Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays
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Thomas H. Huxley >> Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays
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* It remains to be seen whether the plants which have no
chlorophyll, and flourish in darkness, such as the Fungi, can
live upon purely mineral food.
We are compact of dust and air; from that we set out, and to that
complexion must we come at last. The plant either directly, or by some
animal intermediary, lends us the capital which enables us to carry on
the business of life, as we flit through the upper world, from the one
term of our journey to the other. Popularly, no doubt, it is
permissible to speak of the soil as a "producer," just as we may talk
of the daily movement of the sun. But, as I have elsewhere remarked,
propositions which are to bear any deductive strain that may be put
upon them must run the risk of [157] seeming pedantic, rather than
that of being inaccurate. And the statement that land, in the sense of
cultivable soil, is a producer, or even one of the essentials of
economic production, is anything but accurate. The process of
water-culture, in which a plant is not "planted" in any soil, but is
merely supported in water containing in solution the mineral
ingredients essential to that plant, is now thoroughly understood;
and, if it were worth while, a crop yielding abundant food-stuffs
could be raised on an acre of fresh water, no less than on an acre of
dry land. In the Arctic regions, again, land has nothing to do with
"production" in the social economy of the Esquimaux, who live on seals
and other marine animals; and might, like Proteus, shepherd the flocks
of Poseidon if they had a mind for pastoral life. But the seals and
the bears are dependent on other inhabitants of the sea, until,
somewhere in the series, we come to the minute green plants which
float in the ocean, and are the real "producers" by which the whole of
its vast animal population is supported.* Thus, when we find set forth
as an "absolute" [158] truth the statement that the essential factors
in economic production are land, capital and labour--when this is
offered as an axiom whence all sorts of other important truths may be
deduced--it is needful to remember that the assertion is true only
with a qualification. Undoubtedly "vital capital" is essential; for,
as we have seen, no human work can be done unless it exists, not even
that internal work of the body which is necessary to passive life.
But, with respect to labour (that is, human labour) I hope to have
left no doubt on the reader's mind that, in regard to production, the
importance of human labour may be so small as to be almost a vanishing
quantity. Moreover, it is certain that there is no approximation to a
fixed ratio between the expenditure of labour and the production of
that vital capital which is the foundation of all wealth. For, suppose
that we introduce into our suppositious pastoral paradise beasts of
prey and rival shepherds, the amount of labour thrown upon the
sheep-owner may increase almost indefinitely, and its importance as a
condition of production may be enormously augmented, while the
quantity of produce remains stationary. Compare for a moment the
unimportance of the shepherd's labour, under the circumstances first
defined, with its indispensability in countries in which the water for
the sheep has to be drawn from deep [159] wells, or in which the flock
has to be defended from wolves or from human depredators. As to land,
it has been shown that, except as affording mere room and standing
ground, the importance of land, great as it may be, is secondary. The
one thing needful for economic production is the green plant, as the
sole producer of vital capital from natural inorganic bodies. Men
might exist without labour (in the ordinary sense) and without land;
without plants they must inevitably perish.
* In some remarkable passages of the Botany of Sir James Ross's
Antarctic voyage, which took place half a century ago, Sir
Joseph Hooker demonstrated the dependence of the animal life of
the sea upon the minute, indeed microscopic, plants which float
in it: a marvellous example of what may be done by
water-culture. One might indulge in dreams of cultivating and
improving diatoms, until the domesticated bore the same
relation to the wild forms, as cauliflowers to the primitive
Brassica oleracea, without passing beyond the limits of fair
scientific speculation.
That which is true of the purely pastoral condition is a fortiori true
of the purely agricultural* condition, in which the existence of the
cultivator is directly dependent on the production of vital capital by
the plants which he cultivates. Here, again, the condition precedent
of the work of each year is vital capital. Suppose that a man lives
exclusively upon the plants which he cultivates. It is obvious that he
must have food-stuffs to live upon, while he prepares the soil for
sowing and throughout the period which elapses between this and
harvest. These food-stuffs must be yielded by the stock remaining over
from former crops. The result is the same as before--the pre-existence
of vital capital is the necessary antecedent of labour. Moreover, the
amount of labour which contributes, as an accessory condition, to the
production [160] of the crop varies as widely in the case of
plant-raising as in that of cattle-raising. With favourable soil,
climate and other conditions, it may be very small, with unfavourable,
very great, for the same revenue or yield of food-stuffs.
* It is a pity that we have no word that signifies plant-culture
exclusively. But for the present purpose I may restrict
agriculture to that sense.
Thus, I do not think it is possible to dispute the following
proposition: the existence of any man, or of any number of men,
whether organised into a polity or not, depends on the production of
foodstuffs (that is, vital capital) readily accessible to man, either
directly or indirectly, by plants. But it follows that the number of
men who can exist, say for one year, on any given area of land, taken
by itself, depends upon the quantity of food-stuffs produced by such
plants growing on the area in one year. If a is that quantity, and b
the minimum of food-stuffs required for each man, A/B=N, the maximum
number of men who can exist on the area. Now the amount of production
(a) is limited by the extent of area occupied; by the quantity of
sunshine which falls upon the area; by the range and distribution of
temperature; by the force of the winds; by the supply of water; by the
composition and the physical characters of the soil; by animal and
vegetable competitors and destroyers. The labour of man neither does,
nor can, produce vital capital; all that it can do is to modify,
favourably or unfavourably, the conditions of its production. The most
important of these-- [161] namely, sunshine, range of daily and
nightly temperature, wind--are practically out of men's reach.* On the
other hand, the supply of water, the physical and chemical qualities
of the soil, and the influences of competitors and destroyers, can
often, though by no means always, be largely affected by labour and
skill. And there is no harm in calling the effect of such labour
"production," if it is clearly understood that "production" in this
sense is a very different thing from the "production" of food-stuffs
by a plant.
* I do not forget electric lighting, greenhouses and hothouses,
and the various modes of affording shelter against violent
winds: but in regard to production of food-stuffs on the large
scale they may be neglected. Even if synthetic chemistry should
effect the construction of proteids, the Laborato ry will
hardly enter into competition with the Farm within any time
which the present generation need trouble itself about.
We have been dealing hitherto with suppositions the materials of which
are furnished by everyday experience, not with mere a priori
assumptions. Our hypothetical solitary shepherd with his flock, or the
solitary farmer with his grain field, are mere bits of such
experience, cut out, as it were, for easy study. Still borrowing from
daily experience, let us suppose that either sheep-owner or farmer,
for any reason that may be imagined, desires the help of one or more
other men; and that, in exchange for their labour, he offers so many
sheep, or quarts of milk, or pounds of [162] cheese, or so many
measures of grain, for a year's service. I fail to discover any a
priori "rights of labour" in virtue of which these men may insist on
being employed, if they are not wanted. But, on the other hand, I
think it is clear that there is only one condition upon which the
persons to whom the offer of these "wages" is made can accept it; and
that is that the things offered in exchange for a year's work shall
contain at least as much vital capital as a man uses up in doing the
year's work. For no rational man could knowingly and willingly accept
conditions which necessarily involve starvation. Therefore there is an
irreducible minimum of wages; it is such an amount of vital capital as
suffices to replace the inevitable consumption of the person hired.
Now, surely, it is beyond a doubt that these wages, whether at or
above the irreducible minimum, are paid out of the capital disposable
after the wants of the owner of the flock or of the crop of grain are
satisfied; and, from what has been said already, it follows that there
is a limit to the number of men, whether hired, or brought in any other
way, who can be maintained by the sheep owner or landowner out of his
own resources. Since no amount of labour can produce an ounce of
foodstuff beyond the maximum producible by a limited number of plants,
under the most favourable circumstances in regard to those conditions
which are not affected by labour, it follows [163] that, if the number
of men to be fed increases indefinitely, a time must come when some
will have to starve. That is the essence of the so-called Malthusian
doctrine; and it is a truth which, to my mind, is as plain as the
general proposition that a quantity which constantly increases will,
some time or other, exceed any greater quantity the amount of which is
fixed.
The foregoing considerations leave no doubt about the fundamental
condition of the existence of any polity, or organised society of men,
either in a purely pastoral or purely agricultural state, or in any
mixture of both states. It must possess a store of vital capital to
start with, and the means of repairing the consumption of that capital
which takes place as a consequence of the work of the members of the
society. And, if the polity occupies a completely isolated area of the
earth's surface, the numerical strength of that polity can never
exceed the quotient of the maximum quantity of food-stuffs producible
by the green plants on that area, in each year, divided by the
quantity necessary for the maintenance of each person during the year.
But, there is a third mode of existence possible to a polity; it may,
conceivably, be neither purely pastoral nor purely agricultural, but
purely manufacturing. Let us suppose three islands, like Gran Canaria,
Teneriffe and Lanzerote, in the Canaries, to be quite cut off from the
rest of the world. Let Gran Canaria be [164] inhabited by
grain-raisers, Teneriffe by cattle-breeders; while the population of
Lanzerote (which we may suppose to be utterly barren) consists of
carpenters, woollen manufacturers, and shoemakers. Then the facts of
daily experience teach us that the people of Lanzerote could never
have existed unless they came to the island provided with a stock of
food-stuffs; and that they could not continue to exist, unless that
stock, as it was consumed, was made up by contributions from the vital
capital of either Gran Canaria, or Teneriffe, or both. Moreover, the
carpenters of Lanzerote could do nothing, unless they were provided
with wood from the other islands; nor could the wool spinners and
weavers or the shoemakers work without wool and skins from the same
sources. The wood and the wool and the skins are, in fact, the capital
without which their work as manufacturers in their respective trades
is impossible--so that the vital and other capital supplied by Gran
Canaria and Teneriffe is most indubitably the necessary antecedent of
the industrial labour of Lanzerote. It is perfectly true that by the
time the wood, the wool, and the skins reached Lanzerote a good deal
of labour in cutting, shearing, skinning, transport, and so on, would
have been spent upon them. But this does not alter the fact that the
only "production" which is essential to the existence of the
population of Teneriffe and Gran Canaria is that effected by the [165]
green plants in both islands; and that all the labour spent upon the
raw produce useful in manufacture, directly or indirectly yielded by
them--by the inhabitants of these islands and by those of Lanzerote
into the bargain--will not provide one solitary Lanzerotian with a
dinner, unless the Teneriffians and Canariotes happen to want his
goods and to be willing to give some of their vital capital in
exchange for them.
Under the circumstances defined, if Teneriffe and Gran Canaria
disappeared, or if their inhabitants ceased to care for carpentry,
clothing, or shoes, the people of Lanzerote must starve. But if they
wish to buy, then the Lanzerotians, by "cultivating" the buyers,
indirectly favour the cultivation of the produce of those buyers.
Thus, if the question is asked whether the labour employed in
manufacture in Lanzerote is "productive" or "unproductive" there can
be only one reply. If anybody will exchange vital capital, or that
which can be exchanged for vital capital, for Lanzerote goods, it is
productive; if not, it is unproductive.
In the case of the manufacturer, the dependence of labour upon capital
is still more intimate than in that of the herdsman or agriculturist.
When the latter are once started they can go on, without troubling
themselves about the existence of any other people. But the
manufacturer depends on pre-existing capital, not only at the [166]
beginning, but at the end of his operations. However great the
expenditure of his labour and of his skill, the result, for the
purpose of maintaining his existence, is just the same as if he had
done nothing, unless there is a customer able and willing to exchange
food-stuffs for that which his labour and skill have achieved.
There is another point concerning which it is very necessary to have
clear ideas. Suppose a carpenter in Lanzerote to be engaged in making
chests of drawers. Let us suppose that a, the timber, and b, the grain
and meat needful for the man's sustenance until he can finish a chest
of drawers, have to be paid for by that chest. Then the capital with
which he starts is represented by a + b. He could not start at all
unless he had it; day by day, he must destroy more or less of the
substance and of the general adaptability of a in order to work it up
into the special forms needed to constitute the chest of drawers; and,
day by day, he must use up at least so much of b as will replace his
loss of vital capital by the work of that day. Suppose it takes the
carpenter and his workmen ten days to saw up the timber, to plane the
boards, and to give them the shape and size proper for the various
parts of the chest of drawers. And suppose that he then offers his
heap of boards to the advancer of a + b as an equivalent for the wood
+ ten days' supply of vital capital? The latter will surely say: "No.
[167] I did not ask for a heap of boards. I asked for a chest of
drawers. Up to this time, so far as I am concerned, you have done
nothing and are as much in my debt as ever." And if the carpenter
maintained that he had "virtually" created two-thirds of a chest of
drawers, inasmuch as it would take only five days more to put together
the pieces of wood, and that the heap of boards ought to be accepted
as the equivalent of two-thirds of his debt, I am afraid the creditor
would regard him as little better than an impudent swindler. It
obviously makes no sort of difference whether the Canariote or
Teneriffian buyer advanced the wood and the food-stuffs, on which the
carpenter had to maintain himself; or whether the carpenter had a stock
of both, the consumption of which must be recouped by the exchange of
a chest of drawers for a fresh supply. In the latter case, it is even
less doubtful that, if the carpenter offered his boards to the man who
wanted a chest of drawers, the latter would laugh in his face. And if
he took the chest of drawers for himself, then so much of his vital
capital would be sunk in it past recovery. Again, the payment of goods
in a lump, for the chest of drawers, comes to the same thing as the
payment of daily wages for the fifteen days that the carpenter was
occupied in making it. If, at the end of each day, the carpenter chose
to say to himself "I have 'virtually' created, by my day's labour, a
fifteenth of what I shall get for the chest [168] of
drawers--therefore my wages are the produce of my day's labour"--there
is no great harm in such metaphorical speech, so long as the poor man
does not delude himself into the supposition that it represents the
exact truth. "Virtually" is apt to cover more intellectual sins than
"charity" does moral delicts. After what has been said, it surely must
be plain enough that each day's work has involved the consumption of
the carpenter's vital capital, and the fashioning of his timber, at
the expense of more or less consumption of those forms of capital.
Whether the a + b to be exchanged for the chest has been advanced as a
loan, or is paid daily or weekly as wages, or, at some later time, as
the price of a finished commodity--the essential element of the
transaction, and the only essential element, is, that it must, at
least, effect the replacement of the vital capital consumed. Neither
boards nor chest of drawers are eatable; and, so far from the
carpenter having produced the essential part of his wages by each
day's labour, he has merely wasted that labour, unless somebody who
happens to want a chest of drawers offers to exchange vital capital,
or something that can procure it, equivalent to the amount consumed
during the process of manufacture.*
* See the discussion of this subject further on.
That it should be necessary, at this time of day, to set forth such
elementary truths as these may [169] well seem strange; but no one who
consults that interesting museum of political delusions, "Progress and
Poverty," some of the treasures of which I have already brought to
light, will doubt the fact, if he bestows proper attention upon the
first book of that widely-read work. At page 15 it is thus written:
"The proposition I shall endeavour to prove is: that wages, instead of
being drawn from capital, are, in reality, drawn from the product of
the labour for which they are paid."
Again at page 18:--
"In every case in which labour is exchanged for commodities,
production really precedes enjoyment . . . wages are the
earnings--that is to say, the makings--of labour--not the advances
of capital."
And the proposition which the author endeavours to disprove is the
hitherto generally accepted doctrine
..."that labour is maintained and paid out of existing capital,
before the product which constitutes the ultimate object is
secured" (p. 16).
The doctrine respecting the relation of capital and wages, which is
thus opposed in "Progress and Poverty," is that illustrated in the
foregoing pages; the truth of which, I conceive, must be plain to any
one who has apprehended the very simple arguments by which I have
endeavoured to [170] demonstrate it. One conclusion or the other must
be hopelessly wrong; and, even at the cost of going once more over
some of the ground traversed in this essay and that on "Natural and
Political Rights,"* I propose to show that the error lies with
"Progress and Poverty"; in which work, so far as political science is
concerned, the poverty is, to my eye, much more apparent than the
progress.
* Collected Essays, vol. i. pp. 359-382.
To begin at the beginning. The author propounds a definition of
wealth: "Nothing which nature supplies to man without his labour is
wealth" (p. 28). Wealth consists of "natural substances or products
which have been adapted by human labour to human use or gratification,
their value depending upon the amount of labour which, upon the
average, would be required to produce things of like kind" (p. 27).
The following examples of wealth are given:--
. . . "Buildings, cattle, tools, machinery, agricultural and
mineral products, manufactured goods, ships, waggons,
furniture, and the like" (p. 27).
I take it that native metals, coal and brick clay, are "mineral
products"; and I quite believe that they are properly termed "wealth."
But when a seam of coal crops out at the surface, and lumps of coal
are to be had for the picking up; or when native copper lies about in
nuggets, or [171] when brick clay forms a superficial stratum, it
appears to me that these things are supplied to, nay almost thrust
upon, man without his labour. According to the definition, therefore,
they are not "wealth." According to the enumeration, however, they are
"wealth": a tolerably fair specimen of a contradiction in terms. Or
does "Progress and Poverty" really suggest that a coal seam which
crops out at the surface is not wealth; but that if somebody breaks
off a piece and carries it away, the bestowal of this amount of labour
upon that particular lump makes it wealth; while the rest remains "not
wealth"? The notion that the value of a thing bears any necessary
relation to the amount of labour (average or otherwise) bestowed upon
it, is a fallacy which needs no further refutation than it has already
received. The average amount of labour bestowed upon warming-pans
confers no value upon them in the eyes of a Gold-Coast negro; nor
would an Esquimaux give a slice of blubber for the most elaborate of
ice-machines.
So much for the doctrine of "Progress and Poverty" touching the nature
of wealth. Let us now consider its teachings respecting capital as
wealth or a part of wealth. Adam Smith's definition "that part of a
man's stock which he expects to yield him a revenue is called his
capital" is quoted with approval (p. 32); elsewhere capital is said to
be that part of wealth "which [172] is devoted to the aid of
production" (p. 28); and yet again it is said to be
. . . "wealth in course of exchange,* understanding exchange to
include, not merely the passing from hand to hand, but
also such transmutations as occur when the reproductive
or transforming forces of nature are utilised for the
increase of wealth" (p. 32).
* The italics are the author's.
But if too much pondering over the possible senses and scope of these
definitions should weary the reader, he will be relieved by the
following acknowledgment:--
. . . "Nor is the definition of capital I have suggested of
any importance" (p. 33).
The author informs us, in fact, that he is "not writing a text-book,"
thereby intimating his opinion that it is less important to be clear
and accurate when you are trying to bring about a political revolution
than when a merely academic interest attaches to the subject treated.
But he is not busy about anything so serious as a textbook: no, he "is
only attempting to discover the laws which control a great social
problem"--a mode of expression which indicates perhaps the high-water
mark of intellectual muddlement. I have heard, in my time, of "laws"
which control other "laws"; but this is the first occasion on which
"laws" which "control a problem" have come under my notice. Even the
disquisitions "of [173] those flabby writers who have burdened the
press and darkened counsel by numerous volumes which are dubbed
political economy" (p. 28) could hardly furnish their critics with a
finer specimen of that which a hero of the "Dunciad," by the one flash
of genius recorded of him, called "clotted nonsense."
Doubtless it is a sign of grace that the author of these definitions
should attach no importance to any of them; but since, unfortunately,
his whole argument turns upon the tacit assumption that they are
important, I may not pass them over so lightly. The third I give up.
Why anything should be capital when it is "in course of exchange," and
not be capital under other circumstances, passes my understanding. We
are told that "that part of a farmer's crop held for sale or for seed,
or to feed his help, in part payment of wages, would be accounted
capital; that held for the care of his family would not be" (p. 31).
But I fail to discover any ground of reason or authority for the
doctrine that it is only when a crop is about to be sold or sown, or
given as wages, that it may be called capital. On the contrary,
whether we consider custom or reason, so much of it as is stored away
in ricks and barns during harvest, and remains there to be used in any
of these ways months or years afterwards, is customarily and rightly
termed capital. Surely, the meaning of the clumsy phrase that capital
is "wealth in the [174] course of exchange" must be that it is "wealth
capable of being exchanged" against labour or anything else. That, in
fact, is the equivalent of the second definition, that capital is
"that part of wealth which is devoted to the aid of production."
Obviously, if you possess that for which men will give labour, you can
aid production by means of that labour. And, again, it agrees with the
first definition (borrowed from Adam Smith) that capital is "that part
of a man's stock which he expects to yield him a revenue." For a
revenue is both etymologically and in sense a "return." A man gives
his labour in sowing grain, or in tending cattle, because he expects a
"return"--a "revenue"--in the shape of the increase of the grain or of
the herd; and also, in the latter case, in the shape of their labour
and manure which "aid the production" of such increase. The grain and
cattle of which he is possessed immediately after harvest is his
capital; and his revenue for the twelvemonth, until the next harvest,
is the surplus of grain and cattle over and above the amount with
which he started. This is disposable for any purpose for which he may
desire to use it, leaving him just as well off as he was at the
beginning of the year. Whether the man keeps the surplus grain for
sowing more land, and the surplus cattle for occupying more pasture;
whether he exchanges them for other commodities, such as the use of
the land (as rent); or labour (as [175] wages); or whether he feeds
himself and his family, in no way alters their nature as revenue, or
affects the fact that this revenue is merely disposable capital.
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