The elements of social justice / by L.T. Hobhouse.

  • Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse
Date:
[1922]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The elements of social justice / by L.T. Hobhouse. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    174/216 page 170
    The process may or may not be useful to society. It is useful in an unregulated industry in so far as it tends to stimulate production when it is deficient, and to check it when superabundant. The profits made by those who thus intelligently forecast the market may be regarded as of the nature of a payment for the regulation of industry. They may with equal justice be regarded as a tax which keen-sighted individuals can put upon society on account of its deficiencies in organization. The mere speculator who enters into the business of buying and selling with a view to the chances of the market seems to fulfil no function, but only to aggravate fluctuations of prices which makes the reward of the producers the more uncertain. It would seem (a) to be a legitimate object of society to render this source of individual profit un¬ available by assisting as far as possible the work of organization, and (b) in the meanwhile to reduce the profits of mere speculation as far as possible by taxation, thereby enhancing the degree of socially-useful foresight necessary to make the working of the financial middleman a paying business. (b) In all exchange the greater advantage goes to the stronger purchaser. He may be stronger through his existing economic position, or through special skill in bargaining. Neither of these adds to social wealth. The qualities which make a good bargainer are rather anti- social, and the good bargain achieved by superiority of economic position does not represent any proportionate increment in the social value of the product sold. Profit on price, then, so far as due to such causes, is not a reward of social service. As accruing to the individual it repre¬ sents a tax on others. (c) The same considerations apply to all profits accru¬ ing from the possession of differential advantages in production, except so far as they depend on and corre¬ spond to differences of personal ability in organizing and executing production. The price of an article being fixed by demand and supply, the owmer of any differential advantages enabling him to produce it at lower cost, is
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