III. Capitalism and Social Ideas

In contemporary society, management of capital for the production of commodities is closely allied to the possession of the means of production—which is also capital. Nevertheless, these two relationships of man to capital are quite different as far as their effects within the social organism are concerned. Management through individual abilities, when they are properly exercised, supplies the social organism with goods in which everyone who belongs to this organism has an interest. Whatever a person's situation in life, it is in his interest that nothing be lost of what flows from the sources of human nature in the form of individual abilities, by means of which the goods are produced that purposefully serve human life. The development of these abilities can only ensue when their possessors are able to activate them with their own free initiative. The welfare of mankind is, at least to a certain extent, deprived of whatever is not able to flow from these sources in freedom. Capital is the means by which such abilities are made effective for wide areas of the social organism. Everyone within a social organism must have a real interest in the sum total of capital being managed in such a way that particularly gifted individuals or groups have this capital at the disposal of their own free initiative. Every person, whether his work is spiritually creative or that of a labourer, if he wishes to objectively serve his own interests, must say: would like a sufficiently large number of competent persons or groups of persons not only to have capital freely at their disposal, but also that it become accessible to them through their own initiative. For only they can judge how their individual abilities, through the mediation of capital, will purposefully produce goods for the social organism.