sion of those natural resources which are the foundation of all wealth or property. The "liberty of labour," as it is called, is circumscribed by the limits of exclusive possession; labour by itself cannot produce anything out of nothing. Add to this that the increase of population is infinite, and the process of expansion of natural agents limited; and the result of this mutual relationship* will be an effective supply of commodities to every member of the community under the following three cardinal conditions only: viz., we must postulate:

(1) The greatest development of economic activity of the population, in the acquisition of wealth and careful saving; for a working and saving people are necessary for creating wealth.

(2) A normal relationship between the number of population and the magnitude of natural resources; for the latter exist only in a limited degree.

†

(3) Supposing this normal relationship to exist, the most productive use of the natural factor for the common good, by means of utilizing in the best manner natural resources, and the best application of labour power engaged in husbanding the existing "natural wealth." + On the fulfilment of these three conditions depends the proper distribution of national wealth. But we have by no means arrived as yet at that happy consummation. Our present capitalistic system does not by any means secure for us the proper development and thorough utilization of all labour power. The working man, in his low proletarian condition, cannot cultivate or utilize his talents for his own or the public good. His moral and intellectual inferiority lessens the value of his productive

* Compare J. S. Mill's "Principles of Political Economy:" Book I., chap. xii., § 2. (People's edition.)

The above is a close translation of Dr. Schäffle's work, in loco.

EQUILIBRIUM OF POPULATION-MALTHUS.

39

labour, and the property of those in whose service he drudges like a beast of burden he wastes without a pang, because his only feelings towards it are those of envy and hatred.

66

Similarly, the solution of the second problem, the equilibrium of population, has not yet been arrived at. The existing system of political economy of the liberal school does not meet the case by its avowed principle of non-interference with the "freedom of labour." Its most able representative on this question, Malthus, assumes with as much candour as chilling indifference a constant and necessary sacrifice of human life in the struggle for existence. He says in a well-known passage: Any human being entering a world already occupied has not the slightest right (!) to any share in the existing stores of the necessaries of life. He is altogether a supernumerary, and finds no cover at the great banquet of nature. She tells him begone, and does not hesitate to extort by force obedience to her mandate. Hunger and pestilence, war and crime, mortality and neglect of infantine life, prostitution and syphilis, are the forms,hospitals, houses of correction, foundling hospitals, and emigration packets are the places,—of execution erected by nature." Thus we see that the pure "laissez-faire" system does not provide for the exigencies of overpopulation, and does nothing to ameliorate the fate of those who fall as victims of an inexorable law. Plato and Aristotle among the ancients took a more candid view of the matter, and had the positive courage to recommend colonization and emigration, the setting apart of public domains and family properties, in order to maintain the equilibrium of population. The guilds of the middle ages aimed at the same object. It was reserved for our present age of liberal institutions to regard with fatal

indifference the natural execution of proletarians. What we require now is the moral and spiritual education of the masses, and a consequent proper appreciation on their part of that sort of higher family life which exercises some restraint on the natural impulse of procreation. But the absence of proper means either for education or emigration prevents these proletarians from ever rising above their low animalism, or seeking elsewhere the necessary means of adequate support. And to expect moral restraint in such persons, whilst discountenancing at the same time their claims for a higher mode of existence, and so loosening more and more the domestic bonds, is the height of injustice and folly. And thus we find that this equilibrium, too, depending as it does on a higher personal training, implies the requisite of previous personal property towards that end.

The third important condition we have mentioned is the most effective distribution of all the means of production and consumption, a widely diffused possession of property, so as to bring about the highest individual development of every member in the community. This cannot be effected merely by "freedom of labour." It does not by any means prevent the worst modes of creating capital property, as experience abundantly shows; no more does communism, which is the negation of property, effect it. What is everybody's property can never become the proper apparatus of any given individual for the sake of economic production and consumption. A general scramble for the good things of this world would become the source of utter unproductiveness and general poverty. True economy

requires the watchful eye of private or collective proprietorship. The higher the rate of increase in the population, the more wary and careful must be the

COLLECTIVE PROPERTY AND CO-OPERATION.

41

economic process, and on this account it demands the most cautious supervision on the part of interested individuals or corporations. Not destruction but rather the constantly increased formation of property becomes the first and foremost requisite for the highest state of cultivation and material prosperity in the community.

There must be collective property as well as private property. In fact, strictly speaking, the former is composed of separate portions of the latter. A collection of books and manuscripts in a public library forms a vastly better apparatus for education than a hundred private libraries spread over the country. A good public road, as part of the property of a commonwealth, surpasses and naturally supersedes a dozen of private roads representing so much private property. Therefore, whilst advocating the coexistence of public with private property as necessary for the complete organization of civilized society, we must point out that there is no antagonism between the two. The idea of common property comes into collision with that of private property only when understood in that primitive sense, that everything belongs to everybody, and hence nothing to anybody in particular. The one rather ought to be the supplement of the other. But for some reason or another, recently, collective property has not been available sufficiently in proportion to the requirements of the times. Let no one be frightened by an advocacy for an increase of it. It has existed, and necessarily must continue to exist, in all ages. Public institutions in church and state, corporations, foundations, etc., admit of a community of goods, which would entirely disappear with the destruction of private property demanded by communists.

But there is another field where collective property may become a means for improving the condition of the opera

>

tive classes, namely, that of the co-operative associations of every kind, which have gradually been developed out of the less pretentious mutual benefit societies. They are an outgrowth of modern social relations, and much in favour now-a-days. In England and Belgium, the postal savings banks and public life insurance offices encourage their formation, and assist the poor people in forming common funds, which in course of time will enable them to compete with large capitalists. And in like manner the co-operative system in consumption, in the joint use of magazines, machinery, and any other modes of combination by the help of which small people act and speculate in a body, deserves the attention and encouragement of the legislature, and full recognition on the part of political economists. The consciousness of ownership in those who save, and the greater productiveness of their collective savings, will do much towards protecting private property, and act as a powerful bulwark against over population.

But private property has its peculiar advantages too, as well as collective or public property. A liberal distribution of surplus wealth by way of benefactions, hospitality, and contributions towards the promotion of the arts and sciences, is dependent on it. It is the necessary aliment of collective property; for without levies, contributions, premiums, and deposits of individuals, there cannot be created a common and lasting public fund. And private enterprise husbands in the most effective manner those productions which nature yields in a limited degree for the common interest of all. Thus the European merchant who invests his private fortune in Eastern trade supplies, at his own risk, the whole community with the products of the East at a moderate premium; and he does it far better than any