mmodities
which constitute our capital, instead of being mainly, as our plain
sense tells us that they are, factories, machinery and other durable
instruments, were rather a _store_ or _stock_ of immediately
consumable goods. The argument takes the following form. It is
consumers' goods, things like food and clothes, which the farmer, the
builder and their workpeople consume while they are working. To enable
them to work, therefore, it is vital that such things should not in
the past have been consumed as soon as they were made; part of them
must have been saved, and carried forward for future use.
Furthermore, the longer the time that the work on which people are now
engaged takes to yield its product, the larger must be this store of
consumers' goods. For these products, when they are completed, will
serve (taking society as a whole) to replace the store which in the
meantime is being used up, so that the longer this replacement takes,
the larger must be the initial store. Conversely, the larger the
store of consumers' goods available, the more distant is the future
for which we can afford to work. It is thus the store or stock of
consumers' goods which represents our real capital; for it is the
magnitude of this store which determines how far we can devote our
energies to purposes which are remote in time.

Now this is pure mysticism. Regarded literally, it is in direct
conflict with the facts. The processes of industry are fairly regular
and continuous. At any moment, large quantities of consumers' goods of
almost every kind are on the point of completion; at the same moment
equally large quantities are consumed. The things which we buy were
finished, very likely, only recently; or, if in fact they have lain
idle for some time in stock, there is nothing essential or at all
helpful in that fact. It represents rather a defect--a maladjustment
which should be rectified. Even many kinds of agricultural produce do
not need to be carried forward from one year to another, for they are
produced in many parts of the world, where the seasons come at
different periods of the year. It is conceivable, therefore, that we
might consume all non-durable things the moment they were ready, and
the degree to which we approximate to this ideal is a mark of the
efficiency of our economic system. A large store of consumable goods
is thus _not_ a fundamental necessity of a prosperous society.

What _is_ necessary is plainly the power to