come out of profits, depending on conditions that do not rest with the
spiritual work of the directing personality, but with the interplay
of the forces at work in the communal life.
It will be seen, that with the realisation of social ideas such as
these, institutions that we already have will acquire an altogether
new significance. The ownership of property ceases to be what it
has been up till now. But instead of going back to an obsolete
form, such as communal ownership would be, it is carried on a
step further to something quite new. The objects of ownership
are brought into the stream of social life. No private owner, for
his own personal interests, can control them to the injury of the
general public;--neither, again, can the general public control them
bureaucratically to the injury of the private person;--but private
persons, who are suitable, will have access to them, as a means of
serving the public.
A sense for the general public interest will have a chance to grow up,
when impulses of this sort are realised, which place production on
a sound basis, and safeguards the body social from sudden crises. An
administrature too, which occupies itself solely with the processes
of economic life, will be able to bring about any adjustments for
which necessity may arise in the course of these processes. Suppose,
for instance, a business concern were not in a position to pay its
creditors the interest due on the savings of their labour, then,--if
it is a business that is nevertheless recognised as meeting a want,--it
will be possible to arrange for other industrial concerns to subsidise
it by the voluntary agreement of everyone concerned in them.
Self-contained, on a basis of "rights" determined from outside itself,
and supplied from without by a constant flow of fresh human ability
as it comes on the scenes, the economic life, within its own circuit,
will concern itself with nothing but its proper work. Accordingly it
will be possible for it to facilitate a distribution of wealth that
will ensure each person receiving that which he is rightfully entitled
to receive, according to the community's general prosperity. And,
if one person appears to have more income than another, it will only
be because his individual abilities make this More, this "surplus,"
of advantage to the community.
The taxes which are needed for the "rights" system can be settled
between the leaders of the "rights" life and the economic life
in a social organism shaped by the light of such conceptions as
these. Whilst everything needed for the maintenance of the spiritual
organisation will come as good-will from the voluntary appreciation of
the private members of the body social. The spiritual organisation will
rest on a healthy basis of individual initiative, exercised in free
competition amongst the private individuals suited to spiritual work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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