To save is not to accumulate quantities of corn, of game, or of crown-pieces. This hoarding-up of material and consumable commodities, which must necessarily from its nature be restrained within narrow bounds, represents only the saving of man in a state of isolation. All that we have hitherto said of value, of services, of relative wealth, shows us that, socially, saving, although it proceeds from the same source, develops itself differently and assumes another character.
To save is to interpose voluntarily an interval between the time when we render services to society and the time when we receive back from society equivalent services. A man, for example, may every day, from the time he is twenty until he is sixty, render to his neighbours professional services equal to four, and demand from them services only equal to three. In that case he reserves the power of drawing upon society in his old age, and when he can no longer work, for payment of the remaining fourth of his forty years’ labour.
The circumstance that he has received and accumulated through a succession of years notes of acknowledgment consisting of bills of exchange, promissory notes, bank notes, money, is quite secondary, and belongs only to the form of the transaction. It has relation only to the means of execution. It changes neither the nature nor the consequences of saving. The illusion to which the intervention of money gives rise in this respect is not the less an illusion, although we are almost always the dupes of it.
In fact, it is with difficulty that we can avoid believing that the man who saves withdraws from circulation a certain amount of value, and, in consequence, does a certain amount of harm to society.
And here we encounter one of those apparent contradictions [p394] which are at war with logic, one of those barriers which would seem to oppose an insurmountable obstacle to progress, one of those dissonances which gives us pain by appearing to call in question the Divine power and will.
On the one hand, we know that the human race can only extend itself, raise itself, improve itself, acquire leisure, stability, and, by consequence, intellectual development and moral culture, by the abundant creation and persevering accumulation of capital. It is this rapid augmentation of capital on which depends the demand for labour, the elevation of wages, and, consequently, the progress of men towards equality.
But, on the other hand, to save is not the opposite of to spend, and if the man who spends gives a fillip to industry and additional employment to labour, does the man who saves not do exactly the reverse? If every one set himself to economize as much as possible, we should see labour languish in the same proportion, and if all could be saved, we should have no fund for the employment of labour.
In such circumstances, what advice can we give? And what solid basis can political economy offer to morals, when we appear to be able to educe from the former only this contradictory and melancholy alternative:—
“If you do not save, capital will not be replaced, but dissipated, the labouring class will be multiplied, while the fund for their remuneration will remain stationary; they will enter into competition with each other, and offer their services at a lower rate; wages will be depressed, and society will, in this respect, be on the decline. It will be on the decline also in another respect, for unless you save you will be without bread in your old age; you can no longer set your son out in the world, give a portion to your daughter, or enlarge your trade,” etc.