Book: Freeland

T >> Theodor Hertzka >> Freeland




'Very well; I perfectly understand that. But how is it with those who are
orphaned in infancy? Is no provision made for such? It cannot possibly
accord with the sentiments of Freeland parents who live in luxury to hand
over their children to public orphanages?'

'As to orphanages, it is the same as with hospitals,' answered David. 'If
by orphanages you mean those barracks of civilised Europe or America, in
which the waifs of poverty are without love, and after a mechanical pattern
educated into the poor of the future, there are certainly none such among
us. But if you mean the institutions in which the Freeland orphans are
brought up, I can assure you that the most sensitive parents can commit
their children to them with the most perfect confidence. Of course, nothing
can take the place of parental love; but otherwise the children are cared
for and brought up exactly as if they were in their parents' house. The
sexes dwell apart by tens in houses which differ in nothing from other
Freeland private houses; and they are under the care of pedagogically
trained guardians, whose duty it is not to teach them, but to watch over
them and attend to all their domestic wants. Food, clothing, play,--in
short, the whole routine of life is in every respect similar to that of the
rest of Freeland. They are taught in the public schools; and after they
have passed through the intermediate schools, the young people themselves
decide whether they will go to a technical school or to a university. Until
their majority they remain in the adoptive home selected for them by the
authorities, and then, if they are not yet able to maintain themselves,
they enjoy the general right of maintenance-allowance. What more could the
most affectionate care of parents do for them? Not even the most intangible
reproach can attach to training in such a public orphanage, for the
children are not the children of poverty, but simply orphans.'

'But I imagine that orphans from better houses are adopted by relatives or
acquaintances, particularly if the parents make full provision for their
support,' I answered.

'In case there are such houses to which the children can go, the parents
need make no provision for their maintenance, but merely a testamentary
declaration, and the children will then be transferred to such houses
without becoming any pecuniary burden to their adoptive parents. For in
such a case the commonwealth pays to the household in question an
equivalent to what would have been the cost of maintenance at the
orphanage; and as, besides the ordinary expenses of living in every
Freeland house, the fee for personal superintendence must be paid out of
this equivalent, the allowance will not be much more than the child will
cost its foster-parents. Thus no parental provision is needed to save the
orphans from being dependent upon the liberality or goodwill of strangers.
But I should tell you that this interposition of friendly or even related
families on behalf of orphans is exceptional. Unless circumstances are very
much in favour of such an arrangement, Freeland parents prefer to leave
their children to the care of the public orphanages. And this is very
intelligible to all who have had opportunities of observing the touching
tenderness of the guardian angels who rule in these houses, and of the
intimate relations which quickly develop between the children and their
attendants. Our Board of Maintenance, supported by our Board of Education,
lays great weight upon this part of its duty. Only the most approved
masters and mistresses--and the latter must also be experienced nurses--are
appointed as guardians of the orphans; and to have been successfully
occupied in this work for a number of years is a high distinction zealously
striven after, particularly by the flower of our young women.'

'I can quite understand that,' I said. 'May I, in this connection, ask how
you deal with the right of inheritance in general, and of inheritance of
real property in particular? For here, in property in houses there seems to
me to be a rock upon which your general principles as to property in land
might be wrecked. It is one of the fundamental principles of your
organisation that no one can have a right of property in land; but
houses--if I have been rightly informed--are private property. How do you
reconcile these things?'

'Everyone,' answered David, 'can dispose freely of his own property, at
death as in life. The right of bequest is free and unqualified; but it must
be noted that between husband and wife there is an absolute community of
goods, whence it follows that only the survivor can definitively dispose of
the common property. The right of property in the house, however, cannot be
divided; and it is not allowable to build more than one dwelling-house upon
a house-and-garden plot. Finally, the dwelling-house must be used by the
owner, and cannot be let to another. If the house-plot be used for any
other purpose than as the site of the owner's home, the breach of the law
involves no punishment, and no force will be brought to bear upon the
owner, but the owner at once loses his exclusive right as usufructuary of
the plot. The plot becomes at once, _ipso facto_, ground to which no one
has a special right, and to which everyone has an equal claim. For,
according to our views, there is no right of property in land, and
therefore not in the building-site of the house; and the right to
appropriate such ground to one's own house is simply a right of usufruct
for a special purpose. Just as, for example, the traveller by rail has a
claim to the seat which he occupies, but only for the purpose of sitting
there, and not for the purpose of unpacking his goods or of letting it to
another, so I have the right to reserve for myself, merely for occupation,
the spot of ground upon which I wish to fix my home; and no one has any
more right to settle upon my building-site than he has to occupy my cushion
in the railway, even if it should be possible to crowd two persons into the
one seat. But neither am I at liberty to make room for a friend upon my
seat; for my fellow-travellers are not likely to approve of the
inconvenience thereby occasioned, and they may protest that the legs and
elbows of the sharer of my seat crowd them too much, and that the air-space
calculated for one pair of lungs is by my arbitrary action shared by two
pair. Just so my house-neighbours are not likely to approve of having my
walls and roof too near to theirs, and will resent the arbitrary act by
which I fill the air-space of the town with more persons than the
commonwealth allows.

'Now, in the exercise of my right of usufruct of a definite plot of ground,
I have inseparably connected with this plot something over which I have not
merely the right of usufruct, but also the right of property--namely, a
house. Consequently my right of usufruct passes over to the person to
whom--whether gratuitously or not--I transfer my right of property in the
house. Therefore I can sell, or bequeath, or give away my house without
being prevented from doing so by the fact that I have no right of property
in the building-site.

'But if, through any circumstances independent of my labour or of the
building cost, the site on which my house stands acquires a value above
that of other building-sites, this increased value belongs not to me, but
to those who have given rise to it, and that is, without exception, the
community. Let us suppose that building-ground in Eden Vale has acquired
such an exceptional value, while there are still sites available throughout
Freeland for milliards of persons: this local increase of value can be
attributed merely to the fact that the excellent streets, public grounds,
splendid monuments, theatres, libraries--in short, the public institutions
of Eden Vale--have made living in this town more desirable than in any
other place in the country. But these public institutions are not my
work--they are the work of the community; and I have no right to put into
my pocket the increased ground-value derived from the common enjoyment of
these institutions. All that I myself have expended upon the house and
garden belongs to me, and on a change of ownership must be either made good
to me or put to my credit; but the ground-price--and, indeed, the whole of
it--belongs to the commonwealth; for building-sites which offer no
advantages over any others are, in view of the still existing surplus of
unoccupied ground, valueless. The commonwealth, therefore, has, strictly
speaking, a right at any time to claim this value or an equivalent; and if
the question were an important one, it would be advisable actually to
exercise this right--that is, from time to time, or at least on a change of
ownership, to assess the value of the sites of houses and gardens, and to
appropriate the surplus of the sale-price to the public treasury.

'In reality, in view of our other arrangements, this question of the value
of building-sites in Freeland is of no importance whatever. It must not be
forgotten that our private houses are not lodging-houses, but merely family
dwellings. As I have already said, every contract to let renders absolutely
void the occupier's right of exclusive usufruct of the house-site. He who
lets his house has, by the very act of doing so, made his plot masterless.
A secret letting is prevented by our general constitution, and particularly
by the central bank, which we will visit next. Thus the increased value
which may be acquired by a building-plot cannot become a question of
importance, and we are able to refrain altogether from interfering with
free trade in houses. We buy, sell, bequeath, and give away our
dwelling-houses, and no one troubles himself about it. I may remark, in
passing, that up to the present there has been no noticeable increase in
the prices of sites. A man pays for his house what the house itself is held
to be worth, the trifling differences being due to the greater or less
taste exhibited in the structure, the greater or less beauty of the garden,
&c., &c. But that the Eden Vale plots, for example, as such, have a special
value cannot be asserted, as there are still many thousands freely
available to anyone, but which are not taken. The conveniences of life are
pretty evenly distributed throughout Freeland, and no town can boast of
attractions which are not balanced by attractions of other kinds in other
towns. Eden Vale, for instance, possesses the most splendid buildings, and
is distinguished by incomparable natural beauty; hence it is less adapted
to industries, and has no agricultural colony in its neighbourhood. Dana
City, on the other hand, which is specially suitable for industry, and is
in the midst of agricultural land, is unattractive to many on account of
its ceaseless and noisy business activity. And, in general, we Freelanders
are not fond of large towns; we love to have woods and meadows as near us
as possible, and those who are able to live in the country do it in
preference to living in towns. Of course, there is not likely to be any
lack of rural building-sites; hence there can never be any ground-price
proper among us. If, however, building-ground should acquire a price, we
are in any case protected by our way and manner of building and living from
such prices as would give rise to any material derangement of our property
relations. Whether a family residence has a higher or a lower value is,
therefore, after all, only a question of subordinate interest, and it is
not worth the trouble, in order to equalise the differences in value which
arise, to bring into play an apparatus which, under the circumstances,
might lead to chicanery.'

I agreed with him. Wishing, however, to understand this important matter in
all its relations, I supposed a case in which the opportunity of gaining an
extraordinarily high profit was connected with a certain definite locality,
and asked what would happen then. 'Let us imagine that in a small valley
surrounded by uninhabitable rocks or marshes, a mine of incalculable value
is discovered, the exploitation of which would give twice or thrice as much
profit as the average profit in Freeland at that time. Naturally everyone
will labour at this mine until the influx of workers produces an
equilibrium in the profits. If there were sufficient space round the mine
for dwelling-houses, nothing would stand in the way of this equalisation of
profits; but as, in the supposed case, the space is limited, only the first
comers will be able to work at the mine; all later comers--unless they camp
out--will be as effectually excluded from competing as if an insuperable
barrier had been raised round the mine. The fortunate usufructuaries of the
few building-sites will, therefore, be in the pleasant situation of
permanently pocketing twice or thrice the average proceeds of labour--let
us say, for example, 1,600£ a year, whilst 600£ is the average.
Consequently their early occupation of the ground will be worth 1,000£ a
year to them, exactly the same as to a London house-owner the lucky
circumstance that his ancestors set up their huts on that particular spot
on the banks of the Thames is worth his 1,000£ or more a year. That this is
the rule and is the principal source of wealth, not only in London, but
everywhere outside of Freeland, whilst in this country it would require an
extraordinary concurrence of circumstances to produce similar phenomena,
makes no difference in the fact itself that it can occur everywhere, and
that, if you know of no means to prevent it, the ground-rent you have
fortunately got rid of might revive among you. Nay, in this--I will admit
extreme--case the Freeland institutions would prove themselves a hindrance
to the national exploitation of such a highly profitable opportunity for
labour, the most intense utilisation of which would evidently be to the
general interest. If such a case occurred in Europe or America, the
fortunate owners would surround the mines with large lodging-barracks, from
which certainly they would without any trouble derive enormous profits, but
which at the same time would make it possible to extract the rich treasures
from the earth. Your Freeland house-right, on the contrary, would in such a
case prevent the exploitation of the treasure of the earth, merely in order
that an exceptional increase of the wealth of individuals should be
avoided. And yet it is characteristic of your institutions as a whole to
render labour more productive than is possible under an exploiting system
of industry. A correct principle, however, must be correct under all
circumstances.'

'That is also my view,' answered David; 'but in such cases even your
Western law affords a means of help--namely, expropriation. Let it be
assumed that we could by no means whatever make the neighbourhood of the
mine accommodate a greater number of dwelling-houses; then, in the public
interest, we would redeem the houses already existing at the mine, and in
their place we would erect large lodging-houses after the pattern of our
hotels. If that would not suffice to accommodate as many workers as were
required in order to bring the profit of labour at the mine into
equilibrium with the average profit of the country, we would proceed to the
last resource and expropriate the mine for the benefit of the commonwealth.
By no means would even such a very improbable contingency present any
serious difficulties to the carrying out of our principles. For you will
certainly admit that the undertaking of a really monopolist production by
the commonwealth is not contrary to our principles. If you would deny it,
you must go farther, and assert that in working the railways, the
telegraphs, the post, nay, even in assuming the ultimate control of the
community, there is to be found a violation of the principle of individual
freedom.'

'You are only too right,' I answered, 'and I cannot defend myself from the
charge of harbouring a doubt which would have been seen to be superfluous
if I had only been unreservedly willing to admit that the people of
Freeland, whatever might happen, would probably make the wisest and not the
stupidest provision against such a contingency as I imagined. The ground of
that inconceivable stubbornness with which we adherents of the old are apt
to resist every new idea is, that we imagine difficulties, which exist only
in our fancy, and most unnecessarily suppose that there is no other way of
surmounting those imaginary difficulties than the stupidest imaginable. We
then triumphantly believe we have reduced the new ideas _ad absurdum_;
whilst we should have done better to have been ashamed of our own
absurdities.'

With this fierce self-accusation I will close my letter to-day; but not
without telling you in confidence that in making it I was thinking less of
myself than of--others.

----




CHAPTER XVIII


Eden Vale: Aug. 6, ----

Yesterday, accompanied by the two English agents, we inspected the Freeland
Central Bank. The comprehensive and--as a necessary consequence--
exceedingly simple clearing system excited the highest admiration of the
two experienced gentlemen. The remarkably small amount of cash required to
adjust the accounts of the whole of the gigantic business transactions
drew from Lord E---- the inquiry why Freeland retained gold as a measure
of value. He thought that, as the Freelanders already made the value of a
unit of labour-time the standard of calculation in their most important
affairs, the simplest plan would be to universalise this method--that is,
to declare the labour-hour to be the measure of value, the money-unit.
This would, he thought, far better harmonise with the general social order
of Freeland, in which labour is the source and basis of all value.

The director of the bank (Mr. Clark) replied: 'That is a view which has
been repeatedly expressed by strangers; but it is based simply upon
confounding the _measure of value_ with the _source of income_. For labour
alone is not the source of value, though most Socialists adopt this error
of the so-called classical economists as the ground of their demands. If
all value were derived from labour and from labour alone, then even among
you in the old exploiting world everything would be in favour of the
workers, for even there the workers have control over their working power.
The misery among you is due to the fact that the workers have no control
over the other things which are requisite for the creation of value,
namely, the product of previous work--_i.e._ capital, and the forces and
materials derived from nature. We in Freeland have guaranteed to labour the
whole of what it assists to produce. But we do not base this right upon the
erroneous proposition that labour is the sole source of the value of what
it produces, but upon the proposition that the worker has the same claim to
the use of those other factors requisite for the creation of value as he
has to his working-power. But this is only by the way. Even if labour were
the only source of and the only ingredient in value, it would still be in
any case the worst conceivable _measure_ of value; for it is of all things
that possess value the one the value of which is most liable to variations.
Its value rises with every advance in human dexterity and industry; that
is, a labour-day or a labour hour is continuously being transformed into an
increasing quantity of all imaginable other kinds of value. That the value
of the product of labour differs as the labour-power is well or badly
furnished with tools, well or badly applied, cannot be questioned, and
never has been seriously questioned. Now, among us in Freeland _all_
labour-power is as well equipped and applied as possible, because the
perfect and unlimited freedom of labour to apply itself at any time to
whatever will then create the highest value brings about, if not an
absolute, yet a relative equilibrium of values; but, in order that this may
be brought about, there must exist an unchangeable and reliable standard by
which the value of the things produced by labour can be measured. That the
labour expended by us upon shoe goods and upon textile fabrics, upon
cereals and turnery goods, possesses the same value is shown by the fact
that these various kinds of wares produced in the same period of time
possess the same value; but this fact can be shown, not by a comparison
between the respective amounts of labour-time, but only by a comparison
with something that has a constant value in itself. If we concluded that
the things which required an equal time to produce were of equal value
because they were produced in an equal time, we might soon find ourselves
producing shoes which no one wanted, while we were suffering from a lack of
textile fabrics; and we might see with unconcern the superfluity of turnery
wares, the production of which was increasing, while perhaps all available
hands were required in order to correct a disastrous lack of cereals. To
make the labour-day the measure of value--if it were not, for other
reasons, impossible--involves Communism, which, instead of leaving the
adjustment of the relations between supply and demand to free commerce,
fixes those relations by authority; doing this, of course, without asking
anyone what he wishes to enjoy, or what he wishes to do, but
authoritatively prescribing what everyone shall consume, and what he shall
produce.

'But we in Freeland strive after what is the direct opposite of
Communism--namely, absolute individual freedom. Consequently we, more
imperatively than any other people, need a measure of value as accurate and
reliable as possible--that is, one the exchange-power of which, with
reference to all other things, is exposed to as little variation as
possible. This best possible, most constant, standard the civilised world
has hitherto found rightly in gold. There is no difference in value between
two equal quantities of gold, whilst one labour-day may be very materially
more valuable than another; and there is no means of ascertaining with
certainty the difference in value of the two labour-days except by
comparing them both with one and the same thing which possesses a really
constant value. Yet this equality in value of equal quantities of gold is
the least of the advantages possessed by gold over other measures of value.
Two equal quantities of wheat are of nearly equal value. But the value of
gold is exposed to less _variation_ than is the value of any other thing.
Two equal quantities of wheat are of equal value at the same time; but
to-morrow they may both be worth twice as much as to-day, or they may sink
to half their present value; while gold can change its value but very
little in a short time. If its exchange-relation to any commodity whatever
alters suddenly and considerably, it can be at once and with certainty
assumed that it is the value not of the gold, but of the other commodity,
which has suddenly and considerably altered. And this is a necessary
conclusion from that most unquestionable law of value according to which
the price of everything is determined by supply and demand, if we connect
with this law the equally unquestionable fact that the supply and demand of
no other thing are exposed to so small a relative variation as are those of
gold. This fact is not due to any mysterious quality in this metal, but to
its peculiar durability, in consequence of which in the course of thousands
of years there has been accumulated, and placed at the service of those who
can demand it, a quantity of gold sufficient to make the greatest temporary
variations in its production of no practical moment. Whilst a good or a bad
wheat harvest makes an enormous difference in the supply of wheat for the
time being, because the old stock of wheat is of very subordinate
importance relatively to the results of the new harvest, the amount of gold
in the world remains relatively unaltered by the variations, however great
they may be, of even several years of gold-production, because the existing
stock of gold is enormously greater than the greatest possible
gold-production of any single year. If all the gold-mines in the world
suddenly ceased to yield any gold, no material influence would be produced
upon the quantity of available gold; whilst a single general failure in the
cereal crop would at once and inevitably produce the most terrible
corn-famine. This, then, is the reason why gold is the best possible,
though by no means an absolutely perfect, measure of value. But labour-time
would be the worst conceivable measure of value, for neither are two equal
periods of labour necessarily of equal value, nor does labour-time in
general possess an unalterable value, but its exchange-power in relation to
all other things increases with every step forward in the methods of
labour.'

We were all convinced, but Lord E---- could not refrain from remarking that
the Freelanders did nevertheless estimate the value of many things in
labour-equivalents. He at once received from my father the pertinent answer
that, according to all they had yet heard, this happened only in cases in
which an increase of payment had to run parallel with a rise in the value
of labour. Salaries and maintenance-allowances _ought_ to rise in
proportion as the proceeds of labour and therewith the general consumption
rose; and it was only when this relation had to be kept in view that the
value of things could be estimated in labour-equivalents.

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