◆¹ The second point I alluded to must be considered at greater length. In dealing with Capital and Ability, I first treated them separately. I then showed that, regarded as a productive agent, Capital is Ability, and must be treated as identical with it. But it is necessary, now that we are dealing with distribution, to disunite them for a moment, and treat them separately once more. ◆² For even though it be admitted that Ability, working by means of Capital, produces, as it has been shown to do, nearly two-thirds of the national income, and though it be admitted further that a large portion of this product should go to those able men who are actively engaged in producing it,—the men whose Ability animates and vivifies Capital,—it may yet be urged that a portion of it which is very large indeed goes, as a fact, to men who do not exert themselves at all, or who, at any rate, do not exert themselves in the production of wealth. These men, it will be said, live not on the products of Ability, but on the interest of Capital which they have come accidentally to possess; ◆³ and it will be asked on what grounds Labour is interested in forbearing to touch the possessions of those who produce nothing? If it has added to its income, as it has done, during the past hundred years, why should it not now add to it much more rapidly, by appropriating what goes to this wholly non-productive class?
To this question there are several answers. One is that a leisured class—a class whose exertions have no commercial value, or no value commensurate with the cost of its maintenance—is essential to the development of culture, of knowledge, of art, and of mental civilisation generally. But this is an answer which we need not dwell on here; for, whatever its force, it is foreign to our present purpose. We will confine ourselves solely to the material interests that are involved, and consider solely how the plunder of a class living on the interest of Capital would tend to affect the actual production of wealth.
It would affect the production of wealth in just the same way as would a similar treatment of that class on whose active Ability production is directly dependent; and it would do this for the following reasons.
◆1 They are the heirs of Ability, and represent, by their possession of Capital, the main object with which that Capital was originally created.
◆2 For Capital is created and saved in order that it may yield interest, firstly, to the man who himself created and saved it;
◆¹ The greater part of the Capital that has been accumulated in the modern world is the creation of active Ability, as I have pointed out already. It has been saved not from the product of Labour, but from the product which Ability has added to this. It is Ability congealed, or Ability stored up. And the main motive that has prompted the men of Ability to create it has not consisted only of the desire of enjoying the income which they are enabled to produce by its means, when actually employing it themselves, but the desire also of enjoying some portion of the income which will be produced by its means if it is employed by the Ability of others. ◆² In a word, the men who create and add to our Capital are motived to do so by expectation that the Capital shall be their own property; that it shall, when they wish it, yield them a certain income independent of any further exertions of their own. Were this expectation rendered impossible, were Capital by any means prevented from yielding interest either to the persons who made and saved it, or those to whom the makers might bequeath it, the principal motive for making or saving it would be gone. If a man, for instance, makes one thousand pounds he can, as matters stand, do three things with it, any one of which will gratify him. He can spend it as income, and enjoy the whole of it in that way; he can use it himself as Capital, and so enjoy the profits; or he can let others use it as Capital, and so enjoy the interest. But if he were by any means precluded from receiving interest for it, and desired for any reason to retire from active business, he could do with his thousand pounds one of two things only—he could spend it as income, in which case it would be destroyed; or let others use it as Capital, in which case he himself could derive no benefit whatever from it, and would, in effect, be giving it or throwing it away. Were the first course pursued, no Capital would be saved; were the second course obligatory, no Capital would be created.[48]
◆1 And secondly, to his family and his immediate heirs.
◆2 The bulk of the Capital owned now by those who do not employ it themselves has come to them from their fathers or grandfathers who created it;
◆3 As the history of the growth of Capital during the present century shows.
◆4 A man’s desire to leave money to his family is shown by history to be as strong a motive as the desire to enjoy it himself.