Ethics · John Dewey
UNSETTLED PROBLEMS IN THE ECONOMIC ORDER (CONTINUED)
Sec. 4. THE THEORY OF PUBLIC AGENCY AND CONTROL The various theories of public direction, including socialism in the technical sense, are primarily interested in the just distribution of goods. It is not so much "How many goods can be produced?" as "Who is to get them?" Individualism was chiefly concerned in increasing public wealth, assuming (in the case of the democratic individualists) that all would get the benefit. Socialism is more concerned that the producing persons shall not be sacrificed, and that each member shall benefit by the result. Public agency and control might assert itself (1) as a method of production, (2) as a method of distribution of goods and returns, (3) as a method of property. It is important to note at the outset that all civilized peoples have some degree of social direction in each of these fields. (1) Practically all peoples collect taxes, coin money, carry mails, protect life and property, and supply such elementary demands as those for water and drainage, through State or municipal agency instead of leaving it to private initiative. And in every one of the instances the work was formerly done privately. (2) Under distribution, all progressive peoples give education through the State. Further, the benefits of the mail service are distributed not in proportion to receipts, but on other principles based on social welfare.
The advantage claimed for society as an agent of production is not primarily greater efficiency, although it is claimed that the present method is enormously wasteful except where there already is private monopoly. Nor is it in the social service rendered by providing great variety of goods, and of the kinds most wanted. It is rather (1) that in the case of public service enterprises, such as transportation or lighting, fairness to the various shippers, localities, and other users can be secured only through public control or operation. These services are as indispensable to modern life as air or navigation. Only by public agency can discrimination be avoided. (2) That the prizes to be gained are here so enormous that bribery and corruption are inevitable under private management. (3) That the profits arising from the growth of the community belong to the community, and can only be secured if the community owns and operates such agencies of public service as transportation, communication, and in cities water supply and lighting. (4) That the method of individualistic production is reckless of child life and in general of the health of workmen. Great Britain is already fearing a deterioration in physical stature and capacity. (5) The motive of self-interest, relied upon and fostered by individualism, is anti-social. How can morality be expected to improve when the fundamental agency and method of business and industry is contradictory to morality? (6) More complete socialism maintains that, under modern capitalism, a disproportionate share is sure to fall to the capitalist, and, more than this, to the great capitalist. Modern production is complex and expensive. It requires an enormous plant; the capitalist, not the workman, has the tools, and can therefore charge what he pleases. The small capitalist cannot undertake competition with the great capitalist, for the latter can undersell him until he drives him from business, and can then recoup himself by greater gains. Hence the only way to secure fair distribution is through social ownership of the tools and materials for production.
It demoralizes not individuals only, but the standards of society. As to (3) there is no doubt as to the rights of the matter. Gains due to social growth should be socially shared, not appropriated by a few. The only question is as to the best method of securing these gains. European States and cities have gone much farther than the United States along the line of public agency, and, while there is still dispute as to the balance of advantage in certain cases, there is a growing sentiment that the more intelligent and upright the community, the more it can wisely undertake. The moral principle is that the public must have its due. Whether it pays certain agents a salary as its own officials, or a commission in the form of a moderate dividend, is not so important.[240] But to pay a man or a small group of promoters a million dollars to supply water or lighting or transportation, seems no more moral than to pay such a salary to a mayor or counsel or superintendent of schools. Taxpayers would probably denounce such salaries as robbery. Such franchises as have for the most part been given in American cities have been licenses to collect high taxes from the citizens for the benefit of a few, and do not differ in principle from paying excessive salaries, except as the element of risk enters. What is needed at present in the United States is a larger number of experiments in various methods of agency to see which type results in least corruption, fairest distribution, and best service.
For a society pretending to be moral to permit little children to be used up or stunted under any plea of cheap production or support of parents, is not above the moral level of those peoples which practice infanticide to prevent economic stress. Indeed, in the case of a country which boasts of its wealth, there is far less justification than for the savage. In the case of provision against accident due to dangerous machinery, the ethical principle is also clear. To throw all the burden of the accidents incident to modern production upon the families of the laborers is entirely unjust. To impose it upon the conscientious manufacturer is no better, for it places him at a disadvantage. This is a necessary--except so far as it can be minimized by safety devices--part of the modern machine process. It ought to be paid for either by all manufacturers, who would then shift it to the consumers in the price of the goods, or by the public as a whole in some form of insurance. European countries have gone much farther than the United States in this direction. The theory that the employer is exempt if a fellow workman contributes in any way to the accident has been applied in the United States in such a way as to free employers, and thus the public, from any share in the burden of a large part of accidents--except as these entail poverty and bring the victim and his family into the dependent class.
Moreover, it is only by public action that fair conditions of labor can be secured in many trades and under many employers. For the single workman has not the slightest chance to make conditions, and the union has no effective means to support its position unless it represents a highly skilled trade and controls completely the supply of labor. It may go without saying that violence is wrong. But it is often ignored that for a _prosperous society to leave the laborer no remedy but violence for an intolerable condition is just as wrong_. =Motives.=--(5) On the question of motives the collectivist theory is probably over-sanguine as to the gain to be effected by external means. It is difficult to believe that any change in methods would eliminate selfishness. There is abundant exercise of selfishness in political democracy, and even in families. Further, if it should be settled on other grounds that competition in certain cases performs a social service, it would then be possible for a man to compete with a desire to serve the public, just as truly as it would be possible to compete for selfish motives. That a process causes pain incidentally does not necessarily pervert the motive of the surgeon or parent. It does, of course, throw the burden of proof upon the advocate of the process. Rivalry need not mean enmity if the rivals are on an equal footing and play fair.
That sometimes capital exploits labor is merely to say that the buyer sometimes gets the advantage. That capital usually has the advantage in its greater resources may be admitted, but that it _invariably must_ seems an unwarranted deduction. The multiplication of wants widens continually the number of occupations and thus increases the competition for the service of the more skilled. In such cases some, at least, of the sellers should be in a position to make a fair bargain. Indeed, recent socialists do not advocate any such complete assumption by society of all production as is presented in some of the socialistic Utopias. Their principle is "that the State must undertake the production and distribution of social wealth wherever private enterprise is dangerous or less efficient than public enterprise."[242] It is for those who do not believe in public control to prove that in the great enterprises for the production of the necessaries of life, for transportation, banking, mining, and the like, private enterprise is not dangerous. The conduct of many--not all--of these enterprises in recent years, not only in their economic aspects, but in their recklessness of human life, health, and morality, is what makes socialism a practical question. If it is adopted, it will not be for any academic or _a priori_ reasons. It will be because private enterprise fails to serve the public, and its injustice becomes intolerable. If business enterprise, as sometimes threatens, seeks to subordinate political and social institutions, including legislatures and courts, to economic interests, the choice must be between public control and public ownership. And if, whether by the inherent nature of legal doctrine and procedure, or by the superior shrewdness of capital in evading regulation, control is made to appear ineffective, the social conscience will demand ownership. To subordinate the State to commercial interests is as immoral as to make the economic interest supreme in the individual.
As regards the relations between capital and labor, it argues an undeveloped state of society that we have no machinery for determining controversy as to what is a fair wage. In the long run, and on the whole, supply and demand may give an approximately fair adjustment, but our present method of fighting it out in doubtful cases is barbaric. The issue is decided often by violence or the no less unmoral motive of pressing want, instead of by the moral test of what is fair. And the great third interest, the consumer, or the public at large, is not represented at all. New Zealand, Canada, and some of the states in the United States have made beginnings. The President undoubtedly commanded general support in his position during the coal strike, when he maintained that the public was morally bound to take some part in the struggle. Must not society be lacking in resources if its only resource is to permit exploitation, on the one hand, or carry on all industry and business itself, upon the other? To lose the flexibility, variety, and keenness of interest secured by individual or associated enterprise, would certainly be an evil. Early business was conducted largely by kinship organizations. The pendulum has doubtless reached the other extreme in turning over to groups, organized on a purely commercial basis, operations that could be more equitably managed by city or state agency. Most favor public agency in the case of schools. Railroads, gas companies, and other monopolies are still subject to controversy. But that an ideally organized society should permit associations and grouping of a great many kinds as agencies for carrying on its work seems a platform not to be abandoned until proved hopeless.
Socialism as theory of distribution does not necessarily imply public operation of production. By graded taxation the proceeds of production might be taken by society and either held, used, or distributed on some supposedly more equitable basis. To give point to any inquiry as to the justice of a proposed distribution, it would be desirable to know what is the present distribution. Unfortunately, no figures are accepted by all students. Spahr's _Present Distribution of Wealth in the United States_ estimates that seven-eighths of the families in the United States own only one-eighth of the wealth, and that one per cent. own more than the remaining ninety-nine per cent. This has been challenged, but any estimate made by the economists shows such enormous disproportion as to make it incredible that the present distribution can be regarded as just on any definition of justice other than "according to the principles of contract and competition." Suppose, then, the question is raised, How can we make a just distribution? =Criteria Proposed.=--The simplest, and at the same time most mechanical and abstract, method would be to divide all goods equally. This would be to ignore all moral and other differences, as indeed is practically done in the suffrage. If all men are accounted equal in the State, why not in wealth? It may be admitted that, if society were to distribute, it would have to do it on some system which could be objectively administered. To divide wealth according to merit, or according to efforts, or according to needs, would be a far more moral method. But it is difficult to see how, in the case of material goods or their money equivalent, such a division could be made by any being not omniscient as well as absolutely just. If we are to consider distribution as administered by society, we seem reduced to the alternative of the present system or a system of equality.
(3) It measures desert by service rendered without taking any account of motive or even of intent. The captain of industry performs an important service to society; therefore, it is argued, he should be rewarded accordingly, quite irrespective of the question whether he was aiming at social welfare or at selfish gain. It may even be plausibly argued that to reward men financially for good motives would be bribing men to be honest. It is true that financial rewards will not make good citizens, but this is irrelevant. The point is that whatever other reasons,--expediency, difficulty of estimating intent and motive,--may be urged for abstracting from everything but the result, the one reason which cannot be urged is, such abstraction is just. A person has rights only because he is a social person. But to call a man a social person because he incidentally produces useful results, is to say that purpose and will are negligible elements of personality.[243] =2. Equal Division.=--The system of equal division is liable to the following criticism. In their economic services men are not equal. They are unequal not merely in talent and ability; not merely in the value of their work; they are unequal in their disposition. To treat idle and industrious, useless and useful, slow and quick alike is not equality, but inequality. It is to be guilty of as palpable an abstraction as to say that all men are equally free because they are not subject to physical constraint. Real equality will try to treat like conditions alike, and unlike character, efforts, or services differently.
There is, moreover, a psychological objection which would weigh against an equal division even if such were regarded as just. The average man perhaps prefers an economic order in which there are prizes and blanks to an order in which every man draws out the same. He prefers an exciting game to a sure but tame return of his investment. He may call for a "square deal," but we must remember that a "square deal" in the great American game from which the metaphor is taken is not designed to make the game less one of chance. It is designed to give full scope to luck and nerve. A game in which every player was sure to win, but also sure to win just what he had put in, would be equitable, but it would not be a game. An equal distribution might rob life of its excitement and its passion. Possibly the very strain of the process develops some elements of character which it would be unfortunate to lose. Is there no alternative possible for society except an equality which is external only, and therefore unequal, or an inequality which charges a man with all the accrued benefits or evils of his ancestry? Must we either recognize no moral differences in men, or else be more merciless than the old orthodox doctrine of hereditary or imputed guilt? The theological doctrine merely made a man suffer for his ancestors' sins; the doctrine of unlimited individualism would damn him not only for his ancestors' sins and defects, but for the injustice suffered by his ancestors at the hands of others. The analysis of the sources of a man's ability may give a clue to a third possibility, and it is along this line that the social conscience of to-day is feeling its way.
Not a _free_ hand, for physical and mental incapacity limit the amount of social accumulation which can be communicated, but we are only beginning to appreciate how much of the deficiency formerly acquiesced in as hopeless may be prevented or remedied by proper food, hygiene, and medical care. _Completely_ equal education, likewise, cannot be given; not in kind, for not all children have like interests and society does not want to train all for the same task; nor in quantity, for some will have neither the ability nor the disposition to do the more advanced work. But as, little by little, labor becomes in larger degree scientific, the ratio of opportunities for better trained men will increase, and as education becomes less exclusively academic, and more an active preparation for all kinds of work, the interests of larger and larger numbers of children will be awakened. Such a programme as this is one of the meanings of the phrase "_equal opportunity_," which voices the demand widely felt for some larger conception of economic and social justice than now obtains. It would make formal freedom, formal "equality" before the law, less an empty mockery by giving to every child some of the power and knowledge which are the necessary conditions of real freedom.
Society has already gone a long way along the line of giving an equal share in education. It is moving rapidly toward broader conceptions of education for all occupations--farming, mechanics, arts, trade, business--as well as for the "learned professions." It is making a beginning toward giving children (see the Report of the New York Tenement House Commission) a chance to be born and grow up with at least a living minimum of light and air. Libraries and dispensaries and public health officials are bringing the science and literature of the world in increasing measure into the lives of all. When by the better organization of the courts the poor man has real, and not merely formal equality before the law, and thereby justice itself is made more accessible to all, another long step will be taken toward a juster order. How far society can go is yet to be solved. But is it not at least a working hypothesis for experiment, that society should try to give to all its members the gains due to the social progress of the past? How far the maxim of equal opportunity will logically lead it is impossible to say. Fortunately, the moral problem is to work out new ideals, not merely to administer old ones. Other possibilities of larger justice are noticed under Sec. 8 below.
Sec. 7. OWNERSHIP AND USE OF PROPERTY The public wealth may be controlled and used in four ways: It may be (1) Privately owned and used; (2) Privately owned and publicly used; (3) Publicly held, but privately used; (4) Publicly held and commonly used. The individualist would have all wealth, or as much as possible, under one of the first two forms. The tendency in the United States until very recently has been to divest the public of all ownership. The socialist, while favoring private ownership and use of the more strictly personal articles, favors the public holding of much which is now privately owned--notably the land, or the instruments of production--as versus the holding of these by private or corporate persons. Or, again, it may be maintained that while individuals should be allowed to accumulate as much property as they can, they should not be allowed to transmit it entirely to their heirs.
A more serious objection to the individualistic policy is the enormous power allowed to the holders of great properties. It has been estimated that a trust fund recently created for two grandchildren will exceed five billion dollars when handed over. It is easily possible that some of the private fortunes now held may, if undisturbed, amount to far more than the above within another generation. Moreover, the power of such a fortune is not limited to its own absolute purchasing value. By the presence of its owners upon directorates of industrial, transportation, banking, and insurance corporations the resources of many other owners are controlled. A pressure may be exerted upon political affairs compared with which actual contributions to campaign funds are of slight importance. The older theory in America was that the injury to the private character of the owners of wealth would negative the possible dangers to the public, since possession of large wealth would lead to relaxation of energy, or even to dissipation. It was assumed that the father acquired the fortune, the son spent it, and thus scattered it among the many, and the grandson began again at the bottom of the ladder. Now that this theory is no longer tenable, society will be obliged to ask how much power may safely be left to any individual.
It must be recognized that the present management of such natural resources as forests under the regime of private property has been extremely wasteful and threatens serious injury to the United States. Individual owners cannot be expected to consider the welfare of the country at large, or of future generations; hence the water power is impaired and the timber supply of the future threatened. Finally it must be remembered that many of the present evils and inequities in ownership are not due necessarily to a system of private property, but rather to special privileges possessed by classes of individuals. These may be survivals of past conquests of arms as in Europe, or derived by special legislation, or due to a perfectly unconscious attitude of public morals which carries over to a new situation the customs of an early day. Mill's famous indictment of present conditions is not in all respects so applicable to America as to the older countries of Europe, but it has too much truth to be omitted in any ethical consideration.
"On the fundamental question of the relation of public policy to private property rights the [Supreme] Court has abandoned the individualist views with which the founders of the constitution were imbued; and in its doctrines of the public use and the police power it has distinctly accepted what may be termed, in the literal and proper sense of the word, the socialist view. In so doing, it has unquestionably expressed the dominant opinion of the American people. The American people does not accept the collectivist theory; it believes in private property; but it recognizes that rights of property must yield, in cases of conflict, to the superior rights of society at large." If some of the means set forth above for securing juster distribution were adopted, the first step toward Mill's demand[246] would be met. If the community should reap the return for its own growth, if taxation should be so arranged as to fall most heavily on those best able to pay rather than on those who are most honest or least able to evade, it would seem rational to hold that society will find a way to continue the four forms of control now existing, making such shifts as changing conditions require. Some of these shiftings are already evident and give promise of greater justice without loss of any of the benefits accruing from private property.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.