With a higher degree of culture these small communities lose, the individual and the greater communities gain in importance. Now the individual and now the community appears more in the foreground, and accordingly the consciousness of the community of interests will change in intensity. In the periods in which the individual's or the family's technical economic life still forms, without more extensive intercourse, without more elaborate division of labor, the centre of gravity in economics, the feeling of community in economic matters will recede. The further the division of labor progresses, the more inextricably will the threads of intercourse involve the individual in an insoluble social community, the more the whole production will assume the character of a general, not an individual concern. Then the common functions of the local and the national community will thrive, individuals will be more and more dislodged by social leaders. Every larger undertaking, whenever it unites continuously a certain number of men for a common economic purpose, reveals itself as a moral community. It governs the external and internal life of all participants, determines their residence, school, division of time, family life, to a certain degree their mental horizon, education and pleasure. The relations of those concerned necessarily exchange a merely economic for a generally moral character. And therefrom the conception arises; here a common production exists, hence a moral community. And that leads to the question: Is the relation between the participants, is the division of the products a just one? And similar considerations follow for whole industries, for whole social classes, and this all the more; the more frequently the employers and the laborers are organized into associations and societies. They also result for whole States and unions of States.
The moral communities, which play a part in economics, follow sometimes purely economic purposes, sometimes other purposes, as above all do local communities and the State. The narrower their circle, the ******r and clearer their purpose, the more evident become the qualities, according to which moral judgment compares and classifies men. The more comprehensive they are, the more manifold their purposes, the more complicated becomes the question which qualities are concerned, the more fluctuating becomes the judgment of what is just, the more indispensable for customs and laws become conventional presumptions and standards in order to attain something definite at all.
In times of primitive culture, in the small circles of economic and moral communities all men, or at least all men able to bear arms, may readily appear equal, and so it there appears just to give each the same allotment of land, the same share of booty. The guild sought to secure to each member as nearly as possible an equal share of profit. With higher culture begins the necessary discrimination. Formerly the greater allotments were often given to the bravest soldier and to the noble families, distinctions now become more general. All inherited preference is considered just, in the measure in which public sentiment values not the qualities of the single individual, but of families as a whole, a conception which decreases more and more with higher culture. Inherited wealth, as long as it appears necessarily and obviously coupled with its possessor, is under some conditions regarded as a just standard of the distribution of goods. So the distribution of public lands according to the possessions in cattle and real estate appeared quite just to many a day laborer and "kossaeth" in the eastern provinces of Prussia, while to one who knew the public land systems in France or southern Germany it seemed an outrageous injustice.
For all community of production, labor is the most obvious standard; hence perhaps it is the most usual, most generally comprehensible. As soon as it becomes necessary to compare many different kinds of labor, only an abstraction totally foreign to public sentiment will conceive the idea of reducing all this labor to mere quantities of handiwork; natural public sentiment will simply value more highly the labor which requires more education or talent.
Those qualities will always be most highly considered which serve the common objects; those which only relate to the individual and his selfish aims are less esteemed. Only a complete misconception therefore could establish individual needs as a standard of distributing justice. Older socialism wisely held aloof at all times from this aberration. Even the first really social-democratic platform in Germany, that of Eisenach of 1869, did not vet venture to commit such a folly. The progressive victory of vulgarity and rudeness first demanded in the Gotha platform of 1875 the division of the aggregate labor products among individuals according to their "reasonable needs." The proviso of reasonableness was intended to prevent excesses; it does not remove the low conception. With his needs a man serves himself only; with his labor, his virtue, his accomplishments, he serves, mankind, and these determine the judgment which esteems them as just.
When the great social communities which follow the most various interests and what is just in them are concerned, the attempt will always be made, more or less, to weigh the different qualities and accomplishments of men in their result and in their connection with the objects of the community. Talents and knowledge, virtues and accomplishments, merit in short is considered. Moral qualities are often apparently overlooked, great talents whose achievements and deeds are generally visible are apparently over-estimated. But only because one is more noticed than the other, and the moral judgment which values individuals according to what they are to the whole can naturally only judge by what it sees.
And therein lies the contrast between moral and economic value. In the ordinary economic valuation activities and products have value in the same measure, as individuals covet them for the satisfaction of their personal needs. In the moral valuation, on which the judgment as to justice depends, the activities of individuals receive their value, according as they serve the inherent ends of the whole. True justice, says Ihering, is a balancing between consequences and acts, which is weighed equally to all citizens according to the measure of the value of these acts to society. Both valuations go in life side by side, combating and influencing one another. The one rules the market, the other moral judgments and conceptions. They approach each other as mankind grows more perfect. Through what mechanism the arising conflicts are lessened and mitigated, we still have to discuss.