University of Santa Clara - Redwood Yearbook (Santa Clara, CA)

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THE REDWOOD. wealth on the Socialistic plan would be a gross injustice, for it would give to the laborer that which is not his own and would rob from the man of ability the fruit of his own creative genius. There is in England today, however, a more thoughtful school of Socialists whose arguments are far more subtle than those proposed by the Marxian school. I refer to the Fabian society, whose intellectual headlights are such men as George Bernard Shaw, Mr. Sid- ney Webb and J. Ramsey McDonald, M. P. These men are wont to look upon Marx as the German Monists look up- on Darwin. They credit him only with the embryonic idea. His teaching was merely the nucleus of a greater, which was to evolve out of it. Economic de- terminism only reflected the material- istic doctrine of the age, they say, and it is not essential to the movement. They admit Ability as a factor in the creation of wealth and all that they de- sire is to see by a system of gradual increases in taxes the slow but sure turning over to the central government all the means of production. They ab- hor, likewise, the revolutionary meas- ures of confiscation proposed by the proponents of the popular branch of Socialism. They see a gross injustice to the laborer under the present system of production and they propose to erad- icate it by an identical system of Col- Cf. The Soc. Movement, J. R. McDonald, M. P., p. 142. lectivism in which all members of so- ciety shall share equally. But although their methods dififer the two factions are unanimous as to the ultimate goal. Likewise, although their arguments differ, they both as- sume the injustice of the present sys- tem whereby the laborer is robbed of his just deserts. Under this more recent school of So- cialism, however, the movement has been given a sudden impetus. The sub- tilty of their arguments and the unas- suming and conservative manner in which they propose to bring about their Utopia, has won many to their cause. It will not be amiss, therefore to ex- amine their line of argument and see whether or not their claims are justi- fied. The Fabians, being of a more thoughtful type than their Marxian comrades, have been forced to admit that labor is not the only source of wealth, but that Ability also is a po- tent productive agent. The trend of their reasoning therefore has been to establish a premise which will show why Ability as a factor in production is entitled to no more than labor. The arguments, of course, are many, but it will fulfill our purpose if we take a couple of the most important and ex- pose their fallacies, demonstrating that the Fabian claims of injustice are false and that the present system, though open to abuse, is at least closer to the principles of natural justice than the spectre which they propose.

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THE REDWOOD. dependent of the labor and time con- sumed in producing them. Marx therefore is unjustified in drawing the conclusion that all wealth is produced by labor alone for labor and time are not the only factors which bring about the exchange value of a given economic good. Utility plays even a more important part. But to admit that utility is a factor as well as labor involves the Socialists in an inextricable contradiction. For to admit utility as a factor is to admit those factors that administer to utility. In the preceding illustration it was B. who foresaw the utility, who devised the means of satisfying it, who risked his capital in the commercial venture. It was he who gave work to thousands of men whose labor would have been valueless without his direc- tive oversight. His was a labor quite disproportionate with that of the man who checked freight. B ' s work called for a grade of superior intelligence which cannot be reduced to a question of time spent in acquiring. And this suggests another and even greater difficulty to the Socialist, name- ly the part played by ability in the cre- ation of wealth. There are various or- ders of labor, mental and manual, some more useful to society than others and therefore more valuable. Labor would be useless had it not some superior di- rective power. It would be as a mighty machine powerless to move without some outside motive force. Consider for example the greatest engineering achievement of modern times, the Pa- nama Canal. This work is doubtless crystallized labor, as Marx terms it, but it is not in its distinctive features, crystallized labor as such. It is crys- tallized science, chemistry, mathematics and in short it is crystallized knowledge and intellect of such high calibre as not to be found existing in one mind out of ten thousand and labor is only effective in the production of such an undertak- ing inasmuch as it submits itself to the guidance of the intellectual leaders who conceived it. To reduce this higher type of labor, as Socialists propose, to a question of average time spent in acquiring it is foolhardy. How long may I ask would it have taken the ordinary man to in- vent the electric light, the telephone or the spinning jenny? How long an ap- prenticeship would the average man need before he could give to the world the serums of modern medicine, the steam engine of Watt or the treasures of literature and so in every walk of life? Nature has so constituted man that she has established an equality of her own and it is puerile to attempt to reduce all value to labor and all labor to time. All wealth IS NOT produced by la- bor alone and value IS NOT a result of of labor and time. Hence the entire theory of surplus value and the unjust accumulation of capital must necessar- ily collapse as these are but deductions from the theory of value. On the other hand an equal ■distribution of

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THE REDWOOD. The first argument I shall take from Mr. Sidney Webb. He correctly main- tains that exceptional ability is a pow- erful factor in the production of wealth, but, he says, exceptional productive ability has no right to any exceptional share of the products. To substantiate this statement he says : The special ability or energy witn which some per- sons are born is an unearned increment due to the effect of the struggle for ex- istence on their ancestors, and conse- quently having been produced by so- ciety is as much due to society as the unearned increment of rent. By this, our intellectual friend means to say that the man of ability inherited his superiority from his ancestors. That his ancestors acquired their superiority in their struggle for existence with the rest of humanity. The ' ' rest of human- ity was the stone upon which the knife was whetted, therefore to the rest of humanity is due the superiority just as much as to the ancestors themselves. The rest of humanity may claim an equal share with Ability for they were co-partners in the production of that Ability. But to admit such an argument would lead to a multitude of absurdit- ies. If the man of genius owes his abil- ity to society, then the criminal owes his degeneracy to the same source, and society may not with justice punish him, for they have an equal share in his crime. He who comes into court must come with clean hands. Likewise if two rival teams are running for a grand prize the defeated members after the race may approach their victors with the argument that they, the victors, had acquired their fleet-footedness by the experience gained in running against them, the losers, in former times, that therefore justice required the victors to share the prize for the losers con- duced to win the prize as much as their victors themselves. Similarly the idle man owes his indolence to society and therefore, though he does nothing he is entitled to an equal share. But let us turn to the second argu- ment of the new school in the hope that it may be more plausible than the former. This second argument has been cull- ed from the pages of John Stuart Mill, the most celebrated of the orthodox economists, who while not a Socialist himself, strangely enough furnished them with one of their strongest argu- ments. It is not necessary that we explain Mill ' s application of the argu- ment to land and labor. It will suf- fice to elucidate the Fabian application of it to ability and labor. Recalling that this school of Socialists admit individ- ual ability as well as labor as a produc- er of capital it is curious to note the manner in which they attempt to min- imize the value of the former. They say: Labor and Ability are two fac- tors, their product is wealth. But we can no more determine which of these two factors produces the greater part of wealth than we can tell which of the two factors five or six has most to do in