§5.The organic law of distribution in regarding needs will, therefore, take as full an account as it can both of the unity and the diversity of human nature.The recognition of 'common' humanity will carry an adequate provision of food, shelter, health, education and other prime necessaries of life, so as to yield equal satisfaction of such requirements to all members of the community.This minimum standard of life will be substantially the same for all adult persons, and for all families of equal size and age.Upon this standard of human uniformity will be erected certain differences of distribution, adjusted to the specific needs of any class or group whose work or physical conditions marks it out as different from others.The present inequalities of income, so largely based upon conventional or traditional claims, would find little or no support under this application of the organic law.Indeed, it seems unlikely that any specific requirements of industrial or professional life would bulk so largely in interpreting human needs as to warrant any wide discrimination of incomes.There seems no reason to maintain that a lawyer's or a doctor's family would require, or could advantageously spend, a larger income than a bricklayer's, in a society where equality of educational and other opportunities obtained.But, if there were any sorts of work which, by reason of the special calls they made upon human faculties, or of the special conditions they imposed, required an expenditure out of the common, the organic law of distribution according to needs would make provision for the same as an addition to the standard minimum.So likewise the hours of labour would be varied from a standard working-day to meet the case of work unusually intense or wearing in its incidence.To what extent society would find it necessary to recognise individual differences of efficiency within each grade as a ground for particular remuneration -- and how far such claims would represent, not payment according to true needs but power to extort a personal rent --is a question which can only be answered by experience.It may, however, be regarded as certain that the high individual rents which prevail at present in skilled manual and menial work, could not be maintained.For these high rates depend upon conditions of supply and of demand which would not then exist.The enormous fees which specialists of repute in the law or medicine can obtain depend, partly, upon the inequality of educational and social opportunities that limits the supply of able men in these professions;partly, upon other inequalities of income that enable certain persons to afford to pay such fees.Equality of opportunity and even an approximate equalisation of income would destroy both these sources of high rents of ability.What applies in the professions would apply in every trade.Individual 'rents' of ability might survive, but they must be brought within a narrow compass.
While, then, the selfishness of individual man might give a slight twist to the application of the social policy of distribution according to needs, it would not impair its substantial validity and practicability.
Thus we see this law of distribution, operative as a purely physical economy in the apportionment of energy for mechanical work, operative as a biological economy through the whole range of organic life, is strictly applicable as a principle of social economy.Its proper application to social industry would enable that system to function economically, so as to produce the maximum of human utility with the minimum of human cost.
§6.If we can get an industrial order, in which every person is induced to discover and apply to the service of society his best abilities of body and mind, while he receives from society what is required to sustain and to develop those abilities, and so to live the best and fullest life of which he is capable, we have evidently reached a formally sound solution of the social problem on its economic side.We are now in a position to approach the actual processes of economic distribution that prevail to-day, so as to consider how far they conform to this sound principle of human industry.
We are not justified at the outset in assuming that any wide discrepancy will be admitted.On the contrary, in many quarters there survives a firm conviction that our actual system of industry does work in substantial conformity with the human law of distribution.
The so-called laissez-faire theory of industrialism based its claims to utility and equity upon an assertion of the virtual identity of the economic and the human distribution.If every owner of capital or labour or any other factor of production were free to apply his factor in any industry and any place he chose, he would choose that industry and that place where the highest remuneration for its employment was attainable.
But since all remuneration for the factors of production is derived from the product itself, which is distributed among the owners of the several factors, it follows that the highest remuneration must always imply the most productive use.Thus, by securing complete mobility of capital and labour, we ensure both a maximum production and an equitable distribution.
