Yesterday we
started looking at Harold G. Moulton’s vision of the future. What we saw was good and positive. Today, however, we look at something with
which we disagree, and why we say that, for all his genius, Moulton would have
benefited from a conversation with Louis O. Kelso.
The fact is,
most economists and all politicians have a number of blind spots when it comes
to “real” economics. One of them, and
possibly the most significant, is the idea that all production comes from
labor; capital is not independently productive and only enhances labor.
Imagine our
surprise, then, when we discovered that Moulton had fallen into this common
error. A number of his books were
written from the perspective of Say’s Law of Markets, which assumes as a given
that production can be carried out by means of land, labor, and capital.
Of course, in
binary economics in which we divide the factors of production into the human
and the non-human, we would say by means of labor and capital. The point, however, is the same: both the
human and the non-human factors of production are productive and in the same
way.
To speak of
capital only “enhancing” labor is to say that capital is not productive in the
same sense that labor is productive, which we know is not the case. We know this by applying the first principle
of reason in its form as the principle of identity: that which is true is as
true, and is true in the same way, as everything else that is true. Thus (assuming we go by reason), if both
labor and capital are productive, they are both productive in the same way.
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| Karl Marx |
Yet, in his
predictions for the future, Moulton appeared to assume that advancing
technology enhances labor, and is not independently productive. Ultimately, of course, this means that —
remember, capital is not in and of itself productive given the assumption that
labor alone is productive — the owner of capital is stealing from the worker by
demanding anything more than what the capital cost him . . . which is exactly
the same argument Karl Marx made in Das
Kapital (1867), and which was condemned a number of times by the Catholic
Church:
Wherefore it is
wholly false to ascribe to property alone or to labor alone whatever has been
obtained through the combined effort of both, and it is wholly unjust for
either, denying the efficacy of the other, to arrogate to itself whatever has
been produced. (Quadragesimo Anno, §
53.)
Moulton a
Marxist? Given the assumption that labor
alone is productive — and that even capital is nothing more than congealed or
accumulated labor — we can’t say that Moulton was a Marxist, actually, but that
he had fallen into a common Marxist error:
A LOOK AT THE FUTURE (CONT.)
Dr. Moulton has an answer for that, too. He says the greatest single need, in the U.S.
and other countries, is “a progressive increase in the efficiency of
workmen.” He adds:
“Concretely, a universal increase of 20 per cent in output through
better labor performance would mean close to to a 40-billion-dollar increase in
American national income.”
Dr. Moulton says this can be achieved without sweating labor, but
simply by making it more effective.
Management would play its part by providing the most efficient machines
and methods. The result, he says, would
solve most of the difficult economic problems now before us. He says:
“Simultaneously, real wages could be materially increased, the
returns to capital could be enlarged, and prices to the consuming public could
be lowered.”
All that is needed to bring this about is clear understanding and
support on the part of labor organizations, Dr. Moulton says.
So what can we
do to bring Moulton back to the right path?
Not of capitalism, but of the Just Third Way?
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| Kelso and Adler |
That’s actually
pretty simple . . . and something that Kelso and Mortimer Adler accomplished
with their second collaboration in 1961, The New Capitalists.
Now, ordinarily
we point out that in The New Capitalists,
Kelso and Adler brought Moulton’s work into expanded capital ownership. In his 1935 classic, The
Formation of Capital, Moulton showed how it is unnecessary, even
counterproductive to rely on existing accumulations of savings to finance new
capital formation. This is highlighted
by the subtitle, “A Proposal to Free Economic Growth from the Slavery of
Savings.”
Today, however,
we don’t need to bring Moulton into expanded ownership . . . but to bring
expanded ownership into Moulton! The
answer to increasing real income — “real wages” is a blind alley, a diversion;
all income need not be in the form of wages — is to supplement wage income (and
in some instances replace it entirely) with ownership income . . . which is the
issue Kelso and Adler addressed. And how
can workers pay for acquiring capital ownership?
That’s where
Moulton came in. The bottom line here is
that Moulton needed Kelso and Adler’s insights but didn’t have them, while
Kelso and Adler needed Moulton’s insights and got them.
Fortunately,
you can also share the benefit of adding Moulton and Kelso and Adler together
by learning about
Capital Homesteading, an application of the principles set out in the Just
Third Way.
#30#
