Part 5 (1/2)
Finally a unit called money was adopted in which the base was the value of some weight of gold. Thus we see that money came to mean simply the accepted unit for measuring, representing and expressing values of and in wealth.
But what is wealth? I have said that the old conceptions of wealth, capital and money-the conceptions that are still current throughout the world-belong to the period of humanity's childhood-they are childish conceptions. I have said that they must be replaced by scientific conceptions-by conceptions fit for humanity's manhood. The change that must be made in our conceptions of the great terms is tremendous. It is necessary to a.n.a.lyse the current conceptions of wealth, capital, and money-the childish conceptions of them-in order to reveal their falseness, stupidity and folly. To do this we must enter the field of Political Economy-a field beset with peculiar difficulties and dangers. All the Furies of private interests are involved. One gains the impression that there is little or no real desire to gain a true conception-a scientific conception-of wealth. Everybody seems to prefer an emotional definition-a definition that suits his personal love of wealth or his hatred of it.
Many definitions of wealth, capital and money are to be found in modern books of political economy-definitions and books belonging to humanity's childhood. For the purpose of this writing they all of them look alike-they sufficiently agree-they are all of them childish. Mill, for example, tells us that wealth consists of ”useful or agreeable things which possess exchangeable value.” Of capital one of the simplest definitions is this:
”Capital is that part of wealth which is devoted to obtaining further wealth.” (Alfred Marshall, _Economics of Industry_.)
Walker (in his _Money, Trade and Industry_) defines money as follows:
”Money is that which pa.s.ses freely from hand to hand throughout the community in final discharge of debts and full payment for commodities, being accepted equally without reference to the character or credit of the person who offers it, and without the intention of the person who receives it to consume it, or to enjoy it, or apply it to any other use than, in turn, to tender it to others in discharge of debts or full payment for commodities.”
Political economy has many different schools of thought and methods of cla.s.sification. Its reasonings are mainly speculative, metaphysical, and legalistic; its ethics is zoological ethics, based on the zoological conception of man as an animal. The elements of natural logic and natural ethics are absent. The sophisticated ideas about the subject of political economy, bluntly do not correspond to facts. Our primitive forefather in the jungle would have died from hunger, cold, heat, blood poisoning or the attacks of wild animals, if he had not used his brain and muscles to take some stone or a piece of wood to knock down fruit from trees, to kill an animal, so as to use his hide for clothes and his meat for food, or to break wood and trees for a shelter and to make some weapons for defense and hunting.
”In the first stone which he (the savage) flings at the wild animal he pursues, in the first stick that he seizes to strike down the fruit which hangs above his reach, we see the appropriation of one article for the purpose of aiding in the acquisition of another and thus we discover the origin of capital.” (R. Torrens, _An Essay on the Production of Wealth_.)
Our primitive forefather's first acquaintance with fire was probably through lightning; he discovered, probably by chance, the possibility of making fire by rubbing together two pieces of wood and by striking together two pieces of stone; he established one of the first facts in technology; he felt the warm effect of fire and also the good effect of broiling his food by finding some roasted animals in a fire. Thus nature revealed to him one of its great gifts, the stored-up energy of the sun in vegetation and its primitive beneficial use. He was already a time-binding being; evolution had brought him to that level. Being a product of nature, he was reflecting those natural laws that belong to his cla.s.s of life; he had ceased to be static-he had become dynamic-progressiveness had got into his blood-he was above the estate of animals.
We also observe that primitive man produced commodities, acquired experiences, made observations, and that some of the produced commodities had a use-value for other people and remained good for use, even after his death.
The produced commodities were composed of raw material, freely supplied by nature, combined with some mental work which gave him the conception of how to make and to use the object, and some work on his part which finally shaped the thing; all of this mental and manual work consumed an amount of time. It is obvious that all of these elements are indispensable to produce anything of any value, or of any use-value. His child not only directly received some of the use-values produced by him, but was initiated into all of his experiences and observations. (As we know, power, as defined in mechanics, means the ratio of work done to the time used in doing it.)
All those things are time-binding phenomena produced by the time-binding capacity of man; but man has _not_ known that _this capacity_ was his _defining mark_. We must notice the strange fact that, from the engineering point of view, humanity, though very developed in some ways, is childishly undeveloped in others. Humanity has some conceptions about dimensions and talks of the world in which we live as having three dimensions; yet even in its wildest imagination it can not picture tangibly a _fourth_ dimension; nay, humanity has not learned to grasp the real meanings of things that are basic or fundamental. All of our conceptions are relative and comparative; all of them are based upon matters which we do not yet understand; for example, we talk of time, s.p.a.ce, electricity, gravity, and so on, but no one has been able to define them in terms of the data of sensation; nevertheless-and it is a fact of the greatest importance-we learn how to use many things which we do not fully understand and are not yet able to define.
In political economy the meagreness of our understanding is especially remarkable; we have not yet grasped the obvious fact-a fact of immeasurable import for all of the social sciences-that with little exception the wealth and capital possessed by a given generation are not produced by its own toil but are the inherited fruit of dead men's toil-a free gift of the past. We have yet to learn and apply the lesson that not only our material wealth and capital but our science and art and learning and wisdom-all that goes to const.i.tute our civilization-were produced, not by our own labor, but by the time-binding energies of past generations.
Primitive man used natural laws without knowing them or understanding them, but he was able to cause nature to express itself, by finding a way to release nature's stored up energy. Through the work of his brain and its direction in the use of his muscles, he found that some of his appliances were not good; he made better ones, and thus slowly at first, the progress of humanity went on. I will not enlarge upon the history of the evolution of civilization because it is told in many books.
In the earliest times the religious, philosophical, legal and ethical systems had not been invented. The morale at that time was a natural morale. Humans knew that they did not create nature. They did not feel it ”proper” to ”expropriate the creator” and legalistically appropriate the earth and its treasure for themselves. They felt, in their unsophisticated morale, that being called into existence they had a natural right to exist and to use freely the gifts of nature in the preservation of their life; and that is what they did.
After the death of a man, some of the objects produced by him still survived, such as weapons, fis.h.i.+ng or hunting instruments, or the caves adapted for living; a baby had to be nourished for some years by its parents or it would have died. Those facts had important consequences; objects made by someone for some particular use could be used by someone else, even after the death of one or more successive users; again the experiences acquired by one member of a family or a group of people were taught by example or precept to others of the same generation and to the next generation. Such simple facts are the corner stones of our whole civilization and they are the direct result of the HUMAN CAPACITY OF TIME-BINDING.
The world to-day is full of controversy about wealth, capital, and money, and because humanity, through its peculiar time-binding power, binds this element ”time” in an ever larger and larger degree, the controversy becomes more and more acute. Civilization as a process is the process of binding time; progress is made by the fact that each generation adds to the material and spiritual wealth which it inherits. Past achievements-the fruit of bygone time-thus live in the present, are augmented in the present, and transmitted to the future; the process goes on; time, the essential element, is so involved that, though it increases arithmetically, its fruit, civilization, advances geometrically.
But there is another peculiarity in wealth and money: If a wooden or iron ”inch” be allowed to rot or rust quietly on some shelf, this ”inch” does not represent anything besides this piece of wood or iron. But if we take the MENTAL value of an inch, this unit of one of the measures of s.p.a.ce, and use it, with other quant.i.ties, in the contemplation of the skies for the solving of an astronomical problem, it gives a prophetic answer that, in a certain place there is a star; this star, may be for years looked for in vain. Was it that the calculation was wrong? No, for after further search with telescopes of greater power, the star is found and the calculation thus verified.
It is obvious that the ”unit”-inch-has no value by itself, but is very precious as a unit for measuring the phenomenon of length, which it perfectly represents, and that is why it was introduced.
It is exactly the same with money if the term be rightly understood.
Understood aright, money, being the measure and representative of wealth, is in the main, the measure and the representative of dead men's toil; for, rightly understood, wealth is almost entirely the product of the labor of by-gone generations. This product, we have seen, involves the element of time as the chief factor. And so we discover how money, properly understood, is connected with time-the main function of money is to measure and represent the acc.u.mulated products of the labor of past generations. h.o.a.rded money is like an iron ”inch” upon a shelf-a useless lump; but when used as a measure and representative of wealth rightly understood, money renders invaluable service, for it then serves to measure and represent the living fruit of dead men's toil.
For this reason, it is useless to argue who is the more important, the capitalist who has legal possession of most of the material fruit of dead men's toil, or the laborer who has legal possession of but little of it.
In the laborer, we do not now really look for his physical muscular labor ALONE; for this is replaced by mechanical or animal power as soon as it can be. What we do need from labor, and what we will always need, is his BRAIN-HIS TIME-BINDING POWER.
The population of the world may be divided into different cla.s.ses; if the cla.s.ses are not here enumerated in the customary way, it is because it is necessary to cla.s.sify human beings, as nearly as possible according to their ”power-value.” There is no a.s.sertion that this is an ideal cla.s.sification, but if someone is moved to exclaim-”what a foolish, unscientific division!”-I will answer by saying: ”I grant that the division is foolish and unscientific; but IT IS THE ONLY DIVISION WHICH CORRESPONDS TO FACTS IN LIFE, and it is not the writer's fault. By this 'foolishness' some good may be accomplished.”
From an engineer's point of view humanity is apparently to be divided into three cla.s.ses; (1) the intellectuals; (2) the rich; and (3) the poor. This division would seem to be contrary to all the rules of logic, but it corresponds to facts. Of course some individuals belong to two of the cla.s.ses or even to all three of them, an after-war product, but essentially, they belong to the one cla.s.s in proportion to the characteristic which is the most marked in their life; that is, in the sense of social cla.s.ses-BASED ON MAGNITUDE OF VALUES.
(1) The intellectuals are the men and women who possess the knowledge produced by the labor of by-gone generations but do not possess the material wealth thus produced. In mastering and using this inheritance of knowledge, they are exercising their time-binding energies and making the labor of the dead live in the present and for the future.