The Idea of Justice in Political Economy [18]
salutary that now and then we do not find fault with breaking the formal law in such contests. There is no worse delusion than that of the older English economists that there are a number of simple and natural legal and economic institutions which have always been as they are and will always remain so; that all progress of civilization and wealth is simply an individual or technical one; that this is simply a question of increased production or consumption which will and can be accomplished on the basis of the same legal institutions. This faith in the stability of economic institutions was the result of the naive overweening confidence of the older economists in the omnipotence of the individual and of the individual life. Socialism then has perhaps over-estimated the significance of social institutions. Historical economics and the modern philosophy of law have given them their due position by showing us that the great epochs of economic progress are primarily connected with the reform of social institutions. The great messages of salvation to humanity were all aimed at the injustice of outworn institutions; by higher justice and better institutions humanity is educated up to higher forms of life. As little as the social institutions of antiquity have governed modern history, as certainly as slavery and serfdom have vanished, as certainly as all past progress of institutions was connected with apparent success in distributing wealth and incomes in a more just way and in adapting it more and more to personal virtues and accomplishments, as certainly as this increased more and more the activity of all individuals, as certain as all.this is it, that the future will also see new improvements in this direction, that the institutions of coming centuries will be more just than those of to-day. The decisive ideal conceptions will be influenced not exclusively but essentially by distributive justice. Institutions which govern whole groups of human beings and the entire distribution of wealth and incomes necessarily call forth a judgment upon their total effects. Inasmuch, indeed, as single institutions concern only single men and single phases of life, the justice required will only be a partial one. Naturally this is always easy to attain. A just assessment of taxes, a just distribution of the burdens for the improvement of highways, of the duty of military service, a just gradation of wages are much easier to attain than a just distribution of the total incomes and wealth. But an endeavor towards these ends will never cease; all partially just regulations have significance only in a system of the just distribution of the total. And with this we finally come to the question what can be and what should the State do in this matter? In our view it will obviously not be a body confined to the extension of justice in criminal law, in the jurisdiction upon contracts and further, perhaps, in the assessment of taxes, but ignoring the just distribution of goods. What sense is there in warming up in the legislatures over the hundredth part of a cent, which a quart of beer or a yard of cloth is raised in price for the poor man, when one takes the standpoint on principle, that his wages are to be regarded as something indifferent and remote from all human intervention. Our modern civilized commonwealth indeed cannot remove every injustice, because primarily it operates and has to operate by means of law. But it should not therefore be indifferent to the moral sentiments of men who ask for justice in distributing wealth and incomes for the grand total of human society. The State is the centre and the heart in which all institutions empty and unite. It also has a strong direct influence on the distribution of incomes and wealth as the greatest employer of labor, the greatest property holder, or the administrator of the greatest undertakings. Above all it exercises as legislator and administrator the greatest indirect influence on law and custom, on all social institutions; and this is the decisive point. The right man in the