Page:Property and Improperty.djvu/96

 work should be done without cost as part of the routine of planning.

Our analysis thus far discloses a distinction between property and improperty based on an examination of what is necessary to induce the owners of the various sorts of land, labour and capital to apply these factors promptly and efficiently to the production of wealth. We have seen that the surplus of unearned income which the simpler socialism regarded as obtained by the employer by plundering the employce is rightly regarded as a social surplus to which all factors contribute and which can be measured as the excess over and above the payments sufficient to get the best use of natural resources, savings and labour of mind and body, inclusive of the higher forms of mental ability in creative administrative and technical activities.

It is, however, worth while to consider separately the question how far it would be necessary for a socialist society to make payments out of their surplus to get the best work out of those whose scarcity value will continue to exist under the new order. In other words, how far will such a society be able to go towards equalitarianism in income, or towards a distribution according to needs? Though a full use of modern productivity should operate towards feeing a larger proportion of work-time and ability for the production of the sorts of wealth which carry elements of skill and interest in their making, there will still remain a large body of workers engegd in standardised routine labour for the supply of those needs common to all consumers. Much depends upon how far and fast mechanism can continue to displace unskilled labour in such work and substitute the skilled control of machinery for servitude to it. There are grounds for believing that modern technology is transforming certain important and growing industries into this more human shape. “In industries which are the newest fruits of scientific technique, such as electrical communications, the demand for special training is becoming almost co-extensive with the entire body of employees, and the old-time unskilled worker of the landless proletariat gives place to a new type with aspirations to the hire purchase of a suburban villa, scarcely distinguishable from the man who calls his wage a salary.”

In every capitalist country statistics show that a diminishing proportion of employees are engaged in industry and agriculture, an increasing proportion in transport, trade and commerce. Though machinery plays a predominant part in most transport services, the employees are largely skilled operators; and though machines have even invaded the work of book-keeping in banks and offices, the net result is to liberate clerks from some of their dullest routine labour. The typist performs a relatively skilled work, less onerous than the hand-labour the typewriter has displaced. It cannot, of course, be pretended that a long day's work in most or any of these occupations carries a margin of positive interest or enjoyment, as in the finer arts and crafts. But the general tendency has been to lighten both the physical burden and the sheer monotony of the more routine processes which are taken over by machinery.