Part 9 (1/2)
Absolute justice is indeed no more attainable than absolute truth; but the righteous man is distinguished from the unrighteous by his desire and hope of justice, as the true man from the false by his desire and hope of truth. And though absolute justice be unattainable, as much justice as we need for all practical use is attainable by all those who make it their aim.
We have to examine, then, in the subject before us, what are the laws of justice respecting payment of labour--no small part, these, of the foundations of all jurisprudence.
I reduced, in my last paper, the idea of money payment to its simplest or radical terms. In those terms its nature, and the conditions of justice respecting it, can be best ascertained.
Money payment, as there stated, consists radically in a promise to some person working for us, that for the time and labour he spends in our service to-day we will give or procure equivalent time and labour in his service at any future time when he may demand it.[39]
[39] It might appear at first that the market price of labour expressed such an exchange: but this is a fallacy, for the market price is the momentary price of the kind of labour required, but the just price is its equivalent of the productive labour of mankind. This difference will be a.n.a.lysed in its place. It must be noted also that I speak here only of the exchangeable value of labour, not of that of commodities. The exchangeable value of a commodity is that of the labour required to produce it, multiplied into the force of the demand for it. If the value of the labour = _x_ and the force of demand = _y_, the exchangeable value of the commodity is _xy_, in which if either _x_ = 0, or _y_ = 0, _xy_ = 0.
If we promise to give him less labour than he has given us, we under-pay him. If we promise to give him more labour than he has given us, we over-pay him. In practice, according to the laws of demand and supply, when two men are ready to do the work, and only one man wants to have it done, the two men under-bid each other for it; and the one who gets it to do, is under-paid. But when two men want the work done, and there is only one man ready to do it, the two men who want it done over-bid each other, and the workman is over-paid.
I will examine these two points of injustice in succession, but first I wish the reader to clearly understand the central principle lying between the two, of right or just payment.
When we ask a service of any man, he may either give it us freely, or demand payment for it. Respecting free gift of service, there is no question at present, that being a matter of affection--not of traffic.
But if he demand payment for it, and we wish to treat him with absolute equity, it is evident that this equity can only consist in giving time for time, strength for strength, and skill for skill. If a man works an hour for us, and we only promise to work half an hour for him in return, we obtain an unjust advantage. If, on the contrary, we promise to work an hour and a half for him in return, he has an unjust advantage. The justice consists in absolute exchange; or, if there be any respect to the stations of the parties, it will not be in favour of the employer: there is certainly no equitable reason in a man's being poor, that if he give me a pound of bread to-day, I should return him less than a pound of bread to-morrow; or any equitable reason in a man's being uneducated, that if he uses a certain quant.i.ty of skill and knowledge in my service, I should use a less quant.i.ty of skill and knowledge in his. Perhaps, ultimately, it may appear desirable, or, to say the least, gracious, that I should give in return somewhat more than I received. But at present, we are concerned on the law of justice only, which is that of perfect and accurate exchange;--one circ.u.mstance only interfering with the simplicity of this radical idea of just payment--that inasmuch as labour (rightly directed) is fruitful just as seed is, the fruit (or ”interest” as it is called) of the labour first given, or ”advanced,” ought to be taken into account, and balanced by an additional quant.i.ty of labour in the subsequent repayment. Supposing the repayment to take place at the end of a year, or of any other given time, this calculation could be approximately made; but as money (that is to say, cash) payment involves no reference to time (it being optional with the person paid to spend what he receives at once or after any number of years), we can only a.s.sume, generally, that some slight advantage must in equity be allowed to the person who advances the labour, so that the typical form of bargain will be: If you give me an hour to-day, I will give you an hour and five minutes on demand. If you give me a pound of bread to-day, I will give you seventeen ounces on demand, and so on.
All that is necessary for the reader to note is, that the amount returned is at least in equity not to be _less_ than the amount given.
The abstract idea, then, of just or due wages, as respects the labourer, is that they will consist in a sum of money which will at any time procure for him at least as much labour as he has given, rather more than less. And this equity or justice of payment is, observe, wholly independent of any reference to the number of men who are willing to do the work. I want a horseshoe for my horse. Twenty smiths, or twenty thousand smiths, may be ready to forge it; their number does not in one atom's weight affect the question of the equitable payment of the one who _does_ forge it. It costs him a quarter of an hour of his life, and so much skill and strength of arm to make that horseshoe for me. Then at some future time I am bound in equity to give a quarter of an hour, and some minutes more, of my life (or of some other person's at my disposal), and also as much strength of arm and skill, and a little more, in making or doing what the smith may have need of.
Such being the abstract theory of just remunerative payment, its application is practically modified by the fact that the order for labour, given in payment, is general, while the labour received is special. The current coin or doc.u.ment is practically an order on the nation for so much work of any kind; and this universal applicability to immediate need renders it so much more valuable than special labour can be, that an order for a less quant.i.ty of this general toil will always be accepted as a just equivalent for a greater quant.i.ty of special toil. Any given craftsman will always be willing to give an hour of his own work in order to receive command over half an hour, or even much less, of national work. This source of uncertainty, together with the difficulty of determining the monetary value of skill,[40]
renders the ascertainment (even approximate) of the proper wages of any given labour in terms of currency, matter of considerable complexity. But they do not affect the principle of exchange. The worth of the work may not be easily known; but it _has_ a worth, just as fixed and real as the specific gravity of a substance, though such specific gravity may not be easily ascertainable when the substance is united with many others. Nor is there so much difficulty or chance in determining it as in determining the ordinary maxima and minima of vulgar political economy. There are few bargains in which the buyer can ascertain with anything like precision that the seller would have taken no less;--or the seller acquire more than a comfortable faith that the purchaser would have given no more. This impossibility of precise knowledge prevents neither from striving to attain the desired point of greatest vexation and injury to the other, nor from accepting it for a scientific principle that he is to buy for the least and sell for the most possible, though what the real least or most may be he cannot tell. In like manner, a just person lays it down for a scientific principle that he is to pay a just price, and, without being able precisely to ascertain the limits of such a price, will nevertheless strive to attain the closest possible approximation to them. A practically serviceable approximation he _can_ obtain. It is easier to determine scientifically what a man ought to have for his work, than what his necessities will compel him to take for it. His necessities can only be ascertained by empirical, but his due by a.n.a.lytical, investigation. In the one case, you try your answer to the sum like a puzzled schoolboy--till you find one that fits; in the other, you bring out your result within certain limits, by process of calculation.
[40] Under the term ”skill” I mean to include the united force of experience, intellect, and pa.s.sion in their operation on manual labour: and under the term ”pa.s.sion,” to include the entire range and agency of the moral feelings; from the simple patience and gentleness of mind which will give continuity and fineness to the touch, or enable one person to work without fatigue, and with good effect, twice as long as another, up to the qualities of character which render science possible--(the r.e.t.a.r.dation of science by envy is one of the most tremendous losses in the economy of the present century)--and to the incommunicable emotion and imagination which are the first and mightiest sources of all value in art.
It is highly singular that political economists should not yet have perceived, if not the moral, at least the pa.s.sionate element, to be an inextricable quant.i.ty in every calculation. I cannot conceive, for instance, how it was possible that Mr. Mill should have followed the true clue so far as to write,--”No limit can be set to the importance--even in a purely productive and material point of view--of mere thought,” without seeing that it was logically necessary to add also, ”and of mere feeling.” And this the more, because in his first definition of labour he includes in the idea of it ”all feelings of a disagreeable kind connected with the employment of one's thoughts in a particular occupation.” True; but why not also, ”feelings of an agreeable kind?” It can hardly be supposed that the feelings which r.e.t.a.r.d labour are more essentially a part of the labour than those which accelerate it. The first are paid for as pain, the second as power. The workman is merely indemnified for the first; but the second both produce a part of the exchangeable value of the work, and materially increase its actual quant.i.ty.
”Fritz is with us. _He_ is worth fifty thousand men.” Truly, a large addition to the material force;--consisting, however, be it observed, not more in operations carried on in Fritz's head, than in operations carried on in his armies' heart. ”No limit can be set to the importance of _mere_ thought.” Perhaps not! Nay, suppose some day it should turn out that ”mere” thought was in itself a recommendable object of production, and that all Material production was only a step towards this more precious Immaterial one?
Supposing, then, the just wages of any quant.i.ty of given labour to have been ascertained, let us examine the first results of just and unjust payment, when in favour of the purchaser or employer; _i.e._, when two men are ready to do the work, and only one wants to have it done.
The unjust purchaser forces the two to bid against each other till he has reduced their demand to its lowest terms. Let us a.s.sume that the lowest bidder offers to do the work at half its just price.
The purchaser employs him, and does not employ the other. The first or _apparent_ result, is, therefore, that one of the two men is left out of employ, or to starvation, just as definitely as by the just procedure of giving fair price to the best workman. The various writers who endeavoured to invalidate the positions of my first paper never saw this, and a.s.sumed that the unjust hirer employed _both_. He employs both no more than the just hirer. The only difference (in the outset) is that the just man pays sufficiently, the unjust man insufficiently, for the labour of the single person employed.
I say, in ”the outset;” for this first or apparent difference is not the actual difference. By the unjust procedure, half the proper price of the work is left in the hands of the employer. This enables him to hire another man at the same unjust rate on some other kind of work; and the final result is that he has two men working for him at half-price, and two are out of employ.
By the just procedure, the whole price of the first piece of work goes into the hands of the man who does it. No surplus being left in the employer's hands, _he_ cannot hire another man for another piece of labour. But by precisely so much as his power is diminished, the hired workman's power is increased; that is to say, by the additional half of the price he has received; which additional half _he_ has the power of using to employ another man in _his_ service. I will suppose, for the moment, the least favourable, though quite probable, case--that, though justly treated himself, he yet will act unjustly to his subordinate; and hire at half-price, if he can. The final result will then be, that one man works for the employer, at just price; one for the workman, at half-price; and two, as in the first case, are still out of employ. These two, as I said before, are out of employ in _both_ cases. The difference between the just and unjust procedure does not lie in the number of men hired, but in the price paid to them, and the _persons by whom_ it is paid. The essential difference, that which I want the reader to see clearly, is, that in the unjust case, two men work for one, the first hirer. In the just case, one man works for the first hirer, one for the person hired, and so on, down or up through the various grades of service; the influence being carried forward by justice, and arrested by injustice. The universal and constant action of justice in this matter is therefore to diminish the power of wealth, in the hands of one individual, over ma.s.ses of men, and to distribute it through a chain of men. The actual power exerted by the wealth is the same in both cases; but by injustice it is put all into one man's hands, so that he directs at once and with equal force the labour of a circle of men about him; by the just procedure, he is permitted to touch the nearest only, through whom, with diminished force, modified by new minds, the energy of the wealth pa.s.ses on to others, and so till it exhausts itself.
The immediate operation of justice in this respect is, therefore, to diminish the power of wealth, first in acquisition of luxury, and, secondly, in exercise of moral influence. The employer cannot concentrate so mult.i.tudinous labour on his own interests, nor can he subdue so mult.i.tudinous mind to his own will. But the secondary operation of justice is not less important. The insufficient payment of the group of men working for one, places each under a maximum of difficulty in rising above his position. The tendency of the system is to check advancement. But the sufficient or just payment, distributed through a descending series of offices or grades of labour,[41] gives each subordinated person fair and sufficient means of rising in the social scale, if he chooses to use them; and thus not only diminishes the immediate power of wealth, but removes the worst disabilities of poverty.
[41] I am sorry to lose time by answering, however curtly, the equivocations of the writers who sought to obscure the instances given of regulated labour in the first of these papers, by confusing kinds, ranks, and quant.i.ties of labour with its qualities. I never said that a colonel should have the same pay as a private, nor a bishop the same pay as a curate. Neither did I say that more work ought to be paid as less work (so that the curate of a parish of two thousand souls should have no more than the curate of a parish of five hundred). But I said that, so far as you employ it at all, bad work should be paid no less than good work; as a bad clergyman yet takes his t.i.thes, a bad physician takes his fee, and a bad lawyer his costs. And this, as will be farther shown in the conclusion, I said, and say, partly because the best work never was, nor ever will be, done for money at all; but chiefly because, the moment people know they have to pay the bad and good alike, they will try to discern the one from the other, and not use the bad. A sagacious writer in the _Scotsman_ asks me if I should like any common scribbler to be paid by Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co. [the original publishers of this work] as their good authors are. I should, if they employed him--but would seriously recommend them, for the scribbler's sake, as well as their own, _not_ to employ him. The quant.i.ty of its money which the country at present invests in scribbling is not, in the outcome of it, economically spent; and even the highly ingenious person to whom this question occurred, might perhaps have been more beneficially employed than in printing it.
It is on this vital problem that the entire destiny of the labourer is ultimately dependent. Many minor interests may sometimes appear to interfere with it, but all branch from it. For instance, considerable agitation is often caused in the minds of the lower cla.s.ses when they discover the share which they nominally, and to all appearance, actually, pay out of their wages in taxation (I believe thirty-five or forty per cent.). This sounds very grievous; but in reality the labourer does not pay it, but his employer. If the workman had not to pay it, his wages would be less by just that sum: compet.i.tion would still reduce them to the lowest rate at which life was possible.
Similarly the lower orders agitated for the repeal of the corn laws,[42] thinking they would be better off if bread were cheaper; never perceiving that as soon as bread was permanently cheaper, wages would permanently fall in precisely that proportion. The corn laws were rightly repealed; not, however, because they directly oppressed the poor, but because they indirectly oppressed them in causing a large quant.i.ty of their labour to be consumed unproductively. So also unnecessary taxation oppresses them, through destruction of capital, but the destiny of the poor depends primarily always on this one question of dueness of wages. Their distress (irrespectively of that caused by sloth, minor error, or crime) arises on the grand scale from the two reacting forces of compet.i.tion and oppression. There is not yet, nor will yet for ages be, any real over-population in the world; but a local over-population, or, more accurately, a degree of population locally unmanageable under existing circ.u.mstances for want of forethought and sufficient machinery, necessarily shows itself by pressure of compet.i.tion; and the taking advantage of this compet.i.tion by the purchaser to obtain their labour unjustly cheap, consummates at once their suffering and his own; for in this (as I believe in every other kind of slavery) the oppressor suffers at last more than the oppressed, and those magnificent lines of Pope, even in all their force, fall short of the truth--
”Yet, to be just to these poor men of pelf, Each does but HATE HIS NEIGHBOUR AS HIMSELF: d.a.m.ned to the mines, an equal fate betides The slave that digs it, and the slave that hides.”
[42] I have to acknowledge an interesting communication on the subject of free trade from Paisley (for a short letter from ”A Well-wisher” at ----, my thanks are yet more due). But the Scottish writer will, I fear, be disagreeably surprised to hear, that I am, and always have been, an utterly fearless and unscrupulous free trader. Seven years ago, speaking of the various signs of infancy in the European mind (_Stones of Venice_, vol. iii. p. 168), I wrote: ”The first principles of commerce were acknowledged by the English parliament only a few months ago, in its free trade measures, and are still so little understood by the million, that _no nation dares to abolish its custom-houses_.”
It will be observed that I do not admit even the idea of reciprocity. Let other nations, if they like, keep their ports shut; every wise nation will throw its own open. It is not the opening them, but a sudden, inconsiderate, and blunderingly experimental manner of opening them, which does harm. If you have been protecting a manufacture for a long series of years, you must not take the protection off in a moment, so as to throw every one of its operatives at once out of employ, any more than you must take all its wrappings off a feeble child at once in cold weather, though the c.u.mber of them may have been radically injuring its health.