IN the economic meaning of the term production, the transporter or exchanger,
or anyone engaged in any subdivision of those functions, is as truly engaged
in production as is the primary extractor or maker. A newspaper-carrier or
the keeper of a news-stand would, for instance, in common speech be styled
a distributor. But in economic terminology he is not a distributor of wealth,
but a producer of wealth. Although his part in the process of producing the
newspaper to the final receiver comes last, not first, he is as much a producer
as the paper-maker or type-founder, the editor, or compositor, or press-man.
For the object of production is the satisfaction of human desires, that is
to say, it is consumption; and this object is not made capable of attainment,
that is to say, production is not really complete, until wealth is brought
to the place where it is to be consumed and put at the disposal of him whose
desire it is to satisfy. — The Science of Political Economy unabridged:
Book III, Chapter 1, The Production of Wealth: The Meaning of Production • abridged:
Part III, Chapter 1, The Production of Wealth: The Meaning of Production
PRODUCTION and distribution are not separate things, but two mentally distinguishable
parts of one thing — the exertion of human labor in the satisfaction of
human desire. Though materially distinguishable, they are as closely related
as the two arms of the syphon. And as it is the outflow of water at the longer
end of the syphon that is the cause of the inflow of water at the shorter end,
so it is that distribution is really the cause of production, not production
the cause of distribution. In the ordinary course, things are not distributed
because they have been produced, but are produced in order that they may be distributed.
Thus interference with the distribution of wealth is interference with the production
of wealth, and shows its effect in lessened production. — The Science
of Political Economy — unabridged
Book IV, Chapter 2, The Distribution of Wealth: The Nature of Distribution • abridged
Part IV, Chapter 2, The Distribution of Wealth: The Nature of Distribution
OUR inquiry into the laws of the distribution of wealth is not an inquiry into
the municipal laws or human enactments which either here and now, or in any other
time and place, prescribe or have prescribed how wealth shall be divided among
men. With them we have no concern, unless it may be for purposes of illustration.
What we have to seek are those laws of the distribution of wealth which belong
to the natural order — laws which are a part of that system or arrangement
which constitutes the social organism or body economic, as distinguished from
the body politic or state, the Greater Leviathan which makes its appearance with
civilization and develops with its advance. These natural laws are in all times
and places the same, and though they may be crossed by human enactment, can never
be annulled or swerved by it. It is more needful to call this to mind, because,
in what have passed for systematic treatises on political economy, the fact that
it is with natural laws, not human laws, that the science of political economy
is concerned, has, in treating of the distribution of wealth, been utterly ignored,
and even flatly denied. — The Science of Political Economy — unabridged:
Part IV, Chapter 1, The Distribution of Wealth: The Meaning of Distribution • abridged:
Part IV, Chapter 1, The Distribution of Wealth: The Meaning of Distribution
THE distinction between the laws of production and the laws of distribution is
not, as is erroneously taught in the scholastic political economy, that the one
set of laws are natural laws and the other human laws. Both sets of laws are
laws of nature. The real distinction is that the natural laws of production
are physical laws and the natural laws of distribution are moral laws. . . .
The moment we turn from a consideration of the laws of the production of wealth
to a consideration of the laws of the distribution of wealth, the idea of ought
or duty becomes primary. All consideration of distribution involves the ethical
principle, is necessarily a consideration of ought or duty — a consideration
in which the idea of right or justice is from the very first involved. — The
Science of Political Economy — unabridged:
Book IV, Chapter 4, The Distribution of Wealth: The Real Difference Between Laws
of Production and of Distribution • abridged:
Part IV, Chapter 3: The Distribution of Wealth: Physical and Moral Laws
Co-operation and Competition
MANY if not most of the writers on political economy have treated exchange as
a part of distribution. On the contrary, it belongs to production. It is by exchange,
and through exchange, that man obtains, and is able to exert, the power of co-operation
which, with the advance of civilization, so enormously increases his ability
to produce wealth. — The Science of Political Economy — unabridged:
Book III, Chapter 11, The Production of Wealth: The Office of Exchange in Production • unabridged
Chapter 9, The Office of Exchange in Production
THEY who, seeing how men are forced by competition to the extreme of human wretchedness,
jump to the conclusion that competition should be abolished, are like those who,
seeing a house burn down, would prohibit the use of fire.
The air we breathe exerts upon every square inch of our bodies a pressure of
fifteen pounds. Were this pressure exerted only on one side, it would pin us
to the ground and crush us to a jelly. But being exerted on all sides, we move
under it with perfect freedom. It not only does not inconvenience us, but it
serves such indispensable purposes that, relieved of its pressure, we should
die.
So it is with competition. Where there exists a class denied all right to the
element necessary to life arid labor, competition is one-sided, and as population
increases must press the lowest class into virtual slavery, and even starvation.
But where the natural rights of all are secured, then competition, acting on
every hand — between employers as between employed, between buyers as between
sellers — can injure no one.
On the contrary it becomes the most simple, most extensive, most elastic, and
most refined system of co-operation that, in the present stage of social development,
and in the domain where it will freely act, we can rely on for the co-ordination
of industry and the economizing of social forces.
In short, competition plays just such a part in the social organism as those
vital impulses which are beneath consciousness do in the bodily organism. With
it, as with them, it is only necessary that it should be free. The line at which
the state should come in is that where free competition becomes impossible — a
line analogous to that which in the individual organism separates the conscious
from the unconscious functions. There is such a line, though extreme socialists
and extreme individualists both ignore it. The extreme individualist is like
the man who would have his hunger provide him food; the extreme socialist is
like the man who would have his conscious will direct his stomach how to digest
it. — Protection or Free Trade, chapter 28 econlib
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