Political Economy and the Discovery of Society [135]
But a principle quite unfavorable to individual and general happiness
was wreaking havoc with his social environment, his neighborhood,
his standing in the community, his craft; in a word, with those rela-
tionships to nature and man in which his economic existence was for-
merly embedded. The Industrial Revolution was causing a social dis-
location of stupendous proportions, and the problem of poverty was
merely the economic aspect of this event. Owen justly pronounced
that unless legislative interference and direction counteracted these
devastating forces, great and permanent evils would follow.
He did not, at that time, foresee that the self-protection of society
for which he was calling would prove incompatible with the function-
ing of the economic system itself.
[ II. Self-Protection of Society ]
C H A P T E R E L E V E N
Man, Nature, and
Productive Organization
( J "or a century the dynamics of modern society was governed by a
A. double movement: the market expanded continuously but this
movement was met by a countermovement checking the expansion in
definite directions. Vital though such a countermovement was for the
protection of society, in the last analysis it was incompatible with the
self-regulation of the market, and thus with the market system itself.
That system developed in leaps and bounds; it engulfed space and
time, and by creating bank money it produced a dynamic hitherto un-
known. By the time it reached its maximum extent, around 1914, every
part of the globe, all its inhabitants and yet unborn generations, physi-
cal persons as well as huge fictitious bodies called corporations, were
comprised in it. A new way of life spread over the planet with a claim
to universality unparalleled since the age when Christianity started
out on its career, only this time the movement was on a purely mate-
rial level.
Yet simultaneously a countermovement was on foot. This was
more than the usual defensive behavior of a society faced with change;
it was a reaction against a dislocation which attacked the fabric of soci-
ety, and which would have destroyed the very organization of produc-
tion that the market had called into being.
Robert Owen's was a true insight: market economy if left to evolve
according to its own laws would create great and permanent evils.
Production is interaction of man and nature; if this process is to
be organized through a self-regulating mechanism of barter and ex-
change, then man and nature must be brought into its orbit; they must
be subject to supply and demand, that is, be dealt with as commodi-
ties, as goods produced for sale.
Such precisely was the arrangement under a market system. Man
under the name of labor, nature under the name of land, were made
[136]
Man, Nature, and Productive Organization [ 137 ]
available for sale; the use of labor power could be universally bought
and sold at a price called wages, and the use of land could be negotiated
for a price called rent. There was a market in labor as well as in land,
and supply and demand in either was regulated by the height of wages
and rents, respectively; the fiction that labor and land were produced
for sale was consistently upheld. Capital invested in the various com-
binations of labor and land could thus flow from one branch of pro-
duction to another, as was required for an automatic levelling of earn-
ings in the various branches.
But, while production could theoretically be organized in this way,
the commodity fiction disregarded the fact that leaving the fate of soil
and people to the market would be tantamount to annihilating them.
Accordingly, the countermove consisted in checking the action of the
market in respect to the factors of production, labor, and land. This
was the main function of interventionism.
Productive organization also was threatened from the same quar-
ter. The danger was to the single enterprise—industrial, agricultural,
or commercial insofar as it was affected by changes in the price level.
For under a market system, if prices fell, business was impaired; unless
all elements of cost fell proportionately, "going concerns" were forced
to liquidate, while the fall in prices might have been due not to a gen-
eral fall in costs, but merely to the manner in which the monetary sys-
tem was organized. Actually, as we shall see, such was often the case
under a self-regulating market.
Purchasing power is, in principle, here supplied and regulated by
the action of the market itself; this is meant when we say that money
is a commodity the amount of which is controlled by the supply and
demand of the goods which happen to function as money—the well-
known classical theory of money. According to this doctrine, money is
only another name for a commodity used in exchange more often
than another, and which is therefore acquired mainly in order to facil-
itate exchange. Whether hides, oxen, shells, or gold are used to this end
is immaterial; the value of the objects functioning as money is deter-
mined as if they were sought only for their usefulness in regard to nu-
trition, clothing, ornaments, or other purposes. If gold happens to be
used as money, its value, amount, and movements are governed by ex-
actly the same laws that apply to other commodities. Any other means
of exchange would involve the creating of currency outside the mar-
ket, the act of its creation—whether by banks or government—con-
Dostları ilə paylaş: |