Читать книгу A Critical Examination of Socialism - W. H. Mallock - Страница 9

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[1] When I insisted on this distinction between "labour" and "ability" in America, innumerable critics met me with two objections. One of these, as stated by a writer who confessed himself otherwise in entire agreement with me, was this: "It is impossible, as Mr. Mallock attempts to do, to draw a hard-and-fast line between mental effort and muscular." No such attempt is made. As I pointed out in one of my speeches, many kinds of "labour" (e.g. that of the great painter) exhibit higher mentality than do many kinds of ability. Further, I pointed out that, in a technical sense, the same effort may be either an effort of labour or ability, according to its application. Thus, if a singer sings to an audience, his effort is technically "labour," because it ends with the single task; but if he sings so as to produce a gramophone record, his effort is an act of "ability," for he influences the products of other men, by whom the records are multiplied. The second objection was expressed by one of my critics thus: "I say that all productive effort is labour. … I dare you to tell any one of these genii that they are not labourers." Another critic said: "Just as 'land' in economics means all the forces of nature, so does 'labour' mean all the forces of man. Why, then, speak of ability?" These criticisms are purely verbal. If we like to take "labour" as a collective name for all forms of human effort, we can of course do so; but in that case we must find other differential names for the different forces of effort individually. To give them all the same name is not to explain them. It is to tie them all up in a parcel.

[2] If this fact requires any further exemplification, we can find one on a large scale in the pages of Marx himself. According to him the first appreciable capitalistic movement—the first leaping of the modern system in the womb—took place in the English cloth trade about four hundred years ago. Now, if capitalism were merely, as according to Marx it is, a passive monopoly by some men of implements which have been produced by others, the pioneers of capitalism in the reign of Henry VIII. would have got into their possession all the hand-looms then in use; they would have taken their toll in kind from all whom they allowed to use them; and there the matter would have ended. The looms of to-day would be the looms of four hundred years ago. The passive ownership of machines does nothing to improve their construction. If a gang of ignorant thieves could steal all the watches in America, and then let them out to the public at so much a month or year, this would not convert the three-dollar watches into chronometers. And how little mere labour, or the experience gained by labour, tends to improve the implements which the labourer uses is shown by the fact that the looms which wove Anne Boleyn's petticoats were practically the same as the looms which wove those of Semiramis.