ALTERNATIVES SEEN AS BASIC ECONOMIC FACTS 199
gressive economic production is just one part of a continuing
interchange of matter and energy between organism and environ-
ment in combinations of increasing complexity. The evolution of
utility I said is a process of correlation and coordination. In
capitalistic production we have a lengthening series of pre-
liminary correlations and coordinations. Every intermediate
product must be a complex of such preliminary correlations and
codrdinations, and if it is to be in fact einer Hilfskraft it must
be the precise complex that fits exactly into a combination of
increasing complexity. The fitting in of exactly the right product
in exactly the right place is specifically what is involved in the
“capitalization” of “stock.” It calls for invention in the ordinary
meaning of the word, and a good deal more. It calls for the
organizing and adjusting functions of the entrepreneur and of the
financier. Capitalization, then, as here described, is the creative
thinking which is imperative if we are to escape from the
economics of exploitation.
These considerations bring us to our fourth basic economic fact,
which is the alternative: Speed up and work overtime or fail to
capitalize; fail even to have stock to capitalize.
Many of the complexes of preliminary correlation and coordi-
nation are provided for us by nature. Primitive man, the tool
making animal, invented others, the first intermediate products
of Bohm-Bawerk’s lengthening series. Modern man, the machine
maker, has added an incredible number, all of marvelous
complexity.
How has the accumulation of these intermediate products been
effected? I confess to amazement that economists should ever
have taught that the word “saving” conveys an adequate answer.
To have saving there must be something that can be saved, and
there must be a motive for saving. Consider, then, the case of a
man who is so circumstanced that he must toil from sun to sun to
obtain enough food, fuel and other necessaries to sustain life.
That man, at least, whatever may be true of another, can get
something to save only by working over-time or harder. Or
consider the case of a man content with a low standard of living.
He does not save.
But, we are reminded, multitudes of human beings have enjoyed
the luck of living indolently in bountiful environments, and as
for the rest of us tools and capitalistic processes have enabled us