CHAPTER XXI

DISTRIBUTION. RENT. INTEREST

I. DISTRIBUTION

Explanation. — Distribution is the third part of Political Economy. The object of this part of Political Economy is to study the principles that determine how the product of Nature, Labor, and Capital, or its equivalent in money value, is to be distributed among the various agents which help in its creation.

An immense amount of concrete product is the result of the various forces, Nature, Labor, Capital, treated of in the first part of Political Economy, Production. This product has value estimated in money. The purpose now is to consider how the product shall be distributed, what share of it shall come to the individual factors which have, by collective energy, helped in its production.

This subject constitutes the great social question.

That there is a social question at all is denied by writers of the Liberal School, who hold that if everything is left absolutely alone, matters will settle themselves according to strict justice and according to the infallible operation of laws as inflexible and as certain of result as are the laws of nature. They say that there should be no attempt to determine methods of distribution, and that it is idle to speculate on how distribution shall be accomplished. How commodities may be produced, how they can be produced at least cost, and how placed where they may bring in the greatest returns, these are questions which properly come under the investigation of Political Economy, but Political Economy should go no further. The proceeds from the produce, they claim, will distribute themselves naturally, just

as the waters of a river, debouching into a plain, will find their own level and will contrive their own exits. So, Adam Smith did not treat of distribution at all, limiting his study to production alone.

Yet the question of distribution has in recent years come to be considered a practical question. It is, according to most writers, the great social question upon the solution of which depends the welfare of the individual members of society. It is claimed that, while production is increasing year by year and the world is annually becoming richer, the social standing of most of the members of society is not becoming appreciably better, or at least not in proportion to the increase of wealth.

The evil is not in methods of production, but in the methods of distribution of the immense wealth brought into existence by production.

The amassing of great wealth, it is declared, is due to causes often unjust and tyrannical. They are thus enumerated: the sword, slave trade, political power, foreign trade, inventions, mercantile skill, monopolies, enterprise in real estate, gambling, immense charges for professional services, extortion in trade, usury. Through such causes, many of them unjust, wealth has been concentrated in the hands of the comparatively few, and the great majority of the people are left outside the reach of the benefits that accrue from an ever increasing quantity of production and an ever advancing facility in the means of production.

From the unequal distribution of the wealth produced have arisen the diversity of classes in society, one antagonistic to another, and the inequality of social conditions.

So has it been in the past, and so is it to-day. In ancient Greece, there were the helots and the upper classes; in Rome, there were the patricians, the plebeians, and the slaves; in the Middle Ages, there were the feudal lords and the serfs. In Russia, what abject degradation still obtains! In Europe, to-day, there exist the nobility and the populace. In our own land, we have the rich and the poor.

All this inequality, this distinction of classes, it is claimed, is due to the unequal and frequently unjust distribution of wealth.

Much is said about the equality of men. We hear from many quarters the saying: “All men are by nature equal;" and we are told to believe that any difference of social condition, any supereminence in ability or in the possession of the world's goods, violates this fundamental principle of the natural equality of men, and must have arisen from social or personal causes necessarily unjust.

The Catholic View. We must not, however, fail to keep in mind the fundamental principles of Catholic doctrine, which directly or indirectly pertain to this matter.

It is true that, according to nature taken in the abstract, all men are equal, i.e. all men have the same nature. All have the same Creator, the same destiny and end, the same natural law. All are members of the same family. All have the same essential rights and duties arising from the natural law. All have the right to be treated as men. All have a right to the essential conditions of existence, that is, the right to acquire food, raiment, lodging, to possess property, to dispose of their possessions and services as they please, provided they offend in no way against the rights of others.

But it cannot rightly be claimed that in the concrete all men are by nature equal. Men differ in physical and mental powers, in qualities inherited and acquired through education and under influence of environment, in judgment of things, in that ability which makes for success in the world, in the fortunate surroundings which apparently through mere chance affect their lives, and in the power to turn their surroundings to good account. The causes being so varied, the results must be equally varied, and there will always be the remarkably successful man alongside of the man who wins success but in small measure and after much labor, and the man who seems fated to absolute failure.

Nor do these varieties of inherent abilities, nor the social

POL. ECON.- 25

differences due to them and to fortuitous circumstances ably profited by, militate against the only true kind of natural equality that can be asserted of all men, equality in the abstract. Had nature intended that all men should be equal in the concrete, nature would have given to all men equally the same health, the same natural dispositions, the same mental abilities, the same tenacity of purpose, the same moral qualities.

He had been raised to a

Moreover, man is in a fallen state. supernatural order, and through the sin of the first parents, he has fallen from his high estate and has become subject to death, to suffering, to misery, and to labor. This is no mere speculation. It is the truth made known to us by Revelation. Man's life on this earth is short. He is destined to a future life, to a life eternal. This present life is not the be-all and the end-all of man. Another era will open up to him, and that era will bring about the perfection of his being, which cannot be gained in this life.

Hence, evils may exist in this world, injustice and oppression may go on, and the equilibration of things may never take place here; the wicked may prosper and the honest and the just may be oppressed, and no adequate remedy may appear; yet the moment of compensation, of perfect justice, will come, if not in this life, then in the life of eternity.

The efforts that are being exerted to correct the patent evils of society are being made usually without any consideration of these absolutely certain truths. Theories are advanced, systems are proposed, for the amelioration of mankind, in the false assumption that the supernatural does not exist, that man has within himself all that is needed for his own perfectibility, that this world is the final term of man's being.

These theories ignore the fall of man, the supernatural order to which man has been raised, the supernatural means requisite under the present order, the Providence of God, the future life where a final settlement must be made.

The efforts being exerted by all such theorizers for the better

ment of man must infallibly prove abortive, because, building upon false assumptions, they ignore the fundamental truths of the human race and world conditions.

No doubt much has been done and much more can be done for the relief of existing evils through natural efforts and with natural means, but to hope to attain by such means alone perfect happiness for all men in this life is a vain chimera, and must be so, if Revelation is not a myth.

It would be well for us to hearken to the words of Leo XIII: "To suffer and to endure is the lot of humanity; let them strive as they may, no strength and no artifice will ever succeed in banishing from human life the ills and troubles which beset it. If any there are who pretend differently- who hold out to a hard-pressed people the boon of freedom from pain and trouble, an undisturbed repose, and constant enjoyment— they delude the people and impose upon them, and their lying promises will only one day bring forth evils worse than the present." (Encycl. Rerum Novarum.)

In

Socialist Solution of the Problem of Distribution. treating of Socialism in a preceding page, the reader was referred to this third part of Economics for a view of the methods of distribution advocated by the Socialists. It is well to give at least a cursory glance at the principal views which have been set forth at various times by Socialist teachers. (Cf. Gide, Principles of Political Economy, p. 454; Cathrein-Gettelmann, Socialism, p. 316.)

The principles which, according to Socialists, should govern distribution may all be summed up in the following formulas:

(1) Every one should receive an equal share of the social product. (2) Every one should receive according to his wants. (3) Every one should receive according to his merits or capacities. (4) Every one should receive according to his labor.

(1) Equal Sharing. "Every one should receive an equal share of the social product." Equal sharing was practiced among some ancient societies. The Romans divided the land,