IN the economic meaning of the term production, the
transporter or exchanger, or anyone engaged in any
subdivision of those functions, is as truly engaged in
production as is the primary extractor or maker. A
newspaper-carrier or the keeper of a news-stand would,
for instance, in common speech be styled a distributor.
But in economic terminology he is not a distributor of
wealth, but a producer of wealth. Although his part in
the process of producing the newspaper to the final
receiver comes last, not first, he is as much a producer
as the paper-maker or type-founder, the editor, or
compositor, or press-man. For the object of production is
the satisfaction of human desires, that is to say, it is
consumption; and this object is not made capable of
attainment, that is to say, production is not really
complete, until wealth is brought to the place where it
is to be consumed and put at the disposal of him whose
desire it is to satisfy. — The Science of
Political Economy
unabridged: Book III, Chapter 1, The Production of
Wealth: The Meaning of Production • abridged:
Part III, Chapter 1, The Production of Wealth: The
Meaning of Production
PRODUCTION and distribution are not separate things, but
two mentally distinguishable parts of one thing —
the exertion of human labor in the satisfaction of human
desire. Though materially distinguishable, they are as
closely related as the two arms of the syphon. And as it
is the outflow of water at the longer end of the syphon
that is the cause of the inflow of water at the shorter
end, so it is that distribution is really the cause of
production, not production the cause of distribution. In
the ordinary course, things are not distributed because
they have been produced, but are produced in order that
they may be distributed. Thus interference with the
distribution of wealth is interference with the
production of wealth, and shows its effect in lessened
production. — The Science of Political
Economy —
unabridged Book IV, Chapter 2, The Distribution of
Wealth: The Nature of Distribution • abridged
Part IV, Chapter 2, The Distribution of Wealth: The
Nature of Distribution
OUR inquiry into the laws of the distribution of wealth
is not an inquiry into the municipal laws or human
enactments which either here and now, or in any other
time and place, prescribe or have prescribed how wealth
shall be divided among men. With them we have no concern,
unless it may be for purposes of illustration. What we
have to seek are those laws of the distribution of wealth
which belong to the natural order — laws which are
a part of that system or arrangement which constitutes
the social organism or body economic, as distinguished
from the body politic or state, the Greater Leviathan
which makes its appearance with civilization and develops
with its advance. These natural laws are in all times and
places the same, and though they may be crossed by human
enactment, can never be annulled or swerved by it. It is
more needful to call this to mind, because, in what have
passed for systematic treatises on political economy, the
fact that it is with natural laws, not human laws, that
the science of political economy is concerned, has, in
treating of the distribution of wealth, been utterly
ignored, and even flatly denied. — The Science
of Political Economy —
unabridged: Part IV, Chapter 1, The Distribution of
Wealth: The Meaning of Distribution • abridged:
Part IV, Chapter 1, The Distribution of Wealth: The
Meaning of Distribution
THE distinction between the laws of production and the
laws of distribution is not, as is erroneously taught in
the scholastic political economy, that the one set of
laws are natural laws and the other human laws. Both sets
of laws are laws of nature. The real distinction is that
the natural laws of production are physical laws and the
natural laws of distribution are moral laws. . . . The
moment we turn from a consideration of the laws of the
production of wealth to a consideration of the laws of
the distribution of wealth, the idea of ought or duty
becomes primary. All consideration of distribution
involves the ethical principle, is necessarily a
consideration of ought or duty — a consideration in
which the idea of right or justice is from the very first
involved. — The Science of Political
Economy —
unabridged: Book IV, Chapter 4, The Distribution of
Wealth: The Real Difference Between Laws of Production
and of Distribution • abridged:
Part IV, Chapter 3: The Distribution of Wealth: Physical
and Moral Laws
Co-operation and Competition
MANY if not most of the writers on political economy have
treated exchange as a part of distribution. On the
contrary, it belongs to production. It is by exchange,
and through exchange, that man obtains, and is able to
exert, the power of co-operation which, with the advance
of civilization, so enormously increases his ability to
produce wealth. — The Science of Political
Economy —
unabridged: Book III, Chapter 11, The Production of
Wealth: The Office of Exchange in Production •
unabridged
Chapter 9, The Office of Exchange in Production
THEY who, seeing how men are forced by competition to the
extreme of human wretchedness, jump to the conclusion
that competition should be abolished, are like those who,
seeing a house burn down, would prohibit the use of
fire.
The air we breathe exerts upon every square inch of our
bodies a pressure of fifteen pounds. Were this pressure
exerted only on one side, it would pin us to the ground
and crush us to a jelly. But being exerted on all sides,
we move under it with perfect freedom. It not only does
not inconvenience us, but it serves such indispensable
purposes that, relieved of its pressure, we should
die.
So it is with competition. Where there exists a class
denied all right to the element necessary to life arid
labor, competition is one-sided, and as population
increases must press the lowest class into virtual
slavery, and even starvation. But where the natural
rights of all are secured, then competition, acting on
every hand — between employers as between employed,
between buyers as between sellers — can injure no
one.
On the contrary it becomes the most simple, most
extensive, most elastic, and most refined system of
co-operation that, in the present stage of social
development, and in the domain where it will freely act,
we can rely on for the co-ordination of industry and the
economizing of social forces.
In short, competition plays just such a part in the
social organism as those vital impulses which are beneath
consciousness do in the bodily organism. With it, as with
them, it is only necessary that it should be free. The
line at which the state should come in is that where free
competition becomes impossible — a line analogous
to that which in the individual organism separates the
conscious from the unconscious functions. There is such a
line, though extreme socialists and extreme
individualists both ignore it. The extreme individualist
is like the man who would have his hunger provide him
food; the extreme socialist is like the man who would
have his conscious will direct his stomach how to digest
it. — Protection or Free Trade, chapter 28
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