CHAPTER III. Property; Private Income; Collective Property.-Income of the Family, and National Property.-Importance of the Family in the Distribution of Wealth. THE attacks of modern socialism, as everybody knows, are chiefly directed against property as such, or, in other words, against the accumulation of private income and its use, prevalent in the present day. We must, however, never lose sight of the great fact that man not property (or those commodities which are comprehended under the word wealth) is the great object of political economy. For the production and consumption of commodities are to be regarded only as the means to an end, that end being the highest personal improvement of the individual, and the best social organization of the human family. Property, from this point of view, is itself a part of the individual possessor; it forms that circle of external goods which centres in him personally.* It is the apparatus of personal life. Socialists recognise this in part, and attack not so much property per se, but rather the exclusive possession and use of it by a few private persons, belonging to the landed aristocracy, in the shape of ground rent, and to the plutocracy in the shape of capital. *The following is the definition of property given by Dr. Schäffle: "Der um eine Person gezogene, von ihr benützte, durch sie beherrschte Kreis von äusseren Gütern, der ihr dem gemäss rechtlich und wirthschaftlich eigenthümlich ist, heisst Vermögen."—" Kapitalismus und Socialismus," p. 60. The fact is recognised on all hands that throughout the individual existence of every human being a plurality of wants must be supplied by private income, and in a similar manner the public wants of a community must be supplied by the collective property or income of the state. It used to be the fashion even of economists to consider property from the legal point only. Nor is this view in itself incorrect, since without legal protection wealth would not be created and accumulated; without safety there would be no saving. But we must consider property from another point of view too, its strictly economic aspect. Regarded in this light, property, or a certain amount of ready-made commodities, becomes indispensable in order to the most effective development of the personal life in consumption, and also as the starting point of the most extensive production. The economic progress could not be carried on at all, technically, without some previously existing property in the form of buildings, raw stuffs, machinery, and other aids besides the capital to maintain the hands (which produce ultimate wealth) by prepaid wages. Even a small tradesman must have an available stock of property to commence business, and the destruction of private property would become ultimately the extinction of personal life. The real difficulty in this question is: how are all individually to be provided with an adequate apparatus of ready-made instruments for productive purposes and the necessary commodities for domestic purposes in consumption? Marlo, a moderate socialist, is against the absurd notion of consigning property to destruction by a levelling down process. He rather recommends a levelling up process in the formation of private property by, and a more extensive acquisition of it among, what are now the moneyless classes. What in classic and PROPERTY THE RESULT OF LABOUR AND NATURE. 37 mediæval ages was claimed as a right of the privileged citizen, reasonable socialists claim now as the legal right of proletarians. And certainly, judging from the general tone of the early Christian writings, the problem how to arm every individual with the adequate means for its own physical support and moral development ought to have been discussed centuries ago. True, the solution of the problem may remain as far off as ever after thousands of years' discussion; still the duty remains, to give it due consideration. Some liberal optimists have opined that "liberty of labour" is the best guarantee of a sufficient endowment of property for every individual proportionate to its wants. But the first principles of political economy show the futility of this opinion; for wealth is the product not of labour only but of nature also. The gifts of nature, however, are limited; and unless part of the soil, and other natural agents, are within reach of the working man, he has not the proper means for acquiring property. If nature with a prodigal liberality supplied all alike with her gifts, everybody might become in a short time the forger of his own fortune. But the supplies of nature are limited and unequally distributed, and hence the inequality in the struggle of life between the privileged and the working classes. No doubt Adam Smith is quite correct in asserting that "nature" does not "create values," that the value of commodities depends on labour. On the other hand, Quesnay, the founder of an opposite school, asserts with almost equal justice that "the soil is the sole source of wealth." The truth is, property is the outcome of these two factors conjointly. To a fund of nature limited in quantity is added human labour; and, as population increases, there will be an urging and pressing towards exclusive posses sion of those natural resources which are the foundation of all wealth or property. The "liberty of labour,” as it is called, is circumscribed by the limits of exclusive possession; labour by itself cannot produce anything out of nothing. Add to this that the increase of population is infinite, and the process of expansion of natural agents limited; and the result of this mutual relationship* will be an effective supply of commodities to every member of the community under the following three cardinal conditions only: viz., we must postulate: (1) The greatest development of economic activity of the population, in the acquisition of wealth and careful saving; for a working and saving people are necessary for creating wealth. (2) A normal relationship between the number of population and the magnitude of natural resources; for the latter exist only in a limited degree. (3) Supposing this normal relationship to exist, the most productive use of the natural factor for the common good, by means of utilizing in the best manner natural resources, and the best application of labour power engaged in husbanding the existing "natural wealth." + On the fulfilment of these three conditions depends the proper distribution of national wealth. But we have by no means arrived as yet at that happy consummation. Our present capitalistic system does not by any means secure for us the proper development and thorough utilization of all labour power. The working man, in his low proletarian condition, cannot cultivate or utilize his talents for his own or the public good. His moral and intellectual inferiority lessens the value of his productive * Compare J. S. Mill's "Principles of Political Economy:" Book I., chap. xii., § 2. (People's edition.) + The above is a close translation of Dr. Schäffle's work, in loco. EQUILIBRIUM OF POPULATION-MALTHUS. 39 labour, and the property of those in whose service he drudges like a beast of burden he wastes without a pang, because his only feelings towards it are those of envy and hatred. Similarly, the solution of the second problem, the equilibrium of population, has not yet been arrived at. The existing system of political economy of the liberal school does not meet the case by its avowed principle of non-interference with the "freedom of labour." Its most able representative on this question, Malthus, assumes with as much candour as chilling indifference a constant and necessary sacrifice of human life in the struggle for existence. He says in a well-known passage: "Any human being entering a world already occupied has not the slightest right (!) to any share in the existing stores of the necessaries of life. He is altogether a supernumerary, and finds no cover at the great banquet of nature. She tells him begone, and does not hesitate to extort by force obedience to her mandate. Hunger and pestilence, war and crime, mortality and neglect of infantine life, prostitution and syphilis, are the forms,— hospitals, houses of correction, foundling hospitals, and emigration packets are the places,-of execution erected by nature." Thus we see that the pure "laissez-faire" system does not provide for the exigencies of overpopulation, and does nothing to ameliorate the fate of those who fall as victims of an inexorable law. Plato and Aristotle among the ancients took a more candid view of the matter, and had the positive courage to recommend colonization and emigration, the setting apart of public domains and family properties, in order to maintain the equilibrium of population. The guilds of the middle ages aimed at the same object. It was reserved for our present age of liberal institutions to regard with fatal |