Chapter II: Pecuniary Emulation
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In the sequence
of cultural evolution the emergence of a leisure class coincides
with the beginning of ownership. This is necessarily the case, for
these two institutions result from the same set of economic forces.
In the inchoate phase of their development they are but different
aspects of the same general facts of social structure.
It is as elements of social structure -- conventional facts -- that
leisure and ownership are matters of interest for the purpose in
hand. An habitual neglect of work does not constitute a leisure
class; neither does the mechanical fact of use and consumption
constitute ownership. The present inquiry, therefore, is not
concerned with the beginning of indolence, nor with the beginning of
the appropriation of useful articles to individual consumption. The
point in question is the origin and nature of a conventional leisure
class on the one hand and the beginnings of individual ownership as
a conventional right or equitable claim on the other hand.
The early differentiation out of which the distinction between a
leisure and a working class arises is a division maintained between
men's and women's work in the lower stages of barbarism. Likewise
the earliest form of ownership is an ownership of the women by the
able bodied men of the community. The facts may be expressed in more
general terms. and truer to the import of the barbarian theory of
life, by saying that it is an ownership of the woman by the man.
There was undoubtedly some appropriation of useful articles before
the custom of appropriating women arose. The usages of existing
archaic communities in which there is no ownership of women is
warrant for such a view. In all communities the members, both male
and female, habitually appropriate to their individual use a variety
of useful things; but these useful things are not thought of as
owned by the person who appropriates and consumes them. The habitual
appropriation and consumption of certain slight personal effects
goes on without raising the question of ownership; that is to say,
the question of a conventional, equitable claim to extraneous
things.
The ownership of women begins in the lower barbarian stages of
culture, apparently with the seizure of female captives. The
original reason for the seizure and appropriation of women seems to
have been their usefulness as trophies. The practice of seizing
women from the enemy as trophies, gave rise to a form of
ownership-marriage, resulting in a household with a male head. This
was followed by an extension of slavery to other captives and
inferiors, besides women, and by an extension of ownership-marriage
to other women than those seized from the enemy. The outcome of
emulation under the circumstances of a predatory life, therefore,
has been on the one hand a form of marriage resting on coercion, and
on the other hand the custom of ownership. The two institutions are
not distinguishable in the initial phase of their development; both
arise from the desire of the successful men to put their prowess in
evidence by exhibiting some durable result of their exploits. Both
also minister to that propensity for mastery which pervades all
predatory communities. From the ownership of women the concept of
ownership extends itself to include the products of their industry,
and so there arises the ownership of things as well as of persons.
In this way a consistent system of property in goods is gradually
installed. And although in the latest stages of the development, the
serviceability of goods for consumption has come to be the most
obtrusive element of their value, still, wealth has by no means yet
lost its utility as a honorific evidence of the owner's prepotence.
Wherever the institution of private property is found, even in a
slightly developed form, the economic process bears the character of
a struggle between men for the possession of goods. It has been
customary in economic theory, and especially among those economists
who adhere with least faltering to the body of modernised classical
doctrines, to construe this struggle for wealth as being
substantially a struggle for subsistence. Such is, no doubt, its
character in large part during the earlier and less efficient phases
of industry. Such is also its character in all cases where the
"niggardliness of nature" is so strict as to afford but a scanty
livelihood to the community in return for strenuous and unremitting
application to the business of getting the means of subsistence. But
in all progressing communities an advance is presently made beyond
this early stage of technological development. Industrial efficiency
is presently carried to such a pitch as to afford something
appreciably more than a bare livelihood to those engaged in the
industrial process. It has not been unusual for economic theory to
speak of the further struggle for wealth on this new industrial
basis as a competition for an increase of the comforts of life, --
primarily for an increase of the physical comforts which the
consumption of goods affords.
The end of acquisition and accumulation is conventionally held to be
the consumption of the goods accumulated -- whether it is
consumption directly by the owner of the goods or by the household
attached to him and for this purpose identified with him in theory.
This is at least felt to be the economically legitimate end of
acquisition, which alone it is incumbent on the theory to take
account of. Such consumption may of course be conceived to serve the
consumer's physical wants -- his physical comfort -- or his
so-called higher wants -- spiritual, aesthetic, intellectual, or
what not; the latter class of wants being served indirectly by an
expenditure of goods, after the fashion familiar to all economic
readers.
But it is only when taken in a sense far removed from its naive
meaning that consumption of goods can be said to afford the
incentive from which accumulation invariably proceeds. The motive
that lies at the root of ownership is emulation; and the same motive
of emulation continues active in the further development of the
institution to which it has given rise and in the development of all
those features of the social structure which this institution of
ownership touches. The possession of wealth confers honour; it is an
invidious distinction. Nothing equally cogent can be said for the
consumption of goods, nor for any other conceivable incentive to
acquisition, and especially not for any incentive to accumulation of
wealth.
It is of course not to be overlooked that in a community where
nearly all goods are private property the necessity of earning a
livelihood is a powerful and ever present incentive for the poorer
members of the community. The need of subsistence and of an increase
of physical comfort may for a time be the dominant motive of
acquisition for those classes who are habitually employed at manual
labour, whose subsistence is on a precarious footing, who possess
little and ordinarily accumulate little; but it will appear in the
course of the discussion that even in the case of these impecunious
classes the predominance of the motive of physical want is not so
decided as has sometimes been assumed. On the other hand, so far as
regards those members and classes of the community who are chiefly
concerned in the accumulation of wealth, the incentive of
subsistence or of physical comfort never plays a considerable part.
Ownership began and grew into a human institution on grounds
unrelated to the subsistence minimum. The dominant incentive was
from the outset the invidious distinction attaching to wealth, and,
save temporarily and by exception, no other motive has usurped the
primacy at any later stage of the development.
Property set out with being booty held as trophies of the successful
raid. So long as the group had departed and so long as it still
stood in close contact with other hostile groups, the utility of
things or persons owned lay chiefly in an invidious comparison
between their possessor and the enemy from whom they were taken. The
habit of distinguishing between the interests of the individual and
those of the group to which he belongs is apparently a later growth.
Invidious comparison between the possessor of the honorific booty
and his less successful neighbours within the group was no doubt
present early as an element of the utility of the things possessed,
though this was not at the outset the chief element of their value.
The man's prowess was still primarily the group's prowess, and the
possessor of the booty felt himself to be primarily the keeper of
the honour of his group. This appreciation of exploit from the
communal point of view is met with also at later stages of social
growth, especially as regards the laurels of war.
But as soon as the custom of individual ownership begins to gain
consistency, the point of view taken in making the invidious
comparison on which private property rests will begin to change.
Indeed, the one change is but the reflex of the other. The initial
phase of ownership, the phase of acquisition by naive seizure and
conversion, begins to pass into the subsequent stage of an incipient
organization of industry on the basis of private property (in
slaves); the horde develops into a more or less self-sufficing
industrial community; possessions then come to be valued not so much
as evidence of successful foray, but rather as evidence of the
prepotence of the possessor of these goods over other individuals
within the community. The invidious comparison now becomes primarily
a comparison of the owner with the other members of the group.
Property is still of the nature of trophy, but, with the cultural
advance, it becomes more and more a trophy of successes scored in
the game of ownership carried on between the members of the group
under the quasi-peaceable methods of nomadic life.
Gradually, as industrial activity further displaced predatory
activity in the community's everyday life and in men's habits of
thought, accumulated property more and more replaces trophies of
predatory exploit as the conventional exponent of prepotence and
success. With the growth of settled industry, therefore, the
possession of wealth gains in relative importance and effectiveness
as a customary basis of repute and esteem. Not that esteem ceases to
be awarded on the basis of other, more direct evidence of prowess;
not that successful predatory aggression or warlike exploit ceases
to call out the approval and admiration of the crowd, or to stir the
envy of the less successful competitors; but the opportunities for
gaining distinction by means of this direct manifestation of
superior force grow less available both in scope and frequency. At
the same time opportunities for industrial aggression, and for the
accumulation of property, increase in scope and availability. And it
is even more to the point that property now becomes the most easily
recognised evidence of a reputable degree of success as
distinguished from heroic or signal achievement. It therefore
becomes the conventional basis of esteem. Its possession in some
amount becomes necessary in order to any reputable standing in the
community. It becomes indispensable to accumulate, to acquire
property, in order to retain one's good name. When accumulated goods
have in this way once become the accepted badge of efficiency, the
possession of wealth presently assumes the character of an
independent and definitive basis of esteem. The possession of goods,
whether acquired aggressively by one's own exertion or passively by
transmission through inheritance from others, becomes a conventional
basis of reputability. The possession of wealth, which was at the
outset valued simply as an evidence of efficiency, becomes, in
popular apprehension, itself a meritorious act. Wealth is now itself
intrinsically honourable and confers honour on its possessor. By a
further refinement, wealth acquired passively by transmission from
ancestors or other antecedents presently becomes even more honorific
than wealth acquired by the possessor's own effort; but this
distinction belongs at a later stage in the evolution of the
pecuniary culture and will be spoken of in its place.
Prowess and exploit may still remain the basis of award of the
highest popular esteem, although the possession of wealth has become
the basis of common place reputability and of a blameless social
standing. The predatory instinct and the consequent approbation of
predatory efficiency are deeply ingrained in the habits of thought
of those peoples who have passed under the discipline of a
protracted predatory culture. According to popular award, the
highest honours within human reach may, even yet, be those gained by
an unfolding of extraordinary predatory efficiency in war, or by a
quasi-predatory efficiency in statecraft; but for the purposes of a
commonplace decent standing in the community these means of repute
have been replaced by the acquisition and accumulation of goods. In
order to stand well in the eyes of the community, it is necessary to
come up to a certain, somewhat indefinite, conventional standard of
wealth; just as in the earlier predatory stage it is necessary for
the barbarian man to come up to the tribe's standard of physical
endurance, cunning, and skill at arms. A certain standard of wealth
in the one case, and of prowess in the other, is a necessary
condition of reputability, and anything in excess of this normal
amount is meritorious.
Those members of the community who fall short of this, somewhat
indefinite, normal degree of prowess or of property suffer in the
esteem of their fellow-men; and consequently they suffer also in
their own esteem, since the usual basis of self-respect is the
respect accorded by one's neighbours. Only individuals with an
aberrant temperament can in the long run retain their self-esteem in
the face of the disesteem of their fellows. Apparent exceptions to
the rule are met with, especially among people with strong religious
convictions. But these apparent exceptions are scarcely real
exceptions, since such persons commonly fall back on the putative
approbation of some supernatural witness of their deeds.
So soon as the possession of property becomes the basis of popular
esteem, therefore, it becomes also a requisite to the complacency
which we call self-respect. In any community where goods are held in
severalty it is necessary, in order to his own peace of mind, that
an individual should possess as large a portion of goods as others
with whom he is accustomed to class himself; and it is extremely
gratifying to possess something more than others. But as fast as a
person makes new acquisitions, and becomes accustomed to the
resulting new standard of wealth, the new standard forthwith ceases
to afford appreciably greater satisfaction than the earlier standard
did. The tendency in any case is constantly to make the present
pecuniary standard the point of departure for a fresh increase of
wealth; and this in turn gives rise to a new standard of sufficiency
and a new pecuniary classification of one's self as compared with
one's neighbours. So far as concerns the present question, the end
sought by accumulation is to rank high in comparison with the rest
of the community in point of pecuniary strength. So long as the
comparison is distinctly unfavourable to himself, the normal,
average individual will live in chronic dissatisfaction with his
present lot; and when he has reached what may be called the normal
pecuniary standard of the community, or of his class in the
community, this chronic dissatisfaction will give place to a
restless straining to place a wider and ever-widening pecuniary
interval between himself and this average standard. The invidious
comparison can never become so favourable to the individual making
it that he would not gladly rate himself still higher relatively to
his competitors in the struggle for pecuniary reputability.
In the nature of the case, the desire for wealth can scarcely be
satiated in any individual instance, and evidently a satiation of
the average or general desire for wealth is out of the question.
However widely, or equally, or "fairly", it may be distributed, no
general increase of the community's wealth can make any approach to
satiating this need, the ground of which approach to satiating this
need, the ground of which is the desire of every one to excel every
one else in the accumulation of goods. If, as is sometimes assumed,
the incentive to accumulation were the want of subsistence or of
physical comfort, then the aggregate economic wants of a community
might conceivably be satisfied at some point in the advance of
industrial efficiency; but since the struggle is substantially a
race for reputability on the basis of an invidious comparison, no
approach to a definitive attainment is possible.
What has just been said must not be taken to mean that there are no
other incentives to acquisition and accumulation than this desire to
excel in pecuniary standing and so gain the esteem and envy of one's
fellow-men. The desire for added comfort and security from want is
present as a motive at every stage of the process of accumulation in
a modern industrial community; although the standard of sufficiency
in these respects is in turn greatly affected by the habit of
pecuniary emulation. To a great extent this emulation shapes the
methods and selects the objects of expenditure for personal comfort
and decent livelihood.
Besides this, the power conferred by wealth also affords a motive to
accumulation. That propensity for purposeful activity and that
repugnance to all futility of effort which belong to man by virtue
of his character as an agent do not desert him when he emerges from
the naive communal culture where the dominant note of life is the
unanalysed and undifferentiated solidarity of the individual with
the group with which his life is bound up. When he enters upon the
predatory stage, where self-seeking in the narrower sense becomes
the dominant note, this propensity goes with him still, as the
pervasive trait that shapes his scheme of life. The propensity for
achievement and the repugnance to futility remain the underlying
economic motive. The propensity changes only in the form of its
expression and in the proximate objects to which it directs the
man's activity. Under the regime of individual ownership the most
available means of visibly achieving a purpose is that afforded by
the acquisition and accumulation of goods; and as the self-regarding
antithesis between man and man reaches fuller consciousness, the
propensity for achievement -- the instinct of workmanship -- tends
more and more to shape itself into a straining to excel others in
pecuniary achievement. Relative success, tested by an invidious
pecuniary comparison with other men, becomes the conventional end of
action. The currently accepted legitimate end of effort becomes the
achievement of a favourable comparison with other men; and therefore
the repugnance to futility to a good extent coalesces with the
incentive of emulation. It acts to accentuate the struggle for
pecuniary reputability by visiting with a sharper disapproval all
shortcoming and all evidence of shortcoming in point of pecuniary
success. Purposeful effort comes to mean, primarily, effort directed
to or resulting in a more creditable showing of accumulated wealth.
Among the motives which lead men to accumulate wealth, the primacy,
both in scope and intensity, therefore, continues to belong to this
motive of pecuniary emulation.
In making use of the term "invidious", it may perhaps be unnecessary
to remark, there is no intention to extol or depreciate, or to
commend or deplore any of the phenomena which the word is used to
characterise. The term is used in a technical sense as describing a
comparison of persons with a view to rating and grading them in
respect of relative worth or value -- in an aesthetic or moral sense
-- and so awarding and defining the relative degrees of complacency
with which they may legitimately be contemplated by themselves and
by others. An invidious comparison is a process of valuation of
persons in respect of worth.
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