particular object. 12 But how strange it is that the labor of a violin-maker is called productive, while that of the violinplayer is called unproductive; although the product of the former has no other object than to be played on by the latter? (Garnier.) Is it not strange that the hog-raiser should be called productive, and the educator of man unproductive (List); the apothecary, who prepares a salve which alleviates for the moment, productive, the physician, unproductive, spite of the fact that his prescription in relation to diet, or his surgical operation, may radically cure the severest disease? If the productiveness of an employment of the factors of production be made to depend on whether it is attended by a material result, no one will deny that the labor of the plowman, for instance, is productive; and no one, of Adam Smith's school, at least, that that of the clerk, who orders the raw material for the owner of the manufactory, is. They have participated indirectly in the production. But, has not the servant of the state, who protects the property of its citizens, or the physician, who preserves the health of the producer, an equally mediate but indispensable share in it? The fieldguard who keeps the crows away, every one calls productive; why, not, then, the soldier, who keeps away a far worse 1 W. of N., ch. 3. See, however, Garnier's French translation of Ad. Smith, Préf. p. IX and V, note 20. Similarly, Malthus, Principles, ch. 1, Lect. 21. Definitions, ch. 7, 10. * Bacon had already said of the nobility, clergy and literateurs: sorti reipublicæ nihil addunt (Serm., 15, 29); in opposition to which, Hobbes justly remarks, that even human labor may, like other things, be exchanged against goods of all sorts. (Leviathan, 24.) In the work, Discourse of Trade, Coyn and Credit, p. 44 ff., and p. 156, the absolute necessity of "head-work" as well as bodily labor, is conceded; but it is insisted that physicians, clergymen and jurists can never enrich a country, and that a relatively large number of them would even conduce to national poverty. (See Roscher, Geschichte der englischen Volkswirthschaftslehre, 138.) David Hume considers merchants as productive, but says that a doctor or lawyer can grow rich only at the expense of some one else. (Discourses, No. 4, On Interest.) Ferguson very cleverly compares such a valuation of national wealth to that of a miser. Hist. of Civil Society, VI, I. cnemy from the whole land? (McCulloch.) But the entire division of business into two branches, the one directly, and the other indirectly productive, can be defended only as respects certain kinds of goods. (Schmitthenner.) The labor of the judge, for instance, is only indirectly productive in the manufacture of shoes, inasmuch as he guarantees the payment of the shoemaker's account. On the other hand, the shoemaker contributes only very indirectly to the general security which the law affords, by protecting the judge's foot.3 Nor can any effectual inferiority of service be claimed, simply because the productive power of one branch of business is, measured by the duration of its results, greater than another." What is more perishable than a loaf of bread bought for dinner? What more imperishable than the monumentum ære perennius of a Horace? The labor expended on persons and on relations (Verhältnissen) is, both as to the ex 3 Similarly Lauderdale, Inquiry, 355; Lotz, Handbuch der Staätswirthschaft, I, § 39, and Rau, Lehrbuch I, § 195, concede only indirect productiveness to commerce. It may be shown, in a great many instances, that such productiveness exists side by side with direct productiveness, on account of the thousand ways in which all economic threads are interwoven with one another. Thus Paley remarks in his work on the Principles of Morals and Politics, that a tobacco manufacturer even may contribute indirectly to the cultivation of grain; an actor, to industry etc. 4 Thus Sismondi, Nouveaux Principes, II, ch. 1, and, earlier, Mengotti Colbertismo, 317. (Cust.) See, on the other hand, Hermann, Staatsw. Untersuchungen, 34 ff. Even J. B. Say does no manner of justice, in this respect, to personal services. He speaks of produits qui ne s'attachent à rien qui s'évanouissent à mésure qu'ils naissent, qu'il est impossible d'accumuler, qui n'ajoutent rein à la richesse nationale. Compare Catéchisme (3d ed.) 52 ff., 174 ff. On the other hand Dunoyer, Liberté du Travail, L. V., remarks that here labor and its result are made to change places; the former like all labor is very perishable, the latter as lasting as in the case of other kinds of labor. In the one case the utility is fixed in things, in the other in persons. Ad. Müller, Elemente der Staatskunst passim, calls special attention to how the kinds of labor, called unproductive by Adam Smith, preserve the state, and in that way, all individual exchangeable goods. Similarly, Storch, Handbuch, I, 347; Steinlein, Handbuch, I, 460. Lauderdale (443), however, is correct when he says, that the continued duration of the product of labor depends, usually, more on the caprice of consumers than on the nature of the labor. tent and duration of its results, much less capable of being estimated than any other; but its capacity of accumulation and its power of propagation are greater than any other. It is in the domain of the "immaterial," that man is most "creative." (Lueder.)5 Finally, neither should the greater indispensablenss of the more material branches of business be too generally asserted. Agriculture produces grain which is indispensable, and tobacco which is not; industry, cloth, as well as lace; commerce draws from the same part of the world rhubarb and edible bird's-nests; and so, to services belong the indispensable ones of the educator and judge, as well as those of the rope-dancer and bear-leader, which can be dispensed with. Indeed, the dividing line between material and intellectual production cannot, by any means, be closely drawn.? SECTION LI. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. The greater number of recent writers1 have, therefore, come to be of the opinion that every useful business which minis 5 Garnier calls attention to the fact, that there is a great quantity of material products, such as laces, perfumes etc., that can scarcely be ever used in further production, and, generally speaking, one's resources for the most part are not kept in lasting goods, but are preserved by the change of technic forms in production. Hermann, I, Aufl., 115. When Schön, Nat. Ekonomie, 33, ridicules the idea of the productive. ness of personal services, by citing the instance of prostitution carried on as a trade, he forgets that many material goods also may conduce to the moral damage of the purchaser of them. It is said that there are in France 3,500 retailers and colporteurs of immoral writings and pictures, who sell yearly nine million numbers or pieces, at a cost of six million francs! (Moniteur, 9 Avril, 1853.) "Compare Schäffle, Theorie der ausschliessenden Absatzverhältnise, 1867, 135, seq. 1 Many of the socialists take a retrograde step in this respect, in as much as they consider only manual labor productive. Fourier's school particularly, declaim passionately against the unproductiveness of commerce and of most personal services. Compare V. Considérant, Destinée sociale, 1851, I, 44. ters to the whole people's requirement of external goods possesses economic productiveness. But it makes a great difference to science, whether a view is considered true because no one has suggested a doubt of its correctness, or because all doubts as to its truth have been triumphantly removed. Besides the above, see Gioja, N. Prospetto, I, 246 ff.; Scialoja, 42; J. B. Say, Traité, I, ch. 2; Hufeland, N. Grundlegung, I, 42, 54; Gr. Soden, Nat. Ekonomie, I, 142 ff. Hermann, St. Untersuchungen, 20 ff., distinguishes three politico-economical points of view; that of the producer, that of the consumer, and that of the whole nation's economy. The producer calls his labor productive, in case he receives back his outlay of capital with the rate of profit usual in the trade of the country. To this point of view, therefore, every service which is paid for, according to wish, seems productive. On the other hand, the consumer ascribes productiveness to all those kinds of labor the achievements of which he may use, and which he can obtain at a convenient price. Whenever, therefore, he pays for a service voluntarily, he acknowledges its productiveness. Lastly, from a national-economical point of view, all labor is considered productive which increases the quantity of goods exposed for sale in the market; and this, personal services do. The technic productiveness, which depends on the execution of the technic ideas floating before the mind of the workman, must be distinguished from this economic productiveness. It is possible that, technically labor may be very productive, and yet cause economic loss; for instance, the fine arts and the so-called master pieces of the trades! See Seneca, De Benef., II, 33. H. (33) furnishes a very good refutation of the doctrine that a great deal depends on whether the labor has been paid from capital or from income. Eiselen, Volkswirthschaft (1843), 27 ff., remarks, that the laborer, for instance, who grows corn, must besides look after his health and the preservation of his house; this is a part of his necessary aggregate labor. Why, then, should it be called unproductive when such secondary labor is performed by particular persons? Otherwise the farmer would have no time whatever for his principal business! Edinburg Review, 1804, IV, 343 ff.; Wakefield, An Essay upon Political Economy, 1804, who is concerned mainly with the theory of the productiveness of labor. L. Lauderdale says, that when the nation's wealth is estimated according to its value in use, all useful labor is productive; and that when estimated according to its value in exchange, all labor that is paid is productive. (Inquiry, ch. 3.) Stein (Lehrbuch, 68; Tüb. Zeitschr., 1868, 230) conditions the notion of productiveness by the presence of a superfluity of values. But, it may be asked, does a family, which does no more than support itself, labor unproductively? (Compare, however, 30.) 7. S. Mill took a surprisingly retrograde step in the doctrine on this point, in his Principles, I, ch. 3. Compare his Essays on some VOL. I.-12 SECTION LII. IDEA OF PRODUCTIVENESS. It should never be lost sight of, that the public economy of a people should be considered an organism, which, when its growth is healthy, always develops more varied organs, but always in a due proportion, which are not only carried by the body, but also in turn serve to carry it. The aggregate of the wants of the entire public economy etc., is satisfied by the aggregate activity of the people. Every individual who employs his lands, labor or capital for the whole, receives his share of the aggregate produce, whether he contributed or not to the creation of the kind of produce in which he is paid. Thus, in a pin-manufactory, the workman who is occupied solely in making the heads of pins is not paid in pins or pinheads, but in a part of the aggregate result of the manufacture, in money. Every department of business, therefore, for the achievements of which there is a rational demand, and which are remunerated in proportion to their deserts, has labored productively. It is unproductive only when no one will need what it has brought forth, or when no one will pay for it; but, in this case, what is true of the writer without readers—that he is unproductive—and of the singer without hearers, is equally true of the peasant whose corn rots in his granary, because he can find no sale for it.1 unsettled Questions of Political Economy, No. 3. A still more surprising exaggeration in de Augustinis Instituzzioni di Economia sociale (Napoli1 837), who goes so far as to call a person guilty of arson a productive person because he has produced for himself "the pleasure of destruction"! More recently, von Mangoldt distinguishes between economic labor and the labor of culture: the latter is incorporated into the man himself, the former one employed on the external world, in order to transform it in a way corresponding to human wants. Viewed from the stand-point of Political Economy, the latter only is productive. (Volkswirthschaftslehre, 1865, 26 ff.) I We might, indeed, compare original production, that which preceded all other, to eating; the trades, to digestion; commerce, to the movements of the |