This expectation is realised when we examine the bearing of the two kinds of productivity upon human welfare. In the exercise of productive effort the average labourer undergoes a sacrifice. He is engaged in a process that is ordinarily irksome. To require from him this toilsome expenditure of energy without compensation, would make him a mere instrument of his fellows. It would subordinate him and his comfort to the aggrandisement of beings who are not his superiors but his moral equals. For he is a person; they are no more than persons. On the other hand, the capitalist as such, as the recipient of interest, performs no labour, painful or otherwise. Not the capitalist, but capital participates in the productive process. Even though the capitalist should receive no interest, the productive functioning of capital would not subordinate him to his fellows in the way that wageless labour would subordinate the labourer. The precise and fundamental reason for according to the labourer his product is that this is the only rational rule of distribution. When a man makes a useful thing out of materials that are his, he has a strict right to the product simply because there is no other reasonable method of distributing the goods and opportunities of the earth. If another individual, or society, were permitted to take this product, industry would be discouraged, idleness fostered, and reasonable life and self development rendered impossible. Direful consequences of this magnitude would not follow the abolition of interest. Perhaps the most important difference between the moral claims of capitalist and labourer is the fact that for the latter labour is the sole means of livelihood. Unless he is compensated for his product he will perish. But the capitalist has in addition to the interest that he receives the ability to work. Were interest abolished he would still be in as good a position as the labourer. The product of the labourer means to him the necessaries of life; the product of the capitalist means to him goods in excess of a mere livelihood. Consequently their claims to the product are greatly unequal in vital importance and moral value. The foregoing considerations show that even the claim of the labourer to his product is not based upon merely intrinsic grounds. It does not spring entirely from the mere fact that he has produced the product, from the mere relation between producer and thing produced. If this is true of labour-productivity we should expect to find it even more evident with regard to the productivity of capital; for the latter is passive instead of active, non rational instead of human.