The Consumer Theory of Prosperity; J.S. Mill

THE CONSUMER THEORY OF PROSPERITY t'l Jo~n Stuart mitt AMONG THE MISTAKES [of the pre-classical writers] which were most pernicious in their direct consequences ... was the immense importance attached to consumption. The great end of legislation in matters of national wealth ... was to create consumers .... This object, un der the varying names of an extensive demand, a brisk circulation, a great expenditure of money, and some times totidem verbis a large consumption, was conceived to be the great condition of prosperity. It is not necessary, in the present state of the science, to contest this doctrine in the most flagrantly absurd of its forms or of its applications. The utility of a large government expenditure for the purpose of encouraging industry is no longer maintained .... In opposition to these palpable absurdities, it was triumphantly established by political economists that consumption never needs encouragement .... The per son who saves his income is no less a consumer than he These excerpts, selected by Henry Hazlitt for quotation in The Failure of the uNew Economics" (Princeton: D. Van Nostrand, 1959) are from Mill's Essays on Some Unsettled Questions of Po litical Economy written in 1830.

334 THE CONSUMER THEORY OF PROSPERITY 335 who spends it: he consumes it in a different way; it sup plies food and clothing to be consumed, tools and rna.. terials to be used, by productive laborers. Consumption, therefore, already takes place to the greatest extent which the amount of production admits of; but, of the two kinds of consumption, reproductive and unproduc tive, the former alone adds to the national wealth, the latter impairs it. What is consumed for mere enjoyment is gone; what is consumed for reproduction leaves com modi ties of equal value, commonly with the addition of a profit. The usual effect of the attempts of govern ment to encourage consumption is merely to prevent saving; that is, to promote unproductive consumption at the expense of reproductive, and diminish the na tional wealth by the very means which were intended to increase it. What a country wants to make it richer is never con sumption, but production. Where there is the latter, we may be sure that there is no want of the former. To pro duce, implies that the producer desires to consume; why else should he give himself useless labor? He may not wish to consume what he himself produces, but his mo tive for producing and selling is the desire to buy.

Therefore, if the producers generally produce and sell more and more, they certainly also buy more and more. From what has been already said, it is obvious that periods of "brisk demand" are also the periods of great est production: the national·capital is never called into full employment but at those periods. This, however, is no reason for desiring such times; it is not desirable 336 JOHN STUART MILL that the whole capital of the country should be in full employment. For, the calculations of producers and trad ers being of necessity imperfect, there are always some commodities which are more or less in excess, as there are ahvays some which are in deficiency. If, therefore, the whole truth were known, there would always be some classes of producers contracting, not extending, their operations. If all are endeavoring to extend them, it is a certain proof that some general delusion is afloat.

The commonest cause of such delusion is some gen eral, or very extensive, rise of prices (whether caused by speculation or by the currency) which persuades all dealers that they are growing rich. And hence, an in crease of production really takes place during the prog ress of depreciation, as long as the existence of deprecia tion is not suspected. . . . But when the delusion van ishes and the truth is disclosed, those whose commodi ties are relatively in excess must diminish their produc tion or be ruined: and if during the high prices they have built mills and erected machinery, they will be likely to repent at leisure. Waves of Hope ,and Fear Unreasonable hopes and unreasonable fears alter nately rule with tyrannical sway over the minds of a ma jority of the mercantile public; general eagerness to buy and general reluctance to buy, succeed one another in a manner more or less marked, at brief intervals. Except during short periods of transition, there is almost alTHE CONSUMER THEORY OF PROSPERITY 337 ways either great briskness of business or great stagna tion; either the principal producers of almost all the leading articles of industry have as many orders as they can possibly execute, or the dealers in almost all com modities have their warehouses full of unsold goods.

In this last case, it is commonly said that there is a general superabundance; and as those economists who have contested the possibility of general superabun dance would none of them deny the possibility or even the frequent occurrence of the phenomenon which we have just noticed, it would seem incumbent on them to show that the expression to which they object is not applicable to a state of things in which all or most commodities remain unsold, in the same sense in which there is said to· be a superabundance. of anyone com modity when it remains in the warehouses of dealers for want of a market. Whoever offers a commodity for sale desires to obtain a commodity in exchange for it, and is therefore a buyer by the mere fact of his being a seller. The sellers and the buyers, for all commodities taken together, must, by the metaphysical necessity of the case, be an exact equipoise to each other; and if there be more sellers than buyers of one thing, there must be more buyers than sellers for another.

This argument is evidently founded on the supposi tion of a state of barter; and, on that supposition, it is perfectly incontestable. When two persons perform an act of barter, each of them is at once a seller and a buyer. He cannot sell without buying. Unless he chooses 338 JOHN STUART MILL to buy some other person's commodity, he does not sell his own. Monetary Complications If, however, we suppose that money is used, these propositions cease to be exactly true. . . . Interchange by means of money is therefore, as has been often ob served, ultimately nothing but barter. But there is this difference-that in the case of barter, the selling and the buying are simultaneously confounded in one operation; you sell what you have, and buy what you want, by one indivisible act, and you cannot do the one without doing the other. Now the effect of the employment of money, and even the utility of it, is that it enables this one act of inter change to be divided into two separate acts or opera tions; one of which may be performed now, and the other a year hence, or whenever it shall be most con venient. Although he who sells, really sells only to buy, he need not buy at the same moment when he sells; and he does not therefore necessarily add to the immedi ate demand for one commodity when he adds to the supply of another. The buying and selling being now separated, it may very well occur that there may be, at some given time, a very general inclination to sell with as little delay as possible, accompanied with an equally general inclination to defer all purchases as long as possible.

This is always actually the case, in those periods THE CONSUMER THEORY OF PROSPERITY 339 which are described as periods of general excess. And no one, after sufficient explanation, will contest the possi bility of general excess, in this sense of the word. The state of things which we have just described, and which is of no uncommon occurrence, amounts to it. For when there is a general anxiety to sell, and a general disinclination to buy, commodities of all kinds remain for a long time unsold, and those which find an immediate market do so at a very low price. . . . There is stagnation to those who are not obliged to sell, and distress to those who are.... In order to render the argument for the impossibility of an excess of all commodities applicable to the case in which a circulating medium is employed, money must itself be considered as a commodity. It must, undoubt edly, be admitted that there cannot be an excess of all other commodities, and an excess of money at the same time.

But those who have, at periods such as we have de scribed, affirmed that there was an excess of all com modities, never pretended that money was one of these commodities; they held that there was not an excess, but a deficiency of the circulating medium. What they called a general superabundance, was not :a superabun dance of commodities relatively to commodities, but a superabundance of all commodities relatively to money. What it amounted to was, that persons in general, at that particular time, from a general expectation of be ing called upon to meet sudden demands, liked better to possess money than any other commodity. Money, 340 JOHN STUART MILL \ consequently, was in. request, and all other commodities were in comparative disrepute. In extreme cases, money is collected in masses, and hoarded; in the milder cases, people merely defer parting with· their money, or com ing under any new engagements to part with it. But the result is, that all commodities fall in price, or become unsalable ....

It is, however, of the utmost importance to observe that excess of all commodities, in the only sense in which it is possible, means only a temporary fall in their value relatively to money. To suppose that the markets for all commodities could, in any other sense than this, be overstocked, involves the absurdity that commodities may fall in value relatively to themselves. The Myth of Oversaving The argument against the possibility of general over production is quite conclusive, so far as it applies to the doctrine that a country may accumulate capital too fast; that produce in general may, by increasing faster than the demand for it, reduce all· producers to distress. This proposition, strange to say, was almost a received doctrine as lately as thirty years ago; and the merit of those who have exploded it is much greater than might be inferred from the extreme obviousness of its absurdity when it is stated in its native simplicity.

It is true that if all the wants of all the inhabitants of a country were fully satisfied, no further capital could find useful employment; but, in that case, none would THE CONSUMER THEORY OF PROSPERITY 341 be accumulated. So long as there remain any persons not possessed, we do not say of subsistence, but of the most refined luxuries, and who would work to possess them, there is employment for capital. ... Nothing can be more chimerical than the fear that the accumulation of capital should produce poverty and not wealth, or that it will ever take place too fast for its own end. Nothing is more true than that it is produce which con stitutes the market for produce, and that every increase of production, if distributed without miscalculation among all kinds of produce in the proportion which private interest would dictate, creates, or rather con stitutes its own demand. This is the truth which the deniers of general over prod uction have seized and enforced. . . .

The essentials of the doctrine are preserved when it is allowed that there cannot be permanent excess of production, or of accumulation; though it be at the same time admitted, that as there may be a temporary excess of anyone article considered separately, so may there of commodities generally, not in consequence of over production, but of a want of commercial confidence.