第140章 PERSONAL AND SOCIAL EFFICIENCY(1)

§1.What light does our human valuation of economic processes throw upon the conditions of individual and social progress? Our examination of industry has shown us the ways in which the actual production and consumption of wealth affect the personal efficiency and welfare of individuals.The organic law of distribution clearly indicates personal efficiency, alike for purposes of economic productivity and for the wider art of life, to depend primarily upon the maintenance of sound relations between the output of economic activities and the income of economic satisfactions.A healthy system of industry will demand from each producer an amount and kind of 'costly' labour accommodated to his natural and acquired powers.By such a distribution of the socially useful work which is not in itself agreeable to its performers, the common economic needs of society are supplied with the smallest aggregate amount of human cost.Similarly, we see how, by a distribution of wealth according to the needs of each member, i.e., according to his 'power' as consumer, the largest aggregate amount of human utility is got out of the wealth distributed.

But this burden of 'costly' work, required of the producer and adjusted to his powers, is not the only work that he can do.The main object of the shorter work-day and the better apportionment of 'costly' labour, as we have already recognised, is to liberate the individual so that he has time and energy for the voluntary performance of 'productive' activities that are 'costless,' interesting and beneficial to his personal life.Some of these voluntary activities will be 'economic' in the sense that they may produce goods or services which have an exchange value.Such is the gardening or the wood-carving which a man may do in his spare time.Though it may bring him a direct return of personal gain and satisfaction that is non-economic, it may also be a supplementary means of income.There is no reason why a man whose hobby is his garden should not be able to exchange some of the fruit and flowers, which it has been a pleasure for for him to grow, for the photographs or the book-bindings on which his neighbours may prefer to spend a portion of their leisure.Most of the spare energy or leisure, however, won for the worker by a fair distribution of 'costly' labour, will, of course, usually be applied to personal employments, to the arts of home life and of society, which, though highly conducive to personal efficiency, lie outside the range of 'economics.' Each person would apply this free time and energy differently, his voluntary work having some natural relation as 'relief' or 'variety' to the sort of 'costly'

or routine labour which earned his livelihood.Thus on this true equalitarian basis there would arise an immense variety of freely active personalities.

Each person would have what may be called a personal standard of production, an orderly application of his productive energies, which, though partly imposed by his status as a member of society bound to do his share in social work, would largely represent his personal tastes, choices and interests, selfish or altruistic, according to his temperament.

§2.Turning to the other side of industry, the distribution of wealth to each according to his needs, i.e., capacities of use, personality would impress itself similarly upon an immense variety of actual standards of consumption, or modes of applying income to the satisfaction of desires.

There is, however, an important distinction to be noted between standards of consumption and of production.Whereas in modern industry the earning of income is normally an individual art, its consumption is normally a family act.While the family, except in some agricultural societies, is very rarely a unit of production, it remains usually a unit of consumption.

It would appear, then, that our human distribution would affect personal efficiency differently upon the two sides of its application.As producer his standard of production, or of use of productive activities, would appear to be directed by a balance between the social requirements of labour and his personal proclivities, whereas on the side of consumption the balance would be between the social requirements and the family.Society must secure for the standard of family comfort such an expenditure as will sustain the working numbers of the family in full economic efficiency, i.e., a proper economy of what the classical economists called 'productive consumption'