questions of the day. Nothing is more emphatic in the programmes of the working-class than this demand for social justice. Nothing is more discouraging than to see the futile efforts made to define social justice by extemporizing a notion of fair adjustment which goes to pieces in every serious labor controversy.
One more remark should be made in regard to what is meant by property as a relation between persons and things considered as a means of developing personality. A convenient illustration is the use of a block of stone by a sculptor. The sculptor’s attempt at self-expression is an effort to combine two things in themselves uncongenial, an ideal image, and an external tangible thing, the block of stone. The mental image does not leap from the mind upon the stone and transform it magically into its own likeness. The external thing, the stone, offers resistance, and the resistance limits the artist’s effort. But the limitation itself becomes in time an indispensable aid. For the ideal image as at first it started up in the artist’s mind was vague, and the limitations imposed by the intractable nature of the material compel him to articulate the image, to grasp more firmly its complex details, and thus to become more surely possessed of it. The same is true of the mental thing which we call the relation of cause and effect in the mind of the scientist, and of his endeavor to impose this mental relation on the sequence of phenomena observed by him. And the same is again true of that supreme thing which we call the ethical ideal, and of the effort to embody it in the social relations. The attempt to express the ethical ideal in human society inevitably hits on limitations, and leads to frustrations. We have in our heads fine schemes of universal regeneration. We find elements in human nature that resent and resist our Socialisms, our communisms. We desire to enlarge men’s moral horizon, the field of their moral interest, to lead out from the family to the nation, to fraternity in general. We presently discover that we are losing the benefit of the closer ties. In the very process of building we seem to be in danger of destroying the foundations, and to be building in the air. In this way our formulations of the ethical ideal are tested. We are compelled to recast them, and the frustrations which we meet with become the means of clarifying and articulating the ideal itself, and of enabling us to experience more vividly the coercive impulses that go out from it.
The Right to Reputation
The ethical rule is to show a sacred respect for the reputation of others. In the present discussion intellectual and moral reputation may be considered separately.
Under the first head of intellectual reputation, certain points suggest themselves, one of them in regard to controversies concerning priority of scientific discovery. What is the sense of such controversies? What difference does it make whether the law of the conservation of energy was first enunciated by Helmholtz or by Robert Mayer, or whether the method of fluxions was invented by Newton or Leibnitz,—not to mention lesser contrarieties of claims? Would it not argue, on the part of the scientists and their friends, a more entire devotion to objective truth if they showed themselves indifferent to personal credit? The discovery, the invention, it may be said, is important, not the reputation of the discoverer or the inventor. Nevertheless, such controversies are carried on in a lively spirit. And it is usually felt that something more than vanity is at stake, that a man is entitled to be named in connection with the productions of his mind.
Such controversies resemble a suit at law undertaken to determine a disputed title to some valuable property. Plagiarism is different. It is barefaced intellectual theft. The title to the property in this case is not disputed. The plagiarist just steals an idea or a form of words in which an idea has been happily expressed, and palms it off as his own, hoping to escape with his stolen goods undetected. In this case too, it seems, one might say the idea is important, not the authorship. Nevertheless, a profound resentment is felt, not only by the author, but by the general public, against a plagiarist.