The first relates to the remuneration of the ordinary manual labourer, and deals with the question of what his just remuneration is. According to Marx this question is easily settled. Of every thousand labourers associated in any given industry, each produces, with few and unimportant exceptions, a thousandth part of the whole exchangeable product; and his just remuneration is a thousandth part of the value of it. The intellectual socialists of to-day, while repudiating as we have seen the doctrine that the labourer's claim to remuneration is limited to the values produced by him, and contending that he has a further right to the product of the ability of others, constantly declare that, even according to the moral standard of Marx, he is usually defrauded at present of a large part of his due; or that, in most if not all industries, his wages represent but a part of the full value produced by him. Whether this is so or not is a question not of theory but of fact, and one which can only be answered by discovering some intelligible basis on which the values produced by labour in a general way may be estimated, as distinct from those produced by effort of other kinds. With this question I shall deal in the following chapter.
The second relates to those forms of individual income which are covered by the word interest, when used in a comprehensive sense. It being admitted by the later socialists, in opposition to the earlier, that the directive ability of the few is, in the modern world, a productive agency no less truly than labour is, many of these socialists are now anxious to concede that the man of ability is entitled to such values, no matter how large, as are due to the active exercise of his own exceptional powers; but they contend that, as soon as his personal activity ceases, his claim to any influx of further wealth should therewith cease also. Let him spend his accumulations, they say, on his own gratifications as he will; but neither he nor his descendants can be suffered in moral justice to hold or apply them in such a manner that they will renew themselves, and yield an income to recipients who do nothing to make them fructify. To numbers of people who repudiate most of the socialistic programme, this doctrine as to interest appeals as at once just and practicable. If the state could appropriate all incomes due to interest, as distinct from those which represent the product of active ability, an enormous fund would, they think, be available for general distribution, and the ideals of socialism, in so far as they are practicable or desirable, might thus be realised by other than socialistic means. This argument, likewise, will have its own chapter—or rather two chapters—allotted to it.
The third of these arguments or proposals which, though not in themselves socialistic, are popularly associated with socialism, relates to equality of opportunity. To this also I will devote a separate chapter.
FOOTNOTES:
[17] While these pages were being corrected for the press, a number of utterances have been made by English clerics—Episcopalian and Nonconformist—precisely similar in purpose and spirit to those of the author here quoted.
CHAPTER XII
THE JUST REWARD OF LABOUR AS ESTIMATED BY ITS ACTUAL PRODUCTS
Since the educated socialists of to-day admit that in the modern world wealth is produced by two functionally different classes—a majority who labour and a minority by whom this labour is directed; or by two different faculties—namely, labour and directive ability—the question of how much of the total product or its value is produced by one class or agency, and how much by the other, is, for all social reformers, and not for socialists only, a question of the first importance; for in the minds of numbers, who care little about ideal transfigurations of society, the doctrines of socialism leave one vivid conviction, which is this—that, though the labourers in the modern world do not produce everything, though the ability of those directing them is a productive agent also, and though part of the wealth of modern nations is undoubtedly produced by this, yet the men of ability produce much less than they manage to keep, while the labourers produce much more than is represented by the wages which they get; that labour in this way, even if in no other, is suffering at present a general and intolerable wrong; and that socialism is simply a system by which this wrong will be righted. [18]
Now, this alleged wrong is essentially an affair of quantity. If the products of any typical firm—one, let us say, which produces chemicals—are represented by the number a hundred, and if fifty represents the amount which at present is the share of labour, the rest being taken by men of directive ability—a picked body of organisers, chemists, and inventors—labour, it is contended, produces more than the fifty, which is all that it at present gets. Yes; but how much more? It is not contended that it produces the entire hundred. Does it produce, then, sixty, or sixty-five, or seventy, or eighty-three, or what? Unless such a wrong as this can have some extent assigned to it—unless it can be measured approximately by reference to some intelligible standard—it is not only difficult to deal with it; it is impossible to be sure that it exists. Of course we are here not contemplating individual cases. That some employés may, under existing conditions, get less than their work is worth, is possible and likely enough. It is equally likely or possible that others may get more. We must confine ourselves to what happens generally. We must take labour as a whole, on the one hand, and directive ability on the other, and ask how we may estimate, with rough but substantial accuracy, the proportion of the joint product respectively produced by each.