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

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THE REDWOOD. the production of thirty. Therefore to each let us give share and share ahke. This indeed is a plausible argument, but we shall find it based on a false as- sumption. Consider for a moment a simple illustration. A. is a man who is at the head, let us say, of a great peach-packing industry, the only one in the world. He has un- der him ten thousand employes. Now for the past ten years he has annually packed one million crates of peaches. This is his maximum capacity and al- though there is a greater supply of peaches he cannot succeed in pack- ing more with his present equipment. Let us now suppose that A. is taken seriously ill and B, his office man, sub- stitutes. During the year in which B manages the system two million crates of peaches are packed with the same number of employes and with the same tools of production. After a regime of one year A again assumes the manager- ship and returning to his own system succeeds in packing but one million crates for the ensuing year and so on for the following years of his manager- ship. Since both A. and B. used the same establishment, the same employes and the same means of production it is clear that the increased capacity of the industry under the regime of B was due simply and solely to his special ability in systematization and to his superior directive powers. Returning now to the Fabian argu- ment it will be seen that what they have overlooked is the fact that capital cannot be represented by a product such as thirty, for although yesterday it was thirty, tomorrow it will be sixty, and the day after perhaps one hun- dred, and though one of these factors five, remains constant, the other varies from six to twelve to twenty and so on. In like manner although labor remains more or less constant Ability varies and therefore we can determine which of the two produces the greater part of wealth. Since we are able to do this, justice and the natural law demand that we render unto Caesar the things which belong to Caesar and we are right in giving to the greater producer the greater share of the spoils. We are safe in stating therefore that the Fa- bian claims for the injustice of the present order are false. We have already examined the main arguments advanced by the two great schools of Socialism by which they claim to have demonstrated the injus- tice of the present order of distribution, and we have found them wanting in soundness. Therefore we might here make an application of the saying of the old Ro- man legists: Cessante ratione; cessat ipsa lex and say that since all the reasons for the change are a falsity, the necessity of the change itself is a fal- sity and we might consider the ques- tion settled once and for all. There is, however, a vast army of men and women to whom arguments of this nature do not appeal and it is mainly to them that the leaders of the

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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

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10 THE BEDWOOD. movement make their strong appeal. The state which they hold out and the condition of society under it is indeed alluring and purposely concocted to at- tract those dissatisfied with the present state of affairs. For this reason it can- not be amiss to critically examine this proposed state and determine a few of its necessary consequences. Victor Cathrein, in his admirable work on Socialism, has summed up the numberless difficulties with which the Socialists ' state will be confronted upon its inauguration. These difficul- ties may, however, in the main be re- duced to five principal heads which I in the ensuing pages shall briefly out- line. These difficulties are, in order: 1. Difficulty of organization. 2. The difficulty of supplying dif- ferent wants. 3. Difficulty of the assignment of employments. 4. Difficulty of assigning remunera- tion. 5. Difficulty of supplying a motive to work. l have said necessary consequences because So- cialists tliemseives are very reserved in statements as to the future condition of their state and the manner in which they will conduct it. Bellamy in his novel Looi ing Backward received harsh criti- cism and denunciationfrom his comrades for the Utopia he pictured, and Socialists all over the world pro- nounced him a dreamer. There are, however many necessary consequences attendant upon the adop- tion of Socialism which must follow a Collectivist state in which all the means of production are na- tionally owned. These necessary difficulties therefore are real ar- guments against the doctrine, Hilquit and Bernstein to the contrary noth withstanding. 1. To state briefly the difficulty of organization, either all the productive property of the United States would be worked from one center as one business, keeping work and wages uniform or else each state, dis- trict, county or town would be granted local autonomy. In the first instance such a system would require a huge amount of clerical work to determine the various demands and necessities of the commonwealth. In meeting this contention Socialists are wont to point to our huge corporations, syndicates and industries with their el- aborate systems, but they overlook the important fact that there exists an im- mense chasm between one company run for one purpose and a common- wealth made up of several millions of such companies. Compare for example the difference in time and labor in com- piling the smallest details as to articles of clothing, underwear, food and so on which every family needs, with the dif- ficulty of coinpiling a simple census which in itself is a huge task. Then again such an ascertainment of neces- sities would be required at least every month and even then there are many necessaries which cannot be foreseen and which would provoke weekly and even daily statistics. The entire ar- rangement would call for an army of officials bound by no private interest to the faithful administration of their office and subject to gross blunders which might prove fatal to the entire plan.