§1.In seeking at once to establish and apply to industry a standard of human value, we have taken for our concrete subject-matter the aggregate of marketable goods and services that constitute the real income of the nation.This real wealth, distributed in income among the various members of the community, we subjected to a double analysis, tracing it backwards through the processes of its production, forward into its consumption.
Some of the activities of its production we recognised as being in themselves interesting, pleasant, educative or otherwise organically useful: others we found to be uninteresting, painful, depressing or otherwise organically costly.A similar divergence of human value appeared in the consumption of those forms of wealth.Some sorts and quantities of consumption were found conducive to the maintenance and furtherance of healthy life, both pleasant and profitable.Other sorts and qualities of consumption were found wasteful or injurious to the life of the consumers and of the community.
The general result of this double analysis may be summarised in the following tabular form.
WEALTH
PRODUCTION
Human utility -- Art & Exercise; Labour Human cost -- Toil; Mal-production CONSUMPTIONHuman utility -- Needs; Abundance Human cost -- Satiety; Mal-consumption In the ordinary economic account 'costs' appear entirely on the Production side of the account, 'utility' entirely on the Consumption side.Production is regarded not as good or desirable in itself, but only as a means towards an end, Consumption.On the other hand, all parts of Consumption are regarded as in themselves desirable and good, and are assessed as Utilities according to the worth which current desires, expressed in purchasing power, set upon them.
Our human valuation refuses to regard work as a mere means to consumption.
It finds life and welfare in the healthy functioning of productive activities, as well as in the processes of repair and growth which form sound consumption.
If all production could be reduced to Art and Exercise, the creative and the re-creative functions, all consumption to the satisfaction of physical and spiritual needs, we should appear to have reached an ideal economy, in which there would be no human costs and a maximum amount of human utility.
The conditions of a complete individual life would seem to be attained.
But we are not concerned with a society in which completeness of the individual life is the sole end, but with a society in which the desires, purposes and welfare of the individuals are comprised in the achievement of a common life.For this reason I have included under the head of Utility on the Productive side of our account, not only the Art and Exercise which are directly conducive to individual well-being, but a quantum of Labour which represents the economic measure of the inter-dependency, or solidarity, of the so-called individuals.Such labour is the so-called 'sacrifice'
required of 'individuals' in the interest of the society to which they belong.To the individualist it appears a distortion of the free full development of his nature, an interference with his perfect life.But it is, of course, neither sacrifice nor distortion.For the so-called individual is nowise, except in physical structure,1 completely divided from his fellows.He is a social being and this social nature demands recognition and expression in economic processes.It requires him to engage in some special work which has for its direct end the welfare of society, in addition to the work of using his own powers for his own personal ends.How far this routine labour for society can be taken into his conception of his human nature, and so become a source of personal satisfaction, is a question we shall discuss later on.At present it will suffice to recognise that each man's fair contribution to the routine labour of the world, though irksome to him, is not injurious but serviceable to his 'human' nature.Thus interpreted, it stands on the utility, not on the cost, side of the account.It must be distinguished from its excess, which we here term 'toil', and from work, which whether from an abuse of the creative faculty or of social control, is bad and degrading in its nature and is here termed mal-production.
A similar distinction between the narrowly personal and the broader social interpretation of welfare is applicable on the consumption side.
It is clearly not enough that the income which is to furnish consumption should suffice only to make provision for the satisfaction of the material and spiritual needs of the individual or even of his family.The expenditure of every man should contain a margin -- which I here call 'abundance' --from which he may contribute voluntarily to the good of others.There will be public needs or emergencies, which are not properly covered by State services but remain a call upon the public spirit of persons of discernment and humanity.There are also the calls of hospitality and comradeship, and the wider claim of charity, the willing help to those in need, a charity that is spontaneous, not organised, that degrades neither him who gives nor him who receives, because it is the natural expression of a spirit of human brotherhood.For the sting alike of condescension and of degradation would be removed from charity, when both parties feel that such acts of giving are an agreeable expression of a spirit of fellowship.From the consumption which is thus applied to the satisfaction of sound personal needs, or which overflows in 'abundance' to meet the needs of others, we distinguish sharply that excessive quantity of consumption, which in our Table ranks as 'Satiety', and those base modes of consumption which in their poisonous reactions on personal and social welfare strictly correspond to the base forms of production.
