These sentences are a poor and pallid way of conveying the outstanding
fact. There are organic or native needs, of course, as for food,
protection and mates. There are innate structures which facilitate
them in securing the external objects through which they are met.
But the only kind of industry they are capable of giving rise to is
a precarious livelihood obtained by gathering such edible plants and
animals as chance might throw in the way: the lowest type of savagery
just emerging from a brute condition. Nor, strictly speaking, could
they effect even this meager result. For because of the phenomenon
of helpless infancy even such a primitive régime depends upon the
assistance of associated action, including that most valuable form of
assistance: learning from others. What would even savage industry be
without the use of fire, of weapons, of woven articles, all of which
involve communication and tradition? The industrial régime which the
authors of “natural” economy contemplated presupposed wants, tools,
materials, purposes, techniques and abilities in a thousand ways
dependent upon associated behavior. Thus in the sense in which the
authors of the doctrine employed the word “artificial,” these things
were intensely and cumulatively artificial. What they were really after
was a changed direction of custom and institutions. The outcome of
the acts of those who were engaged in forwarding the new industry and
commerce was a new set of customs and institutions. The latter were as
much extensive and enduring conjoint modes of life as were those which
they displaced; more so in their sweep and force.
The bearing of this fact upon political theory and practice is evident.
Not only were the wants and intentions which actually operated
functions of associated life, but they re-determined the forms and
temper of this life. Athenians did not buy Sunday newspapers, make
investments in stocks and bonds, nor want motor cars. Nor do we to-day
want for the most part beautiful bodies and beauty of architectural
surroundings. We are mostly satisfied with the result of cosmetics and
with ugly slums, and oftentimes with equally ugly palaces. We do not
“naturally” or organically need them, but we _want_ them. If we do not
demand them directly we demand them none the less effectively. For they
are necessary consequences of the things upon which we have set our
hearts. In other words, a community wants (in the only intelligible
sense of wanting, effective demand) either education or ignorance,
lovely or squalid surroundings, railway trains or ox-carts, stocks and
bonds, pecuniary profit or constructive arts, according as associated
activity presents these things to them habitually, esteems them, and
supplies the means of attaining them. But that is only half the tale.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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