Of the Levelling System
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~7,160 words · 34 passages
Cite this work
- APAJeremy Bentham. (n.d.). Of the Levelling System. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/jeremy-bentham/of-the-levelling-system
- MLAJeremy Bentham. "Of the Levelling System." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/jeremy-bentham/of-the-levelling-system.
- ChicagoJeremy Bentham. Of the Levelling System. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/jeremy-bentham/of-the-levelling-system.
What it is about
Of the Levelling System: on the equalisation of fortunes.
Context and history
Bentham asks whether redistributing wealth increases total happiness. The answer has two halves usually quoted apart: yes, because the same money is worth more to whoever has less of it; but not if it destroys the security of property, which he takes to be the condition of everything else.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
"All human creatures are born and remain," says the Declaration of Rights, "equal in rights." It has hence been argued, that they ought to be equal in property; and that all the distinctions which hare grown up in society in this respect, should be swept away, and every individual placed on the same level in point of actual possessions. Such a system would, however, be destructive both of security and wealth. It would be destructive of security. What a man has inherited from his ancestors — what he has himself earned, he hopes to keep; and this hope cannot be interrupted without producing a pain of disappointment. But if, of two persons, the one is to take from the other a portion of the property he possesses to-day, because he is the poorer; for the same reason, a third should take a portion of such property from both to-morrow, as being poorer than either; and so on, till all security in the possession of property — all hope of retaining it, were altogether abolished. As no man could, at this rate, be secure of enjoying any thing for two moments together, no man would give himself the trouble to improve any thing by his labour: all men would live from hand to mouth. While the levelling process is going on, it is destructive to security; when completed, it is destructive, and that for ever, of national opulence. The wealth of a nation is the sum of the fortunes of individuals; but the sum of the fortunes of individuals is reduced by the levelling system in an infinity of ways. Whatever be the quantum of wealth allowed of, to reduce fortunes to this standard the community must be emptied of all articles of wealth, which cannot exist but in a quantum superior to that standard. The English nation is, for a nation of any considerable size, generally acknowledged to be the richest, in proportion to the number of the people, of any nation under the sun. But in this richest nation, those who have reckoned its wealth at the highest, have not s
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