バートランド・ラッセル「買えない不幸と売れない不幸」

* 原著：Mortals and Others; Bertrand Russell's American Essays, 1931-1935, v.1, ed. by Harry Ruja, 1975)
* 出典：『ラッセル思想辞典』

　今の世界には欲しい商品が買えない人と商品を抱えていて売れない人とがいる。二つの不幸は馬鹿げている。コーヒーの過剰生産に悩むブラジルは、コーヒー豆を機関車の燃料にする。
　禁欲的道徳観から労働を美徳とする結果、生産は善、消費は悪となる。そこから、人類の半数は過剰生産のために貧乏し、他の半数は過少消費のために貧乏になるという現在の国際的な制度を生みだした。
　経済機構を再び正常に戻すには、個々の経済活動を'利潤本位'から解放することが不可欠である。余剰食料を飢えた人々に送り、彼らが米国西部の農民の需要を溝たす労働に従事すれば、個々の資本家が利潤をあげなくとも、世界は全体としてずっと豊かになれる。
　組織化された社会の努力だけがあれば、世界の経済状態を回復しうる。個人的利潤という動機は今では明らかに通用しない。
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( The world at the present day is suffering from two misfortunes : there are people who desire goods which they cannot purchase, and there are people who have goods which they cannot sell. ... Our morality is ascetic, which makes us regard work as a virtue; it follows that production is good and consumption is bad. This ascetic twist has produced a world system in which half the world is poor because it produces too much and the other half because it consumes too little.///
I think it is clear that to start the economic machine again working normally it will be necessary no longer to demand that each operation should at each moment be profitable. There is food rotting in the West of the United States and Canada; there are unemployed populations starving in all the industrial regions throughout the world. If the food were brought to the starving populations, and they were set to work such as would satisfy the wants of Western farmers, the world would be the richer even if no individual capitalist made a profit.The motive of individual profit has apparently broken down, and only organised public effort will restore the economic life of the world.)