2. Competition and the Natural Harmony of Individual Interests[193]
The general industry of the society never can exceed what the capital of the society can employ. As the number of workmen that can be kept in employment by any particular person must bear a certain proportion to his capital, so the number of those that can be continually employed by all the members of a great society must bear a certain proportion to the whole capital of that society and never can exceed that proportion. No regulation of commerce can increase the quantity of industry in any society beyond what its capital can maintain. It can only divert a part of it into a direction into which it might not otherwise have gone; and it is by no means certain that this artificial direction is likely to be more advantageous to the society than that into which it would have gone of its own accord.
Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage, indeed, and not that of the society, which he has in view. But the study of his own advantage naturally, or rather necessarily, leads him to prefer that employment which is most advantageous to the society.
As every individual, therefore, endeavors as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry and so to direct that industry that its product may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labors to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner that its product may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.
What is the species of domestic industry which his capital can employ, and of which the product is likely to be of the greatest value, every individual, it is evident, can, in his local situation, judge much better than any statesman or lawgiver can do for him. The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.
3. Competition and Freedom[194]
What, after all, is competition? Is it something that exists and acts of itself, like the cholera? No, competition is simply the absence of oppression. In reference to the matters that interest me, I prefer to choose for myself and I do not want anyone else to choose for me against my will; that's all. And if anyone undertakes to substitute his judgment for mine in matters that concern me I shall demand the privilege of substituting my wishes for his in matters which concern him. What guaranty is there that this arrangement will improve matters? It is evident that competition is liberty. To destroy liberty of action is to destroy the possibility and consequently the faculty of choosing, judging, comparing; it is to kill intelligence, to kill thought, to kill man himself. Whatever the point of departure, there is where modern reforms always end; in order to improve society it is necessary to annihilate the individual, upon the assumption that the individual is the source of all evil, and as if the individual was not likewise the source of all good.
4. Money and Freedom[195]
Money not only makes the relation of individuals to the group a more independent one, but the content of the special forms of associations and the relations of the participants to these associations is subject to an entirely new process of differentiation.
The medieval corporations included in themselves all the human interests. A guild of cloth-makers was not an association of individuals which cultivated the interests of cloth-making exclusively. It was a community in a vocational, personal, religious, political sense and in many other respects. And however technical the interests that might be grouped together in such an association, they had an immediate and lively interest for all members. Members were wholly bound up in the association.