The Vested Interests and the Common Man & An Inquiry into the Nature of Peace and the Terms of Its Perpetuation E-Book
Thorstein Veblen
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- Herausgeber: e-artnow
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
This carefully crafted ebook: "The Vested Interests and the Common Man & An Inquiry into the Nature of Peace and the Terms of Its Perpetuation" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. The Vested Interests and The Nature of Peace are two books by Thorstein Veblen that go hand in hand. Veblen's main critique in The Vested Interests and the Common Man that business prospers by limiting supply in order to allow capitalists to dictate the highest possible prices, making theirs and interests of the government clearly in the opposition to the interests of the common man. Veblen goes further stating that not only that common man doesn't profit, but he is also damaged in this relationship considering social repercussions of capitalistic industry. An Inquiry into the Nature of Peace and the Terms of Its Perpetuation is a Veblen's book that came as a product of his work with a group that had been commissioned by President Woodrow Wilson to analyze possible peace settlements for World War I. Veblen here claims that patriotism is based on the idea of superiority of one nation over others and is often abused by governments especially in imperial monarchies. He explicitly says that the peace between democratic states and imperial monarchies can't be kept without disbanding one form of government and these claims were later confirmed. Working on this book marked a series of distinct changes in Veblen's later career path. Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) was an American economist and sociologist. He is well known as a witty critic of capitalism. Veblen is famous for the idea of "conspicuous consumption." Conspicuous consumption, along with "conspicuous leisure," is performed to demonstrate wealth or mark social status. Veblen explains the concept in his best-known book, The Theory of the Leisure Class. Within the history of economic thought, Veblen is considered the leader of the institutional economics movement.
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The Vested Interests and the Common Man & An Inquiry into the Nature of Peace and the Terms of Its Perpetuation
From the Author of The Theory of the Leisure Class, The Theory of Business Enterprise, The Higher Learning in America, Imperial Germany and the Industrial Revolution and many more
Table of Contents
THE VESTED INTERESTS AND THE COMMON MAN
I. The Instability of Knowledge and Belief
As is true of any other point of view that may be characteristic of any other period of history, so also the modern point of view is a matter of habit. It is common to the modern civilised peoples only in so far as these peoples have come through substantially the same historical experience and have thereby acquired substantially the same habits of thought and have fallen into somewhat the same prevalent frame of mind. This modern point of view, therefore, is limited both in time and space. It is characteristic of the modern historical era and of such peoples as lie within the range of that peculiar civilisation which marks off the modern world from what has gone before and from what still prevails outside of its range. In other words, it is a trait of modern Christendom, of Occidental civilisation as it has run within the past few centuries. This general statement is not vitiated by the fact that there has been some slight diffusion of these modern and Western ideas outside of this range in recent times.
By historical accident it happens that the modern point of view has reached its maturest formulation and prevails with the least faltering among the French and English-speaking peoples; so that these peoples may be said to constitute the center of diffusion for that system of ideas which is called the modern point of view. Outward from this broad center the same range of ideas prevail throughout Christendom, but they prevail with less singleness of conviction among the peoples who are culturally more remote from this center; increasingly so with each farther remove. These others have carried over a larger remainder of the habits of thought of an earlier age, and have carried them over in a better state of preservation. It may also be that these others, or some of them, have acquired habits of thought of a new order which do not altogether fit into that system of ideas that is commonly spoken of as the modern point of view. That such is the case need imply neither praise nor blame. It is only that, by common usage, these remainders of ancient habits of thought and these newer preconceptions that do not fit into the framework of
West-European conventional thinking are not ordinarily rated as intrinsic to the modern point of view. They need not therefore be less to the purpose as a guide and criterion of human living; it is only that they are alien to those purposes which are considered to be of prime consequence in civilised life as it is guided and tested by the constituent principles of the modern point of view.
What is spoken of as a point of view is always a composite affair; some sort of a rounded and balanced system of principles and standards, which are taken for granted, at least provisionally, and which serve as a base of reference and legitimation in all questions of deliberate opinion. So when any given usage or any line of conduct or belief is seen and approved from the modern point of view, it comes to the same as saying that these things are seen and accepted in the light of those principles which modern men habitually consider to be final and sufficient. They are principles of right, equity, propriety, duty, perhaps of knowledge, belief, and taste.
It is evident that these principles and standards of what is right, good, true, and beautiful, will vary from one age to another and from one people to another, in response to the varying conditions of life; inasmuch as these principles are always of the nature of habit; although the variation will of course range only within the limits of that human nature that finds expression in these same principles of right, good, truth, and beauty. So also, it will be found that something in the way of a common measure of truth and sufficiency runs through any such body of principles that are accepted as final and self-evident at any given time and place, -- in case this habitual body of principles has reached such a degree of poise and consistency that they can fairly be said to constitute a stable point of view. It is only because there is such a degree of consistency and such a common measure of validity among the commonly accepted principles of conduct and belief today, that it is possible to speak intelligently of the modern point of view, and to contrast it with any other point of view which may have prevailed earlier or elsewhere, as, e.g., in the Middle Ages or in Pagan Antiquity.
The Romans were given to saying. Tempora mutantur, and the Spanish have learned to speak indulgently in the name of Costumbres del pais. The common law of the English-speaking peoples does not coincide at all points with what was indefeasibly right and good in the eyes of the Romans; and still less do its principles countenance all the vagaries of the Mosaic code. Yet, each and several, in their due time and institutional setting, these have all been tried and found valid and have approved themselves as securely and eternally right and good in principle.
Evidently these principles, which so are made to serve as standards of validity in law and custom, knowledge and belief, are of the nature of canons, established rules, and have the authority of precedent, prescription. They have been defined by the attrition of use and wont and disputation, and they are accepted in a somewhat deliberate manner by common consent, and are upheld by a deliberate public opinion as to what is right and seemly. In the popular apprehension, and indeed in the apprehension of the trained jurists and scholars for the time being, these constituent principles of the accepted point of view are "fundamentally and eternally right and good." But this perpetuity with which they so are habitually invested in the popular apprehension, in their time, is evidently such a qualified perpetuity only as belongs to any settled outgrowth of use and wont. They are of an institutional character and they are endowed with that degree of perpetuity only that belongs to any institution. So soon as a marked change of circumstances comes on, -- a change of a sufficiently profound, enduring and comprehensive character, such as persistently to cross or to go beyond those lines of use and wont out of which these settled principles have emerged, -- then these principles and their standards of validity and finality must presently undergo a revision, such as to bring on a new balance of principles, embodying the habits of thought enforced by a new situation, and expressing itself in a revised scheme of authoritative use and wont, law and custom. In the transition from the medieval to the modern point of view, e. g., there is to be seen such a pervasive change in men's habitual outlook, answering to the compulsion of a new range of circumstances which then came to condition the daily life of the peoples of Christendom. In this mutation of the habitual outlook, between medieval and modern times, the contrast is perhaps most neatly shown in the altered standards of knowledge and belief, rather than in the settled domain of law and morals. Not that the mutation of habits which then overtook the Western world need have been less wide or less effectual in matters of conduct; but the change which has taken effect in science and philosophy, between the fourteenth century and the nineteenth, e. g., appears to have been of a more recognizable character, more easily defined in succinct and convincing terms.
It has also quite generally attracted the attention of those men who have interested themselves in the course of historical events, and it has therefore become something of a commonplace in any standard historical survey of modern civilisation to say that the scheme of knowledge and belief underwent a visible change between the Middle Ages and modern times.
It will also be found true that the canons of knowledge and belief, the principles governing what is fact and what is credible, are more intimately and intrinsically involved in the habitual behavior of the human spirit than any factors of human habit in other bearings. Such is necessarily the case, because the principles which guide and limit knowledge and belief are the ways and means by which men take stock of what is to be done and by which they take thought of how it is to be done. It is by the use of their habitual canons of knowledge and belief, that men construct those canons of conduct which serve as guide and standards in practical life. Men do not pass appraisal on matters which lie beyond the reach of their knowledge and belief, nor do they formulate rules to govern the game of life beyond that limit.
So, congenitally blind persons do not build color schemes; nor will a man without an "ear for music" become a master of musical composition. So also, "the medieval mind" took no thought and made no provision for those later-arisen exigencies of life and those later-known facts of material science which lay yet beyond the bounds of its medieval knowledge and belief; but this "medieval mind" at the same time spent much thought and took many excellent precautions about things which have now come to be accounted altogether fanciful, -- things which the maturer insight, or perhaps the less fertile conceit, of a more experienced age has disowned as being palpably not in accord with fact.
That is to say, things which once were convincingly substantial and demonstrable, according to the best knowledge and belief of the medieval mind, can now no longer be discerned as facts, according to those canons of knowledge and belief that are now doing duty among modern men as conclusive standards of reality. Not that all persons who are born within modern times are thereby rendered unable to know and to believe in such medieval facts, e. g., as horoscopes, or witchcraft, or gentle birth, or the efficacy of prayer, or the divine right of kings; but, taken by and large, and in so far as it falls under the control of the modern point of view, the deliberate consensus of knowledge and belief now runs to the effect that these and other imponderables like them no longer belong among ascertained or ascertainable facts; but that they are on the other hand wholly illusory conceits, traceable to a mistaken point of view prevalent in that earlier and cruder age.
The principles governing knowledge and belief at any given time are primary and pervasive, beyond any others, in that they underlie all human deliberation and comprise the necessary elements of all human logic. But it is also to be noted that these canons of knowledge and belief are more immediately exposed to revision and correction by experience than the principles of law and morals. So soon as the conditions of life shift and change in any appreciable degree, experience will enforce a revision of the habitual standards of actuality and credibility, because of the habitual and increasingly obvious failure of what has before habitually been regarded as an ascertained fact.
Things which, under the ancient canons of knowledge, have habitually been regarded as known facts, -- as, e. g., witchcraft or the action of bodies at a distance, -- will under altered circumstances prove themselves by experience to have only a supposititious reality.
Any knowledge that runs in such out-worn terms turns out to be futile, misleading, meaningless; and the habit of imputing qualities and behavior of this kind to everyday facts will then fall into disuse, progressively as experience continues to bring home the futility of all that kind of imputation. And presently the habit of perceiving that class of qualities and behavior in the known facts is therefore gradually lost. So also, in due time the observances and the precautions and provisions embodied in law and custom for the preservation or the control of these lost imponderables will also fall into disuse and disappear out of the scheme of institutions, by way of becoming dead letter or by abrogation. Particularly will such a loss of belief and insight, and the consequent loss of those imponderables whose ground has thereby gone out from under them, take effect with the passing of generations.
An Imponderable is an article of make-believe which has become axiomatic by force of settled habit. It can accordingly cease to be an Imponderable by a course of unsettling habit.
Those elders in whom the ancient habits of faith and insight have been ingrained, and in whose knowledge and belief the imponderables in question have therefore had a vital reality, will presently fall away; and the new generation whose experience has run on other lines are in a fair way to lose these articles of faith and in. sight, by disuse. It is a case of obsolescence by habitual disuse. And the habitual disuse which so allows the ancient canons of knowledge and belief to fall away, and which thereby cuts the ground from under the traditional system of law and custom, is re-enforced by the advancing discipline of a new order of experience, which exacts an habitual apprehension of workday facts in terms of a different kind and thereby brings on a revaluation and revision of the traditional rules governing human relations. The new terms of workday knowledge and belief, which do not conform to the ancient canons, go to enforce and stabilise new canons and standards, of a character alien to the traditional point of view. It is, in other words, a case of obsolescence by displacement as well as by habitual disuse.
This unsettling discipline that is brought to bear by workday experience is chiefly and most immediately the discipline exercised by the material conditions of life, the exigencies that beset men in their everyday dealings with the material means of life; inasmuch as these material facts are insistent and uncompromising. And the scope and method of knowledge and belief which is forced on men in their everyday material concerns will unavoidably, by habitual use, extend to other matters as well; so as also to affect the scope and method of knowledge and belief in all that concerns those imponderable facts which lie outside the immediate range of material experience. It results that, the further course of in changing habituation, those imponderable relations, conventions, claims and perquisites, that make up the time-worn system of law and custom will unavoidably also be brought under review and will be revised and reorganised in the light of the same new principles of validity that are found to be sufficient in dealing with material facts.
Given time and a sufficiently exacting run of experience, and it will follow necessarily that much the same standards of truth and finality will come to govern men's knowledge and valuation of facts throughout; whether the facts in question lie in the domain of material things or in the domain of those imponderable conventions and preconceptions that decide what is right and proper in human intercourse. It follows necessarily, because the same persons, bent by the same discipline and habituation, take stock of both and are required to get along with both during the same lifetime. More or less rigorously the same scope and method of knowledge and valuation will control the thinking of the same individuals throughout; at least to the extent that any given article of faith and usage which is palpably at cross purposes with this main intellectual bent will soon begin to seem immaterial and irrelevant and will tend to become obsolete by neglect.
Such has always been the fate which overtakes any notable articles of faith and usage that belong to a bygone point of view. Any established system of law and order will remain securely stable only on condition that it he kept in line or brought into line to conform with those canons of validity that have the vogue for the time being; and the vogue is a matter of habits of thought ingrained by everyday experience. And the moral is that any established system of law and custom is due to undergo a revision of its constituent principles so soon as a new order of economic life has had time materially to affect the community's habits of thought. But all the while the changeless native proclivities of the race will assert themselves in some measure in any eventual revision of the received institutional system; and always they will stand ready eventually to break the ordered scheme of things into a paralytic mass of confusion if it can not be bent into some passable degree of congruity with the paramount native needs of life.
What is likely to arrest the attention of any student of the modern era from the outset is the peculiar character of its industry and of its intellectual outlook; particularly the scope and method of modern science and technology. The intellectual life of modern Europe and its cultural dependencies differs notably from what has gone before. There is all about it an air of matter-of-fact both in its technology and in its science; which culminates in a "mechanistic conception" of all those things with which scientific inquiry is concerned and in the light of which many of the dread realities of the Middle Ages look like superfluous make-believe.
But it has been only during the later decades of the modern era -- during that time interval that might fairly be called the post-modern era -- that this mechanistic conception of things has begun seriously to affect the current system of knowledge and belief; and it has not hitherto seriously taken effect except in technology and in the material sciences. So that it has not hitherto seriously invaded the established scheme of institutional arrangements, the system of law and custom, which governs the relations of men to one another and defines their mutual rights, obligations, advantages and disabilities. But it should reasonably be expected that this established system of rights, duties, proprieties and disabilities will also in due time come in for something in the way of a revision, to bring it all more nearly into congruity with that matter-of-fact conception of things that lies at the root of the late-modern civilisation.
The constituent principles of the established system of law and custom are of the nature of imponderables, of course; but they are imponderables which have been conceived and formulated in terms of a different order from those that are convincing to the twentieth-century scientists and engineers. Whereas the line of advance of the scientists and engineers, dominated by their mechanistic conception of things, appears to be the main line of march for modern civilisation. It should seem reasonable to expect, therefore, that the scheme of law and custom will also fall into line with this mechanistic conception that appears to mark the apex of growth in modern intellectual life. But hitherto the "due time" needed for the adjustment has apparently not been had, or perhaps the experience which drives men in the direction of a mechanistic conception of all things has not hitherto been driving them hard enough or unremittingly enough to carry such a revision of ideas out in the system of law and custom. The modern point of view in matters of law and custom appears to be somewhat in arrears, as measured by the later advance in science and technology.
But just now the attention of thoughtful men centers on questions of practical concern, questions of law and usage, brought to a focus by the flagrant miscarriage of that organisation of Christendom that has brought the War upon the civilised nations. The paramount question just now is, what to do to save the civilised nations from irretrievable disaster, and what further may be accomplished by taking thought so that no similar epoch of calamities shall be put in train for the next generation. It is realised that there must be something in the way of a "reconstruction" of the scheme of things; and it is also realised, though more dimly, that the reconstruction must be carried out with a view to the security of life under such conditions as men will put up with, rather than with a view to the impeccable preservation of the received scheme of law and custom. All of which is only saying that the constituent principles of the modern point of view are to be taken under advisement, reviewed and -- conceivably -- revised and brought into line, in so far as these principles are constituent elements of that received scheme of law and custom that is spoken of as the status quo. It is the status quo in respect of law and custom, not in respect of science and technology or of knowledge and belief, that is to be brought under review. Law and custom, it is believed, may be revised to meet the requirements of civilised men's knowledge and belief; but no man of sound mind hopes to revise the modern system of knowledge and belief so as to bring it all into conformity with the time-worn scheme of law and custom of the status quo.
Therefore the bearing of this stabilised modern point of view, stabilised in the eighteenth century, on these questions of practical concern is of present interest, -- its practical value as ground for a reasonably hopeful reconstruction of the war-shattered scheme of use and wont; its possible serviceability as a basis of enduring settlement; as well as the share which its constituent principles have had in the creation of that status quo out of which this epoch of calamities has been precipitated.
The status quo ante, in which the roots of this growth of misfortunes and impossibilities are to be found, lies within the modern era, of course, and it is nowise to be decried as an alien, or even as an unforeseen, outgrowth of this modern era. By and large, this eighteenth-century stabilised modern point of view has governed men's dealings within this era, and its constituent principles of right and honest living must therefore, presumptively, be held answerable for the disastrous event of it all, -- at least to the extent that they have permissively countenanced the growth of those sinister conditions which have now ripened into a state of world-wide shame and confusion.
How and how far is this modern point of view, this body of legal and moral principles established in the eighteenth century, to be accounted an accessory to this crime? And if it be argued that this complication of atrocities has come on, not because of these principles of conduct which are so dear to civilised men and so blameless in their sight, but only in spite of them; then, what is the particular weakness or shortcoming inherent in this body of principles which has allowed such a growth of malignant conditions to go on and gather head? If the modern point of view, these settled principles of conduct by which modern men collectively are actuated in what they will do and in what they will permit, -- if these canons and standards of clean and honest living have proved to be a fatal snare; then it becomes an urgent question: Is it safe, or sane to go into the future by the light of these same established canons of right, equity, and propriety that so have been tried and found wanting?
Perhaps the question should rather take the less didactic form: Will the present experience of calamities induce men to revise these established principles of conduct, and the specifications of the code based on them, so effectually as to guard against any chance of return to the same desperate situation in the calculable future? Can the discipline of recent experience and the insight bred by the new order of knowledge and belief, re-enforced by the shock of the present miscarriage, be counted on to bring such a revision of these principles of law and custom as will preclude a return to that status quo ante from which this miscarriage of civilisation has resulted? The latter question is more to the point. History teaches that men, taken collectively, learn by habituation rather than by precept and reflection; particularly as touches those underlying principles of truth and validity on which the effectual scheme of law and custom finally rests.
In the last analysis it resolves itself into a question as to how and how far the habituation of the recent past, mobilised by the shock of the present conjuncture, will have affected the frame of mind of the common man in these civilised countries; for in the last analysis and with due allowance for a margin of tolerance it is the frame of mind of the common man that makes the foundation of society in the modern world; even though the elder statesmen continue to direct its motions from day to day by the light of those principles that were found good some time before yesterday. And the fortunes of the civilised world, for good or ill, have come to turn on the deeds of commission and of omission of these advanced peoples among whom the frame of mind of the common man is the finally conditioning circumstance in what may safely be done or left undone. The advice and consent of the common run has latterly come to be indispensable to the conduct of affairs among civilised men, somewhat in the same degree in which the community is to be accounted a civilised people. It is indispensable at least in a permissive way, at least to the extent that no line of policy can long be pursued successfully without the permissive tolerance of the common run; and the margin of tolerance in the case appears to be narrower the more alert and the more matter-of-fact the frame of mind of the common man.
II. The Stability of Law and Custom
In so far as concerns the present question, that is to say as regards those standards and principles which underlie the established system of law and custom, the modern point of view was stabilised and given a definitive formulation in the eighteenth century; and in so far as concerns the subsequent conduct of practical affairs, its constituent principles have stood over without material change or revision since that time.
So that for practical purposes it is fair to say that the modern point of view is now some one hundred and fifty years old.
It will not do to say that it is that much behind the times; because its time-worn standards of truth and validity are a very material factor in the makeup of "our time." That such is the case is due in great part to the fact that this body of principles was stabilised at that time and that they have therefore stood over intact, in spite of other changes that have taken place. It is only that the principles which had been tested and found good under the conditions of life in the modern era up to that time were at that time held fast, canvassed, defined, approved, and stabilised by being reduced to documentary form. In some sense they were then written into the constitution of civilised society, and they have continued to make up the nucleus of the document from that time forth; and so they have become inflexible, after the fashion of written constitutions.
In the sight of those generations who so achieved the definite acceptance of these enlightened modern principles, and who finally made good their formal installation in law and usage as self-balanced canons of human conduct, the principles which they so arrived at had all the sanction of Natural Law, -- impersonal, dispassionate, indefeasible and immutable; fundamentally and eternally right and good. That generation of men held "these truths to be self-evident"; and they have continued so to be held since that epoch by all those peoples who make up the effectual body of modern civilisation. And the backward peoples, those others who have since then been coming into line and making their claim to a place in the scheme of modern civilised life, have also successively been accepting and (passably) assimilating the same enlightened principles of clean and honest living. Christendom, as a going concern of civilised peoples, has continued to regulate its affairs by the help of these principles, which are still held to be a competent formulation of the aspirations of civilised mankind. So that these modern principles of the eighteenth century, stabilised in documentary form a hundred and fifty years ago, have stood over in immutable perfection until our time,a monument more enduring than brass.
These principles are of the nature of habits of thought, of course; and it is the nature of habits of thought forever to shift and change in response to the changing impact of experience, since they are creatures of habituation. But inasmuch as they have once been stabilised in a thoroughly competent fashion in the eighteenth century, and have been drafted into finished documentary form, they have been enabled to stand over unimpaired into the present with all that weight and stability that a well-devised documentary formulation will give. It is true, so far as regards the conditions of civilised life during the interval that has passed since these modern principles of law and custom took on their settled shape in the eighteenth century, it has been a period of unexampled change, -- swift, varied, profound and extensive beyond example. And it follows of necessity that the principles of conduct which were approved and stabilised in the eighteenth century, under the driving exigencies of that age, have not altogether escaped the complications of changing circumstances. They have at least come in for some shrewd interpretation in the course of the nineteenth century. There have been refinements of definition, extensions of application, scrutiny and exposition of implications, as new exigencies have arisen and the established canons have been required to cover unforeseen contingencies; but it has all been done with the explicit reservation that no material innovation shall be allowed to touch the legacy of modern principles handed down from the eighteenth century, and that the vital system of
Natural Rights installed in the eighteenth century must not be deranged at any point or at any cost.
It is scarcely necessary to describe this modern system of principles that still continues to govern human intercourse among the civilised peoples, or to attempt an exposition of its constituent articles. It is all to be had in exemplary form, ably incorporated in such familiar documents as the American
Declaration of Independence, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, and the American Constitution; and it is all to be found set forth with all the circumstance of philosophical and juristic scholarship in the best work of such writers as John Locke.
Montesquieu. Adam Smith, or Blackstone. It has all been sufficiently canvassed, through all its dips, spurs and angles, by the most competent authorities, who have brought their best will and their best abilities to bear on its elucidation at every point, with full documentation. Besides which, there is no need of recondite exposition for the present purpose; since all that is required by the present argument is such a degree of information on these matters as is familiar to English-speaking persons by common notoriety.
At the same time it may be to the purpose to call to mind that this secular profession of faith enters creatively into that established order of things which has now fallen into a state of havoc because it does not meet the requirements of the new order.
This eighteenth-century modern plan specifically makes provision for certain untoward rights, perquisites and disabilities which have, in the course of time and shifting circumstance, become incompatible with continued peace on earth and good-will among men.
There are two main counts included in this modern -- eighteenth-century -- plan, which appear unremittingly to make for discomfort and dissension under the conditions offered by the
New Order of things: -- National Ambition, and the Vested Rights of ownership. Neither of the two need be condemned as being intrinsically mischievous. Indeed, it may be true, as has often been argued, that both have served a good purpose in their due time and place; at least there is no need of arguing the contrary. Both belong in the settled order of civilised life; and both alike are countenanced by those principles of truth, equity and validity that go to make up the modern point of view. It is only that now, as things have been turning during the later one hundred years, both of these immemorially modern rights of man have come to yield a net return of hardship and ill-will for all those peoples who have bound up their fortunes with that kind of enterprise. The case might be stated to this effect, that the fault lies not in the nature of these untoward institutions of national sovereignty and vested rights, nor in those principles of self-help which underlie them, but only in those latter-day facts which stubbornly refuse to fall into such lines as these forms of human enterprise require for their perfect and beneficent working. The facts, particularly the facts of industry and science, have outrun these provisions of law and custom; and so the scheme of things has got out of joint by that much, through no inherent weakness in the underlying principles of law and custom. The ancient and honorable principles of self-help are as sound as ever; it is only that the facts have quite unwarrantably not remained the same. The fault lies in the latter-day facts, which have not continued in suitable shape.
Such, in effect, has been the view habitually spoken for by many thoughtful persons of a conservative turn, who take an interest in concerting measures for holding fast that which once was good, in the face of distasteful facts.
The vested right of ownership in all kinds of property has the sanction of the time-honored principles of individual self-direction, equal opportunity, free contract, security of earnings and belongings, self-help, in the simple and honest meaning of the word. It would be quite bootless to find fault with these reasonable principles of tolerance and security. Their definitive acceptance and stabilisation in the eighteenth century are among the illustrious achievements of Western civilisation; and their roots lie deep in the native wisdom of mankind. They are obvious corollaries under the rule of Live and let live, -- an Accidental version of the Golden Rule. Yet in practical effect those vested rights which rest blamelessly on these reasonable canons of tolerance and good faith have today become the focus of vexation and misery in the life of the civilised peoples.
Circumstances have changed to such effect that provisions which were once framed to uphold a system of neighborly good-will have now begun to run counter to one another and are working mischief to the common good.
Any impartial survey of the past one-hundred-fifty years will show that the constituent principles of this modern point of view governing the mutual rights and obligations of men within the civilised nations have held their ground, on the whole, without material net gain or net loss. It is the ground of Natural
Rights, of self-help and free bargaining. Civil rights and the perquisites and obligations of ownership have remained substantially intact over this interval of a hundred and fifty years, but with some slight advance in the way of Live and let live at certain points, and some slight retrenchment at other points. So far as regards the formal stipulations, in law and custom, the balance of class interests within these countries has, on the whole, not been seriously disturbed. In this system of Natural Rights, as it has worked out in practice, the rights of ownership are paramount; largely because the other personal rights in the case have come to be a matter of course and so have ceased to hold men's attention.
So, in the matter of the franchise, e.g., the legal provisions more nearly meet the popular ideals of the modern point of view today than ever before. An the other hand the guiding principles in the case at certain other points have undergone a certain refinement of interpretation with a view to greater ease and security for trade and investment; and there has, in effect, been some slight abridgement of the freedom of combination and concerted action at any point where an unguarded exercise of such freedom would hamper trade or curtail the profits of business, -- for the modern era has turned out to be an era of business enterprise, dominated by the paramount claims of trade and investment. In point of formal requirements, these restrictions imposed on concerted action "in restraint of trade" fall in equal measure on the vested interests engaged in business and on the working population engaged in industry. So that the measures taken to safeguard the natural rights of ownership apply with equal force to those who own and those who do not. "The majestic equality of the law forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges or to beg on the street corners." But it has turned out on trial that the vested interests of business are not seriously hampered by these restrictions; inasmuch as any formal restriction on any concerted action between the owners of such vested interests can always be got around by a formal coalition of ownership in the shape of a corporation. The extensive resort to corporate combination of ownership, which is so marked a feature of the nineteenth century, was not foreseen and was not taken into account in the eighteenth century, when the constituent principles of the modern point of view found their way into the common law. The system of Natural Rights is a system of personal rights, among which the rights of ownership are paramount; and among the rights of ownership is the right of free disposal and security of ownership and of credit obligations.
The same line of evasion is not available in the same degree for concerted action between persons who own nothing. Still, in neither case, neither as regards the owners of the country's wealth nor as regards the common man, can these restrictions on personal freedom of action be said to be a serious burden. And any slight mutilation or abridgement of the rule of self-help in their economic relations has been offset by an increasingly broad and liberal construction of the principles of self-direction and equality among men in their civil capacity and their personal relations. Indeed, the increasingly exacting temper of the common man in these countries during this period has made such an outcome unavoidable. By and large, in its formal vindication of personal liberty and equality before the law, the modern point of view has with singular consistency remained intact in the shape in which its principles were stabilised in the eighteenth century, in spite of changing circumstances. In point of formal compliance with their demands, the enlightened ideals of the eighteenth century are, no doubt, more commonly realised in practice today than at any earlier period. So that the modern civilised countries are now, in point of legal form and perhaps also in practical effect, more nearly a body of ungraded and masterless men than any earlier generation has known how to be.
In this modern era, as well as elsewhere and in other times, the circumstances that make for change and reconstruction have been chiefly the material circumstances of everyday life, -- circumstances affecting the ordinary state of industry and ordinary intercourse. These material circumstances have changed notably during the modern era. There has been a progressive change in the state of the industrial arts, which has materially altered the scope and method of industry and the conditions under which men live in all the civilised countries. Accordingly, as a point of comparison, it will be to the purpose to call to mind what were the material circumstances, and more particularly the state of the industrial arts, which underlay and gave character to the modern point of view at the period when its constituent principles were found good and worked out as a stable and articulate system, in the shape in which they have continued to be held since then.
The material conditions of industry, trade and daily life during the period of transition and approach to this modern ground created that frame of mind which we call the modern point of view and dictated that reconstruction of institutional arrangements which has been worked out under its guidance.
Therefore the economic situation which so underlay and conditioned this modern point of view at the period when it was given its stable form becomes the necessary point of departure for any argument bearing on the changes that have been going forward since then, or on any prospective reconstruction that may be due to follow from these changed conditions in the calculable future. An this head, the students of history are in a singularly fortunate position. The whole case is set forth in the works of
Adam Smith, with a comprehension and lucidity which no longer calls for praise. Beyond all other men Adam Smith is the approved and faithful spokesman of this modern point of view in all that concerns the economic situation which it assumes as its material ground; and his description of the state of civilised society, trade and industry, as he saw it in his time and as he wished it to stand over into the future, is to be taken without abatement as a competent exposition of those material conditions which were then conceived to underlie civilised society and to dictate the only sound reconstruction of civil and economic institutions according to the modern plan.
But like other men. Adam Smith was a creature of his own time, and what he has to say applies to the state of things as he saw them. What he describes and inquires into is that state of things which was to him the "historical present"; which always signifies the recent past, -- that is to say, the past as it had come under his observation and as it had shaped his outlook.
As it is conventionally dated, the Industrial Revolution took effect within Adam Smith's active lifetime, and some of its more significant beginnings passed immediately under his eyes; indeed, it is related that he took an active personal interest in at least one of the epoch-making mechanical inventions from which the era of the machine industry takes its date. Yet the
Industrial Revolution does not lie within Adam Smith's "historical present," nor does his system of economic doctrines make provision for any of its peculiar issues. What he has to say on the mechanics of industry is conceived in terms derived from an older order of things than that machine industry which was beginning to get under way in his own life-time; and all his illustrative instances and arguments on trade and industry are also such as would apply to the state of things that was passing, but they are not drawn with any view to that new order which was then coming on in the world of business enterprise.
The economic situation contemplated by Adam Smith as the natural (and ultimate) state of industry and trade in any enlightened society, conducted on sane and sound lines according to the natural order of human relations, was of a simple structure and may be drawn in few lines, -- neglecting such minor extensions and exceptions as would properly be taken account of in any exhaustive description. Industry is conceived to be of the nature of handicraft; not of the nature of mechanical engineering, such as it has in effect and progressively come to be since his time. It is described as a matter of workmanlike labor, "and of the skill, dexterity and judgment with which it is commonly applied." It is a question of the skilled workman and his use of tools. Mechanical inventions are "labor-saving devices," which "facilitate and abridge labor." The material equipment is the ways and means by manipulation of which the workman gets his work done. "Capital stock" is spoken of as savings parsimoniously accumulated out of the past industry of its owner, or out of the industry of those persons from whom he has legally acquired it by inheritance or in exchange for the products of his own labor. Business is of the nature of "petty trade" and the business man is a "middle man" who is employed for a livelihood in the distribution of goods to the consumers. Trade is subsidiary to industry, and money is a vehicle designed to be used for the distribution of goods. Credit is an expedient of the needy; a dubious expedient. Profits (including interest) are justified as a reasonable remuneration for productive work done, and for the labor-saving use of property derived from the owner's past labor. The efforts of masters and workmen alike are conceived to be bent on turning out the largest and most serviceable output of goods; and prices are competitively determined by the labor-cost of the goods.
Like other men Adam Smith did not see into the future beyond what was calculable on the data given by his own historical present; and in his time that later and greater era of investment and financial enterprise which has made industry subsidiary to business was only beginning to get under way and only obscurely so. So that he was still able to think of commercial enterprise as a middle-man's traffic in merchandise, subsidiary to a small-scale industry on the order of handicraft, and due to an assumed propensity in men "to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another." And so much as he could not help seeing of the new order of business enterprise which was coming in was not rated by him as a sane outgrowth of that system of Natural
Liberty for which he spoke and about which his best affections gathered. In all this he was at one with his thoughtful contemporaries.
That generation of public-spirited men went, perforce, on the scant data afforded by their own historical present, the economic situation as they saw it in the perspective and with the preconceptions of their own time; and to them it was accordingly plain that when all unreasonable restrictions are taken away, "the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord." To this "natural" plan of free workmanship and free trade all restraint or retardation by collusion among business men was wholly obnoxious, and all collusive control of industry or of the market was accordingly execrated as unnatural and subversive. It is true, there were even then some appreciable beginnings of coercion and retardation -- lowering of wages and limitation of output -- by collusion between owners and employers who should by nature have been competitive producers of an unrestrained output of goods and services according to the principles of that modern point of view which animated Adam Smith and his generation; but coercion and unearned gain by a combination of ownership, of the now familiar corporate type, was virtually unknown in his time. So Adam Smith saw and denounced the dangers of unfair combination between "masters" for the exploitation of their workmen, but the modern use of credit and corporation finance for the collective control of the labor market and the goods market of course does not come within his horizon and does not engage his attention.
So also Adam Smith knows and denounces the use of protective tariffs for private gain. That means of pilfering was familiar enough in his time. But he spends little indignation on the equally nefarious use of the national establishment for safe-guarding and augmenting the profits of traders, concessionaires, investors and creditors in foreign parts at the cost of the home community. That method of taxing the common man for the benefit of the vested interests has also grown to more formidable proportions since his time. The constituent principles of the modern point of view, as accepted advisedly or by oversight by Adam Smith and his generation, supply all the legitimation required for this larcenous use of the national establishment; but the means of communication were still too scant, and the larger use of credit was too nearly untried, as contrasted with what has at a later date gone to make the commercial ground and incentive of imperialist politics.
Therefore the imperialist policies of public enterprise for private gain also do not come greatly within the range of Adam
Smith's vision of the future, nor does the "obvious and simple system" on which he and his generation of thoughtful men take their stand comprise anything like explicit declarations for or against this later-matured chicane of the gentlemen-investors who have been managing the affairs of the civilised nations.
Adam Smith's work and life-time falls in with the high tide of eighteenth-century insight and understanding, and it marks an epoch of spiritual achievement and stabilisation in civil institutions, as well as in those principles of conduct that have governed economic rights and relations since that date. But it marks also the beginning of a new order in the state of the industrial arts as well as in those material sciences which come directly in touch with the industrial arts and which take their logical bent from the same range of tangible experience. So it happens that this modern point of view reached a stable and symmetrical finality about the same date when the New Order of experience and insight was beginning to bend men's habits of thought into lines that run at cross purposes with this same stabilised point of view. It is in the ways and means of industry and in the material sciences that the new order of knowledge and belief first comes into evidence; because it is in this domain of workday facts that men's experience began about that time to take a decisive turn at variance with the received canons. A mechanistic conception of things began to displace those essentially romantic notions of untrammeled initiative and rationality that governed the intellectual life of the era of enlightenment which was then drawing to a close.
It is logically due to follow that the same general principles of knowledge and validity will presently undergo a revision of the same character where they have to do with those imponderable facts of human conduct and those conventions of law and custom that govern the duties and obligations of men in society. Here and now as elsewhere and in other times the stubborn teaching that comes of men's experience with the tangible facts of industry should confidently be counted on to make the outcome, so as to bring on a corresponding revision of what is right and good in that world of make-believe that always underlies any established system of law and custom. The material exigencies of the state of industry are unavoidable, and in great part unbending; and the economic conditions which follow immediately from these exigencies imposed by the ways and means of industry are only less uncompromising than the mechanical facts of industry itself. And the men who live under the rule of these economic exigencies are constrained to make their peace with them, to enter into such working arrangements with one another as these unbending conditions of the state of the industrial arts will tolerate, and to cast their system of imponderables on lines which can be understood by the same men who understand the industrial arts and the system of material science which underlies the industrial arts. So that, in due course, the accredited schedule of legal and moral rights, perquisites and obligations will also presently be brought into passable consistency with the ways and means whereby the community gets its living.
But it is also logically to be expected that any revision of the established rights, obligations, perquisites and vested interests will trail along behind the change which has taken effect in the material circumstances of the community and in the community's knowledge and belief with regard to these material circumstances; since any such revision of ancient rights and perquisites will necessarily be consequent upon and conditioned by that change, and since the axioms of law and custom that underlie any established schedule of rights and perquisites are always of the nature of make-believe; and the make-believe is necessarily built up out of conceptions derived from the accustomed range of knowledge and belief.
Out-worn axioms of this make-believe order become superstitions when the scope and method of workday knowledge has outgrown that particular range of preconceptions out of which these make-believe axioms are constructed; which comes to saying that the underlying principles of the system of law and morals are therewith caught in a process of obsolescence, -- "depreciation by supersession and disuse." By a figure of speech it might be said that the community's intangible assets embodied in this particular range of imponderables have shrunk by that much, through the decay of these imponderables that are no longer seasonable, and through their displacement by other figments of the human brain, -- a consensus of brains trained into closer consonance with the latter-day material conditions of life.
Something of this kind, something in the way of depreciation by displacement, appears now to be overtaking that system of imponderables that has been handed down into current law and custom out of that range of ideas and ideals that had the vogue before the coming of the machine industry and the material sciences.
Since the underlying principles of the established order are of this make-believe character, that is to say, since they are built up out of the range of conceptions that have habitually been doing duty as the substance of knowledge and belief in the past, it follows in the nature of the case that any reconstruction of institutions will be made only tardily, reluctantly, and sparingly; inasmuch as settled habits of thought are given up tardily, reluctantly and sparingly. And this will particularly be true when the reconstruction of unseasonable institutions runs counter to a settled and honorable code of ancient principles and a stubborn array of vested interests, as in this instance. Such is the promise of the present situation, and such is also the record of the shift that was once before made from medieval to modern times. It should be a case of break or bend.
III. The State of the Industrial Arts
The modern point of view, with its constituent principles of equal opportunity, self-help, and free bargaining, was given its definitive formulation in the eighteenth century, as a balanced system of Natural Rights; and it has stood over intact since that time, and has served as the unquestioned and immutable ground of public morals and expediency, on which the advocates of enlightened and liberal policies have always been content to rest in their case. The truths which it holds to be self-evident and indefeasible are conceived to be intrinsically bound up in an over-ruling Order of Nature; in which thoughtful men habitually believed at that time and in which less thoughtful men have continued to believe since then. This eighteenth-century order of nature, in the magic name of which Adam Smith was in the habit of speaking, was conceived on lines of personal initiative and activity. It is an order of things in which men were conceived to be effectually equal in all those respects that are of any decided consequence, -- in intelligence, working capacity, initiative, opportunity, and personal worth; in which the creative factor engaged in industry was the workman, with his personal skill, dexterity and judgment; in which, it was believed, the employer ("master") served his own ends and sought his own gain by consistently serving the needs of creative labor, and thereby serving the common good; in which the traders ("middle-men") made an honest living by supplying goods to consumers at a price determined by labor cost, and so serving the common good.
This characterisation of the "obvious and simple system" that lies at the root of the liberal ideals may seem too much of a dream to any person who shuns "the scientific use of the imagination"; its imponderables may seem to lack that axiomatic self-sufficiency which one would like to find in the spiritual foundations of a working system of law and custom. Indeed, the best of its imponderables are in a fair way now to drop back into the discard of uncertified make-believe. But in point of historical fact it appears to have stood the test of time and use, so far as appears formally on the face of law and custom.
For a hundred years and more it has continued to stand as a familiar article of faith and aspiration among the advocates of a
Liberal policy in civil and economic affairs; and Adam Smith's followers -- the economists and publicists of the Liberal movement -- have spoken for it as being the normal system of economic life, the "natural state of man," from which the course of events has been conceived to depart only under pressure of "disturbing causes," and to which the course of events must be pruned back at all hazards in the event of any threatened advance or departure beyond the "natural" bounds set by this working ideal.
However, the subsequent course of events has shown no indisposition to depart from this normal system of economic life, this "natural state of man," on the effectual reality of which the modern point of view rests its inviolate principles of law and morals and economic expediency. A new order of things has been taking effect in the state of the industrial arts and in the material sciences that lie nearest to that tangible body of experience out of which the state of the industrial arts is framed. And the new order of industrial ways and means has been progressively going out of touch with the essential requirements of this established scheme of individual self-help and personal initiative, on the realisation and maintenance of which the best endeavors of the Liberals have habitually been spent.
Under the new order the first requisite of ordinary productive industry is no longer the workman and his manual skill, but rather the mechanical equipment and the standardised processes in which the mechanical equipment is engaged. And this latter-day industrial equipment and process embodies not the manual skill, dexterity and judgment of an individual workman, but rather the accumulated technological wisdom of the community.
Under the new order of things the mechanical equipment -- the "industrial plant" -- takes the initiative, sets the pace, and turns the workman to account in the carrying-on of those standardised processes of production that embody this mechanistic state of the industrial arts; very much as the individual craftsman in his time held the initiative in industry, set the pace, and made use of his tools according to his own discretion in the exercise of his personal skill, dexterity and judgment, under that now obsolescent industrial order which underlies the eighteenth-century modern point of view, and which still colors the aspirations of Liberal statesmen and economists, as well as the standard economic theories.
