Our minds are so thoroughly accustomed to thinking along false lines in economics that true and natural social processes, when described to them, seem but fantastic dreams.

This is only according to the brain’s working habits; it takes time to change it, and we need much patience with ourselves and one another while changing. Fortunately for the age we live in, there has been so much change in so many lines that further progress is easy, compared to what it was a few centuries ago. Fortunately in especial for the country we live in, its national attitude is that of welcome to the new, suspicion of the old.

In the wonderful spread of the great art, Literature, and particularly the branch art, Fiction, as distributed so universally among us by our libraries, our periodicals, and the daily press, we have far more general use of the imagination-our brains will stretch. This faculty of imagination is no mere factor in telling fairy-tales; it is that power of seeing over and under and around and through, of foreseeing, of constructing hypotheses, by which science and invention profit as much as art. Distance, perspective, proportion, these are obtained, in our consideration of facts, by use of the imagination. The rocks and stars confronted the savage as they did the beast, and with little more result; they were visible facts, that is all. He could not imagine any further content in his observation. We observe, similarly unmoved, the facts in economics.

Now let us use this common faculty of imagination; and, judging by man’s behaviour in conditions we do know, try to measure what it would be in other conditions. Let us take one concrete instance in this process of consumption, a perfectly conceivable hypothesis, and see for ourselves how it would work out.

We will now assume that clothing was free to all. This does not mean that it was dropped from the sky; we are still to produce and distribute it; but the final absorption by the individual is unchecked. What would be the consequence? At first there would be a rushing seizure by the people who have never been satisfied in clothing—they would take and take again—greedily—inordinately—sacking the shops and stuffing their houses. But suppose the supply is maintained, steadily. They would soon find it was inconvenient to stuff their houses, if the stores remained always to draw from. The hoarding instinct does not spring from continued plenty, and becomes foolish in the face of it.

Then, though not carrying off so much, they would perhaps choose the most beautiful and expensive fabrics. Finding that all wore the same, these distinctions would cease to distinguish; if everybody was wearing velvet at will, the result would be that those who did not really like it would leave it off. If everybody was wearing lace, they would find it was too frail for outing costumes. If there was no artificial glamour on one stuff more than another; if the supply was steady and free; then, slowly, gradually, timidly, would appear for the first time among us true personal choice! People would at least know what they personally preferred and have it; clothing would be adapted to genuine need and genuine taste.

Our habits of consumption are so complicated by long deprivation on the one hand, and by “the pecuniary canons of taste” (Veblen) on the other, that most of us live and die without ever knowing what we really want. “The Market” for which our producers competitively cater is an unnatural one. What we call “the demand” is not a healthy, legitimate demand; it is uncertain, capricious, subject to strange fluctuations and reactions; and in endeavouring to “supply” it, the most experienced and far-sighted producer often fails.

What is legitimate consumption? Is there any measure by which the world’s market could be regulated? No measure is needed. Our mistake here is due to continually seeking to govern production by an arbitrary system of payment. On the theory that a man will not work except for pay, it follows that his work will be strictly adjusted to the pay; and thus the tendency to a constantly increased productivity is held rigidly in check by our existing means of payment. Commodity money adds the last straw to this heap of folly.

Men will work only for pay.

Pay must be money.

Money must be gold.

So the amount of human productivity must be measured not by the muscular power, brain power, and machine power of society; nor even by the amount of corn and wool, wine and oil, wood and stone, and other necessaries; but by the amount of one particular metal. It is fortunate we have not elected to measure human production by radium!

It was bad enough to try to check our vast output by an arbitrary equivalent in goods; but it is so much worse to squeeze and strain it through this tiny gauge that it does seem as if we might have seen our foolishness long since. But that is where the power of a concept is so much greater than that of a fact. As a matter of fact, the bulk of the world’s business is done on credit; and its material vehicle is paper-a mere matter of record of transaction; but in our minds we still deal only in gold; and every once in a while we must interrupt the course of production and distribution to see if all accounts can be balanced in gold. As the business is necessarily in advance of the gold—always and always—we have to exert ourselves to get more gold—even if we must go to war for it.

Try the imagination again—see the consequence, if gold suddenly grew common as dirt—and lost its supposed “purchasing power.” Talk of “fiat money”—never was any fiat more purely arbitrary than this solemn assumption of ours that a hungry world cannot eat—a strong world cannot work—a vast and intricate organism in full swing of vigorous life cannot perform its functions—without every act of mutual service being measured in gold. The vital facts in the case have no more connection with gold than with wampum. Production and consumption go on as conditions of our organic life; distribution facilitates both; and we, governed by this Punch and Judy troupe of primitive ideas, check and pervert all these great functions.

What are the facts in true social economics as concerning this question? They are these. The earth furnishes us with the raw materials for living. Civilised man is able to combine those materials in consumable form, and to distribute them to all, with increasing facility. Even under all our obstructions, the rate of production and distribution increases with rapid strides; if free—it is impossible to estimate the gain.

Put it something like this:

A primitive man can obtain the necessities of life by giving all his time to it. A civilised man of our day can produce his share of all the necessities of life, in say one-tenth of his time. In the other nine-tenths he can produce comforts, luxuries, all the higher products of human life. Under right conditions, civilised man could produce the necessities in a hundredth part of his time, and could so grow and improve as to lift all the higher products to a far more advanced stage. Fully supplied with all he needs of this social wealth, the producing power of civilised man is far beyond his needs. “His needs” brings us again to the question, “What is legitimate consumption?”

We assume that, unless rigidly kept down by arbitrary forces, man would riotously consume in unending profusion; that he could not possibly supply enough for general consumption; and that since the supply is limited, it should be rigidly confined to those who can pay for it. This is an unwarranted claim. Normal consumption does not increase in any such wild way.

The normal demands of the whole human race for food can be met by the materials at hand. Observe that they are in some measure met now; our millions do live, do eat, even under present conditions. They might live better, have a more improving diet, under better conditions. But if, like Mr. Bounderby, we assume that everyone will wish “to be fed on turtle soup with a gold spoon”—we are wrong. “Have some truffles!” urges Mr. Newrich. “I don’t care for any,” answers Mr. Bornrich. “Not care for truffles?” cries Mr. Newrich; “why, they cost five dollars!” “What of that?” says Mr. Bornrich; “I don’t like ’em!” “Conspicuous consumption” is a feature of leisure-class culture, of illegitimate wealth founded on illegitimate poverty. With consumption on a natural basis, there would be no great demand for nightingales’ tongues.

Observe the existing facts in any department of social supply we have made free to all. Our highroads are free—but we do not therefore run continually up and down on them, just because we can. We travel as we have need of it, that is all. Free roads facilitate normal traffic and promote civilisation. Yet, when it is urged that free railroad travel is a necessity to-day, there is a horrified dissent. “What? let people travel on the railroad without paying for it? Why, they would travel all the time!” You see we do use our imaginations a good deal. These objectors imagine that mankind would desert both business and pleasure, forego the joys of home and the attractions of both city and country, to spend their days in the discomforts of a railroad train, and their nights in those culture tubes of all bacilli, the sleeping cars,—just because travel was free!

Have we never seen the plain and common fact that free provision of anything reduces the demand to the normal at once? Things “common” are not wanted, unless they are really wanted. All artificial demand drops off. There is no pride, no element of “conspicuous waste” in having what everyone can have, in doing what everyone can do. But the normal demand goes on, and the world is enriched, all progress is promoted, by the gratification of that need.

Sometimes people do things merely because they cost money,—to show financial superiority,—but they do not do things merely because they do not cost money. Free consumption would not increase any legitimate human demand, but it would increase our power, and skill, and so our wealth. Recognising that human production is conditioned upon previous supply, upon right inheritance, right education, right environment of all sorts, it follows that the more fully and freely we supply that environment, the more we produce.

Against this clear sequence stand, like a range of mountains, our theories of property rights—of personal ownership. Personal ownership, private property; we believe in these things as we believe in God,—and a good deal more so. These we hold to be basic principles, they underlie all else, nothing can shake them. Whoso questions or criticises them “strikes at the foundations of Society.”

It is not the first time that Society has been challenged in what it held to be foundation principles, has been led to change those principles—and has still survived. Cautiously, and gently, not to jar or strain our unused brain areas too much, let us draw near this mighty pile and see on what it rests. Bear steadily in mind the history of human life and of all life behind it. See all the ages of pre-human evolution going on in their majestic work without any dream of such a thing as property, or ownership. See humanity in its slow beginning, developing the extra-personal medium of life, the garment, shelter, tool. See how these things, detached, yet essential, exchangeable because human, yet had to be connected with the holder for his personal good and social efficiency.

Here, as we have shown in the preceding chapter, arises the true law of ownership, and ownership as natural as that of the beast of his teeth and claws, a true social law. It has no individual basis. Individuals carry their property on their bodies, it grows there. Society evolves detachable material adjuncts, the made things, the social medium. So far as this social medium is usable by all, it should be free to all. So far as it is peculiar to the specialised social functionary, it must be guaranteed to him. Society must guarantee to the individual those things which are essential to his social service. The civilised man has given up his power of caring for himself in order the better to serve Society. Society, to profit by this service, must insure right provision for the individual. In a clumsy, unjust, ill-managed way, it already does so, has always done so, it could not live else. But it has not done so fairly, or well, and, therefore, it is ill served, it suffers and sickens, and in repeated instances has died.

Again and again in history we may see the process: the nascent society developing, growing more and more specialised and interdependent, that development reducing the power of individual constituents to take care of themselves, self-interest weakening in the mass as social interest became increasingly necessary; and then the most primitive members of Society, those still most actuated by pre-social instincts, the surviving savages in civilisation, taking advantage of the immense social productivity, and claiming for themselves the social wealth.

They are not the world’s best servants. Their power is not the power of highly specialised talent or genius. It is a truism that the more ability a man has to serve Society in its advanced needs, as in the arts and sciences, the less ability he has to “make money,” as we call the process of individual absorption.

The gold miners and the mint “make money,” all productive labour makes wealth; but those who secure the most of it for themselves are of quite another class. The verb “to make” and the verb “to take” have not the same root.

This illegitimate development of ownership is injurious to Society. Wealth, in normal circulation, is productive, is a social advantage. Wealth, in abnormal secretion, is not only unproductive of good, but absolutely evil in its influence. Yet, the whole process, with all its mischievous results, is conditioned upon our false concept as to personal property and the right of ownership. Its glaring heights of evil are most conspicuous; but the mischief lies not in the special extreme instance, but in the general condition.

See the effect of a belief in unchecked polygamy. Under economic pressure, the mass of the people have but one wife, and so are saved the worst effects. But the crowded harems of the great show most shameful results—sensuality, cruelty, idleness, physical deterioration, conspiracy, murder. Are we then to blame the polygamist in proportion to the number of his wives; or merely to recognise the principle as wrong,—and the one-wived believer as much in error as Solomon? It is our common concept of ownership that is to blame, not Carnegie and Rockefeller.

See how the true principle would work out. Society is a unit, we are but parts. Social life develops the power to make things—the things which are essential to social life. Increase in these things is increase in social wealth and social power—a ceaseless line of development. The good of Society requires the best development of all its parts—that they may so produce more. The best development of all the parts requires the full supply of social goods.

The social goods belong to Society, are made by Society, for Society; and should be distributed to Society as widely, swiftly, and freely as possible; so adding to the social good. Now this line of talk, to the general mind, means a wallowing sea of communism. We see visions of a flat and uniform world, of no ambition, no distinction, no privacy, no private property, and therefore no life worth having. This is because we do not know what private property really is.

Legitimate private property includes all that the individual needs to consume. All the food he needs, all the clothes he needs, all the education he needs, all the tools he needs; to each person what he separately needs, and to each group what they separately need of the great fund of social advantages. Is not that property enough? All that a man can legitimately consume is his own, but not what he produces. That is his return to Society. What he produces is of no use to him, his dentistry, or surgery, or masonry, his teaching or acting, his manufacturing or transporting,—this belongs to Society.

We have erred in attaching the claim of ownership to the goods produced. It belongs only to the goods consumed. The property rights of the individual to his own food, his own shelter, his own clothing, his own tools of production,—be they paint brushes, books, or chisels,—need never be questioned. So fast as production becomes collective, the means of production become collective. Where a separate weaver had a right to own the separate loom with which he produced cloth, now the group of operators, from “hand” to “head,” have a right to own the mill with which they produce cloth, but not the cloth.

To whom then does the cloth belong, if not the maker? To the wearer, of course. Cloth, as we have shown before, is a social tissue, it is evolved for social advantage. It has to be worn by members of Society. We recognise this so clearly as to have laws commanding people to wear clothes, punishing them if they do not. Such laws might be justly applied to silkworms, but hardly to human beings, unless their clothes are also provided. No doubt a position like this seems impossible to our minds, so used are we to the other, to the present belief that a man owns what he produces, and no one has a right to it; but that he has no right whatever to the necessities of life—to the means of production.

Let us think fairly and courageously about it. Here is a man born. This product of his is yet potential, he cannot produce until he is grown. What he produces when he is grown, in kind and quantity, depends on what he consumes as a baby, boy, and youth. Now since Society needs his product,—not he, mind you, he has no use for the bricks or the books he will make,—since Society needs his product, and since that product is conditioned upon his previous consumption of previous product, Society, in its own interests, must see that he is supplied with all proper provision,—he has a right to it.

“A right” means an essential condition. Human rights are all social, conferred by social consent, and resting upon the social good. The right to individual liberty, the right to justice, any right of any time rests on the general acceptance of social benefit involved in those rights. We have seen long ago that the good of Society rested on the best human productivity; but because we believed that productivity to be conditioned upon subsequent reward, instead of previous supply, we defined our rights accordingly.

Our position was like this: Society needs our best product. Man will not produce, except to gratify his own wants. What he produces is his own, because it is essential to the gratification of his wants. Therefore, Society must guarantee to each man the product of his own labour.

The effect of the position is this: Conceiving ourselves to be independent units, conceiving our end to be the gratification of our wants, conceiving our product to be a personal possession, and only produced in order to gratify wants—we necessarily seek to limit the output of our work to the measure of our wants. The consuming capacity of the man is made the measure of his production, and under such a standard we see no way to increase production, except by increasing the consuming capacity, the wants. This is held by our existing economists to work well, but they overlook certain essential elements in the position.

The free production of the world is obviously not that of the persons who want the most or who get the most. No one can show that a man’s social value depends on his greediness. To want all things, to want them intensely, to want them continually, to want them to be of the best,—this does not add to a man’s industry, or intelligence, to his skill, ability, talent, or genius. The best and most work comes from those who have the most ability and inclination to work, though they may be, and often are, the most modest of consumers. But—and here is the neglected element in the case—if production is not free—if productive labour is under any compulsion, then truly those who want the most will, if they have the power, compel other men to work the most. That is, if you do not make things, but merely take them, it is obvious that the more you want the more you will take.

To recur to the status of slave labour. In this system productivity is under direct compulsion. It is proportioned to punishment. The owner of the slave labour, if he wanted things, took from the slaves the product of their labour, and the more he wanted the more he took. In this case the greediness of the owner is productive, his slaves produce more because he wants more. But if their labour were really free, his wants would not affect their productivity.

Again, in wage labour, we have the employer and the employee. What is an employer? He is one who “owns” what other men want. They cannot get what they want unless he gives it to them. Since these things which they want are the necessities of life, they must work for pay, they are not free.

The employer, if he wants things, takes from the employee the product of his labour; and, as before, the more he wants the more he takes. Since he must, in order to gratify his wants, keep these men alive and productive, he must return them something; but the action of his wants upon their labour tends to keep their share at a minimum. This we call the “iron law of wages.” We hold that it stands to reason that a man will give as little as he can to get what he wants. This is quite true, want does not promote productivity.

But these employees are not free. If they were independent of the employer, he could not make them work to gratify his wants. Personal desire does not add to personal power, neither does it add to other people’s power. Desire, want, hunger, may direct action; but it is not a productive force, it is a tendency to segregate and consume, not to produce and distribute.

Now see the effect of the position here laid down.

Consumption is but a means to production. Production is a natural function of Society—organic, interdependent, instinctive. Production is promoted by increasing social energy and social consciousness, besides the self-evident condition of maintenance.

The organic action of Society necessarily involves a common nourishment, as it is even now seen to involve a common defence, and beyond that it requires a progressive increase in social stimulus. Our increased consumption is an accompanying condition of our increased activity, as the hard worker should eat more than the idle; but it is the well-distributed nourishment that promotes the activity, activity does not nourish. Now since the life and progress of Society depend on our best production, it is the natural duty of Society to so distribute nourishment and stimulus as to promote that production. A rich, strong, free, intelligent, thoroughly educated society will produce far more than a poor, weak, foolish, uneducated society.

The tremendous productivity of America does not result from our wanting more than other people, as is popularly supposed, but from our having more. Not only the great natural advantages of the country, not only the independence which left men more free to work, but our public institutions for wide distribution of social advantages, such as free education,—these have combined to make the American not a greedier, but an abler man. Note in small instance the difference between our custom of free service of ice-water in the theatres, of programmes and the like, of toilet conveniences in the great stores, and all such matters, as compared with the twopence or fivepence you have to pay extra for so much as a napkin in an eating house in England.

“But,” says the Englishman, “you have to pay in the end.” We are willing to pay in the end. Any decent man is willing to pay for what he has had. It is the difference between the “European plan” and the “American plan.” So soon as a more enlightened society provides more and more fully and freely for the needs of its citizens, so much the more cheerfully will they be willing to pay for it.

Our personal work in the specialised service of the great social body which maintains us is our payment for goods received. The slave works to avoid the whip. His labour might be termed whip-dodging. The employee works to obtain bread withheld. His labour is called “bread-winning.” The free and socially conscious human being works because he likes to, because he can’t help it, because it is his honourable return in small degree for the immeasurable benefits he has received from infancy from his supporting society. We have established a very binding sense of “duty to parents” because we believed that the father by his unaided arm supported the child; the mother by hers reared and trained it. The parents unquestionably give the child its physical and mental endowment. But if we proportioned our duty to parents to the value of our inherited constitutions and temperaments, some parents would get short shrift.

Beyond the gifts of birth, the mother’s breast, and the tendency to benefit of parental love, what else the child receives is from Society. Parents were parents and did what they could in savage and pre-savage eras. That parents are wiser and tenderer is due to our progress in Socialisation. That they are richer and more powerful is not due to parenthood, but to Society. The heaped-up increment of all the years, the highly developed products of our industry and skill, the discoveries in science, the masterpieces of art,—these are all social products not parental.

The child needs to be supplied with all that he can healthfully consume of this his social inheritance, his birthright as a human being. Some children have more of the social products than others because their parents have an arbitrary and unnatural “ownership” of these products; but as a normal condition of sociology, all children have this claim upon their great social entail, with no “right of primogeniture” or other usurpation to interfere. So supplied, and so taught to recognise the true supplier, it will be as easy to rear our children in a sense of duty to Society as it is now to duty to parents, and more so, because this later, larger claim is so indisputably true. With the full productive power of the race finally set free and pouring out on normal lines, there will be no lack of social benefit for all.

We have seen the economic advantage of wage labour over slave labour; can we not see the even greater economic advantage of free labour over wage labour?