Chapter 19 Chapter Fourteen

consumption and production I If we look at society and its political organization from a perspective completely different from that of all schools of power, not starting from the state and descending to the individual, but starting from the free individual and reaching a free society Sometimes we take the same approach with regard to economic problems.Before we discuss production, trade, taxation, government, etc., we should first study individual needs (desires) and the methods of satisfying these needs. At first glance it may seem that the difference between the two is very small, but in fact such a difference would completely overthrow the imperial economics.

When you open any economist's work, you always first discuss production, that is, analyze the methods currently used to produce wealth, such as the division of labor, factories and their machinery, the accumulation of capital, and so on.All economists from Adam Smith to Marx proceeded in this way.Consumption, that is, the means by which individual wants are met in present society, is only touched upon briefly later in their work, and they explain only how wealth is divided among those who vie with each other for its possession. Perhaps you will say that this is logical.Before the needs are satisfied, it is natural to manufacture the things that are used to satisfy the needs.But must a need be felt before anything can be produced?For example, when people go hunting, herding animals, farming, making tools, and later inventing machinery, don’t they all do it first when they feel the need?Shouldn't it be the study of needs that governs production?Therefore, it is at least logical that we should first consider what the needs are, and then discuss the organization of production to meet these needs.

That's exactly what we're going to do now. Yet if we look at economics from this point of view, the shape of economics changes completely.Economics has ceased to be a mere record of facts and has become a science; and we can define it as "human needs (desires) and the means of satisfying them with the least possible expenditure of human energy research.” Its real name should be social physiology.It really stands side by side with the sciences constituted by the physiology of animals and plants.The so-called physiology of animals and plants is the study of their needs and the most favorable methods of satisfying them.The economics of human society occupies the same place in the social sciences that the physiology of organisms occupies in the biological sciences.

For example, human beings combine to form a society.All feel the need to live in sanitary housing.The savage's hut is no longer enough; he needs a solid dwelling with some comfort.So the following question arises: According to the current productivity of people, can all people have their own houses?Is there something else that hinders them from getting it? And when we ask this question, we know that every family in Europe can have a house exactly as comfortable as a house in England, Belgium, or the town of Purman, or a set of rooms similar to that. .It only takes a given number of days of work for a man to produce a house that is fully furnished, brightly lit, well ventilated, and exceptionally clean.

①Pullmann-City, this is a small town built by the American industrialist G.M. Pullmann (G.M.Pullmann, 1831-1897) near Chicago, Illinois, USA for the workers of his company, with a total of 10,000 residents. Laborers who worked in the Pullman Company's wrought iron, manufacturing locomotives, railway materials, etc.This can be said to be a workers' city. - translator However, nine out of ten Europeans have never lived in a hygienic house, because ordinary people have to work every day to satisfy the ruler's desire, and never have the leisure and money to build the house of their dreams.If the current social situation continues unchanged, they will not be able to get a house, and they will have to live forever in huts that barely fit their knees.

From this it can be seen that our method is the exact opposite of that of the economists.They believe that the so-called law of production must be constant, and they calculate the number of new houses built every year, and use statistics to indicate that because there are too few new houses to meet the needs of everyone, nine out of ten Europeans It is impossible to live in a hut. More so in terms of food.Economists count the benefits from the division of labor one by one; and tell us that after the division of labor some should be employed in agriculture and others in manufactures.They say that the farmer produces so much, and the factory produces so much, and that is how transactions are conducted; and they analyze sales, profit, profit or surplus value, wages, taxes, banking transactions, and so on.

However, we have listened to them for so long, but have gained nothing.If we ask them: "Whether every family can produce enough wheat to feed ten, twenty or even a hundred people every year, why are there still millions of human beings who have no bread?" The hymn to answer us - what division of labor, wages, surplus value, capital, etc., and still reach the same conclusion that "production cannot meet the needs of all people".Even if this conclusion were true, it would not answer our question.What we are asking is: "Can man at all get the bread he needs by his own labor? If not, what hinders him?"

There are now 350 million Europeans. ① They need so much bread every year, so much meat, wine, milk, eggs, butter, etc.They need so many houses and clothes again.This is the minimum of their needs, can they produce all these things?If so, is there still ample leisure for the study of science, art, entertainment--in other words, for the enjoyment of everything other than the absolutely necessary?If the answer to this question is affirmative—what, then, hinders their progress?What method should they use to destroy that obstacle?Does it take a long time to achieve this result?Let them do it quickly!But let us not forget the purpose of production - which is to satisfy the needs of all people.

①See Note ① on page 148. - translator Supposing the most pressing wants of men are not yet satisfied--what methods should we employ to increase the productivity of our labour?Is there no other reason?Maybe it's because production has forgotten its purpose of satisfying people's needs and has gone down a completely wrong path, maybe it's because the organization of production has gone wrong.Although we can prove that this is the case, then we should study how to transform the organization of production so that it can truly meet the needs of all people. This seems to us to be the only legitimate way of doing things, the only way to make economics a science (social physiology).

It is obvious that this science, when it describes the productive enterprises now practiced by civilized nations, Indian communes, or savages, does not differ greatly from the facts now recorded by economists; That is to say, this is a chapter of pure description, which is the same as the chapters of zoology and botany.Yet if these chapters were written to illustrate the economy of energy necessary to satisfy human needs, then, besides their descriptive value, they should be correct and precise.It should point plainly to the appalling waste of human energy under the present social order, and it should demonstrate that human needs will never be satisfied while the present order lasts.

We know that the point of view should now be completely changed.Behind the looms that wove yards of cloth, behind the perforators that pass through steel plates, behind the safes in which dividends are stored, we often see the laborers in production preparing feasts for others that they do not enjoy at all.We should also know that we are on the wrong footing, that the so-called "laws" of value and exchange are but a false account of what is happening now; Both going in a completely different direction. II If we look at it from our point of view, then there is no principle of economics that does not change shape. For example, overproduction is a term we often hear.There is not an economist, bachelor, or candidate for honorary membership in the world who does not admit that economic panics are due to overproduction--that is, more cotton, clothes, clocks, etc., are produced in a given period. More than needed!We have spoken loudly against the greed of capitalists who are irrationally desperate to produce more than the world can consume! However, if we will take a closer look, we will see that these theories are not justified.Is there, in fact, one of the common commodities in the world that is overproduced?If we try to check the important exports of each country one by one, we can know that if all the exports are used to supply and consume the residents of the exporting country, is the quantity still not enough? The wheat that the Russian peasants sent to Europe was not their surplus.In European Russia, when the harvest is extremely plentiful, the wheat and rice produced are only sufficient for the consumption of the people of the country.As a rule, however, the peasants had to go hungry and sell the wheat they really needed because they had to pay rent and taxes. The coal that England sends to all parts of the world is not its surplus, because the coal left for the consumption of the various inland families is no more than three-quarters of a ton per person, or less than a ton.Millions of Britons cannot warm themselves by a fire in winter, or even cook a little.In fact, apart from useless luxuries, there is only one commodity in general use which perhaps exceeds the needs of the community in England, where the export is the highest of all nations—and that is cotton.However, in the eyes of all British residents, more than one-third of them are dressed in rags. This fact is enough to make them wonder if the cotton exported is not enough if it is used to meet the real needs of the people. ? As a rule, exports are not surplus, perhaps at first, but not now.As the saying goes, "He who makes shoes has no shoes." That's true.In the past, this was true for individual employees, and now it is true for citizens.We exported the necessary items.We do this because workers cannot buy what they produce with the wages they earn, and the price of each produced product includes rent, ground rent, profit and interest for capitalists and bankers. Man's ever-increasing desire for happiness and happiness is not only unsatisfied, but the absolute necessities of life are often lacking.Therefore, the so-called "surplus" does not exist, at least not as explained by those economic theorists. Look at it from another point—all economists tell us that there is a long-proven law, namely, "Man produces more than he consumes." He lives on what he labors, And there are still leftovers.Therefore, what a farm produces is enough to supply the consumption of several families. From our point of view, such repeated sentences do not mean much.If this means that each generation must leave something to the next generation, it is true; for example, if a farmer plants a tree, the tree will continue to grow for thirty or forty years or even a hundred years, and his grandson will still leave it. The fruit of this tree can be taken.Or as he clears up a few acres of waste land, he increases the inheritance to posterity.The roads, bridges, canals, his house and his furniture are also great treasures left to posterity. But that's not what they mean.They say that the farmer produces more than he must consume.Rather, they should have said that the state often took a large part of his (that is, the farmer's) production as a tax, the clergy imposed some annual tax on him, and the landowners demanded rent from him, thus creating a class; Class people used to consume what they produced themselves (but remove the part reserved for accidental disasters, filling forests, repairing roads, etc.), but now they have to live a hard life, work, etc. The rest of the produce is taken by the state, priests, landowners, usurers, etc. We therefore feel it right to say that the agricultural laborer, the industrial laborer, etc., does not consume as much as he produces—for they are compelled to sell a greater part of the produce of their labor, and to be content with the little that remains. . We know that if we take the needs of the individual as the starting point of our economics, we will inevitably arrive at communism, that is, an organization in which all needs are satisfied in the most thorough and economical way.On the contrary, if we take the current production method as the starting point and aim at profit and surplus value without asking whether our production is suitable for meeting our needs, then we will inevitably go to the road of capitalism, at least not on the road of collective production. The road to communism—these are but two different forms of the present wage system. Indeed, when we consider the wants of the individual and society, and the means by which they have been satisfied at all stages of human development, we at once feel compelled to abolish random production as it is at present, and to make our efforts become organized.Everyone knows that the unconsumed wealth passed down from generation to generation is occupied by a few people, and it is of no benefit to ordinary people.Moreover, we know that three-quarters of the needs of the whole society cannot be satisfied by these methods, and that the waste of human energies in producing useless things is now even more sinful and harmful. And we know that the most profitable way of employing any article is to first satisfy the most urgent want: in other words, the so-called "use-value" of an article does not lie in mere fancy, as it was so often said before; It's about meeting real needs. Communism, that is to say, is a comprehensive conception of consumption, production, and exchange, and an organization that goes along with it, and is thus the result of the logic of such an understanding of things—in our view , only it is truly scientific. For a society to satisfy the needs of all, and to know how production must be organized to achieve this end, it must at the same time sweep away all prejudices about industry, and the first thing to sweep away is that economists often The theory of the division of labor in propaganda, which I shall discuss in the next chapter.