Chapter Fourteen ~~ The Higher Learning as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture
Chapter One ~~ Introductory
The
institution of a leisure class is found in its best development at
the higher stages of the barbarian culture; as, for instance, in
feudal Europe or feudal Japan. In such communities the distinction
between classes is very rigorously observed; and the feature of
most
striking economic significance in these class differences is the
distinction maintained between the employments proper to the
several
classes. The upper classes are by custom exempt or excluded from
industrial occupations, and are reserved for certain employments to
which a degree of honour attaches. Chief among the honourable
employments in any feudal community is warfare; and priestly
service
is commonly second to warfare. If the barbarian community is not
notably warlike, the priestly office may take the precedence, with
that of the warrior second. But the rule holds with but slight
exceptions that, whether warriors or priests, the upper classes are
exempt from industrial employments, and this exemption is the
economic expression of their superior rank. Brahmin India affords a
fair illustration of the industrial exemption of both these
classes.
In the communities belonging to the higher barbarian culture there
is
a considerable differentiation of sub-classes within what may be
comprehensively called the leisure class; and there is a
corresponding differentiation of employments between these
sub-classes. The leisure class as a whole comprises the noble and
the
priestly classes, together with much of their retinue. The
occupations of the class are correspondingly diversified; but they
have the common economic characteristic of being non-industrial.
These non-industrial upper-class occupations may be roughly
comprised
under government, warfare, religious observances, and
sports.At
an earlier, but not the earliest, stage of barbarism, the leisure
class is found in a less differentiated form. Neither the class
distinctions nor the distinctions between leisure-class occupations
are so minute and intricate. The Polynesian islanders generally
show
this stage of the development in good form, with the exception
that,
owing to the absence of large game, hunting does not hold the usual
place of honour in their scheme of life. The Icelandic community in
the time of the Sagas also affords a fair instance. In such a
community there is a rigorous distinction between classes and
between
the occupations peculiar to each class. Manual labour, industry,
whatever has to do directly with the everyday work of getting a
livelihood, is the exclusive occupation of the inferior class. This
inferior class includes slaves and other dependents, and ordinarily
also all the women. If there are several grades of aristocracy, the
women of high rank are commonly exempt from industrial employment,
or
at least from the more vulgar kinds of manual labour. The men of
the
upper classes are not only exempt, but by prescriptive custom they
are debarred, from all industrial occupations. The range of
employments open to them is rigidly defined. As on the higher plane
already spoken of, these employments are government, warfare,
religious observances, and sports. These four lines of activity
govern the scheme of life of the upper classes, and for the highest
rank—the kings or chieftains—these are the only kinds of activity
that custom or the common sense of the community will allow.
Indeed,
where the scheme is well developed even sports are accounted
doubtfully legitimate for the members of the highest rank. To the
lower grades of the leisure class certain other employments are
open,
but they are employments that are subsidiary to one or another of
these typical leisure-class occupations. Such are, for instance,
the
manufacture and care of arms and accoutrements and of war canoes,
the
dressing and handling of horses, dogs, and hawks, the preparation
of
sacred apparatus, etc. The lower classes are excluded from these
secondary honourable employments, except from such as are plainly
of
an industrial character and are only remotely related to the
typical
leisure-class occupations.If
we go a step back of this exemplary barbarian culture, into the
lower
stages of barbarism, we no longer find the leisure class in fully
developed form. But this lower barbarism shows the usages, motives,
and circumstances out of which the institution of a leisure class
has
arisen, and indicates the steps of its early growth. Nomadic
hunting
tribes in various parts of the world illustrate these more
primitive
phases of the differentiation. Any one of the North American
hunting
tribes may be taken as a convenient illustration. These tribes can
scarcely be said to have a defined leisure class. There is a
differentiation of function, and there is a distinction between
classes on the basis of this difference of function, but the
exemption of the superior class from work has not gone far enough
to
make the designation "leisure class" altogether applicable.
The tribes belonging on this economic level have carried the
economic
differentiation to the point at which a marked distinction is made
between the occupations of men and women, and this distinction is
of
an invidious character. In nearly all these tribes the women are,
by
prescriptive custom, held to those employments out of which the
industrial occupations proper develop at the next advance. The men
are exempt from these vulgar employments and are reserved for war,
hunting, sports, and devout observances. A very nice discrimination
is ordinarily shown in this matter.This
division of labour coincides with the distinction between the
working
and the leisure class as it appears in the higher barbarian
culture.
As the diversification and specialisation of employments proceed,
the
line of demarcation so drawn comes to divide the industrial from
the
non-industrial employments. The man's occupation as it stands at
the
earlier barbarian stage is not the original out of which any
appreciable portion of later industry has developed. In the later
development it survives only in employments that are not classed as
industrial,—war, politics, sports, learning, and the priestly
office. The only notable exceptions are a portion of the fishery
industry and certain slight employments that are doubtfully to be
classed as industry; such as the manufacture of arms, toys, and
sporting goods. Virtually the whole range of industrial employments
is an outgrowth of what is classed as woman's work in the primitive
barbarian community.The
work of the men in the lower barbarian culture is no less
indispensable to the life of the group than the work done by the
women. It may even be that the men's work contributes as much to
the
food supply and the other necessary consumption of the group.
Indeed,
so obvious is this "productive" character of the men's work
that in the conventional economic writings the hunter's work is
taken
as the type of primitive industry. But such is not the barbarian's
sense of the matter. In his own eyes he is not a labourer, and he
is
not to be classed with the women in this respect; nor is his effort
to be classed with the women's drudgery, as labour or industry, in
such a sense as to admit of its being confounded with the latter.
There is in all barbarian communities a profound sense of the
disparity between man's and woman's work. His work may conduce to
the
maintenance of the group, but it is felt that it does so through an
excellence and an efficacy of a kind that cannot without derogation
be compared with the uneventful diligence of the women.At
a farther step backward in the cultural scale—among savage
groups—the differentiation of employments is still less elaborate
and the invidious distinction between classes and employments is
less
consistent and less rigorous. Unequivocal instances of a primitive
savage culture are hard to find. Few of these groups or communities
that are classed as "savage" show no traces of regression
from a more advanced cultural stage. But there are groups—some of
them apparently not the result of retrogression—which show the
traits of primitive savagery with some fidelity. Their culture
differs from that of the barbarian communities in the absence of a
leisure class and the absence, in great measure, of the animus or
spiritual attitude on which the institution of a leisure class
rests.
These communities of primitive savages in which there is no
hierarchy
of economic classes make up but a small and inconspicuous fraction
of
the human race. As good an instance of this phase of culture as may
be had is afforded by the tribes of the Andamans, or by the Todas
of
the Nilgiri Hills. The scheme of life of these groups at the time
of
their earliest contact with Europeans seems to have been nearly
typical, so far as regards the absence of a leisure class. As a
further instance might be cited the Ainu of Yezo, and, more
doubtfully, also some Bushman and Eskimo groups. Some Pueblo
communities are less confidently to be included in the same class.
Most, if not all, of the communities here cited may well be cases
of
degeneration from a higher barbarism, rather than bearers of a
culture that has never risen above its present level. If so, they
are
for the present purpose to be taken with the allowance, but they
may
serve none the less as evidence to the same effect as if they were
really "primitive" populations.These
communities that are without a defined leisure class resemble one
another also in certain other features of their social structure
and
manner of life. They are small groups and of a simple (archaic)
structure; they are commonly peaceable and sedentary; they are
poor;
and individual ownership is not a dominant feature of their
economic
system. At the same time it does not follow that these are the
smallest of existing communities, or that their social structure is
in all respects the least differentiated; nor does the class
necessarily include all primitive communities which have no defined
system of individual ownership. But it is to be noted that the
class
seems to include the most peaceable—perhaps all the
characteristically peaceable—primitive groups of men. Indeed, the
most notable trait common to members of such communities is a
certain
amiable inefficiency when confronted with force or fraud.The
evidence afforded by the usages and cultural traits of communities
at
a low stage of development indicates that the institution of a
leisure class has emerged gradually during the transition from
primitive savagery to barbarism; or more precisely, during the
transition from a peaceable to a consistently warlike habit of
life.
The conditions apparently necessary to its emergence in a
consistent
form are: (1) the community must be of a predatory habit of life
(war
or the hunting of large game or both); that is to say, the men, who
constitute the inchoate leisure class in these cases, must be
habituated to the infliction of injury by force and stratagem; (2)
subsistence must be obtainable on sufficiently easy terms to admit
of
the exemption of a considerable portion of the community from
steady
application to a routine of labour. The institution of leisure
class
is the outgrowth of an early discrimination between employments,
according to which some employments are worthy and others unworthy.
Under this ancient distinction the worthy employments are those
which
may be classed as exploit; unworthy are those necessary everyday
employments into which no appreciable element of exploit
enters.This
distinction has but little obvious significance in a modern
industrial community, and it has, therefore, received but slight
attention at the hands of economic writers. When viewed in the
light
of that modern common sense which has guided economic discussion,
it
seems formal and insubstantial. But it persists with great tenacity
as a commonplace preconception even in modern life, as is shown,
for
instance, by our habitual aversion to menial employments. It is a
distinction of a personal kind—of superiority and inferiority. In
the earlier stages of culture, when the personal force of the
individual counted more immediately and obviously in shaping the
course of events, the element of exploit counted for more in the
everyday scheme of life. Interest centred about this fact to a
greater degree. Consequently a distinction proceeding on this
ground
seemed more imperative and more definitive then than is the case
to-day. As a fact in the sequence of development, therefore, the
distinction is a substantial one and rests on sufficiently valid
and
cogent grounds.The
ground on which a discrimination between facts is habitually made
changes as the interest from which the facts are habitually viewed
changes. Those features of the facts at hand are salient and
substantial upon which the dominant interest of the time throws its
light. Any given ground of distinction will seem insubstantial to
any
one who habitually apprehends the facts in question from a
different
point of view and values them for a different purpose. The habit of
distinguishing and classifying the various purposes and directions
of
activity prevails of necessity always and everywhere; for it is
indispensable in reaching a working theory or scheme of life. The
particular point of view, or the particular characteristic that is
pitched upon as definitive in the classification of the facts of
life
depends upon the interest from which a discrimination of the facts
is
sought. The grounds of discrimination, and the norm of procedure in
classifying the facts, therefore, progressively change as the
growth
of culture proceeds; for the end for which the facts of life are
apprehended changes, and the point of view consequently changes
also.
So that what are recognised as the salient and decisive features of
a
class of activities or of a social class at one stage of culture
will
not retain the same relative importance for the purposes of
classification at any subsequent stage.But
the change of standards and points of view is gradual only, and it
seldom results in the subversion or entire suppression of a
standpoint once accepted. A distinction is still habitually made
between industrial and non-industrial occupations; and this modern
distinction is a transmuted form of the barbarian distinction
between
exploit and drudgery. Such employments as warfare, politics, public
worship, and public merrymaking, are felt, in the popular
apprehension, to differ intrinsically from the labour that has to
do
with elaborating the material means of life. The precise line of
demarcation is not the same as it was in the early barbarian
scheme,
but the broad distinction has not fallen into disuse.The
tacit, common-sense distinction to-day is, in effect, that any
effort
is to be accounted industrial only so far as its ultimate purpose
is
the utilisation of non-human things. The coercive utilisation of
man
by man is not felt to be an industrial function; but all effort
directed to enhance human life by taking advantage of the non-human
environment is classed together as industrial activity. By the
economists who have best retained and adapted the classical
tradition, man's "power over nature" is currently
postulated as the characteristic fact of industrial productivity.
This industrial power over nature is taken to include man's power
over the life of the beasts and over all the elemental forces. A
line
is in this way drawn between mankind and brute creation.In
other times and among men imbued with a different body of
preconceptions this line is not drawn precisely as we draw it
to-day.
In the savage or the barbarian scheme of life it is drawn in a
different place and in another way. In all communities under the
barbarian culture there is an alert and pervading sense of
antithesis
between two comprehensive groups of phenomena, in one of which
barbarian man includes himself, and in the other, his victual.
There
is a felt antithesis between economic and non-economic phenomena,
but
it is not conceived in the modern fashion; it lies not between man
and brute creation, but between animate and inert things.It
may be an excess of caution at this day to explain that the
barbarian
notion which it is here intended to convey by the term "animate"
is not the same as would be conveyed by the word "living".
The term does not cover all living things, and it does cover a
great
many others. Such a striking natural phenomenon as a storm, a
disease, a waterfall, are recognised as "animate"; while
fruits and herbs, and even inconspicuous animals, such as
house-flies, maggots, lemmings, sheep, are not ordinarily
apprehended
as "animate" except when taken collectively. As here used
the term does not necessarily imply an indwelling soul or spirit.
The
concept includes such things as in the apprehension of the
animistic
savage or barbarian are formidable by virtue of a real or imputed
habit of initiating action. This category comprises a large number
and range of natural objects and phenomena. Such a distinction
between the inert and the active is still present in the habits of
thought of unreflecting persons, and it still profoundly affects
the
prevalent theory of human life and of natural processes; but it
does
not pervade our daily life to the extent or with the far-reaching
practical consequences that are apparent at earlier stages of
culture
and belief.To
the mind of the barbarian, the elaboration and utilisation of what
is
afforded by inert nature is activity on quite a different plane
from
his dealings with "animate" things and forces. The line of
demarcation may be vague and shifting, but the broad distinction is
sufficiently real and cogent to influence the barbarian scheme of
life. To the class of things apprehended as animate, the barbarian
fancy imputes an unfolding of activity directed to some end. It is
this teleological unfolding of activity that constitutes any object
or phenomenon an "animate" fact. Wherever the
unsophisticated savage or barbarian meets with activity that is at
all obtrusive, he construes it in the only terms that are ready to
hand—the terms immediately given in his consciousness of his own
actions. Activity is, therefore, assimilated to human action, and
active objects are in so far assimilated to the human agent.
Phenomena of this character—especially those whose behaviour is
notably formidable or baffling—have to be met in a different spirit
and with proficiency of a different kind from what is required in
dealing with inert things. To deal successfully with such phenomena
is a work of exploit rather than of industry. It is an assertion of
prowess, not of diligence.Under
the guidance of this naive discrimination between the inert and the
animate, the activities of the primitive social group tend to fall
into two classes, which would in modern phrase be called exploit
and
industry. Industry is effort that goes to create a new thing, with
a
new purpose given it by the fashioning hand of its maker out of
passive ("brute") material; while exploit, so far as it
results in an outcome useful to the agent, is the conversion to his
own ends of energies previously directed to some other end by an
other agent. We still speak of "brute matter" with
something of the barbarian's realisation of a profound significance
in the term.The
distinction between exploit and drudgery coincides with a
difference
between the sexes. The sexes differ, not only in stature and
muscular
force, but perhaps even more decisively in temperament, and this
must
early have given rise to a corresponding division of labour. The
general range of activities that come under the head of exploit
falls
to the males as being the stouter, more massive, better capable of
a
sudden and violent strain, and more readily inclined to self
assertion, active emulation, and aggression. The difference in
mass,
in physiological character, and in temperament may be slight among
the members of the primitive group; it appears, in fact, to be
relatively slight and inconsequential in some of the more archaic
communities with which we are acquainted—as for instance the tribes
of the Andamans. But so soon as a differentiation of function has
well begun on the lines marked out by this difference in physique
and
animus, the original difference between the sexes will itself
widen.
A cumulative process of selective adaptation to the new
distribution
of employments will set in, especially if the habitat or the fauna
with which the group is in contact is such as to call for a
considerable exercise of the sturdier virtues. The habitual pursuit
of large game requires more of the manly qualities of massiveness,
agility, and ferocity, and it can therefore scarcely fail to hasten
and widen the differentiation of functions between the sexes. And
so
soon as the group comes into hostile contact with other groups, the
divergence of function will take on the developed form of a
distinction between exploit and industry.In
such a predatory group of hunters it comes to be the able-bodied
men's office to fight and hunt. The women do what other work there
is
to do—other members who are unfit for man's work being for this
purpose classed with women. But the men's hunting and fighting are
both of the same general character. Both are of a predatory nature;
the warrior and the hunter alike reap where they have not strewn.
Their aggressive assertion of force and sagacity differs obviously
from the women's assiduous and uneventful shaping of materials; it
is
not to be accounted productive labour but rather an acquisition of
substance by seizure. Such being the barbarian man's work, in its
best development and widest divergence from women's work, any
effort
that does not involve an assertion of prowess comes to be unworthy
of
the man. As the tradition gains consistency, the common sense of
the
community erects it into a canon of conduct; so that no employment
and no acquisition is morally possible to the self respecting man
at
this cultural stage, except such as proceeds on the basis of
prowess—force or fraud. When the predatory habit of life has been
settled upon the group by long habituation, it becomes the
able-bodied man's accredited office in the social economy to kill,
to
destroy such competitors in the struggle for existence as attempt
to
resist or elude him, to overcome and reduce to subservience those
alien forces that assert themselves refractorily in the
environment.
So tenaciously and with such nicety is this theoretical distinction
between exploit and drudgery adhered to that in many hunting tribes
the man must not bring home the game which he has killed, but must
send his woman to perform that baser office.As
has already been indicated, the distinction between exploit and
drudgery is an invidious distinction between employments. Those
employments which are to be classed as exploit are worthy,
honourable, noble; other employments, which do not contain this
element of exploit, and especially those which imply subservience
or
submission, are unworthy, debasing, ignoble. The concept of
dignity,
worth, or honour, as applied either to persons or conduct, is of
first-rate consequence in the development of classes and of class
distinctions, and it is therefore necessary to say something of its
derivation and meaning. Its psychological ground may be indicated
in
outline as follows.As
a matter of selective necessity, man is an agent. He is, in his own
apprehension, a centre of unfolding impulsive
activity—"teleological"
activity. He is an agent seeking in every act the accomplishment of
some concrete, objective, impersonal end. By force of his being
such
an agent he is possessed of a taste for effective work, and a
distaste for futile effort. He has a sense of the merit of
serviceability or efficiency and of the demerit of futility, waste,
or incapacity. This aptitude or propensity may be called the
instinct
of workmanship. Wherever the circumstances or traditions of life
lead
to an habitual comparison of one person with another in point of
efficiency, the instinct of workmanship works out in an emulative
or
invidious comparison of persons. The extent to which this result
follows depends in some considerable degree on the temperament of
the
population. In any community where such an invidious comparison of
persons is habitually made, visible success becomes an end sought
for
its own utility as a basis of esteem. Esteem is gained and
dispraise
is avoided by putting one's efficiency in evidence. The result is
that the instinct of workmanship works out in an emulative
demonstration of force.During
that primitive phase of social development, when the community is
still habitually peaceable, perhaps sedentary, and without a
developed system of individual ownership, the efficiency of the
individual can be shown chiefly and most consistently in some
employment that goes to further the life of the group. What
emulation
of an economic kind there is between the members of such a group
will
be chiefly emulation in industrial serviceability. At the same time
the incentive to emulation is not strong, nor is the scope for
emulation large.When
the community passes from peaceable savagery to a predatory phase
of
life, the conditions of emulation change. The opportunity and the
incentive to emulate increase greatly in scope and urgency. The
activity of the men more and more takes on the character of
exploit;
and an invidious comparison of one hunter or warrior with another
grows continually easier and more habitual. Tangible evidences of
prowess—trophies—find a place in men's habits of thought as an
essential feature of the paraphernalia of life. Booty, trophies of
the chase or of the raid, come to be prized as evidence of
pre-eminent force. Aggression becomes the accredited form of
action,
and booty serves as prima facie evidence of successful aggression.
As
accepted at this cultural stage, the accredited, worthy form of
self-assertion is contest; and useful articles or services obtained
by seizure or compulsion, serve as a conventional evidence of
successful contest. Therefore, by contrast, the obtaining of goods
by
other methods than seizure comes to be accounted unworthy of man in
his best estate. The performance of productive work, or employment
in
personal service, falls under the same odium for the same reason.
An
invidious distinction in this way arises between exploit and
acquisition on the other hand. Labour acquires a character of
irksomeness by virtue of the indignity imputed to it.With
the primitive barbarian, before the simple content of the notion
has
been obscured by its own ramifications and by a secondary growth of
cognate ideas, "honourable" seems to connote nothing else
than assertion of superior force. "Honourable" is
"formidable"; "worthy" is "prepotent".
A honorific act is in the last analysis little if anything else
than
a recognised successful act of aggression; and where aggression
means
conflict with men and beasts, the activity which comes to be
especially and primarily honourable is the assertion of the strong
hand. The naive, archaic habit of construing all manifestations of
force in terms of personality or "will power" greatly
fortifies this conventional exaltation of the strong hand.
Honorific
epithets, in vogue among barbarian tribes as well as among peoples
of
a more advance culture, commonly bear the stamp of this
unsophisticated sense of honour. Epithets and titles used in
addressing chieftains, and in the propitiation of kings and gods,
very commonly impute a propensity for overbearing violence and an
irresistible devastating force to the person who is to be
propitiated. This holds true to an extent also in the more
civilised
communities of the present day. The predilection shown in heraldic
devices for the more rapacious beasts and birds of prey goes to
enforce the same view.Under
this common-sense barbarian appreciation of worth or honour, the
taking of life—the killing of formidable competitors, whether brute
or human—is honourable in the highest degree. And this high office
of slaughter, as an expression of the slayer's prepotence, casts a
glamour of worth over every act of slaughter and over all the tools
and accessories of the act. Arms are honourable, and the use of
them,
even in seeking the life of the meanest creatures of the fields,
becomes a honorific employment. At the same time, employment in
industry becomes correspondingly odious, and, in the common-sense
apprehension, the handling of the tools and implements of industry
falls beneath the dignity of able-bodied men. Labour becomes
irksome.It
is here assumed that in the sequence of cultural evolution
primitive
groups of men have passed from an initial peaceable stage to a
subsequent stage at which fighting is the avowed and characteristic
employment of the group. But it is not implied that there has been
an
abrupt transition from unbroken peace and good-will to a later or
higher phase of life in which the fact of combat occurs for the
first
time. Neither is it implied that all peaceful industry disappears
on
the transition to the predatory phase of culture. Some fighting, it
is safe to say, would be met with at any early stage of social
development. Fights would occur with more or less frequency through
sexual competition. The known habits of primitive groups, as well
as
the habits of the anthropoid apes, argue to that effect, and the
evidence from the well-known promptings of human nature enforces
the
same view.It
may therefore be objected that there can have been no such initial
stage of peaceable life as is here assumed. There is no point in
cultural evolution prior to which fighting does not occur. But the
point in question is not as to the occurrence of combat, occasional
or sporadic, or even more or less frequent and habitual; it is a
question as to the occurrence of an habitual; it is a question as
to
the occurrence of an habitual bellicose frame of mind—a prevalent
habit of judging facts and events from the point of view of the
fight. The predatory phase of culture is attained only when the
predatory attitude has become the habitual and accredited spiritual
attitude for the members of the group; when the fight has become
the
dominant note in the current theory of life; when the common-sense
appreciation of men and things has come to be an appreciation with
a
view to combat.The
substantial difference between the peaceable and the predatory
phase
of culture, therefore, is a spiritual difference, not a mechanical
one. The change in spiritual attitude is the outgrowth of a change
in
the material facts of the life of the group, and it comes on
gradually as the material circumstances favourable to a predatory
attitude supervene. The inferior limit of the predatory culture is
an
industrial limit. Predation can not become the habitual,
conventional
resource of any group or any class until industrial methods have
been
developed to such a degree of efficiency as to leave a margin worth
fighting for, above the subsistence of those engaged in getting a
living. The transition from peace to predation therefore depends on
the growth of technical knowledge and the use of tools. A predatory
culture is similarly impracticable in early times, until weapons
have
been developed to such a point as to make man a formidable animal.
The early development of tools and of weapons is of course the same
fact seen from two different points of view.The
life of a given group would be characterised as peaceable so long
as
habitual recourse to combat has not brought the fight into the
foreground in men's every day thoughts, as a dominant feature of
the
life of man. A group may evidently attain such a predatory attitude
with a greater or less degree of completeness, so that its scheme
of
life and canons of conduct may be controlled to a greater or less
extent by the predatory animus. The predatory phase of culture is
therefore conceived to come on gradually, through a cumulative
growth
of predatory aptitudes habits, and traditions this growth being due
to a change in the circumstances of the group's life, of such a
kind
as to develop and conserve those traits of human nature and those
traditions and norms of conduct that make for a predatory rather
than
a peaceable life.The
evidence for the hypothesis that there has been such a peaceable
stage of primitive culture is in great part drawn from psychology
rather than from ethnology, and cannot be detailed here. It will be
recited in part in a later chapter, in discussing the survival of
archaic traits of human nature under the modern culture.
Chapter Two ~~ Pecuniary Emulation
In
the sequence of cultural evolution the emergence of a leisure class
coincides with the beginning of ownership. This is necessarily the
case, for these two institutions result from the same set of
economic
forces. In the inchoate phase of their development they are but
different aspects of the same general facts of social
structure.
It
is as elements of social structure—conventional facts—that
leisure and ownership are matters of interest for the purpose in
hand. An habitual neglect of work does not constitute a leisure
class; neither does the mechanical fact of use and consumption
constitute ownership. The present inquiry, therefore, is not
concerned with the beginning of indolence, nor with the beginning
of
the appropriation of useful articles to individual consumption. The
point in question is the origin and nature of a conventional
leisure
class on the one hand and the beginnings of individual ownership as
a
conventional right or equitable claim on the other hand.
The
early differentiation out of which the distinction between a
leisure
and a working class arises is a division maintained between men's
and
women's work in the lower stages of barbarism. Likewise the
earliest
form of ownership is an ownership of the women by the able bodied
men
of the community. The facts may be expressed in more general terms,
and truer to the import of the barbarian theory of life, by saying
that it is an ownership of the woman by the man.
There
was undoubtedly some appropriation of useful articles before the
custom of appropriating women arose. The usages of existing archaic
communities in which there is no ownership of women is warrant for
such a view. In all communities the members, both male and female,
habitually appropriate to their individual use a variety of useful
things; but these useful things are not thought of as owned by the
person who appropriates and consumes them. The habitual
appropriation
and consumption of certain slight personal effects goes on without
raising the question of ownership; that is to say, the question of
a
conventional, equitable claim to extraneous things.
The
ownership of women begins in the lower barbarian stages of culture,
apparently with the seizure of female captives. The original reason
for the seizure and appropriation of women seems to have been their
usefulness as trophies. The practice of seizing women from the
enemy
as trophies, gave rise to a form of ownership-marriage, resulting
in
a household with a male head. This was followed by an extension of
slavery to other captives and inferiors, besides women, and by an
extension of ownership-marriage to other women than those seized
from
the enemy. The outcome of emulation under the circumstances of a
predatory life, therefore, has been on the one hand a form of
marriage resting on coercion, and on the other hand the custom of
ownership. The two institutions are not distinguishable in the
initial phase of their development; both arise from the desire of
the
successful men to put their prowess in evidence by exhibiting some
durable result of their exploits. Both also minister to that
propensity for mastery which pervades all predatory communities.
From
the ownership of women the concept of ownership extends itself to
include the products of their industry, and so there arises the
ownership of things as well as of persons.
In
this way a consistent system of property in goods is gradually
installed. And although in the latest stages of the development,
the
serviceability of goods for consumption has come to be the most
obtrusive element of their value, still, wealth has by no means yet
lost its utility as a honorific evidence of the owner's
prepotence.
Wherever
the institution of private property is found, even in a slightly
developed form, the economic process bears the character of a
struggle between men for the possession of goods. It has been
customary in economic theory, and especially among those economists
who adhere with least faltering to the body of modernised classical
doctrines, to construe this struggle for wealth as being
substantially a struggle for subsistence. Such is, no doubt, its
character in large part during the earlier and less efficient
phases
of industry. Such is also its character in all cases where the
"niggardliness of nature" is so strict as to afford but a
scanty livelihood to the community in return for strenuous and
unremitting application to the business of getting the means of
subsistence. But in all progressing communities an advance is
presently made beyond this early stage of technological
development.
Industrial efficiency is presently carried to such a pitch as to
afford something appreciably more than a bare livelihood to those
engaged in the industrial process. It has not been unusual for
economic theory to speak of the further struggle for wealth on this
new industrial basis as a competition for an increase of the
comforts
of life,—primarily for an increase of the physical comforts which
the consumption of goods affords.
The
end of acquisition and accumulation is conventionally held to be
the
consumption of the goods accumulated—whether it is consumption
directly by the owner of the goods or by the household attached to
him and for this purpose identified with him in theory. This is at
least felt to be the economically legitimate end of acquisition,
which alone it is incumbent on the theory to take account of. Such
consumption may of course be conceived to serve the consumer's
physical wants—his physical comfort—or his so-called higher
wants—spiritual, aesthetic, intellectual, or what not; the latter
class of wants being served indirectly by an expenditure of goods,
after the fashion familiar to all economic readers.
But
it is only when taken in a sense far removed from its naive meaning
that consumption of goods can be said to afford the incentive from
which accumulation invariably proceeds. The motive that lies at the
root of ownership is emulation; and the same motive of emulation
continues active in the further development of the institution to
which it has given rise and in the development of all those
features
of the social structure which this institution of ownership
touches.
The possession of wealth confers honour; it is an invidious
distinction. Nothing equally cogent can be said for the consumption
of goods, nor for any other conceivable incentive to acquisition,
and
especially not for any incentive to accumulation of wealth.
It
is of course not to be overlooked that in a community where nearly
all goods are private property the necessity of earning a
livelihood
is a powerful and ever present incentive for the poorer members of
the community. The need of subsistence and of an increase of
physical
comfort may for a time be the dominant motive of acquisition for
those classes who are habitually employed at manual labour, whose
subsistence is on a precarious footing, who possess little and
ordinarily accumulate little; but it will appear in the course of
the
discussion that even in the case of these impecunious classes the
predominance of the motive of physical want is not so decided as
has
sometimes been assumed. On the other hand, so far as regards those
members and classes of the community who are chiefly concerned in
the
accumulation of wealth, the incentive of subsistence or of physical
comfort never plays a considerable part. Ownership began and grew
into a human institution on grounds unrelated to the subsistence
minimum. The dominant incentive was from the outset the invidious
distinction attaching to wealth, and, save temporarily and by
exception, no other motive has usurped the primacy at any later
stage
of the development.
Property
set out with being booty held as trophies of the successful raid.
So
long as the group had departed and so long as it still stood in
close
contact with other hostile groups, the utility of things or persons
owned lay chiefly in an invidious comparison between their
possessor
and the enemy from whom they were taken. The habit of
distinguishing
between the interests of the individual and those of the group to
which he belongs is apparently a later growth. Invidious comparison
between the possessor of the honorific booty and his less
successful
neighbours within the group was no doubt present early as an
element
of the utility of the things possessed, though this was not at the
outset the chief element of their value. The man's prowess was
still
primarily the group's prowess, and the possessor of the booty felt
himself to be primarily the keeper of the honour of his group. This
appreciation of exploit from the communal point of view is met with
also at later stages of social growth, especially as regards the
laurels of war.
But
as soon as the custom of individual ownership begins to gain
consistency, the point of view taken in making the invidious
comparison on which private property rests will begin to change.
Indeed, the one change is but the reflex of the other. The initial
phase of ownership, the phase of acquisition by naive seizure and
conversion, begins to pass into the subsequent stage of an
incipient
organization of industry on the basis of private property (in
slaves); the horde develops into a more or less self-sufficing
industrial community; possessions then come to be valued not so
much
as evidence of successful foray, but rather as evidence of the
prepotence of the possessor of these goods over other individuals
within the community. The invidious comparison now becomes
primarily
a comparison of the owner with the other members of the group.
Property is still of the nature of trophy, but, with the cultural
advance, it becomes more and more a trophy of successes scored in
the
game of ownership carried on between the members of the group under
the quasi-peaceable methods of nomadic life.
Gradually,
as industrial activity further displaced predatory activity in the
community's everyday life and in men's habits of thought,
accumulated
property more and more replaces trophies of predatory exploit as
the
conventional exponent of prepotence and success. With the growth of
settled industry, therefore, the possession of wealth gains in
relative importance and effectiveness as a customary basis of
repute
and esteem. Not that esteem ceases to be awarded on the basis of
other, more direct evidence of prowess; not that successful
predatory
aggression or warlike exploit ceases to call out the approval and
admiration of the crowd, or to stir the envy of the less successful
competitors; but the opportunities for gaining distinction by means
of this direct manifestation of superior force grow less available
both in scope and frequency. At the same time opportunities for
industrial aggression, and for the accumulation of property,
increase
in scope and availability. And it is even more to the point that
property now becomes the most easily recognised evidence of a
reputable degree of success as distinguished from heroic or signal
achievement. It therefore becomes the conventional basis of esteem.
Its possession in some amount becomes necessary in order to any
reputable standing in the community. It becomes indispensable to
accumulate, to acquire property, in order to retain one's good
name.
When accumulated goods have in this way once become the accepted
badge of efficiency, the possession of wealth presently assumes the
character of an independent and definitive basis of esteem. The
possession of goods, whether acquired aggressively by one's own
exertion or passively by transmission through inheritance from
others, becomes a conventional basis of reputability. The
possession
of wealth, which was at the outset valued simply as an evidence of
efficiency, becomes, in popular apprehension, itself a meritorious
act. Wealth is now itself intrinsically honourable and confers
honour
on its possessor. By a further refinement, wealth acquired
passively
by transmission from ancestors or other antecedents presently
becomes
even more honorific than wealth acquired by the possessor's own
effort; but this distinction belongs at a later stage in the
evolution of the pecuniary culture and will be spoken of in its
place.
Prowess
and exploit may still remain the basis of award of the highest
popular esteem, although the possession of wealth has become the
basis of common place reputability and of a blameless social
standing. The predatory instinct and the consequent approbation of
predatory efficiency are deeply ingrained in the habits of thought
of
those peoples who have passed under the discipline of a protracted
predatory culture. According to popular award, the highest honours
within human reach may, even yet, be those gained by an unfolding
of
extraordinary predatory efficiency in war, or by a quasi-predatory
efficiency in statecraft; but for the purposes of a commonplace
decent standing in the community these means of repute have been
replaced by the acquisition and accumulation of goods. In order to
stand well in the eyes of the community, it is necessary to come up
to a certain, somewhat indefinite, conventional standard of wealth;
just as in the earlier predatory stage it is necessary for the
barbarian man to come up to the tribe's standard of physical
endurance, cunning, and skill at arms. A certain standard of wealth
in the one case, and of prowess in the other, is a necessary
condition of reputability, and anything in excess of this normal
amount is meritorious.
Those
members of the community who fall short of this, somewhat
indefinite,
normal degree of prowess or of property suffer in the esteem of
their
fellow-men; and consequently they suffer also in their own esteem,
since the usual basis of self-respect is the respect accorded by
one's neighbours. Only individuals with an aberrant temperament can
in the long run retain their self-esteem in the face of the
disesteem
of their fellows. Apparent exceptions to the rule are met with,
especially among people with strong religious convictions. But
these
apparent exceptions are scarcely real exceptions, since such
persons
commonly fall back on the putative approbation of some supernatural
witness of their deeds.
So
soon as the possession of property becomes the basis of popular
esteem, therefore, it becomes also a requisite to the complacency
which we call self-respect. In any community where goods are held
in
severalty it is necessary, in order to his own peace of mind, that
an
individual should possess as large a portion of goods as others
with
whom he is accustomed to class himself; and it is extremely
gratifying to possess something more than others. But as fast as a
person makes new acquisitions, and becomes accustomed to the
resulting new standard of wealth, the new standard forthwith ceases
to afford appreciably greater satisfaction than the earlier
standard
did. The tendency in any case is constantly to make the present
pecuniary standard the point of departure for a fresh increase of
wealth; and this in turn gives rise to a new standard of
sufficiency
and a new pecuniary classification of one's self as compared with
one's neighbours. So far as concerns the present question, the end
sought by accumulation is to rank high in comparison with the rest
of
the community in point of pecuniary strength. So long as the
comparison is distinctly unfavourable to himself, the normal,
average
individual will live in chronic dissatisfaction with his present
lot;
and when he has reached what may be called the normal pecuniary
standard of the community, or of his class in the community, this
chronic dissatisfaction will give place to a restless straining to
place a wider and ever-widening pecuniary interval between himself
and this average standard. The invidious comparison can never
become
so favourable to the individual making it that he would not gladly
rate himself still higher relatively to his competitors in the
struggle for pecuniary reputability.
In
the nature of the case, the desire for wealth can scarcely be
satiated in any individual instance, and evidently a satiation of
the
average or general desire for wealth is out of the question.
However
widely, or equally, or "fairly", it may be distributed, no
general increase of the community's wealth can make any approach to
satiating this need, the ground of which is the desire of every one
to excel every one else in the accumulation of goods. If, as is
sometimes assumed, the incentive to accumulation were the want of
subsistence or of physical comfort, then the aggregate economic
wants
of a community might conceivably be satisfied at some point in the
advance of industrial efficiency; but since the struggle is
substantially a race for reputability on the basis of an invidious
comparison, no approach to a definitive attainment is
possible.
What
has just been said must not be taken to mean that there are no
other
incentives to acquisition and accumulation than this desire to
excel
in pecuniary standing and so gain the esteem and envy of one's
fellow-men. The desire for added comfort and security from want is
present as a motive at every stage of the process of accumulation
in
a modern industrial community; although the standard of sufficiency
in these respects is in turn greatly affected by the habit of
pecuniary emulation. To a great extent this emulation shapes the
methods and selects the objects of expenditure for personal comfort
and decent livelihood.
Besides
this, the power conferred by wealth also affords a motive to
accumulation. That propensity for purposeful activity and that
repugnance to all futility of effort which belong to man by virtue
of
his character as an agent do not desert him when he emerges from
the
naive communal culture where the dominant note of life is the
unanalysed and undifferentiated solidarity of the individual with
the
group with which his life is bound up. When he enters upon the
predatory stage, where self-seeking in the narrower sense becomes
the
dominant note, this propensity goes with him still, as the
pervasive
trait that shapes his scheme of life. The propensity for
achievement
and the repugnance to futility remain the underlying economic
motive.
The propensity changes only in the form of its expression and in
the
proximate objects to which it directs the man's activity. Under the
regime of individual ownership the most available means of visibly
achieving a purpose is that afforded by the acquisition and
accumulation of goods; and as the self-regarding antithesis between
man and man reaches fuller consciousness, the propensity for
achievement—the instinct of workmanship—tends more and more to
shape itself into a straining to excel others in pecuniary
achievement. Relative success, tested by an invidious pecuniary
comparison with other men, becomes the conventional end of action.
The currently accepted legitimate end of effort becomes the
achievement of a favourable comparison with other men; and
therefore
the repugnance to futility to a good extent coalesces with the
incentive of emulation. It acts to accentuate the struggle for
pecuniary reputability by visiting with a sharper disapproval all
shortcoming and all evidence of shortcoming in point of pecuniary
success. Purposeful effort comes to mean, primarily, effort
directed
to or resulting in a more creditable showing of accumulated wealth.
Among the motives which lead men to accumulate wealth, the primacy,
both in scope and intensity, therefore, continues to belong to this
motive of pecuniary emulation.
In
making use of the term "invidious", it may perhaps be
unnecessary to remark, there is no intention to extol or
depreciate,
or to commend or deplore any of the phenomena which the word is
used
to characterise. The term is used in a technical sense as
describing
a comparison of persons with a view to rating and grading them in
respect of relative worth or value—in an aesthetic or moral
sense—and so awarding and defining the relative degrees of
complacency with which they may legitimately be contemplated by
themselves and by others. An invidious comparison is a process of
valuation of persons in respect of worth.
