And in order that the knowledge thus made common to everyone may be
actually and profitably made use of by everyone--which is possible only
when everyone is placed in a position to apply his capabilities to those
among the branches of labour in which he is skilled, and which for the time
being yield the highest revenue--provision must be made that everyone shall
always be able to obtain possession of the requisite means of production.
Of these means of production there are two classes--the powers of nature
and capital. Without these means of production, the most exact information
as to which are the branches of labour whose products are in greatest
demand, and which, therefore, yield the highest profits, would be of as
little use as the most perfect skill in such branches of production. A man
can utilise his power to labour only when he has command both of the
materials and forces supplied by nature, and of the appropriate instruments
and machines; and if he is to compete with his fellow-workers he must
possess both classes of the means of production as fully and as completely
as they. In order to grow wheat, a man must not only have land at his
command, but he must have land that is equally good for growing wheat as is
the land of the other wheat-growers, otherwise he will labour with less
profit and possibly with actual loss. And possession of the most fertile
land will not make the work possible, or at any rate equally profitable,
unless the worker possesses the requisite agricultural implements, or if he
possesses them in a less degree than his competitors.
Then as to capital: the Free Society undertook to place it at the disposal
of everyone who wished for it, and that without interest, on condition that
it was reimbursed out of the proceeds of production within a period the
length of which was to be determined by the nature of the proposed
investment. As the instruments of labour and the other capitalistic aids to
labour could be provided to any amount and of any quality, one part of the
problem was thereby solved.
The case was different with the natural powers, as representative of which
we will take the land with which those powers are bound up. No one has
produced the land, therefore no one has a claim of ownership upon it, and
everyone has a right to use it. But not merely has no one produced the
land, no one can produce it; the land, therefore, exists in a limited
quantity, and, moreover, the existing land is not all of the same quality.
Now, in spite of all this, how is it possible to satisfy everyone's claim
not merely to land, but to produce-bearing land?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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