Social Productivity versus Private Acquisition

H. J. Davenport

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1910, vol. 25, issue 1, 96-118

Abstract: The genealogy of certain current doctrines traced back (1) to the distinction between productive and unproductive labor, 97. — The origins of this distinction in Mercantilism and Physiocracy, 99. — Mill's interpretation, 101. — The bearing of the materialistic and mercantilistic notion of production upon the notion of productive instruments and upon the distinction between land and capital, 102. — This distinction as reinforced by the argument from origins, 103. — This distinction subjected to the tests of competitive production for the market, 104. — Its support derived from English juristic thought and institutions, 104. — (2) The Unseen Hand, Natural Law, and Laissez-faire as separate sources of the current optimism, of the current misconceptions of productivity, and of current confusions between social and competitive analysis, 106. — These summarized, 109. — The genealogy of the Productivity Theory of Distribution, productivity being presented as social service, 110. — The concept of capital restated in harmony with the competitive, individualistic, pecuniary organization of business, 111. — Capital characterized not by technological tests or by materiality, 111. — Nor by the materiality of its product, 112. — Nor by social service, 113. — But by pecuniary return, — as, likewise, with the productivity of labor, 114. — Other dangers of error and other actual errors through the confusion of the social and the competitive points of view, 115. — The necessary reformulations of doctrine, 116. — General summary of the argument, 117. — The Productivity Theory of Distribution, as commonly held, old in all essentials, 118.

Date: 1910
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