To purchase progress: discounts and dividends
by Louis Even
What is progress? It is an advance toward a desired goal.
What have human beings sought, since the beginning of the world, in all productive activity? To satisfy human needs? Certainly — but to satisfy them as fully as possible, with the least possible effort.
Maximum results with minimum effort.
The man who tamed and harnessed the horse in order to produce more work with less human fatigue achieved progress.
The man who invented the wheel to replace the sled on dry land achieved progress.
When, then, is there progress? There is progress when there are more products with less human labour.
To make progress, therefore, is to reduce human toil while increasing the goods produced for man.
Is there progress today? Are we succeeding in producing more things with fewer workers, with fewer working hours? Everyone knows the answer is yes. Many have learned it at their own expense and have even come to curse progress.
And yet progress is a good thing. Its aim is increasingly to free man from the labour required to maintain his material life and to leave him leisure for his life as a human being.
Man has always sought progress because he is a man and not a beast. The elephant and the beaver have not made progress. Man has; it is one of his distinguishing marks, one of the products of his intelligence — and therefore of his soul.
The man who invents a machine to do what ten men previously did achieves progress: more goods with less expenditure of human energy.
With what did he invent the machine? Let us say that five years of his time and research were financed by capital of $100,000 at his disposal. If he had had only his time and the $100,000, he would not have invented the machine. But in addition, he had science — science he did not create, which he found already prepared for him when he entered the world. He may have contributed to its growth, but he did not start from zero. The greater part of the science he applied is an accumulation of human knowledge passed down from generation to generation.
With what, then, did the man invent his machine? With science, plus his personal labour, plus the capital placed at his disposal to finance his research and time.
What will be the result of his invention? More products than before his invention. More products than the labour of one man over five years and an investment of $100,000 could have produced under previous conditions. Otherwise, there would be no progress.
If there is progress, then the output of the invention will far exceed what $100,000 and five years'wages can purchase. The inventor's salary and the ordinary interest on capital cannot buy the full product of the invention.
The machine replaces ten men, we said. It therefore produces at least what those ten men previously produced. Even if those ten men could once, with their wages, buy the equivalent of their production, how can they now, with ten fewer wages, buy the output of the machine, which is at least equal to theirs?
With his salary and royalties, the inventor buys a share of the progress. With the return on his $100,000, the capitalist buys a share of the progress. But together they purchase only the consumption of two men. Since the machine has replaced the work that sustained ten men — and two men cannot eat like ten, heat their homes like ten, sleep like ten, or raise children like ten — it is clear that together they cannot purchase the entire output of the machine.
Thus progress has been achieved, but rendered unpurchasable. What is to be done?
The policy of wages for workers and interest for investors will never solve this problem, since progress reduces the number of wage earners. And it is because we cling to the policy of wages and interest that thousands and millions of starving people curse progress instead of blessing it.
This is why Economic Democracy calls for the distribution of dividends to everyone, so that all may purchase their share of progress.
Their share of progress. Progress is the result of accumulated science, the personal labour of the inventor, and the contribution of capital. The investor and the inventor receive their reward in the usual way. But accumulated science — which is a common capital — plays a very large part in the invention. What remains after the capitalist and the worker have been satisfied is therefore the share of accumulated science, which belongs to everyone.
That is why all the good things left unsold — all the goods that wages and interest do not purchase — belong to everyone, and everyone must have the right to take his or her share, rather than let them go to waste and bring progress to a halt.
And who must ensure that everyone receives a share of progress? The government, since it alone represents everyone and is charged with the common good.
There are two ways to enable men and women to purchase their share of progress: by lowering the price of products, so that each dollar buys more; or by increasing the number of dollars in people's hands.
The first method can be generalized in the form of a discount or rebate — a discount that would not harm merchants, because the government would create the necessary money to compensate them for it.
But this method gives a share of progress only to those who already have money to spend. Since progress reduces the number of wage earners, it reduces the flow of income from employment, and many people have no income at all: a sales discount or price rebate would mean little to them. Since everyone owns the greater part of progress, everyone must have their right.
That is why the second method — a dividend for all — is necessary in order to reach everyone. The first method is more technical; the second is more social. The first protects against inflation and against the production of useless goods; the second gives everyone the means to claim their share and to guide production through their choice of products.
The combination of both methods, as advocated by Economic Democracy, accomplishes both objectives at once: it guarantees the share of each and every person, and it prevents inflation.
Progress in the volume of production requires progress in the volume of money.
Progress is enormous in the field of production. It must be made enormous in the field of distribution.
Those who cling to the old method of financial distribution are enemies of progress in distribution; they paralyze the expansion of progress in production and prepare the ground for progress in revolution.
To make two blades of grass grow where only one grew before — that is progress, when it is grass that is desired.
If grass is abundant and dollars are lacking, progress consists in making two dollars grow where only one grew before. And that is why Economic Democracy is progress. And since progress is in the natural order, Economic Democracy is in the natural order. And since progress distinguishes man from beast, Economic Democracy distinguishes the intelligent from the foolish.
Therefore, demand the national dividend to purchase your share of progress and to enable everyone to purchase theirs.
Subscribe