Читать книгу Cannibals all! or, Slaves without masters - Fitzhugh George - Страница 6

"The worth of a thing, is just what it bring." The professional man who charges the highest fees is most respected, and he who undercharges stands disgraced. We have a friend who has been, and we believe will continue to be, one of the most useful men in Virginia. He inherited an independent patrimony. He acquired a fine education, and betook himself laboriously to an honorable profession. His success was great, and his charges very high. In a few years he amassed a fortune, and ceased work. We expounded our theory to him. Told him we used to consider him a good man, and quite an example for the rising generation; but that now he stood condemned under our theory. Whilst making his fortune, he daily exchanged about one day of his light labor for thirty days of the farmer, the gardener, the miner, the ditcher, the sewing woman, and other common working people's labor. His capital was but the accumulation of the results of their labor; for common labor creates all capital. Their labor was more necessary and useful than his, and also more honorable and respectable. The more honorable, because they were contented with their situation and their profits, and not seeking to exploitate, by exchanging one day of their labor for many of other people's. To be exploitated, ought to be more creditable than to exploitate. They were "slaves without masters;" the little fish, who were food for all the larger. They stood disgraced, because they would not practice cannibalism; rise in the world by more lucrative, less useful and less laborious pursuits, and live by exploitation rather than labor. He, by practising cannibalism more successfully than others, had acquired fame and fortune. 'Twas the old tune – "Saul has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands." The more scalps we can shew, the more honored we are.

We told him he had made his fortune by the exploitation of skill, and was now living by the still worse exploitation of capital. Whilst working, he made thirty dollars a day – that is, exploitated or appropriated the labor of thirty common working men, and gave in exchange his own labor, intrinsically less worthy, than any one of theirs. But now he was doing worse. He was using his capital as a power to compel others to work for him – for whom he did not work at all. The white laborers who made his income, or interests and dividends, were wholly neglected by him, because he did not know even who they were. He treated his negro slaves much better. It was true, he appropriated or exploitated much of the results of their labor, but he governed them and provided for them, with almost parental affection. Some of them we knew, who feigned to be unfit for labor, he was boarding expensively. Our friend at first ridiculed our theory. But by degrees began to see its truth, and being sensitively conscientious, was disposed to fret whenever the subject was introduced.

One day he met us, with a face beaming with smiles, and said, "I can explain and justify that new theory of yours. This oppression and exaction of skill and capital which we see continually practiced, and which is too natural to man ever to cease, is necessary in order to disperse and diffuse population over the globe. Half the good lands of the world are unappropriated and invite settlement and cultivation. Most men who choose can become proprietors by change of residence. They are too much crowded in many countries, and exploitation that disperses them is a blessing. It will be time enough to discuss your theory of the despotism of skill and capital, when all the world is densely settled, and the men without property can no longer escape from the exactions of those who hold property."

Our friend's theory is certainly ingenious and novel, and goes far to prove that exploitation is not an unmitigated evil. Under exceptional circumstances, its good effects on human happiness and well-being, may greatly over-balance its evil influences. Such, probably, is the case at the North. There, free competition, and the consequent oppressions of skill and capital are fiercer and more active than in any other country. But in forty-eight hours, laborers may escape to the West, and become proprietors. It is a blessing to them to be thus expelled, and a blessing to those who expel them. The emigration to the West rids the East of a surplus population, and enriches it by the interchanges of trade and commerce which the emigration immediately begets. As an exceptional form of society, we begin to think that at the North highly useful. It will continue to be good and useful until the North-west is peopled. Then, and not till then, it will be time for Mr. Greely to build phalansteries, and for Gerrit Smith to divide all the lands. We find that we shall have to defend the North as well as the South against the assaults of the abolitionist – still, we cannot abate a jot or tittle of our theory: "Slavery is the natural and normal condition of society." The situation of the North is abnormal and anomalous. So in desert or mountainous regions, where only small patches of land can be cultivated, the father, wife and children are sufficient for the purpose, and slavery would be superfluous.

In order to make sure that our reader shall comprehend our theory, we will give a long extract from the "Science of Society," by Stephen Pearle Andrews of New York. He is, we think, far the ablest writer on moral science that America has produced. Though an abolitionist, he has not a very bad opinion of slavery. We verily believe, there is not one intelligent abolitionist at the North who does not believe that slavery to capital in free society is worse than Southern negro slavery; but like Mr. Andrews, they are all perfectionists, with a Utopia in full view:

I. Suppose I am a wheelwright in a small village, and the only one of my trade. You are travelling with certain valuables in your carriage, which breaks down opposite my shop. It will take an hour of my time to mend the carriage. You can get no other means of conveyance, and the loss to you, if you fail to arrive at the neighboring town in season for the sailing of a certain vessel, will be $500, which fact you mention to me, in good faith, in order to quicken my exertions. I give one hour of my work and mend the carriage. What am I in equity entitled to charge – what should be the limit of price upon my labor?

Let us apply the different measures, and see how they will operate. If Value is the limit of price, then the price of the hour's labor should be $500. That is the equivalent of the value of the labor to you. If cost is the limit of price, then you should pay me a commodity, or commodities, or a representative in currency, which will procure me commodities having in them one hour's labor equally as hard as the mending of the carriage, without the slightest reference to the degree of benefit which that labor has bestowed on you; or, putting the illustration in money, thus: assuming the twenty-five cents to be an equivalent for an hour's labor of an artizan in that particular trade, then, according to the Cost Principle, I should be justified in asking only twenty-five cents, but according to the Value Principle, I should be justified in asking $500.

The Value Principle, in some form of expression, is, as I have said, the only recognized principle of trade throughout the world. "A thing is worth what it will bring in the market." Still, if I were to charge you $500, or a fourth part of that sum, and, taking advantage of your necessities, force you to pay it, everybody would denounce me, the poor wheelwright, as an extortioner and a scoundrel. Why? Simply because this is an unusual application of the principle. Wheelwrights seldom have a chance to make such a "speculation," and therefore it is not according to the "established usages of trade." Hence its manifest injustice shocks, in such a case, the common sense of right. Meanwhile you, a wealthy merchant, are daily rolling up an immense fortune by doing business upon the same principle which you condemn in the wheelwright, and nobody finds fault. At every scarcity in the market, you immediately raise the price of every article you hold. It is your business to take advantage of the necessities of those with whom you deal, by selling to them according to the Value to them, and not according to the Cost to you. You go further. You, by every means in your power, create those necessities, by buying up particular articles and holding them out of the market until the demand becomes pressing, by circulating false reports of short crops, and by other similar tricks known to the trade. This is the same in principle, as if the wheelwright had first dug the rut in which your carriage upset, and then charged you the $500.

Yet hitherto no one has thought of seriously questioning the principle, namely, that "Value is the limit of price," or, in other words, that "it is right to take for a thing what it is worth." It is upon this principle or maxim, that all honorable trade professes now to be conducted, until instances arise in which its oppressive operation is so glaring and repugnant to the moral sense of mankind, that those who carry it out are denounced as rogues and cheats. In this manner a sort of conventional limit is placed upon the application of a principle which is equally the principle of every swindling transaction, and of what is called legitimate commerce. The discovery has not hitherto been made, that the principle itself is essentially vicious, and that in its infinite and all-pervading variety of applications, this vicious principle is the source of the injustice, inequality of condition, and frightful pauperism and wretchedness which characterize the existing state of our so-called civilization. Still less has the discovery been made, that there is another simple principle of traffic which, once understood and applied in practice, will effectually rectify all those monstrous evils, and introduce into human society the reign of absolute equity in all property relations, while it will lay the foundations of universal harmony in the social and moral relations as well.

II. Suppose it costs me ten minutes' labor to concoct a pill which will save your life when nothing else will; and suppose, at the same time, to render the case simple, that the knowledge of the ingredients came to me by accident, without labor or cost. It is clear that your life is worth to you more than your fortune. Am I, then, entitled to demand of you for the nostrum the whole of your property, more or less? Clearly so, if it is right to take for a thing what it is worth, which is theoretically the highest ethics of trade.

Forced, on the one hand, by the impossibility, existing in the nature of things, of ascertaining and measuring positive values, or of determining, in other words, what a thing is really worth, and rendered partially conscious by the obvious hardship and injustice of every unusual or extreme application of the principle that it is either no rule or a bad one, and not guided by the knowledge of any true principle out of the labyrinth of conflicting rights into which the false principle conducts, the world has practically abandoned the attempt to combine Equity with Commerce, and lowered its standard of morality to the inverse statement of the formula, namely, that, "A thing is worth what it will bring;" or, in other words, that it is fitting and proper to take for a thing when sold whatever can be got for it. This, then, is what is denominated the Market Value of an article, as distinguished from its actual value. Without being more equitable as a measure of price, it certainly has a great practical advantage over the more decent theoretical statement, in the fact that it is possible to ascertain by experiment how much you can force people, through their necessities, to give. The principle, in this form, measures the price by the degree of want on the part of the purchaser, that is, by what he supposes will prove to be the value or benefit to him of the commodity purchased, in comparison with that of the one with which he parts in the transaction. Hence it becomes immediately and continually the interest of the seller to place the purchaser in a condition of as much want as possible; "to corner" him, as the phrase is in Wall street, and force him to buy at the dearest rate. If he is unable to increase his actual necessity, he resorts to every means of creating an imaginary want by false praises bestowed upon the qualities and uses of his goods. Hence the usages of forestalling the market, of confusing the public knowledge of Supply and Demand, of advertising and puffing worthless commodities, and the like, which constitute the existing commercial system – a system which, in our age, is ripening into putrefaction, and coming to offend the nostrils of good taste no less than the innate sense of right, which, dreadfully vitiating as it is, it has failed wholly to extinguish.

The Value Principle in this form, as in the other, is therefore felt, without being distinctly understood, to be essentially diabolical, and hence it undergoes again a kind of sentimental modification wherever the sentiment for honesty is most potent. This last and highest expression of the doctrine of honesty, as now known in the world, may be stated in the form of the hortatory precept, "Don't be too bad," or, "Don't gouge too deep." No Political Economist, Financier, Moralist, or Religionist, has any more definite standard of right in commercial transactions than that. It is not too much to affirm that neither Political Economist, Financier, Moralist, nor Religionist knows at this day, nor ever has known, what it is to be honest. The religious teacher, who exhorts his hearers from Sabbath to Sabbath to be fair in their dealings with each other and with the outside world, does not know, and could not for his life tell, how much he is, in fair dealing or equity, bound to pay his washerwoman or his housekeeper for any service whatever which they may render. The sentiment of honesty exists, but the science of honesty is wanting. The sentiment is first in order. The science must be an outgrowth, a consequential development of the sentiment. The precepts of Christian Morality deal properly with that which is the soul of the other, leaving to intellectual investigation the discovery of its scientific complement.

It follows from what has been said, that the Value Principle is the commercial embodiment of the essential element of conquest and war – war transferred from the battle-field to the counter – none the less opposed, however, to the spirit of Christian Morality, or the sentiment of human brotherhood. In bodily conflict, the physically strong conquer and subject the physically weak. In the conflict of trade, the intellectually astute and powerful conquer and subject those who are intellectually feeble, or whose intellectual development is not of the precise kind to fit them for the conflict of wits in the matter of trade. With the progress of civilization and development we have ceased to think that superior physical strength gives the right of conquest and subjugation. We have graduated, in idea, out of the period of physical dominion. We remain, however, as yet in the period of intellectual conquest or plunder. It has not been questioned hitherto, as a general proposition, that the man who has superior intellectual endowments to others, has a right resulting therefrom to profit thereby at the cost of others. In the extreme applications of the admission only is the conclusion ever denied. In the whole field of what are denominated the legitimate operations of trade, there is no other law recognized than the relative "smartness" or shrewdness of the parties, modified at most by the sentimental precept stated above.

The intrinsic wrongfulness of the principal axioms and practice of existing commerce will appear to every reflecting mind from the preceding analysis. It will be proper, however, before dismissing the consideration of the Value Principle, to trace out a little more in detail some of its specific results.

The principle itself being essentially iniquitous, all the fruits of the principle are necessarily pernicious.

Among the consequences which flow from it are the following:

I. It renders falsehood and hypocrisy a necessary concomitant of trade. Where the object is to buy cheap and sell dear, the parties find their interest in mutual deception. It is taught, in theory, that "honesty is the best policy," in the long run; but in practice the merchant discovers speedily that he must starve if he acts upon the precept – in the short run. Honesty – even as much honesty as can be arrived at – is not the best policy under the present unscientific system of commerce; if by the best policy is meant that which tends to success in business. Professional merchants are sharp to distinguish their true policy for that end, and they do not find it in a full exposition of the truth. Intelligent merchants know the fact well, and conscientious merchants deplore it; but they see no remedy. The theory of trade taught to innocent youths in the retired family, or the Sunday school, would ruin any clerk, if adhered to behind the counter, in a fortnight. Hence it is uniformly abandoned, and a new system of morality acquired the moment a practical application is to be made of the instruction. A frank disclosure, by the merchant, of all the secret advantages in his possession, would destroy his reputation for sagacity as effectually as it would that of the gambler among his associates. Both commerce and gambling, as professions, are systems of strategy. It is the business of both parties to a trade to over-reach each other – a fact which finds its unblushing announcement in the maxim of the Common Law, Caveat emptor, (let the purchaser take care.)

II. It makes the rich richer and the poor poorer.– Trade being, under this system, the intellectual correspondence to the occupation of the cut-throat or conqueror under the reign of physical force – the stronger consequently accumulating more than his share at the cost of the destruction of the weaker – the consequence of the principle is that the occupation of trade, for those who possess intellectual superiority, with other favorable conditions, enables them to accumulate more than their share of wealth, while it reduces those whose intellectual development – of the precise kind requisite for this species of contest – and whose material conditions are less favorable – to wretchedness and poverty.

III. It creates trade for trade's sake, and augments the number of non-producers, whose support is chargeable upon Labor. As trade under the operation of this principle, offers the temptation of illicit gains and rapid wealth at the expense of others, it creates trade where there is no necessity for trade – not as a beneficent interchange of commodities between producers and consumers, but as a means of speculation. Hence thousands are withdrawn from actual production and thrust unnecessarily into the business of exchanging, mutually devouring each other by competition, and drawing their subsistence and their wealth from the producing classes, without rendering any equivalent service. Hence the interminable range of intermediates between the producer and consumer, the total defeat of organization and economy in the distribution of products, and the intolerable burden of the unproductive classes upon labor, together with a host of the frightful results of pauperism and crime.

IV. It degrades the dignity of Labor. Inasmuch as trade, under the operation of this principle, is more profitable, or at any rate is liable to be, promises to be, and in a portion of cases is more profitable than productive labor, it follows that the road to wealth and social distinction lies in that direction. Hence "Commerce is King," Hence, again, productive labor is depreciated and contemned. It holds the same relation to commerce in this age – under the reign of intellectual superioritythat commerce itself held a few generations since – under the reign of physical force – to military achievement, personal or hereditary. Thus the degradation of labor, and all the innumerable evils which follow in its train, in our existing civilization, find their efficient cause in this same false principle of exchanging products. The next stage of progress will be the inauguration of Equity – equality in the results of every species of industry according to burdens, and the consequent accession of labor to the highest rank of human estimation. Commerce will then sink to a mere brokerage, paid, like any other species of labor, according to its repugnance, as the army is now sinking to a mere police force. It will be reduced to the simplest and most direct methods of exchange, and made to be the merest servant of production, which will come, in its turn, to be regarded as conferring the only true patents of nobility.

V. It prevents the possibility of a scientific Adjustment of Supply to Demand. It has been already shown that speculation is the cause why there has never been, and cannot now be any scientific Adaptation of Supply to Demand. It has also been partially shown, at various points, that speculation, or trading in chances and fluctuations in the market has its root in the Value Principle, and that the Cost Principle extinguishes speculation. It will be proper, however, in this connection to define exactly the limits of speculation, and to point out more specifically how the Value Principle creates it, and how the Cost Principle extinguishes it.

By speculation is meant, in the ordinary language of trade, risky and unusual enterprises entered upon for the sake of more than ordinary profits, and in that sense there is attached to it, among merchants, a slight shade of imputation of dishonesty or disreputable conduct. As we are seeking now, however, to employ language in an exact and scientific way, we must find a more precise definition of the term. The line between ordinary and more than ordinary profits is too vague for a scientific treatise. At one extremity of the long succession of chance-dealing and advantage-taking transactions stands gambling, which is denounced by the common verdict of mankind as merely a more specious form of robbery. It holds the same relation to robbery itself that duelling holds to murder. Where is the other end of this succession? At what point does a man begin to take an undue advantage of his fellow man in a commercial transaction? It clearly appears, from all that has been shown, that he does so from the moment that he receives from him more than an exact equivalent of cost. But it is the constant endeavor of every trader, upon any other than the Cost Principle, to do that. The business of the merchant is profit-making. Profit signifies, etymologically, something made over and above, that is, something beyond an equivalent, or, in its simplest expression, something for nothing.

It is clear, then, that there is no difference between profit-making in its mildest form, speculation in its opprobrious sense as the middle term, and gambling as the ultimate, except in degree. There is simply the bad gradation of rank which there is between the slaveholder, the driver on the slave plantation, and the slave dealer, or between the man of pleasure, the harlot, and the pimp.

The philanthropy of the age is moving heaven and earth to the overthrow of the institution of slavery. But slavery has no scientific definition. It is thought to consist in the feature of chattelism; but an ingenious lawyer would run his pen through every statute upon slavery in existence, and expunge that fiction of the law, and yet leave slavery, for all practical purposes, precisely what it is now. It needs only to appropriate the services of the man by operation of law, instead of the man himself. The only distinction, then, left between his condition and that of the laborer who is robbed by the operation of a false commercial principle, would be in the fact of the oppression being more tangible and undisguisedly degrading to his manhood.

If, in any transaction, I get from you some portion of your earnings without an equivalent, I begin to make you my slave – to confiscate you to my uses; if I get a larger portion of your services without an equivalent, I make you still further my slave; and, finally, if I obtain the whole of your services without an equivalent – except the means of keeping you in working condition for my own sake, I make you completely my slave. Slavery is merely one development of a general system of human oppression, for which we have no comprehensive term in English, but which the French Socialists denominate exploitation– the abstraction, directly or indirectly, from the working classes of the fruits of their labor. In the case of the slave, the instrument of that abstraction is force and legal enactments. In the case of the laborer, generally, it is speculation in the large sense, or profit-making. The slaveholder will be found, therefore, upon a scientific analysis, to hold the same relation to the trader which the freebooter holds to the blackleg. It is a question of taste which to admire most, the dare-devil boldness of the one, or the oily and intriguing propensities and performances of the other.