Germany -- Social conditions; Reconstruction (1914-1939) -- Germany; Socialism
Without this profound alteration of mentality, even the legally
prescribed incomes will exhibit quite grotesque variations, and will
adapt themselves to the rarity-value of special gifts, to
indispensable qualities, to favouritism, with a crudity quite unknown
to-day. A scarcity of Ministers, a Professor's nourishment, and
soldiers' supplies, will then as now be met according to the law of
supply and demand. Consider what ten years' practice in the war for
wages and strike-management, with the public in it as partisans, will
bring with it in the way of favouritisms, celebrities, and
indispensabilities. Popular jockeys, successful surgeons, managers of
sports' clubs, tenors, demimondaines, farce-writers and champion
athletes could, even to-day, if they were class-conscious and joined
together to exploit their opportunities, demand any income they liked.
Even as a matter of practical political economy, the cinema-star (or
whatever may succeed her) will be able to prescribe to the Government
what amount of adornments, drawn from Nature or Art, are necessary for
her calling, and what standard of life she must maintain in order to
keep herself in the proper mood.
Organizers, popular leaders, authors and artists will announce and
enforce their demands to the full limit of their rarity-value. At a
considerable distance below these come the acquired and more or less
transferable powers and talents. The Russians for the first few months
believed in a three-fold order of allowances, rising within a limit of
about one to two. If the ideas now prevailing have not undergone a
radical change, then we may, in the society of the future, look for
divergences of income in the limit of one to a thousand.
Therefore the principle that there shall be no more rich people must
again be substantially limited. We must say, "There will be people
receiving extraordinary incomes in kind to which must be added the
claims to personal service which these favoured persons will lay down
as conditions of their work."
In its external, arithmetical structure, the fabric of life and its
requirements in the new order will resemble that of to-day far more
closely than most of us imagine--on the other hand, the inward and
personal constitution of man will be far more different. Already we
can observe the direction of the movement.
Extravagance and luxury will continue to exist, and those who practise
it will be, as they are to-day, and more than to-day, the profiteers,
the lucky ones, and the adventurers. Excessive wealth will be more
repulsive than it is now; whether it will be less valued depends upon
the state of public ethics, a topic which we shall have to consider
later. It is probable that in defiance of all legislation wealth will
turn itself into expenditure and enjoyment more rapidly and more
recklessly than to-day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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