A hundred years ago it was assumed and scientifically "proved"
by economists that the laws of society made it necessary to have a vast army of
poor and jobless people in order to keep the economy going. Today, hardly
anybody would dare to voice this principle. It is generally accepted that nobody
should be excluded from the wealth of the nation, either by the laws of nature
or by those of society.46)The opinions, which were current a hundred years
ago, that the poor owed their conditions to their ignorance, lack of
responsibility, are outdated. In all Western industrialized countries, a
system of insurance has been introduced which guarantees everyone a minimum of
subsistence(生活维持费)in case of unemployment, sickness and old age. I would go one
step further and argue that, even if these conditions are not present, everyone
has the right to receive the means to subsist (维持生活), in other words, he can
claim this subsistence minimum without having to have any "reason". 47)I
would suggest, however, that it should be limited to a definite period of time,
let’s say two years, so as to avoid the encouraging of an abnormal attitude
which refuses an), kind of social obligation. This may sound
like a fantastic proposal, but so, I think our insurance system would have
sounded to people a hundred years ago. The main objection to such a scheme would
be that if each person were entitled to receive minimum support, people would
not work. 48)This assumption rests on the fallacy of the inherent laziness in
human nature; actually, aside from abnormally lazy people, there would be very
few who would not want to earn more than the minimum, and who would prefer to do
nothing rather than work. 49)However, the suspicions
against a system of guaranteed subsistence minimum are not groundless from the
standpoint of those who want to use ownership of capital for the purpose of
forcing others to accept the work conditions they offer. If nobody were
forced to accept work in order not to starve, work would have to be sufficiently
interesting and attractive to induce one to accept it. Freedom of contract is
possible only if both parties are free to accept and reject it; in the present
capitalist system this is not the case. 50)But such a system
would not only be the beginning of real freedom of contract between employers
and employees; its principal advantage would be the improvement of freedom in
interpersonal relationships in every sphere of daily life.