In Defense of High Wage Civilizations

Joseph Dana Miller

[Reprinted from Land and Freedom, January-February, 1931]

Sir Arthur Keith in a recent statement says:

"Humanity is passing through a process of selection of a kind it has never passed through before. It is passing through the selective mill which has been set up with the introduction of modern economic standards."

And then follows a hiatus, a sense of something missing, a conclusion that does not seem to follow as a perfect sequitur: "A nation has to produce or go under."

A very noted scientist is Sir Arthur. His words have weight with the scientific world. He is, to do him justice, a man of courage, and whether we accept or reject his conclusions they are entitled to a certain respect. We are speaking now of his scientific speculations, and not of the paragraph quoted, which seems to us more than a trifle vague. For it is not too much to say that every period in the progress of civilization is a passage though a selective mill in which something of the old is laid aside and something of the new is instituted. But we do not clearly get the connotation of that thought and the statement that "a nation has to produce or go under."

It would be much nearer the truth to say that a nation must solve the problem of distribution or go under. It is not production but equality of distribution that makes for survival a just or approximately just method of distribution. In other words, the strength of a nation lies in the wages of its workers. That such a nation will rank high in the scale of production is true, but this is a confluence and not a cause.

With high wages flow all the concomitants of a true civilization: enlightenment, culture, private and civic morality. Production is really an individual problem, … in the socialistic state. Distribution is a social problem. To solve it calls for social action. Production takes care |of itself. Where economic laws do not give an undue advantage to one group over another, production will solve its own problems in its own way, automatically. Nothing need be done about it save to leave it alone. Buyer and seller will fix terms between them. In a free competitive market no one will gain an advantage over another, and where there is equality of distribution natural laws may be depended upon to set a reasonable limit to the love of gain.

It is easy to pooh-pooh this reasoning, and we hear some one ask if we would remake human nature. We would rather remake society in accordance with a plan where natural laws would allow human nature to develop its highest tendencies and realize its highest aspirations. This can be done by an entirely new concept of the right of property. Some things treated as property must cease to be so regarded. Referring to the charge brought against us by Professor Douglass in his review of Louis Post's Prophet of San Francisco, in which he accuses us of "monotonous monomania," it is necessary again to reiterate that the basis of a natural society is the ownership by the people of public values and the recognition of the sacredness of private property rights.

Civilization has never tried this plan. But in the measure that it has approached it, nations have prospered. Slavery, either chattel slavery or economic slavery, has never made a happy or contented nation. As some of these hindrances fell away civilization has leaped forward. It is true that liberty is forever being lost and forever being found again, but it is constantly renewing itself, like the eagle.

Let us discard the question of production for the time being and consider the problem of distribution and what determines it. We shall then get somewhere. We do not need to vault these innumerable barriers that bar mankind from enjoyment of wealth and plenty nor can we ignore them in our discussion. They must be removed these title deeds that are fences shutting men out from the great mother earth, the great mother to whom none of her offspring are stepchildren, but all sharers alike in her overflowing bounty. Is this "monotonous monomania" to you, Professor Douglass? You do seem to think there is something in it this you tell us. It is constant repetition that offends the "intellectually fastidious," as you hint, but have patience with us, professor; for our words may be poor enough, but what we would convey is a gospel of vast importance to the world never more so than now.