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Work and Wealth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Yves R. Simon
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Extract

IN DISCUSSIONS concerning such problems as labor-time, leisure, unemployment and thefuture of industrial society, it can be noticed that a number of persons become entangled in a net of confusions and sophisms by failing to consider the finalities of work in the right order. In short, we observe that men profit by working because work provides them with the commodities they need; they profit by working, on the other hand, because labor activities secure a sound training of the mind together with a salutary discipline of the appetites. Thus, two lines of results can be ascribed to labor activity. We maintain that they cannot have the same significance in terms of finality. Harmful confusions are to be feared unless we keep in mind their subordination to one another. We have seen, in a previous study, that labor-activity belongs to the category of transitive activities in the strict sense of the word. It consists in a production, in a casual flow, in the emanation of a term, in the bringing into existence of an effect. Moreover, it is essentially, at least in the primary form of manual work, the production of a term exterior to the acting individual. However profoundly the worker may be affected, in his person, by the work he exercises, it is quite clear that the termswhich defines laboractivity is not its immanent, but its exterior result.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , April 1940 , pp. 197 - 217
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1940

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References

1 It could be objected that an activity which ceases to aim at itsprimary end is not thereby necessarily prevented from aiming at some secondaryend. This is why we carefully point out that the exterior result of work is not only its primary or most important end, but also its object, understanding by the term object the specifying principle of the action, that whichgives the action its nature, or determines it as such and such. An activity which ceases to be related to its objective end, cannot either keep its relation to some secondary end, for the reason that the very nature of the action has been altered.

Consider the example of workmen employed m some useless job, the only reason for their employment being that it is better for them to be busy than idle. Apparently, we have to deal with a kind of labor-activity which, although accidentally deprived of its relation to its object, keeps its nature as a labor-activity, while ordained only to that which is the subjective end of labor. In fact, a new kind of activity has been substituted for a labor-activity. Now this substitution is purposively concealed, the employer knowing very well that play, sport or ascetic exercise cannot take place in the psychology of the workman, and that the latter would disregard any order, should he be ordered openly to act as a player, sportsman or ascetic. Thus, useless tasks can be successfuly performed only as long as their useless character is concealed from those who have to perform them. In short, useless tasks cannot be imposed on workmen, except at the price of a fundamental lie.

2 Aristotle, Elh., I, 3, 1096 b, 6. Pol., I, 8, 1256 b, 30. S. Thomas, I-II, Q, 1.

3 Aristotle, Elh., VIII, 2, 1155 b, 18. S. Thomas, I, 5, 6.

4 S. Thomas, I, 5, 6 ad 3.

5 S. Thomas, I-II, Q, 6, ad 1. Ejusdem rationis est quod appetaturbonum, et quod appetatur delectatio, quae nihil aliud quam quietatio appetitus in bono. … Unde sicut bonum propter seipsum appetitur, ita delectatiopropter se, et non propter aliud appetitur, si ly propterdicat causam (inalem. Cajetan, in I-II, 4, 2, ad 2.

6 S. Thomas, Sent. II, q. 1, a. 3. Inter bona autem invenitur aliquid quod est bonum simpliciter et per se, sicut bona honesta, quae tanquam fines appetuntur sui gratia, etsi in aliud ducant: quia in omnibus honestis utilitas honestati coincidit, nisi in ultimo, quod est finis finium, quod propter se tantum cupiendum est. Aliquid autem est quod in se bonitatem non habet unde appetatur, si absolute consideretur, sed ex ordine ad finem bomtatemquamdam sortitur, qua? utilitas nominatur: et hæc sunt tantum propter aliud appetenda, ut sectio membri propter sanitatem, et hujusmodi. Contra Centes, III, 30. Non enim appetuntur divitiae nisi propter alium; per se enimnihil boni inferunt, sed solum utimur eis vel ad corporis sustentationem, vel ad aliquid hujusmodi.

7 S. Thomas, in Eth., I, lee. 9. John, of Thomas, S., Cursus Philosophlcus, vol. 2, Philosophic! Naturalis, 1, 13, 1.Google Scholar

8 S. Thomas, I-II, 2, 6, ad 1. Sicut bonum propter seipsum appetitur, ita et delectatio propter se, et non propter alium appetitur, si ly propler dicat causam finalem: si vero dicat causam formalem,, vel potius causam motivam, sic delectatio est appetibilis propter aliud, id est propterbonum quod est delectationis objectum, et per consequens est principium eiuset dat ei formam. Ex hoc enim delectatio habet quod appetatur, quia est quies in bono desiderato. Ibid., ad 3. Elo modo omnes appetunt delectationem, sicut et appetunt bonum; et tamen delectationem appetunt ratione boni, et non e converso. Cajetan, in I-II, 4, 2, ad 3.

9 Veblen, Thorstein, The Theory of the Leisure Class, p. 99Google Scholar. “It frequently happens that an element of the standard of living which set out with being primarily wasteful, ends with becoming, in the apprehension of the consumer, a necessity of life; and it may in this way become as indispensable as any other item of the consumer's habitual expenditure.As items which sometimes fall under this head, and are therefore available as illustrations of the manner in which this principle applies, may be cited carpets and tapestries, silver table service, waiter's services, silk hats, starched linen, many articles of jewelry and of dress. The indispensability of these things after the habit and the convention have been formed, however, has little to say in the classification of expenditures as waste or not waste in the technical meaning of the word. The test to which all expenditure must be brought in an attempt to decide that point is the question whether it serves directly to enhance human life on the whole—whether it furthers the life process taken impersonally. For this is the basis of award of the instinct of workmanship, and the instinct is the court of final appeal in any question of economic truth. It is a question as to the award rendered by a dispassionate common sense. The question is, therefore, not whether, under the existing circumstances of individual habit and social custom, a given expenditure conduces to the particular consumer's gratification or peace of mind; but whether, aside from the canons of usage and conventional decency, its result is a net gain in comfort or in the fullness of life.”

10 Aristotle, Pol., I, 8, 1256 b, 35. S. Thomas, , Contra Centes, III, 134Google Scholar; II-II, 118, 1.

11 In that connection the book of Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of Business Enterprise, contains a lot of valuable information. Let us quote, as particularly provocative and relevant the following page: (50) “By the sale of the output the business man in industry ‘realizes’ his gains. To ‘realize means to convert salable goods into money values. The sale is the last step m the process and the end of the business man's endeavor. When he has disposed of the output, and so has converted his holdings of consumable articles into money values, his gains are as nearly secure and definitive as the circumstance of modern life admit. It is in terms of price that he keeps his accounts, and in the same terms he computes his output of products. The vital point of production with him is the rendibility of the output, its convertibility into money values, not its serviceability for the needs of mankind. A modicum of serviceability, for some purpose or other, the output must have if it is to be salable. But it does not follow that the highest serviceability gives the largest gains to the business man in terms of money, nor does it follow that the output need in all cases have otherthan a factitious serviceability…

“In the older days, when handicraft was the rule of the industrial system, the personal contact between the producer and his customer was somewhat close and lasting. Under these circumstances the factor of personal esteem and disesteem had a considerable play in controlling the purveyors of goods and services.

“Under modern circumstances, where industry is carried on on a large scale, the discretionary head of an industrial enterprise is commonly removed from all personal contact with the body of customers for whom the industrial process under his control purveys goods or services. The mitigating effect whichpersonal contact may have in dealings between man and man is therefore in great measure eliminated. The whole takes on something of an impersonal character. One can with an easier conscience and with less of a sense of meanness take advantage of the necessities of people whom one knows of only as an indiscriminate aggregate of consumers.”

See also Taylor, Horace, Mailing Goods and Maying Money, New York, 1928Google Scholar.

12 The idea that exchange cannot work regularly in a regime of abundance has been perseveringly developed by M. Jacques Duboin in a number of books, the most important of which are, to my knowledge, La grandeReléVe Jes hommes par la machineand La grande révolution qui vient. While full of provocative observations, these books are apparently lacking in scientific rigour.

13 Scott, Howard, Introduction to Technocracy, New York, 1933, p. 27Google Scholar. “After 1850 displaced workers were reabsorbed in the expansion of general industrial development. Machinery and equipment could be made only by hand-tool methods; consequently tremendous numbers could be reemployed. To-day the development of a new industry does not mean any considerable increase in national employment, except temporarily in its formative stages. The moment a new industry reaches the state of organization defined as complete mechanization or in other words, when it becomes a technological mechanism, employment drops sharply, always standing to further decrease. The production of new equipment for a new industry today means no great change in the numbers employed in machine-tool fabrication, as the same process of mechanization has occurred in this field as elsewhere.” (In the present system) “if technology is extended into more fields of social activity, the rate of production tends to outstrip the rate of population growth and the rate of possible consumption growth, causing simultaneously an ever increasing unemployment. This process is observable over the period of the last thirty years in every industry for which statistics are available, and this includes every major industry on the North American continent.”

14 Chase, Stuart, The Economy of Abundance, p. 138Google Scholar. (The writer has shown just before that capitalism obeys a law of indefinite expansion) “At this point the puzzled reader may wellcry a halt. If the Economy of Abundance is the ruling phase of our civilization, and is linked to a geometrically expanding curve of invention, why cannot markets likewise expand, and so keep capitalism afloat indefinitely? Why, with so many people in America underhoused, underfed, underclothed, underprovided with comforts, is there no ample room for expansion? and when America is provided for, consider the poverty-stricken hordes of Asia, Africa, Mexico, South America? Even if luxury wants to reach a saturation point, there seems to be a huge vacuum of plain or garden wants yet to be filled. When all consumers have everything they reasonably need, the world over, then, and not until then, is it time to sound a warning to capitalism.)’ (The reader confuses serviceability and Vendibility.) “The function of capitalism is not to supply people with things they want. Goods are supplied, yes, but only if enough money is forthcoming in exchange for them to cover all costs of production including interest, plus a margin of profit. Markets are not made by human need. The ten million unemployed in this country today would gladly take a volume of goods which would make factory wheels hum. The factory wheels are silent because the unemployed have no money. A market in the capitalistic sense is not a place where people want things; it is a place where people who have money are able to buy things.”

I wish to observe, in that connection, that there is some inadequacy in the widespread opinion that the unsatisfactory working of our system of distribution must be ascribed to capitalism as such. Let us imagine a state of society where the instruments of production would be owned by associations of workmen (the dream of the French Socialist Democracy in 1848): such a state of society would undoubtedly imply the suppression of capitalism. On the other hand, it seems that the problems of distribution we are facing today would not be solved by the mere substitution of cooperatives of production for capitalistic enterprises. There is no reason why a non-capitalistic regime could not organize distribution, as capitalism does, on the basis of exchange alone. If it is true that, in a state of abundance, the principle of exchange cannot by itself provide satisfactorily for the distribution of goods, any regime, capitalistic or not, is able to cause poverty in plenty, if only it fails to supplement conveniently the principle of exchange with the principle of free distribution. As a matter of fact, it has been noticed that many Socialist propagandists are used to paying little attention to the problems which spring specifically from abundance production: would they pay a greater attention to those problems, they would be led to do away with a number of oversimplified assumptions, and possibly with the myth of the Anti-capitalist Revolution. For most significant reasons, corporativists, still more than socialists, cautiously refrain from considering distribution problems in reference to abundance production.

15 Aristotle, Pol., II, 5, 1263 a, 22. S. Thomas, Com. in Pol. and H-II, 66, 1 and 22.