In all countries of the world, there exists one class of services, which, as regards the manner in which they are distributed and [p426] remunerated, accomplishes an evolution quite different from that of private or free services. I allude to public services.
When a want assumes a character so universal and so uniform that one can describe it as a public want, it may be convenient for those people who form part of the same agglomeration (be it district, province, or country) to provide for the satisfaction of that want by collective action, or a collective delegation of power. In that case, they name functionaries whose duty it is to render to the community, and distribute among them, the service in question, and whose remuneration they provide for by a contribution which is, at least in principle, proportionate to the means of each member of the society.
In reality, the primordial elements of the social economy are not necessarily impaired or set aside by this peculiar form of exchange,—above all, when the consent of all parties is assumed. It still resolves itself into a transmission of efforts, a transmission of services. These functionaries labour to satisfy the wants of the taxpayers, and the taxpayers labour to satisfy the wants of the functionaries. The relative value of their reciprocal services is determined by a method which we shall have afterwards to examine; but the essential principles of the exchange, speaking in the abstract at least, remain intact.
Those authors, then, are wrong, who, influenced by their dislike of unjust and oppressive taxes, regard as lost all values devoted to the public service.[94] This unqualified condemnation will not bear examination. In so far as loss or gain is concerned, the public service, scientifically considered, differs in nothing from private service. Whether I protect my field myself, or pay a man for protecting it or pay the State for causing it to be protected, there is always a sacrifice with a corresponding benefit. In both ways, no doubt, I lose this amount of labour, but I gain security. It is not a loss, but an exchange.
Will it be said that I give a material object, and receive in return a thing without body or form? This is just to fall back upon the erroneous theory of value. As long as we attribute value to matter, not to services, we must regard every public service as being without value, or lost. Afterwards, when we begin to shift [p427] about between what is true and what is false, on the subject of value, we shift about between what is true and what is false on the subject of taxation.
If taxation is not necessarily a loss, still less is it necessarily spoliation.[95] No doubt, in modern societies, spoliation by means of taxation is perpetrated on a great scale. We shall afterwards see that it is one of the most active of those causes which disturb the equivalence of services and the harmony of interests. But the best way of combating and eradicating the abuses of taxation, is to steer clear of that exaggeration which would represent all taxation as being essentially, and in itself, spoliation.
Thus, considered in themselves, in their own nature, in their normal state, and apart from abuses, public services, like private services, resolve themselves into pure exchanges.
But the modes in which, in these two forms of exchange, services are compared, bargained for, and transmitted, the modes in which they are brought to an equilibrium or equivalence, and in which their relative value is manifested, are so different in themselves, and in their effects, that the reader will bear with me if I dwell at some length on this difficult subject, one of the most interesting which can be presented to the consideration of the economist and the statesman. It is here, in truth, that we have the connecting link between politics and social economy. It is here that we discover the origin and tendency of the most fatal error which has ever infected the science, the error of confounding society with Government; society being the grand whole, which includes both private and public services, and Government, the fraction which includes public services alone.
Unfortunately, when, by following the teaching of Rousseau, and his apt scholars the French republicans, we employ indifferently the words Government and Society, we pronounce, implicitly, beforehand, and without examination, that the State can and ought to absorb private exertion altogether, along with individual liberty and responsibility. We conclude that all private services ought to be converted into public services. We conclude that the social order is a conventional and contingent fact which owes its existence to the law. We pronounce the lawgiver [p428] omnipotent, and mankind powerless, as having forfeited their rights.
In fact, we see public services, or governmental action, extended or restrained according to circumstances of time and place, from the Communism of Sparta, or the Missions of Paraguay, to the individualism of the United States, and the centralization of France.