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The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice — обложка книги
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The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice

Автор Стивен Батлер Ликок
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Дата написания1970-01-01
Язык книгиen
Возрастное ограничение0+
Жанры
личные финансыценные бумаги / инвестициикниги по экономикезарубежная образовательная литературазарубежная старинная литература

Описание

Книга исследует социальную тревогу и экономическую неравномерность в поствоенный период, анализирует классическую экономическую теорию и её ограничения, рассматривает механизмы рынка и монополий, критикует социализм и предлагает постепенные реформы для улучшения условий жизни.

Главный конфликт / проблема

Социальная тревога и неравномерность в условиях промышленного роста и монополий

Ключевые идеи

  • Война и её последствия создают цикл инфляции, недовольства и неравенства.
  • Параллельный рост производства и бедности демонстрирует парадокс индустриальной эпохи.
  • Необходимость пересмотра социальной организации, а не простого перехода к социализму.
  • Классическая экономика основана на идее естественной свободы и индивидуализма.
  • Свободный рынок, по мнению классиков, приводит к социальной справедливости.
  • Механизмы цен, заработной платы, прибыли и аренды рассматриваются как естественные и регулируемые законами.
  • Фундаментальное уравнение стоимости производства и цены является логическим кругом и не объясняет реальное распределение богатства.
  • Необходимость пересмотра принципов естественной свободы в современном обществе.
  • Цены и зарплаты формируются экономической силой, а не справедливостью.
  • Монопольный рынок демонстрирует парадокс стоимости: увеличение объёма снижает цену.
  • Зарплаты зависят от соотношения спроса и предложения труда.
  • Конкурентная индустрия создаёт нестабильное равновесие между работодателями, работниками и потребителями.

Вывод

Книга призывает к глубокому пересмотру социальной организации и постепенным реформам, отвергая радикальные решения

Кому полезна

  • Экономисты
  • Социологи
  • Политологи
  • Студенты
  • Общественные деятели

Главные темы

  • Экономический кризис и социальная неравномерность
  • Классическая экономическая теория и её ограничения
  • Механизмы рынка и монополий
  • Критика социализма и пути реформ

Персонажи

  • Том Джефферсон — Ссылается на его слова о неотъемлемом праве на жизнь, свободу и поиск счастья, которые служат отправной точкой для обсуждения естественной свободы.
  • Адам Смит — Представлен как основатель теории естественной свободы и системы свободного рынка, влияющей на экономические принципы.
  • Джон Стюарт Милль — Упоминается как критик собственности в земле и сторонник более гибкого подхода к собственности, влияя на экономическую мысль.
  • Болшевик — Ведёт волну революции в России, угрожая стабильности и усиливая страх перед революцией.
  • Капиталист — Обвиняет рабочих в «большевизме», а рабочих в «профитизме», представляя противоположную точку зрения.
  • Герой — Он символизирует переход от старого к новому обществу, служит носителем идей социализма в романе Беллмейя.
  • Доктор Лит — Представляет рациональный подход к новому обществу и помогает герою адаптироваться к изменениям.
  • Cincinnatus — Символизирует отказ от честного труда и рост недовольства среди рабочих.
  • Artisan — Сравнивается с фабричным рабочим, чья работа становится рутинной и лишённой смысла.
  • Автор критики — Анализирует роман Беллмейя, обобщает выводы о социализме и демократии, предлагая постепенные реформы.

Цитаты

  • «Всё, что было, было, и всё, что будет, будет, но в этом мире всё равно остаётся бедность».
  • «Если способность производить товары к удовлетворению человеческих нужд умножилась, то мир в целом должен быть гораздо лучше, но он не стал».
  • "ALL men," wrote Thomas Jefferson in framing the Declaration of Independence, "have an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
  • "Under perfectly free competition the value or selling price of everything equals, or is perpetually tending to equal, the cost of its production."
  • WAGES and prices, then, if the argument recited in the preceding chapter of this series holds good, do not under free competition tend towards social justice.
  • The enormous increase in the productivity of industrial effort would never of itself have elevated by one inch the lot of the working class.
  • The reading public is as wayward and as fickle as a bee among the flowers.
  • Socialism, in other words, is slavery.

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There is no need to discuss the particular way in which this policy can best be carried out. It will vary with the circumstances of each community. The action of the municipality, or of the state or province, or of the central government itself may be called into play. But in one form or another, the economic loss involved in illness and infirmity must be shifted from the shoulders of the individual to those of society at large. There was but little realization of this obligation in the nineteenth century. Only in the sensational moments of famine, flood or pestilence was a general social effort called forth. But in the clearer view of the social bond which the war has given us we can see that famine and pestilence are merely exaggerated forms of what is happening every day in our midst.

We spoke much during the war of "man power." We suddenly realized that after all the greatness and strength of a nation is made up of the men and women who compose it. Its money, in the narrow sense, is nothing; a set of meaningless chips and counters piled upon a banker's table ready to fall at a touch. Even before the war we had begun to talk eagerly and anxiously of the conservation of national resources, of the need of safeguarding the forests and fisheries and the mines. These are important things. But the war has shown that the most important thing of all is the conservation of men and women.

The attitude of the nineteenth century upon this point was little short of insane. The melancholy doctrine of Malthus had perverted the public mind. Because it was difficult for a poor man to bring up a family, the hasty conclusion was reached that a family ought not to be brought up. But the war has entirely inverted and corrected this point of view. The father and mother who were able to send six sturdy, native-born sons to the conflict were regarded as benefactors of the nation. But these six sturdy sons had been, some twenty years before, six "puling infants," viewed with gloomy disapproval by the Malthusian bachelor. If the strength of the nation lies in its men and women there is only one way to increase it. Before the war it was thought that a simpler and easier method of increase could be found in the wholesale import of Austrians, Bulgarians and Czecho-Slovaks. The newer nations boasted proudly of their immigration tables. The fallacy is apparent now. Those who really count in a nation and those who govern its destinies for good or ill are those who are born in it.

It is difficult to over-estimate the harm that has been done to public policy by this same Malthusian theory. It has opposed to every proposal of social reform an obstacle that seemed insuperable,—the danger of a rapid overincrease of population that would pauperize the community. Population, it was said, tends always to press upon the heels of subsistence. If the poor are pampered, they will breed fast: the time will come when there will not be food for all and we shall perish in a common destruction. Seen in this light, infant mortality and the cruel wastage of disease were viewed with complacence. It was "Nature's" own process at work. The "unfit," so called, were being winnowed out that only the best might survive. The biological doctrine of evolution was misinterpreted and misapplied to social policy.

But in the organic world there is no such thing as the "fit" or the "unfit," in any higher or moral sense. The most hideous forms of life may "survive" and thrust aside the most beautiful. It is only by a confusion of thought that the processes of organic nature which render every foot of fertile ground the scene of unending conflict can be used to explain away the death of children of the slums. The whole theory of survival is only a statement of what is, not of what ought to be. The moment that we introduce the operation of human volition and activity, that, too, becomes one of the factors of "survival." The dog, the cat, and the cow live by man's will, where the wolf and the hyena have perished.

But it is time that the Malthusian doctrine,—the fear of over-population as a hindrance to social reform,—was dismissed from consideration. It is at best but a worn-out scarecrow shaking its vain rags in the wind. Population, it is true, increases in a geometrical ratio. The human race, if favored by environment, can easily double itself every twenty-five years. If it did this, the time must come, through sheer power of multiplication, when there would not be standing room for it on the globe. All of this is undeniable, but it is quite wide of the mark. It is time enough to cross a bridge when we come to it. The "standing room" problem is still removed from us by such uncounted generations that we need give no thought to it. The physical resources of the globe are as yet only tapped, and not exhausted. We have done little more than scratch the surface. Because we are crowded here and there in the ant-hills of our cities, we dream that the world is full. Because, under our present system, we do not raise enough food for all, we fear that the food supply is running short. All this is pure fancy. Let any one consider in his mind's eye the enormous untouched assets still remaining for mankind in the vast spaces filled with the tangled forests of South America, or the exuberant fertility of equatorial Africa or the huge plains of Canada, Australia, Southern Siberia and the United States, as yet only thinly dotted with human settlement. There is no need to draw up an anxious balance sheet of our assets. There is still an uncounted plenty. And every human being born upon the world represents a power of work that, rightly directed, more than supplies his wants. The fact that as an infant he does not maintain himself has nothing to do with the case. This was true even in the Garden of Eden.

The fundamental error of the Malthusian theory of population and poverty is to confound the difficulties of human organization with the question of physical production. Our existing poverty is purely a problem in the direction and distribution of human effort. It has no connection as yet with the question of the total available means of subsistence. Some day, in a remote future, in which under an improved social system the numbers of mankind might increase to the full power of the natural capacity of multiplication, such a question might conceivably disturb the equanimity of mankind. But it need not now. It is only one of many disasters that must sooner or later overtake mankind. The sun, so the astronomer tells us, is cooling down; the night is coming; an all-pervading cold will some day chill into rigid death the last vestige of organic life. Our poor planet will be but a silent ghost whirling on its dark path in the starlight. This ultimate disaster is, as far as our vision goes, inevitable. Yet no one concerns himself with it. So should it be with the danger of the ultimate overcrowding of the globe.

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