In the most systematic of his works, Munera Pulveris, he, indeed, appears at the outset to have his mind closely set upon the exact performance of the required analysis.For, defining the scope of his work, he says, 'The essential work of the political economist is to determine what are in reality useful or life-giving things, and by what degrees and kind of labour they are attainable and distributable.'4 Then follows a clear and logical distinction between value and cost.'Value is the life-giving power of anything; cost the quantity of labour required to produce it.' Had he proceeded to estimate 'Wealth' with equal regard to its value and its labour-cost, the latter expressed in vital terms, the scientific character of his analysis would have been preserved.But unfortunately he allowed himself to be overweighted by a sense of value which stresses 'human utility' of consumption, so that, while the 'utility' side of the equation is worked out with admirable skill, the 'cost' or labour side is slighted, and the organic relation between the two is lost sight of.The confusion wrought in the minds of readers by the failure to find in any of his works a full application of his principle has been responsible for an unjust disparagement of the truly scientific service rendered by Ruskin towards the foundation of social-economics.
From a Pisgah height his mind's eye swept in quick penetrative glances over the promised land, but he did not occupy it, or furnish any clear survey.
§6.Our purpose here is in part to perform the task indicated by Ruskin, viz.to apply to industry the vital standard of valuation, or at any rate to improve the instruments of vital survey.But only, in part.
For our task is in scope less comprehensive than that to which Ruskin applied himself.Though his teaching sprang originally from two related roots of emotional valuation distinctively economic in their bearings, the love of the finer sorts of human work called Art, and the reprobation of the degrading conditions of the work most of his countrymen were called upon to do, it expanded into a wider meaning of 'economy' which included not merely economic activities and economic goods, but all sorts of vital activities and goods.A criticism of current Political Economy, on the ground that it did not treat its accepted subject-matter in a vital manner, thus developed into a constructive Political Economy which not merely humanised the method but expanded the area of the science and art, so as to make it in effect a comprehensive science and art of human welfare.
Now it has always been an open question whether the makers of Political Economy were intellectually justified in severing marketable from non-marketable goods and services, and framing a separate science upon studies of the former.That marketable goods are not always separable from non-marketable, and that the economic activities of man are always inter-related with non-economic activities, are accepted truths.Ruskin's perception of the intimacy of these relations between commercial and non-commercial functions and products led him to break down.the barriers set up by Economic Science, in the furtherance of an art which should set up as its goal 'the multiplication of human life at its highest standard.'
Now this enlargement may be quite legitimate.But it was evidently responsible in large measure for the failure of Ruskin to drive home the criticism directed against the current economic teaching.It was one thing to attack Political Economists for failing to take due account of human values in their treatment of processes relating to marketable wealth.It was, however, quite another to insist that the barrier between Political Economy and other social sciences and arts should be torn down, and that all phenomena of vital import should become the objects of its study.Had Ruskin been able to keep to the narrower scope, doubtless he would not have been Ruskin, but his attack on current economic theory and practice would have been vastly more effective.
This brief excursion into Ruskin's work has been necessary, first in order to make proper acknowledgement of the sound scientific instinct of this great pioneer of social thought, and, secondly, to make it clear that, while accepting his standard of valuation, we do not propose applying it outside the range of economic phenomena in the ordinary acceptation of that term.While admitting the overlapping and interaction of economic and other human functions, we shall accept the ordinary definition of the boundaries of economic studies, and shall seek to make our human survey and apply our human valuation within these limits.The extra-economic implications which the unity of life will disclose cannot, indeed, be ignored, but they will be treated as supplementary to the main purpose, that of valuing the processes directly connected with the getting and spending of money incomes.
§7.In setting up a vital standard of valuation, we are likely to be met with the objections that life is too vague, too changing, too incomprehensible for any standard, and that life is not valuable in itself but because of certain qualities which it may possess.Our standard must be conceived in terms of a life that is good or desirable.This consideration might evidently lead us far afield.If we are to undertake a valuation of life as a preliminary to valuing industry, it is likely that we may never approach the second undertaking.The best escape from this predicament is to start from some generally accepted concept which indicates, even if it does not express fully, the desirable in life.Such a term I take to be 'organic welfare.' Though in form a mere synonym for good life, it is by usage both more restricted and more precise.It perhaps appears to thrust into the forefront of consideration the physical basis of life.
