On a par with a child's right to education, is the right of the
aged, of invalids, widows and sick persons, to a maintenance;
and the capital-basis for their support will be passed through the
three systems of the body social in much the same way as the capital
contributed for the education of those who are not yet come to their
working powers. The essential point in all this is, that the income
received by anyone who is not personally an earner, should not be
an outcome of the economic life; but the other way about:--economic
life must be dependent on what is the outcome of the common sense of
right. The people working in any economic organism will have all the
less from their work, the more has to go to the non-earners; only the
"less" will be borne fairly by all the members of the body social,
when social impulses, of the kind here meant, are really put into
practice. The education and maintenance of those who cannot work
concerns all mankind in common; and under a "rights-state" detached
from economic life it will become the common concern in actual
practice. For the "rights" organisation is the field for realising
those things in which every grown human being has a voice.
Under a social order, that follows this line of conception, the surplus
that a man performs on the strength of his individual ability will pass
on to the community; and the just maintenance for the deficiency of
the less able will also come from the community. "Surplus value" will
not be created for the unjustified enjoyment of private individuals,
but to enhance everything that can give wealth of soul and body to
the whole social organism, and to foster whatever is born of it,
even though not directly serviceable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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