Economic development -- Social aspects; Social evolution; Social problems; Work
Acting under the Ego concept, with a sense of justice and of ownership
dating from the Ego period, we have arduously bent our minds to the
development of a system of laws more elaborately ramified than the twigs
of a tree; to follow and preserve the individual rights along every
broadening branch of social growth. Governed by the Want theory and its
derivatives, we have planted an arbitrary system of inter-individual
exchange, like a set of interlocking toll-gates, along every inch of
these great roads of progress.
Let us analyse again this group of allied errors, the Want theory. “Work
is an expenditure of energy by an individual man whereby to obtain
something for the gratification of his wants.” This rests on the
assumption that what the man needs to gratify his wants is to be had
only by his working. As we know that he does not himself manufacture the
articles needed to gratify his wants, but that these articles all and
several are made by other people; we assume further that each man owns
what he makes, and will not give it up to another without value
received—“If a man will not work, neither shall he eat.” And as the
supplies of the world are assumed to belong to the existing inhabitants
in private ownership, each newcomer, unless inheriting a share in the
privately owned world, is expected to “work” before he receives
anything.
Confronted by the glaring fact that a new human creature cannot work
before he receives anything, but must be supplied with many social
products for many years before he can produce in return, we then fall
back on the parent and say, “the new human being shall receive nothing
from Society except so much as his father is able to earn,” _i. e._, pay
for in work. That system of supplying the young by the unaided
activities of the parent, which we find among animals, we assume to be
the best for the human race, and so the final distribution of social
products is filtered through, not the consuming capacity, but the
“earning” capacity of individuals.
If the man with ten children is but a low-grade workman, his earning
capacity being but $1.50 a day at our rating, his children receive from
Society less than fifteen cents’ worth of supplies each. Their consuming
capacity is naturally much greater, but under our assumption that the
father represents the family as an economic unit, and that the family
shall be restricted in consumption within his power of production, the
children are thus supplied with the equivalent of one-tenth an
individual’s output.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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