Principles of Political Economy by Charles Gide, 1903 (second edition) – HB 173. G4513 1903 ssh
The Wants of Man
The wants of man are the underlying motive of all economic activity, and consequently the starting-point of economic science. Every living being requires for its development and the accomplishment of its purposes some help from without, and must assimilate certain elements of the outside world. From the plant (and even from the crystal) up to man, this necessity increases with increase of individuality. Every want felt by a living being gives rise to a desire, and consequently to an effort to obtain possession of the necessary exterior objects, because their possession implies gratification, whereas the lack of them means suffering. The wants of man have several characteristics, each of which is important because some great economic law is based on it. These characteristics are the following: -
(1) Human wants are unlimited in number. This feature distinguishes man from the inferior animals and is the mainspring of civilization in the strictest sense of the word. To civilize a people is to increase its wants.
The wants of humanity are at first like those of a child. At birth the child needs nothing but a little milk and warm covering; but soon he requires more varied food, more complicated garments, and toys; each year gives rise to new needs and new desires. The more he learns and sees, the more numerous and intense are these desires.
We are today conscious of a thousand wants that were unknown to our grandfathers, - wants of comfort, hygiene, cleanliness, education, travel, intercourse. It is certain also that our grandchildren will fell new wants. If we should discover, on another planet, beings superior to men, we should find among them a multitude of wants of which we in this world know noting. Nations are doomed if they are too easily satisfied, and if their desires to not extend outside the small circle of necessity. Nations whose people are content with a handful of ripe fruit and a sleeping-place in the shade will succumb in the international struggle for life. They are destined to disappear quickly from a world in which they scarcely know how to subsist.
If we desire a diminution in the number and intensity of wants that aim at wealth, which today make up too great a part of our social activity, this is in perfect agreement not only with Christian ascetics and mystics like Tolstoi, but even with such economist as John Stuart Mill. But this desire is conditioned on the assumption that these wants will be abandoned in order that nobler ones may take their place; for if we simply gave them up without filling their place, that would mean the retrogression of social life toward the animal state.
Moreover, it must be remarked that even purely economic wants are not devoid of moral value, for every new want constitutes a new social bond; generally we can satisfy our wants only with the aid of others, and this fact strengthens the feeling of solidarity. The man who has no wants – the hermit – suffices unto himself, which is precisely what a man should not do. As for the working classes, we should rejoice, not regret, that new wants and desires constantly plague their minds; for without new wants they would have remained in an eternal condition of slavery.
(2) Wants are limited in intensity. This is one of the most important propositions in political economy, for on it, as we shall see, is founded a new theory of value.
Wants are limited in intensity because every want is satiable, i.e. a certain amount of a certain kind or kinds of wealth will satisfy it completely. It is evident that a man needs only a certain amount of bread to satisfy his hunger, and a certain amount of water to slake his thirst. We may say that a want decrease in intensity up to the point of satiety. Then the want is extinguished and is replaced by disgust or even suffering. It is torture to suffer thirst; but it was also torture, in the Middle Ages, to undergo the” watering operation,” by which the victim was compelled to absorb excessive quantities of water.
The more natural a want is, i.e. the more physiological its nature, the more clearly drawn is its limit. It is easy to tell how many pounds of bread and how many pints of water a man needs. But the more artificial or social a want is, the more elastic is the limit marking its satisfaction. It is certainly not an easy matter to tell how many dresses would lead a fashionable woman to cry “Enough!” or the number of rubies desire by an Indian rajah, or how much money would completely satisfy the wants of a civilized man. Nevertheless, we may say that even these wants there is a limit; in these respects, too, satiety is inevitable. At all events each new possession gives less pleasure than the preceding one.
(3) Wants are competitive, i.e. one want can often be developed only at the expense of other wants which it abolished or absorbs. According to the proverb, the old must make room for the new; similarly, one want takes the place of another. This simple fact is the basis of an important economic law called the law of the substitution of wants. Progress consists generally in replacing inferior wants by higher wants. To combat drunkenness, for example, temperance societies have found nothing more successful than ‘temperance restaurants’ in which an effort is made to accustom people to drinking coffee or tea. We should also note that a material what may give way to an intellectual want (the saloon to the reading-room) or a moral want (when, for example, a laborer deprives himself of a drink in order to pay his dues to a benefit society, a labor organization, or a reform club.)
(4) Wants are complementary; they form groups. There is competition among wants of the same sort, among wants that are interchangeable; but there is harmony among wants of different kinds. The want of food is allied, in civilized societies, with the want of tables, chairs, table-cloths, napkins, glassware, knives, and forks. In order to obtain a maximum of enjoyment, many pleasures must be combined, and thus give rise simultaneously to large groups of wants.
(5) Wants, even acquired or artificial wants, tend to become a matter of habit. They become, as the popular expression aptly puts it, our second nature. This, as we shall see, is of great importance in the determination of wages. The customary plane of existence – the standard of living – cannot easily be lowered. There was a time when workmen wore neither shirts nor shoes, when they had wither coffee nor tobacco, when they ate neither met nor white bread; but today these wants are so deep-seated, they from so fundamental a part of our nature, that a workman, if he were deprived of them and suddenly reduced to the condition of his social equals in the time of good King Henry, would probably perish.
If we add, finally, that a habit which has been transmitted from generation to generation tends in time to become established through heredity, and that our senses are every day becoming more subtle and more exaction, we shall understand the despotic power that may eventually be acquired by a want that originally seemed to be futile or insignificant.
It must not be supposed, however, that wants once acquired are perpetual. There is, as we have said, a competition or rivalry among some wants. Some of them are vanquished and disappear. The show-cases of our museums are filled with objects that at one time satisfied a real want, but which now correspond to no human desire save that of collector of curios. But wants perish only when they are supplanted by others that are more strongly felt or whose satisfaction affords greater enjoyment.
