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A Better Life in an Affluent Society
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 July 2024
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Contemporary society is preoccupied with wealth. There is no need here to distinguish between capitalism and communism. It is a well-known fact that the great declared objective of Soviet economic planning is “to attain and to surpass the American standard of life.”
Every country employs statisticians to compute the annual increase in its national wealth. If the increase is substantial, the government prides itself on it; if it is small, the opposition finds in it a grievance capable of rallying public opinion behind it. In democratic countries, the political organizations that are most firmly entrenched are the ones that seek to advance the pretensions of one group for a larger share of the national wealth, and those that seek to defend the present share of a group against such pretensions. Public affairs consist to a large extent of pleadings and pressures concerning the division of wealth, and to some extent of more technical discussions concerning its increase.
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- Copyright © 1961 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1 This piece was published by Danjou and Cimber in their Archives curieuses de l'histoire de France, Second series, vol. 2, pp. 361-387.
2 This is borne out by a passage from Montesquieu concerning Poland: "A few lords own entire provinces; they force the laborers to let them have a greater amount of grain, so they can send it abroad and procure for themselves the goods which their life of luxury demands. If Poland did not trade with any country, her people would be happier. If the great had only their grain, they would give it to their peasants to live on. Too large an estate would be a burden to them, and they would give some of it to their peasants. Since everyone would own herds which yielded hides and wool, there would no longer be enormous sums to pay for clothing. The great would still love luxury; but since they could not find it in their country, would encourage the poor to work." L'Esprit des lois, Book XX, ch. XXIII. Montesquieu, incidentally, is not opposed to international commerce under different conditions.
3 By "standard of life" is here meant "production per capita." The product is, of course, calculated at fixed prices.
4 Raymond W. Goldsmith; the paper referred to was presented, on April 7, 1959, to the Joint Economic Committee of the United States Congress, and published in its Hearings on Employment, Growth and Price Levels. The figures used here occur on page 271.
5 It should be noted that the annual growth in production was much greater than here indicated, viz. 3.66 percent, but also that the annual growth in population was 1.97 percent. It is per capita that production increased by 1.64 percent; and it is increase per capita that constitutes a measure of progress in standards of life.
6 Cf. four articles by E. H. Phelps-Brown and Sheil Hopkins in Economica, August 1955, November 1956, November 1957 and February 1959.
7 According to Abbot Payson Usher, the population of China fluctuated, since the beginning of the Christian era, between a minimum of 54 and a maximum of 79 million; only in the seventeenth century did it begin the gradual growth that brought it up to 600 million. India around 1522 had perhaps up to 100 million inhabitants, which is far less than the nearly 500 million that now inhabit the peninsula. Cf. Usher, "The History of Population and Settlement in Eurasia," Geographical Review, January 1930.
8 These calculations are based on the rate of progress of 3.5 percent per annum, which was mentioned above.
9 This goal was persistently pursued in France during the eighteenth century. It inspired the ordinance of Chancellor d'Aguesseau against the extension of the rights of mortmain. It also inspired the decrees of the Revolution that abolished these rights altogether—though by decreeing that a peasant's holdings were to be divided equally among his heirs, the revolutionaries violated all the principles of economics and did great damage to the progress of agriculture and the welfare of the population.
10 This is illustrated by the abolition of all feudal rights during the French Revolution.
11 This theme played a major part in the American steel dispute of 1959.
12 Documents pour l'histoire des prix by Jean Fourastié and Claude Fon taine; the period covered is 1910-1955.
13 The question of servants shows better than any other that a general increase in wealth cannot place the poorer families in the position previously occupied by the wealthy families. In fact, the rich have always had servants; hence, it is obviously impossible for all to have servants. This question also shows that the position of the richest families cannot but suffer in the course of a general increase in wealth; for this raises the price of men, as compared with the price of objects.
14 One might also find in these pressures the origin of the remarkable role which the nightmare has played in contemporary literature.
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