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Title: Fabian Essays in Socialism
Author: Shaw, Bernard
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Fabian Essays in Socialism" ***
SOCIALISM ***
FABIAN
ESSAYS IN SOCIALISM
BY
G. BERNARD SHAW
SIDNEY WEBB
WILLIAM CLARKE
SYDNEY OLIVIER
ANNIE BESANT
GRAHAM WALLAS
AND
HUBERT BLAND
EDITED BY
G. BERNARD SHAW
_With a new preface for this edition by Mr. Shaw_
BOSTON
THE BALL PUBLISHING CO.
1911
_Copyright, 1908_
BY GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
CONTENTS.
THE FABIAN SOCIETY AND ITS WORK.
BY WILLIAM CLARKE. Page xxiii.
THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM.
ECONOMIC BY G. BERNARD SHAW.
RENT. The Cultivation and Population of the Earth.--Economic
Origin of the County Family.--Economic Rent of Land and
Ability.--Tenant Right.--The Advent of the Proletarian. Page 1.
VALUE. Mechanism of Exchange.--Price and Utility.--Effects
of Supply.--Law of Indifference.--Total and Final Utility.--Relation
of Value to Cost of Production. Page 9.
WAGES. The Proletariat.--Sale of Labor.--Subsistence
Wage.--Capitalism.--Increase of Riches and Decrease of
Wealth.--Divorce of Exchange Value from Social Utility. Page 15.
CONCLUSION. Apparent Discrepancies between History and
Theory.--Socialism.--Pessimism and Private Property.--Economic
Soundness of Meliorism. Page 20.
HISTORIC BY SIDNEY WEBB, LL.B., BARRISTER AT LAW,
LECTURER ON POLITICAL ECONOMY AT THE CITY OF LONDON COLLEGE.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL. Ancestry of
English Socialism.--The Utopians.--Introduction of the Conception
of Evolution.--The Lesson of Democracy. Page 26.
THE DISINTEGRATION OF THE OLD SYNTHESIS. The Decay of
Medievalism.--The Industrial Revolution.--The French Revolution.--The
Progress of Democracy. Page 31.
THE PERIOD OF ANARCHY. Individualism.--Philosophic Radicalism
and _Laisser-faire_.--The Utilitarian Analysis. Page 35.
THE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL REVOLT; AND ITS POLITICAL
OUTCOME. The Poets, Communists, Philosophers, Christian Socialists,
and Evolutionists.--The Extension of State Activity.--Existing State
Registration, Inspection, and Direct Organization of Labor.--The
Radical Programme. Page 40.
THE NEW SYNTHESIS. Evolution and the Social Organism.--Liberty
and Equality.--Social Health. Page 50.
INDUSTRIAL BY WILLIAM CLARKE, M.A., CAMBRIDGE.
THE SUPERSESSION OF INDIVIDUALIST PRODUCTION. The Cottage
Industry.--The Mechanical Inventions.--The Factory System. Page 56.
THE GROWTH OF THE GREAT INDUSTRY. The Expansion of Lancashire.--The
White Slavery.--State Interference. Page 65.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WORLD-COMMERCE. The Triumph
of Free Trade.--The Fight for New Markets.--The Carriers of the
World. Page 71.
THE DIFFERENTIATION OF MANAGER AND CAPITALIST. The Rise
of Co-operation and the Joint Stock Company.--The “Ring” and the
“Trust.”--The Despotism of Capitalist Communism. Page 76.
MORAL BY SYDNEY OLIVIER, B.A., OXFORD.
THE EVOLUTION OF MORALITY. The Common End.--The Conditions
of Freedom.--The Individual and the Race.--The Growth of
Social Consciousness.--Convention and Law. Page 93.
PROPERTY AND MORALS. The Reaction of Property-Forms on Moral
Ideas.--Class Morality.--Negation of the Conditions of
Freedom.--Social Dissolution. Page 104.
THE RE-INTEGRATION OF SOCIETY. The Ordering of the Primary
Conditions.--The Idea of the Poor Law.--Secondary
Conditions.--Morality and Reason.--The Idea of the School. Page 112.
THE ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY.
PROPERTY UNDER SOCIALISM. BY GRAHAM WALLAS, M.A., OXFORD.
VISIBLE WEALTH. Consumers’ Capital.--Producers’ Capital. Page 120.
DEBTS AND SERVICES. Deferred and Anticipated
Consumption.--Interest. Page 125.
IDEAS. Copyright and Patent Right.--Education. Page 132.
INDUSTRY UNDER SOCIALISM BY ANNIE BESANT.
THE ORGANIZATION OF LABOR. Rural.--Urban.--International. Page 136.
THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE PRODUCT. The Individual.--The
Municipality.--The State. Page 147.
SOCIAL SAFEGUARDS. The Stimulus to Labor.--The Provision
for Initiative.--The Reward of Excellence. Page 150.
THE TRANSITION TO SOCIAL DEMOCRACY.
TRANSITION BY G. BERNARD SHAW.
MEDIEVALISM TO CAPITALISM. The Old Order.--Merchant Adventurer,
Pirate, Slave-Trader, Capitalist.--The Old Order burst by the
New Growth.--Chaos. Page 157.
ANARCHY TO STATE INTERFERENCE. Political Economy.--Hegelian
Conception of the Perfect State.--Socialism: Its Practical
Difficulties.--Impracticability of Catastrophic Change.--Democracy
the Antidote to Bureaucracy.--The State Interferes. Page 160.
STATE INTERFERENCE TO STATE ORGANIZATION. Hard Times.--Revival of
Revolutionary Socialism.--Remaining Steps to the Consummation of
Democracy.--Machinery of Socialism.--Social Pressure.--Urban
Rents.--The New Taxation.--State Organization of Labor its
Indispensable Complement.--The Unemployed.--Solution of the
Compensation Difficulty.--Economic Reactions of the Progress
of Municipal Socialism.--Militant Socialism Abandoned but not
Dishonored. Page 169.
THE OUTLOOK BY HUBERT BLAND.
THE CONDITION OF ENGLISH PARTIES. The Lines of Progress.--The
Rate of Progress in Thought and Industry Compared with that in
Politics.--Alleged Disappearance of the Whig. Page 184.
THE SOCIALIZING OF POLITICS. Political Myopia.--Sham Socialism.--Red
Herrings.--Dreams of Permeating the Liberal
Party.--Disillusionment.--The New Departure. Page 189.
THE DUTIES OF THE HOUR. The True Line of Cleavage.--Hopes
and Fears.--The Solidarity of the Workers. Page 198.
INDEX. Page 203.
THE FABIAN SOCIETY AND ITS WORK.
PREFACE TO THE 1908 EDITION
Since 1889 the Socialist movement has been completely transformed
throughout Europe; and the result of the transformation may fairly be
described as Fabian Socialism. In the eighteen-eighties, when Socialism
revived in England for the first time since the suppression of the
Paris Commune in 1871, it was not at first realized that what had
really been suppressed for good and all was the romantic revolutionary
Liberalism and Radicalism of 1848, to which the Socialists had attached
themselves as a matter of course, partly because they were themselves
romantic and revolutionary, and partly because both Liberals and
Socialists had a common object in Democracy.
Besides this common object the two had a common conception of
method in revolution. They were both catastrophists. Liberalism had
conquered autocracy and bureaucracy by that method in England and
France, and then left industry to make what it could of the new
political conditions by the unregulated action of competition between
individuals. Briefly, the Liberal plan was to cut off the King’s head,
and leave the rest to Nature, which was supposed to gravitate towards
economic harmonies when not restrained by tyrannical governments. The
Socialists were very far ahead of the Liberals in their appreciation
of the preponderant importance of industry, even going so far as to
maintain, with Buckle and Marx, that all social institutions whatever
were imposed by economic conditions, and that there was fundamentally
only one tyranny: the tyranny of Capital. Yet even the Socialists
had so far formed their political habits in the Liberal school that
they were quite disposed to believe that if you cut off the head of
King Capital, you might expect to see things come right more or less
spontaneously.
No doubt this general statement shews the Revolutionaries of 1848-71
as simpler than they appear on their own records. Proudhon was full of
proposals: one of them, the minimum wage, turns out to be of the very
first importance now that Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb have put the case
for it on an invincible basis of industrial fact and economic theory.
Lassalle really knew something of the nature of law, the practice
of Government, and the mind of the governing classes. Marx, though
certainly a bit of a Liberal fatalist (did he not say that force is
the midwife of progress without reminding us that force is equally
the midwife of chaos, and chaos the midwife of martial law?), was at
all events no believer in _Laisser-faire_. Socialism involves the
introduction of design, contrivance, and co-ordination, by a nation
consciously seeking its own collective welfare, into the present
industrial scramble for private gain; and as it is clear that this
cannot be a spontaneous result of a violent overthrow of the existing
order, and as the Socialists of 1848-71 were not blind, it would be
impossible to substantiate a claim for Fabian Essays as the first
text-book of Socialism in which catastrophism is repudiated as a method
of Socialism.
Therefore we must not say that the Revolutionists and Internationalists
of 1848-71 believed in a dramatic overthrow of the capitalist system
in a single convulsion, followed by the establishment of a new heaven,
a new earth, and a new humanity. They were visionaries, no doubt:
all political idealists are; but they were quite as practical as the
Conservatives and Liberals who now believe that the triumph of their
party will secure the happiness and peace of the country. All the
same, it was almost impossible to induce them to speak or think of the
Socialist state of the future in terms of the existing human material
for it. They talked of Communes, and, more vaguely and less willingly,
of central departments to co-ordinate the activities of the Communes;
but if you ventured to point out that these apparently strange and
romantic inventions were simply city corporations under the Local
Government Board, they vehemently repudiated such a construction,
and accused you of reading the conditions of the present system into
Socialism. They had all the old Liberal mistrust of governments and
bureaucracy and all the old tendency of bourgeois revolutionists
to idolize the working class. They had no suspicion of the extent
to which the very existence of society depends on the skilled work
of administrators and experts, or how much wisdom and strength of
character is required for their control by popular representatives.
They actually believed that when their efforts throughout Europe had
demonstrated the economics of Socialism to the proletariats of the
great capitals, the cry “Proletarians of all lands: unite,” would be
responded to; and that Capitalism would fall before an International
Federation of the working classes of Europe, not in the sense in
which some future historian will summarize two or three centuries
(in which sense they may prove right enough), but as an immediate
practical plan of action likely to be carried through in twenty years
by Socialist societies holding completely and disdainfully aloof from
ordinary politics. In short, they were romantic amateurs, and, as
such, were enormously encouraged and flattered when Marx and Engels
insisted on the “scientific” character of their movement in contrast
to the “Utopian” Socialism of Owen, Fourier, St. Simon, and the men
of the 1820-48 phase. When the events of 1871 in Paris tested them
practically, their hopeless public incapacity forced their opponents to
exterminate them in the most appalling massacre of modern times--all
the more ghastly because it was a massacre of the innocents.
Public opinion in Europe was reconciled to the massacre by the usual
process of slandering the victims. Now had Europe been politically
educated no slanders would have been necessary; for even had it been
humanly possible that all the Federals mown down with mitrailleuses
in Paris were incendiaries and assassins, it would still have been
questionable whether indiscriminate massacre is the right way to deal
with incendiaries and assassins. But there can be no question as to
what must be done with totally incompetent governors. The one thing
that is politically certain nowadays is that if a body of men upset the
existing government of a modern state without sufficient knowledge and
capacity to continue the necessary and honest part of its work, and
if, being unable to do that work themselves, they will not let anyone
else do it either, their extermination becomes a matter of immediate
necessity. It will avail them nothing that they aim higher than their
fathers did; that their intentions are good, their action personally
disinterested, and their opponents selfish and venal routineers who
would themselves be equally at a loss if they had to create a new
order instead of merely pulling the wires of an old one. Anyone who
looks at the portraits of the members of the Paris Commune can see at
a glance that they compared very favorably in all the external signs
of amiability and refinement with any governing body then or now in
power in Europe. But they could not manage the business they took upon
themselves; and Thiers could. Marx’s demonstration that they were
heroes and martyrs and that Thiers and his allies were rascals did
not help in the least, though it was undeniably the ablest document
in the conflict of moral clap-trap that obscured the real issues--so
able indeed as a piece of literature, that more than thirty years after
its publication it struck down the Marquis de Gallifet as if it had
appeared in the _Temps_ or _Débats_ of the day before. It was amiable
of the Federals to be so much less capable of exterminating Thiers than
he was of exterminating them; but sentimental amiability is not by
itself a qualification for administering great modern States.
Now the Fabian Society, born in 1884, and reaching the age of
discretion in less than two years, had no mind to be exterminated.
Martyrdom was described by one of us as “the only way in which a man
can become famous without ability.” Further, we had no illusions as
to the treatment we should receive if, like the Paris Federals, we
terrified the property classes before they were disabled by a long
series of minor engagements. In Paris in 1871, ordinary sane people
hid themselves in their houses for weeks under the impression that
the streets were not safe: they did not venture out until they ran a
serious risk of being shot at sight by their own partisans in the orgy
of murder and cruelty that followed the discovery that the Commune
could fight only as a rat fights in a corner. Human nature has not
changed since then. In 1906 a Fabian essayist stood one May morning
in the Rue de Rivoli, and found himself almost the only soul in the
west end of Paris who dared appear there. The cultured inhabitants of
that select quarter were hiding in their houses as before, with their
larders full of hams and their baths full of live fish to provision
them for a siege. There was much less danger of a revolution that
day than there is of Primrose Hill becoming an active volcano at six
o’clock this evening; and the purpose of the Government and its party
newspapers in manufacturing the scare to frighten the bourgeoisie
into supporting them at the general election just then beginning was
obvious, one would have thought, to the dimmest political perspicacity.
In the evening that same essayist, in the Place de la Révolution, saw
a crowd of sightseers assembled to witness the promised insurrection,
and the troops and the police assembled to save society from it. It
was very like Trafalgar Square in 1887, when the same violent farce
was enacted in London. Occasionally the troops rode down some of the
sightseers and the police arrested some of them. Enough persons lost
their temper to make a few feeble attempts at riot, and to supply
arrests for the morning papers. Next day Society, saved, came out of
its hiding places; sold the fish from its baths and the hams from
its larders at a sacrifice (the weather being very hot and the hams
in questionable condition); and voted gratefully for the government
that had frightened it out of its senses with an imaginary revolution
and a ridiculous “complot.” England laughed at the Parisians (though
plenty of English visitors had left Paris to avoid the threatened Reign
of Terror); yet in the very next month our own propertied classes
in Cairo, terrified by the Nationalist movement in Egypt, fell into
a paroxysm of cowardice and cruelty, and committed the Denshawai
atrocity, compared to which the massacre of Glencoe was a trifle. The
credulity which allows itself to be persuaded by reiteration of the
pious word Progress that we live in a gentler age than our fathers,
and that the worst extremities of terror and vengeance are less to be
apprehended from our newly enriched automobilist classes than they
were from the aristocracies of the older orders, is not a Fabian
characteristic. The Fabian knows that property does not hesitate to
shoot, and that now, as always, the unsuccessful revolutionist may
expect calumny, perjury, cruelty, judicial and military massacre
without mercy. And the Fabian does not intend to get thus handled if he
can help it. If there is to be any shooting, he intends to be at the
State end of the gun. And he knows that it will take him a good many
years to get there. Still, he thinks he sees his way--or rather the
rest of his way; for he is already well on the road.
It was in 1885 that the Fabian Society, amid the jeers of the
catastrophists, turned its back on the barricades and made up its
mind to turn heroic defeat into prosaic success. We set ourselves two
definite tasks: first, to provide a parliamentary program for a Prime
Minister converted to Socialism as Peel was converted to Free Trade;
and second, to make it as easy and matter-of-course for the ordinary
respectable Englishman to be a Socialist as to be a Liberal or a
Conservative.
These tasks we have accomplished, to the great disgust of our more
romantic comrades. Nobody now conceives Socialism as a destructive
insurrection ending, if successful, in millennial absurdities.
Membership of the Fabian Society, though it involves an express
avowal of Socialism, excites no more comment than membership of the
Society of Friends, or even of the Church of England. Incidentally,
Labor has been organized as a separate political interest in the
House of Commons, with the result that in the very next Budget it was
confessed for the first time that there are unearned as well as earned
incomes in the country; an admission which, if not a surrender of the
Capitalist citadel to Socialism, is at all events letting down the
drawbridge; for Socialism, on its aggressive side, is, and always has
been, an attack on idleness. The resolution to make an end of private
property is gathering force every day: people are beginning to learn
the difference between a man’s property in his walking stick, which
is strictly limited by the public condition that he shall not use it
to break his neighbor’s head or extort money with menaces, and those
private rights of property which enable the idle to levy an enormous
tribute, amounting at present to no less than £630,000,000 a year, on
the earnings of the rest of the community. The old attempt to confuse
the issue by asserting that the existence of the family, religion,
marriage, etc., etc., are inextricably bound up with the toleration
of senseless social theft no longer imposes on anyone: after a whole
year of unexampled exploitation of this particular variety of obscene
vituperation by the most widely read cheap newspapers in London, no
Socialist is a penny the worse for it.
The only really effective weapon of the press against Socialism is
silence. Even Bishops cannot get reported when they advocate Socialism
and tear to pieces the old pretence that political economy, science,
and religion are in favor of our existing industrial system. Socialist
speakers now find audiences so readily that, even with comparatively
high charges for admission, large halls can be filled to hear them
without resorting to the usual channels of advertisement. Their
speeches are crammed with facts and figures and irresistible appeals to
the daily experience and money troubles of the unfortunate ratepayers
and rent-payers who are too harassed by money worries to care about
official party politics; but not a word of these is allowed to leak
through to the public through the ordinary channels of newspaper
reporting. However, the conspiracy of silence has its uses to us. We
have converted the people who have actually heard us. The others,
having no news of our operations, have left us unmolested until our
movement has secured its grip of the public. Now that the alarm has
at last been given, nobody, it seems, is left in the camp of our
enemies except the ignorant, the politically imbecile, the corruptly
interested, and the retinue of broken, drunken, reckless mercenaries
who are always ready to undertake a campaign of slander against the
opponents of any vested interest which has a bountiful secret service
fund. This may seem a strong thing to say; but it is impossible not to
be struck by the feebleness and baseness of the opposition to Socialism
to-day as compared with the opposition of twenty years ago. In the days
when Herbert Spencer’s brightest pupils, from Mrs. Sidney Webb to Grant
Allen, turned from him to the Socialism in which he could see nothing
but “the coming slavery,” we could respect him whilst confuting him.
To-day we neither respect our opponents nor confute them. We simply,
like Mrs. Stetson Gillman’s prejudice slayer, “walk through them as if
they were not there.”
Still, we do not affect to underrate the huge public danger of a press
which is necessarily in the hands of the very people whose idleness and
extravagance keep the nation poor and miserable in spite of its immense
resources. It costs quarter of a million to start a London daily paper
with any chance of success; and every man who writes for it risks
his livelihood every time he pens a word that threatens the incomes
of the proprietors and their class. The quantity of snobbish and
anti-social public opinion thus manufactured is formidable; and a new
sort of crime--the incitement by newspapers of mobs to outrage and even
murder--hitherto tried only on religious impostors, is beginning to be
applied to politics. The result is likely to be another illustration
of the impossibility of combining individual freedom with economic
slavery. We have had to throw freedom of contract to the winds to save
the working classes from extermination as a result of “free” contracts
between penniless fathers of starving families and rich employers.
Freedom of the press is hardly less illusory when the press belongs to
the slave owners of the nation, and not a single journalist is really
free. We think it well therefore at this moment to warn our readers not
to measure the extent of our operations or our influence, much less
the strength of our case, by what they read of us in the papers. The
taste for spending one’s life in drudgery and never-ending pecuniary
anxiety solely in order that certain idle and possibly vicious people
may fleece you for their own amusement, is not so widespread as the
papers would have us think. Even that timidest of Conservatives, the
middle class man with less than £500 a year (sometimes less than £100)
is beginning to ask himself why his son should go, half-educated, to
a clerk’s desk at fifteen, to enable another man’s son to go to a
university and complete an education of which, as a hereditary idler,
he does not intend to make use. To tell him that such self-questioning
is a grave symptom of Free Love and Atheism may terrify him; but it
does not convince. And the evolution of Socialism from the Red spectre
on the barricade, with community of wives (all petroleuses), and
Compulsory Atheism, to the Fabian Society and the Christian Social
Union, constitutional, respectable, even official, eminent, and titled,
is every day allaying his dread of it and increasing his scepticism as
to the inevitability of the ever more and more dreaded knock of the
ground landlord’s agent and the rate collector.
Now, as everyone knows, the course of evolution, in Socialism or
anything else, does not involve the transformation of the earlier
forms into the later. The earlier forms persist side by side with the
later until they are either deliberately exterminated by them or put
out of countenance so completely that they lose the heart to get born.
This is what has happened in the evolution of Fabian Socialism. Fabian
Socialism has not exterminated the earlier types; and though it has
put them so much out of countenance that they no longer breed freely,
still there they are still, preaching, collecting subscriptions, and
repulsing from Socialism many worthy citizens who are quite prepared
to go as far, and farther, than the Fabian Society. Occasionally they
manage even to contest a Parliamentary seat in the name of Socialism,
and to reassure the Capitalist parties by coming out at the foot of
the poll with fewer votes than one would have thought possible for
any human candidate, were he even a flat-earth-man, in these days
when everyone can find a following of some sort. More often, however,
they settle down into politically negligible sects, with a place of
weekly meeting in which they preach to one another every week, except
in the summer months, when they carry the red flag into the open air
and denounce society as it passes or loiters to listen. Now far be
it from us to repudiate these comrades. If a man has been brought
to conviction of sin by the Countess of Huntingdon’s Connexion, and
subsequently enters the Church and becomes an Archbishop, he will
always have sufficient tenderness for the Connexion to refrain from
attacking it, and to remember that many of its members are better
Christians and better men than the more worldly-wise pillars of the
Church. The principal leaders of the Fabian movement are in the same
position with regard to many little societies locally known as “the
Socialists.” We know that their worship of Marx (of whose works
they are for the most part ignorant, and of whose views they are
intellectually incapable) and their repetition of shibboleths about
the Class War and the socialization of all the means of production,
distribution, and exchange have no more application to practical
politics than the Calvinistic covenants which so worried Cromwell when
he, too, tried to reconcile his sectarian creed with the practical
exigencies of government and administration. We know also, and are
compelled on occasion to say bluntly out, that these little sects are
ignorant and incapable in public affairs; that in many cases their
assumption of an extreme position is an excuse for doing nothing under
cover of demanding the impossible; and that their inability to initiate
any practical action when they do by chance get represented on public
bodies often leads to their simply voting steadily for our opponents by
way of protest against what they consider the compromising opportunism
of the Fabians. There are moments when they become so intolerable a
nuisance to the main body of the movement that we are sorely tempted to
excommunicate them formally, and warn the public that they represent
nobody but their silly selves. But such a declaration, though it would
be perfectly true as far as political and administrative action is
concerned, would be misleading on the whole. In England, everyone
begins by being absurdly ignorant of public life and inept at public
action. Just as the Conservative and Liberal Parties are recruited
at Primrose League meetings and Liberal and Radical demonstrations
at which hardly one word of sense or truth is uttered, but at which
nevertheless the novice finds himself in a sympathetic atmosphere, so
even the Fabian Society consists largely of Socialists who sowed their
wild oats in one or other of these little sects of Impossibilists.
Therefore we not only suffer them as gladly as human nature allows,
but give them what help and countenance we can when we can do so
without specifically endorsing their blunders. Fortunately the immense
additions which have been made to the machinery of democracy in
England in the last twenty years, from the County Councils of 1888 to
the education authorities of 1902, have acted as schools of public
life to thousands of men of small means who in the old days must have
remained Impossibilists from want of public experience. One hour on
a responsible committee of a local authority which has to provide
for some public want and spend some public money, were it but half a
crown, will cure any sensible man of Impossibilism for the rest of his
life. And such cures are taking place every day, and converting futile
enthusiasts into useful Fabians.
A word as to this book. It is not a new edition of Fabian Essays. They
are reprinted exactly as they appeared in 1889, nothing being changed
but the price. No other course was possible. When the essays were
written, the Essayists were in their thirties: they are now in their
fifties, except the one, William Clarke, who is in his grave. We were
then regarded as young desperadoes who had sacrificed their chances in
life by committing themselves publicly to Socialism: we are now quoted
as illustrations of the new theory that Socialists, like Quakers,
prosper in this world. It is a dangerous theory; for Socialism, like
all religions and all isms, can turn weak heads as well as inspire
and employ strong ones; but we, at all events, have been fortunate
enough to have had our claim to public attention admitted in the
nineteen years which have elapsed since our youthful escapade as Fabian
Essayists.
It goes without saying that in our present position, and with the
experience we have gained, we should produce a very different book if
the work were to be done anew. We should not waste our time in killing
dead horses, however vigorously they were kicking in 1889. We should
certainly be much more careful not to give countenance to the notion
that the unemployed can be set to work to inaugurate Socialism; though
it remains true that the problem of the unemployed, from the moment
when we cease to abandon them callously to their misery or soothe
our consciences foolishly by buying them off with alms, will force
us to organize them, provide for them, and train them; but the very
first condition of success in this will be the abandonment of the
old idea that the unemployed tailor can be set to make clothes for
the unemployed bootmaker and the unemployed bootmaker to make boots
for the unemployed tailor, the real difficulty being, not a scarcity
of clothes and boots, but a stupid misdistribution of the money to
buy them. We should also probably lay more stress on human volition
and less on economic pressure and historic evolution as making for
Socialism. We should, in short, give the dry practice of our solutions
of social problems instead of the inspiration and theory of them. But
we should also produce a volume which, though it might appeal more than
the present one to administrative experts, to bankers, lawyers, and
constructive statesmen, would have much less charm for the young, and
for the ordinary citizen who is in these matters an amateur.
Besides, the difference between the view of the young and the
elderly is not necessarily a difference between wrong and right. The
Tennysonian process of making stepping stones of our dead selves to
higher things is pious in intention, but it sometimes leads downstairs
instead of up. When Herbert Spencer in his later days expunged from
his Social Statics the irresistible arguments for Land Nationalization
by which he anticipated Henry George, we could not admit that the old
Spencer had any right to do this violence to the young Spencer, or
was less bound either to confute his position or admit it than if the
two had been strangers to one another. Having had this lesson, we do
not feel free to alter even those passages which no longer represent
our latest conclusions. Fortunately, in the main we have nothing to
withdraw, nothing to regret, nothing to apologize for, and much to be
proud of. So we leave our book as it first came into the world, merely
writing “Errors Excepted” as solicitors do: that is, with the firm
conviction that the errors, if they exist at all, do not greatly matter.
_21st May, 1908._
THE FABIAN SOCIETY.
BY WILLIAM CLARKE, M.A.
No visitor to the British capital will mingle very long in the
political life of London before he will hear of the Fabian Society. Few
readers have not heard of the Roman general, Quinctus Fabius Maximus,
_qui cunctando restituit rem_, and who consequently received the title
of Cunctator. That illustrious man is the patron saint of the society,
through which, being dead, he yet speaketh.
The Fabian Society proposes then to conquer by delay; to carry its
programmes, not by a hasty rush, but through the slower but, as it
thinks, surer methods of patient discussion, exposition, and political
action of those who are absolutely convinced in their own minds. For a
convenient motto the society has taken the following sentence: “For the
right moment you must wait, as Fabius did, most patiently, when warring
against Hannibal, though many censured his delays; but when the time
comes you must strike hard, as Fabius did, or your waiting will be in
vain and fruitless.” This double policy then, of waiting and striking,
is the general idea of the society.
What now are the aims of the society? I quote from the official
programme: “The Fabian Society consists of Socialists. It therefore
aims at the reorganization of society by the emancipation of land and
industrial capital from individual and class ownership, and the vesting
of them in the community for the general benefit. In this way only can
the natural and acquired advantages of the country be equitably shared
by the whole people. The society accordingly works for the extinction
of private property in land, and of the consequent individual
appropriation, in the form of rent, of the price paid for permission
to use the earth, as well as for the advantages of superior soils and
sites. The society, further, works for the transfer to the community
of the administration of such industrial capital as can be managed
socially. For, owing to the monopoly of the means of production in the
past, industrial inventions and the transformation of surplus income
into capital have mainly enriched the proprietary class, the workers
being now dependent on that class for leave to earn a living.” To bring
this condition of things about, the programme continues, the society
looks to the spread of Socialist opinions, and it seeks to promote
these by the general dissemination of knowledge as to the relation
between the individual and society in its economic, ethical, and
political aspects.
These, then, are the fundamental ideas of the Fabian Society. Before
describing its growth, work and personnel, let me give an account and
explanation of its origin. The effective modern Socialist movement
in England began in 1881. In that year a conference was held at the
Westminster Palace Hotel in London, at which were present the venerable
Francis W. Newman, brother of the late cardinal; Helen Taylor, the
step-daughter of John Stuart Mill; Mr. Hyndman, the Socialist author
and leader; some men now in Parliament, others who have been there,
and a small number of energetic people well known in London, but not
equally well known in America. These persons and others formed, after
much discussion, the Democratic Federation, a body which at first
appeared to be nothing more than a vigorous Radical protest against the
Irish coercive policy of the Gladstone Cabinet then in power. Immense
demonstrations, some of the biggest ever held in London, were got up
by the Federation, who secured the adherence in this cause of some of
the Irish members of Parliament. But gradually the mere Radicalism
dropped out of the Federation’s programme; and under the stimulating
influence of Mr. Henry George, who was then in England, whose book was
being read everywhere, and who enjoyed much influence then in England,
the Federation preached the doctrine of the “land for the people.” But
a still further stage in its evolution was to be reached; and by the
autumn of 1883 it came out as a full-blown Socialist organization, and
published a little pamphlet entitled “Socialism Made Plain,” which had
a great run and which, singular as it may seem now, created a perfect
consternation among persons who supposed that Socialism was merely a
French or German eccentricity, due to militarism and protectionism,
and that it could never rear its head in “free” England. Mr. Herbert
Spencer, among others, took alarm and predicted a “coming slavery,”
and the venerable _Quarterly Review_ shook its venerable head and
marvelled, like Mrs. Sarah Gamp, at the “brajian imperence” of these
wicked agitators. It was perfectly evident that a new political force
was come into being.
But there were those in London who, sympathizing deeply with the new
movement, nevertheless could not throw themselves heartily into it, for
two reasons: first, it assumed that a revolutionary change affecting
the very bases of society could be brought about all at once; second,
it appeared to ignore what may be called the spiritual side of life,
and to disregard the ethical changes necessary to render a different
social system possible. Such was the state of things in the autumn of
1883, when a very able man, Mr. Thomas Davidson, of New York, whom all
who have meet him know to be a man of exceptional force and enthusiasm,
spent some weeks in London. Mr. Davidson, noting the condition of
things, gathered round him little conferences of men, at several of
which I was present; and while he was in London, and for several months
after, these purely informal conferences went on at different people’s
houses. It would be too long a tale to tell of the endless discussions
which took place, of the dull men and the brilliant men, the cranks and
the thinkers, the men with long hair and the women with short hair,
who debated and argued, and went for one another, and then debated and
argued again. The main upshot was that these persons found themselves
ultimately divided into two camps, not necessarily hostile, but laying
emphasis on different aspects of the social movement. One of these was
composed of persons who laid supreme stress on the need for ethical and
spiritual change as a constant factor in the social movement, and as a
coefficient with the material changes. These persons formed themselves
into a little body called the New Fellowship, which still exists, small
in numbers, but very earnest in purpose, and which publishes a small
quarterly journal called _Seedtime_. The other class, which agreed
with the Social Democratic Federation as to the urgent need for social
and political change, but thought this must be very gradual, and its
leaders persons of some culture and grasp of economics, formed the
Fabian Society. This is the genesis of this active body.
There is a prevalent view, expressed sometimes in American newspapers,
that the Socialist movement is largely made up of cranks and
scoundrels--a view shared in a less degree by a portion of the English
press. I believe there is in every country and age an abundant crop
of both these classes; and assuredly the Socialist, like every other
movement, has had its share of both. But to suppose that a great
movement which is sweeping Europe from end to end, which has given
birth to the largest single political party in Germany, which has
gained victories innumerable in France, which is modifying the whole of
English political life--to suppose that this movement is the outcome of
the delusions of a few wicked or foolish men, is itself the delusion
of people who are probably themselves not over-good or over-wise. In
Marx, Lassalle, Rodbertus, Malon and others, the Socialist movement
has been served by some of the best brains of our century; and it
was no idle boast of Lassalle that he was equipped with all the best
culture of his time. I know the inside of the Socialist movement well,
and it certainly numbers among its adherents the ablest men I know.
The Fabian Society contains not a few of these men. Walter Crane,
the artist; Stopford Brooke, the preacher and man of letters; Grant
Allen, one of the most versatile and accomplished men living; George
Bernard Shaw, one of the most brilliant albeit whimsical of musical
and dramatic critics; Miss Willard, one of America’s women reformers;
Professor Shuttleworth, now London’s most popular and able Broad
Church clergyman; Mr. D. G. Ritchie, of Oxford, foremost among English
philosophic thinkers; Mrs. Theodore Wright, one of our most powerful
actresses; Sergius Stepniak, next to Tolstoi the first of living
Russians; Alfred Hayes, one of the first of our younger poets; Dr.
Furnival, most learned and active of old English scholars,--these are
among its members.
But it is not, of course, the mere inclusion of eminent people that
gives a society force and authority. It is the being grounded in
knowledge and ideas; and here the society is strong. It was recognized
from the first by its members that the social problem cannot be
solved by mere sentiment, though sentiment must be a factor in its
solution. There must be a deal of hard thinking and severe study, not
altogether in books (many of which on the economic problems before us
are worthless), but in social facts. Its critics think the society
has erred on the other side, and become too hard, and even cynical;
but I confess I think that better than talking mere gushing moral
platitudes which people applaud and then forget all about. The society
has always steadily kept before it the idea that we are not looking
for any millennium, any perfectly blissful earthly paradise, but that
we are considering the much more prosaic question, how the economic
interests of society are to be served, how the economic arrangements
of society are to be carried on. Hence its members determined to equip
themselves for their work by hard reading and thinking and by very
stiff discussion of the crucial problems in history, economics and
political philosophy. To this end they were greatly aided by a useful
little Historical Society, which was formed in one of the suburbs of
London, where every week an essay was read and completely discussed. I
do not believe there are any better read or more acute minds in England
than these of the young men who formed this group and who have largely
remained the nucleus of the Fabian Society,--and this though they have
their faults, like other people.
At first the idea was to have a very small number of members, scarcely
more than could be gathered in a good-sized room in a private house.
These were to be well trained and to be apostles. Gradually, however,
the society grew and grew, the barriers of exclusion were broken
down, and persons of less knowledge and experience were brought in.
At the present time I think almost all callings are represented in
the society. I find in the last list of members, lawyers, artists,
journalists, doctors, workingmen, clergymen, teachers, trade-union
leaders, literary people, shop-keepers and persons of no occupation.
There are no millionnaires in the society, as there are no paupers, but
there are a few quite well-to-do people. A large proportion are bright
young men, and there are not a few bright and active women. Individual
instances of the sort of people who belong and what they do are better
than mere vague generalizations. Here are cases:--
A young man employed in the Central Post-Office at a salary of $650 a
year. He has married a very charming and able girl, also a member. They
occupy two or three rooms in a suburban house. The young lady has been
elected as a guardian of the poor, the only woman among a number of
men. Her husband devotes nearly all his spare time after office-hours
to the society’s propaganda. He has had a little portable desk and
stand made for himself, and at this he speaks in open spaces on street
corners or wherever he can get an audience. His wife accompanies him
and sells literature. Do not suppose that these are a blatant young
demagogue and a conventional, strong-minded woman. Both are educated,
intelligent, of sweet disposition; but the Socialist movement has taken
hold of them and given them something they needed, lifted them above
the region of what John Morley calls “greasy domesticity,” and taught
them that there is a great suffering world beyond the four walls of
home to be helped and worked for. Depend upon it, a movement which can
do this has in it some promise of the future.
Or take the amusing, cynical, remarkable George Bernard Shaw, whose
Irish humor and brilliant gifts have partly helped, partly hindered,
the society’s popularity. This man will rise from an elaborate
criticism of last night’s opera or Richter concert (he is the musical
critic of the _World_), and after a light, purely vegetarian meal, will
go down to some far-off club in South London, or to some street-corner
in East London, or to some recognized place of meeting in one of the
parks, and will there speak to poor men about their economic position
and their political duties. People of this sort, who enjoy books and
music and the theatre and good society, do not go down to dreary slums
or even more dreary lecture-rooms to speak on such themes to the poorer
class of workingmen without some strong impelling power; and it is that
power, that motive force, upon which I dwell, as showing what is doing
in the London of to-day. I am satisfied, from inquiries I have made,
that there is really nothing like this going on in any other country of
the world; but it is a commonplace in London.
The original parent Fabian Society, after it began to expand and
employ a paid secretary and become a recognized institution, suggested
to people elsewhere that they might have local Fabian Societies; and
the first of these were formed in Birmingham, where several of the
members addressed crowded, very intelligent and very enthusiastic
audiences in a hall in the centre of that city. There are also local
Fabian Societies now in Manchester, Edinburgh, Bristol, Leeds,
Newcastle, Plymouth, Wolverhampton, Bradford, York and other English
towns, altogether forty-eight in number; and there is also one in
Adelaide, South Australia, and another in Bombay. Some of these are
quite small, but others are important, and are beginning to exercise a
considerable influence in municipal politics, and in one or two places
in Parliamentary politics also. The society has been represented at
International Labor Congresses in Paris, Brussels, Zürich and Chicago.
And now what has in the main been the sort of work the society has
done? At first the idea of its members was rather to discuss among
themselves and teach themselves than to teach others. This was the
initial or self-forming stage. Then came the educational stage, and,
third, the political or active stage, though even in this, its third
stage, education is still the main object of the society. Fortnightly
discussions have been kept up continuously, save for a two months’
summer recess, for years. At these members of the society read papers,
or outsiders, and notably opponents, were invited. The late Charles
Bradlaugh came to oppose, and was very promptly demolished; while, on
the other hand, Oscar Wilde has spoken with eloquence and power on
the relation of art and Socialism. The society tried to get Mr. A.
J. Balfour, the Conservative leader, and Mr. W. H. Mallock, as the
ablest literary opponent of Socialism, to come and argue seriously,
but neither of them would do so. Mr. Haldene, the translator of
Schopenhauer and cultured philosophic member of Parliament, came
to oppose, was handled rather vigorously, and has now been largely
converted to collectivism. Mr. David F. Schloss, whom the British
Government recently sent over to the United States to inquire into
labor matters, has spoken sympathetically; and Mr. Donisthorpe, the
clever, cynical, superficial English individualist, has spoken and
has been mercilessly handled. The result of all this debating is that
the Fabian Society has now some of the best debaters in England. It
has also some of the best lecturers, for it is in lectures that its
work has largely consisted. The society now gives something over one
thousand lectures a year, all free, the lecturers being all unpaid.
Indeed, excepting the secretary’s office, the whole of the society’s
work is voluntary, unpaid work. The majority of these lectures
are given in workmen’s clubs, of which there are some hundreds in
London alone. I take at random from the 1891 list of lectures sample
subjects:--
The Socialism of John Ruskin; The Eight Hours’ Bill; Railway Reform;
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity; Methods of Social Evolution; Adam, the
first and last Individualist; Why we want a Labor Party; The Gospel
of getting on; What the Farm Laborers want; The Social Hell and its
Sources; Experiments in Housing the People; Socialism and Individual
Liberty; the Church’s Message to Men of Wealth; Free Comments on the
Population Question; The Worker’s Share of Wealth; The Programme
of Social Democracy; John Lilburne and the Levellers; The Chartist
Movement; The Religion of Socialism; the Industrial History of England;
Gospel of Bread and Butter; Workingmen and their Difficulties;
Co-operative Production and Socialism; Wealth and the Commonwealth; The
French Revolution; The Right to Live; What Socialists Propose to Do;
Twenty Years of the Labor Movement.
From these it will be seen what extensive ground is covered. These
lectures are for the most part delivered to workingmen, but sometimes
there are middle-class audiences, and I have heard of Fabian lecturers
talking to people in aristocratic drawing-rooms. From the first, the
society has done some publishing, and the last list gives no fewer than
forty-five pamphlets or tracts issued by the society. The first of
these, “Why are the Many Poor?” was a crude one, but good for rousing
attention, which is always the first thing to be done, and quite
justifying some curious Socialistic vagaries. The most valuable of
these pamphlets are “Facts for Socialists,” a really crushing answer
to those whom Matthew Arnold calls the “self-complacent moles,” all
based on the best available statistics; “Facts for Londoners,” an
appalling generalization of the economic condition of London; “What
to Read,” a most admirable and impartially selected list of books for
social reformers, which might with advantage be reprinted in America;
“The Reform of the Poor Law”; and “The Impossibilities of Anarchism,” a
searching criticism of the Anarchist position by George Bernard Shaw.
Remember that the preparation of these has all been voluntary, unpaid
labor, and has involved an immense amount of toil.
In 1888 the society determined to give a course of lectures by those
of its members who were supposed to be best fitted for the purpose,
setting forth the general principles of Socialism as they understood
them. The lectures were eight in number, and were delivered to densely
packed audiences, making such an impression that it was decided to
publish them in a volume; and in the next year they appeared, under
the title of “Fabian Essays in Socialism.” As it is a case of _quorum
pars magna fui_, I am precluded from giving my estimate of a volume
in which I had a share; but I may say that this work has had a very
great sale--thirty thousand copies, the largest sale of any purely
economic work I know of excepting “Progress and Poverty,”--and that
its respectful and even cordial welcome by the English press was a
surprise. The fact shows that the public mind is being prepared for
great social changes. The ruling idea of the book is that of inevitable
political and industrial evolution,--nothing in the least degree
merely utopian, but an attempted generalization on the lines of modern
scientific ideas. The publication of this book first gave to the Fabian
Society a national instead of a merely local reputation; and I believe
the book has now been widely read in America and Germany, while it was
introduced to France by the _Revue Socialiste_. Several courses of
lectures have since been given by the society, but none of them have
been afterwards published.
The third phase of the society’s activity is, as I have said, in
practical politics. This was not undertaken without some misgivings.
On the principle that you cannot touch pitch without being defiled, I
confess I doubted whether, until the people had been far more educated
in these ideas, it was wise to enter the somewhat dirty political
arena. But the intense desire to be _doing_ something, to translate
ideas into facts, to organize the people, to help in shaping the
actual progressive movement in England, and above all, perhaps, to
weaken and destroy the individualist wing of the Liberal party,--these
and other motives acted with cumulative force, especially as members
of the society began to find that they had acquired influence over
little groups of workmen here and there. There were great dangers and
difficulties. There was the danger of falling into mere wire-pulling
and making of political “deals,”--a subject about which people in
America know so much that it is not necessary to enlarge upon it; and
then there was the practical difficulty of differences of opinion in
the society, which might cause wreck if political action were indulged
in. I may say at once that these difficulties remain and will continue
to do so, though they have not led to disruption yet. There are
inveterate wire-pullers in the society, and there are those who favor
an independent labor party, those who want to permeate the Radicals and
gradually gain them over; and there are even a few who, as between the
two parties, prefer Tories to Radicals. The first political chance for
the Fabian Society came at the London county council election in 1889,
when the advanced party in London paid the society the compliment of
appropriating its entire pamphlet, “The London Programme,” and making
of it the Progressive platform of the campaign. The Progressives
carried that election, and they carried it on “The London Programme.”
Still more striking was the Progressive victory in 1892, when the
Moderate or Conservative party was almost annihilated at the polls.
The Fabian Society has supplied London with its programme of reforms;
and the reforms were in the direction of what it is now the fashion
to call municipal Socialism. At the second county council election,
several Fabians were candidates, and four of them were actually
elected; while a fifth, Ben Tillett, the labor leader, was afterwards
made an alderman. Three members of the society proved formidable though
unsuccessful candidates at the Parliamentary election two years ago.
A considerable number of members are on local municipal councils and
school boards, and another fought a very remarkable Parliamentary fight
during the last year. So it is clear that the society is largely _en
evidence_.
As to the general programme of work in which the members are supposed
more or less to take part, I may quote from the printed advice given
to members as to what they can do. First of all, “the need of study”
is insisted on. It is assumed that the member will read all the
society’s publications; and his next duty, it is urged, should be to
read the criticisms on the other side, after the manner of Cicero, who
was always careful to get up his opponent’s case. If a member cannot
read or study alone, he is recommended to set on foot a local reading
circle, and apply to the secretary for literature for the circle.
No public work should be done until this self-education has been
accomplished, and the member is really able to speak with authority
and to deal effectively with an opponent. The opponents of Socialism
in England are usually persons sent out by a body called the Liberty
and Property Defence League, of which the American millionnaire,
Mr. Astor, now a London Tory newspaper proprietor, is a member.
These persons have, as a rule, a remarkable capacity for making
fools of themselves; nevertheless, it is always a tactical blunder
to underestimate the ability of your opponent, and Fabian lecturers
are advised to assume that these Liberty and Property defenders are
acquainted with economics, even though there is good reason to suspect
they are not. There is nothing that kills like ridicule; to gibbet an
ignorant and presumptuous debater, and make him look like a fool before
a large audience, is a source of pleasure to every rightly constituted
mind. Members of the society are also urged to correspond with their
Parliamentary or municipal representative on all vital points, to worry
his life out of him if he is obstinate or wrong-headed or dishonest,
and to make him yearn like the poet for a lodge in some vast wilderness
where he might never receive another letter or vote of censure as long
as he lived. This is a good way to combat what Walt Whitman calls “the
never-ending audacity of elected persons.” The member should always
attend the local caucus meeting, and do what he can there; and if he
has the time to spare, he should be a candidate for any public post,
such as member of Parliament, of county or municipal council, of
school board, guardian of the poor, or member of the parish council
yet to be constituted. The great difficulty in the way of this is that
these public persons are not paid in England, and few of the busy and
impecunious members of the Fabian Society can afford the time for these
things.
Having thus described the constitution, work, and general character
of the Fabian Society, let me speak on the general intellectual
forces which have been operating in England to bring about this new
political growth among active young men; for it is quite new. My first
acquaintance with anything that could properly be called Socialism
in England was in London in 1879, when I went one evening to hear a
young Jewish gentleman, since deceased, Mr. Montefiore, read a paper
on German Socialism, before the London Dialectical Society. Mr.
Montefiore had but a slender knowledge of his subject, and we had to
wait for speeches by a German friend of Marx, resident in London, and
from a young, dreamy-looking man with long, thick, tousled hair, whom
I learned was Mr. Ernest Belfort Bax, since better known as a prolific
writer on Socialism from the revolutionary, Marxite point of view. At
that time there was not a single young man in London interested in or
in favor of anything like Socialism, excepting Mr. Bax. Now there are
hundreds. What are the reasons for the change?
(1) The exhaustion of the older Liberalism and the obviously
unsatisfactory character of mere republicanism. And here American
readers must permit me to be plain by saying that the United States
seemed to furnish an object lesson to the world as to the failure of
mere republicanism to solve a single one of our social questions. A
quarter of a century ago the American Republic was the guiding star of
advanced English political thought. It is not so now: candor compels
me to say that. It is not merely a question of machine politics, of
political corruption, of the omnipotent party boss; though supine
Americans who do nothing to overthrow those purely political evils
should be reminded that Europe as well as America is involved in
and has to pay for their cowardice and indifference. But over and
beyond this is the great fact of the division between rich and poor,
millionnaires at one end, tramps at the other, a growth of monopolies
unparalleled, crises producing abject poverty just as in Europe. These
facts proved to men clearly that new institutions were of no use along
with the old forms of property; that a mere theoretic democracy,
unaccompanied by any social changes, was a delusion and a snare. The
result of this is that the old enthusiasm for mere republicanism has
died away, and that, though twenty-five years ago there was a good
sprinkling of republican clubs in England, there is not a single one of
them left now.
(2) The second cause I take to be a new spirit in literature. The
genteel, the conventional, the thinner kind of romantic literature
began to die out; and the powerful realistic school began to attract
men’s minds. There was a desire to know things as they are, to sound
the plummet in the sea of social misery, to have done with make-believe
and get at realities. The Russian writers, with their intense
Socialistic feeling, attracted great numbers of readers, who seemed to
find in them something entirely new and immensely powerful. I should
name among individual writers who have powerfully aided the growth, I
do not say of Socialism itself, but of the feeling in the soil of which
Socialism is easily developed, Dickens, Victor Hugo, Carlyle, Whitman,
Ruskin, Tolstoi, Zola and Arnold. A curious and medley list, you may
say, and so it is; but I am certain that each of these great writers
has contributed a distinct element to the expansion and liberation of
the minds that have been formed, say, during the last twenty years. For
among all these writers, varied as they are, it is the social feeling
which is the most powerful impulse.
(3) Along with the new literature has grown a new art feeling, an
intense hatred of the smug and respectable, and a love to be surrounded
by attractive objects. Ruskin, Morris, and Walter Crane have shown
why it is that the true artist is at war with commercialism, with
the notion that things are to be produced for a profit, no matter
what abominations you may turn out. The conception that no person
has any right to inflict an ugly object of any sort on the world,
especially for the sake of making gain out of it, has taken hold on the
imaginative mind of the younger people of our cultivated classes.
(4) In the fourth place, the old political economy is absolutely dead
in England, although you might not perhaps guess it from some of the
English economic writers. The influence of German thought in this,
as in other departments, has affected men’s minds. Take a series of
books like the Social Science Series, published by Sonnenschein;
half those books are Socialistic,--and that would have been an
impossibility twenty years ago. Of the “Fabian Essays in Socialism,”
it may be said that the publisher, as well as the Society, reaped
large profits from it. I mention such works as these, rather than
romances like Morris’s “News from Nowhere,” or Bellamy’s “Looking
Backward.” The charm of Morris’s style and the ingenuity of Bellamy’s
narrative would be sufficient to account for their success; but the
popularity of these other works represents a body of serious interest
in advanced economics, which may well be considered startling when the
old hidebound prejudices of orthodox English economics are taken into
consideration.
(5) _Laissez-faire_ individualist political philosophy is dead. In
vain does poor Mr. Herbert Spencer endeavor to stem the torrent. His
political ideas are already as antiquated as Noah’s ark. I do not know
a single one of the younger men in England who is influenced by them
in the slightest degree, though one hears of one occasionally, just
as one hears of a freak in a dime museum. For all practical purposes,
philosophic Radicalism, as it was called, is as extinct as the dodo.
(6) There is another cause which cannot be ignored, though I speak upon
it with some hesitation, as I purposely avoid, as far as possible, the
difficult questions of religion and the deeper ethics. I mean that
the old dualism, with its creed of other-worldliness, has gone by the
board. Whatever men’s theoretical views are upon many transcendental
matters, there is a general feeling now that the world is one, and
that actual life here is just as sacred, normal, good, as it ever was
or ever will be in any hypothetical past or future; that if there is
any heaven for us we have to make it, and that such heaven is a state
of the mind, of human relationships, and not a place to be reached at
a definite period of time. Perhaps I may quote the eloquent words of
William Morris in his “Dream of John Ball”: “Fellowship is heaven, and
the lack of fellowship is hell.” This idea is, I say, a powerful factor
in leading the minds of the younger men to the views of which I am
speaking. But men are not altogether influenced by their theoretical
or even spiritual ideas; they are also moved, and so long as they have
material bodies to be fed and clothed they will continue to be moved,
by purely self-regarding and economic considerations. Let us never be
deluded into supposing that altruistic feelings alone will induce men
to make great social changes; egotistic considerations will prompt them
as well, the desire of self-preservation working along with the desire
for a better and more harmonious social order than exists. It is not
only upon the working classes that capitalist monopoly tells; it tells
also upon the educated middle classes who are not in the monopoly. They
find the avenues of livelihood and preferment one after another closed
to them; and just as education spreads, this will become more and more
the case. When a small number of persons in a large community are
highly educated, they have what economists call a monopoly value; they
can get a good price for their services, because they possess something
which few people have. Spread this higher education and the monopoly
is broken down. Now, this is roughly what is going on in society;
democracy is levelling all up to a common level, however gradual may be
the process; and consequently highly educated men with their special
gifts find their rates of remuneration becoming lower and lower, unless
they possess some rare gift of genius, as a Sara Bernhardt in acting,
a Paderewski in playing, a Stevenson in story-telling, a Mascagni as
a composer. These rare people still command their monopoly value; but
for the rest it has disappeared. Thus even more than the workingmen,
perhaps, it has been the educated young men of the middle class
(and the young women, too) who have been hardest hit by the modern
development. Fifty years ago you could have gathered all the press
writers of London into a single moderate-sized room. To-day all told
they number nearly ten thousand. Everybody with a pen, ink and paper
and any capacity for turning out “copy” is a journalist; and you see
at once that it is impossible for all these men to earn a living. They
don’t, and can’t. There are scores of highly educated people who work
every day in the British Museum for eight or nine hours a day and earn
less than a mechanic in constant occupation. It is the same in all the
professions. Only fifteen per cent of London advocates ever get briefs
at all; the other eighty-five per cent get nothing. In the medical
profession it is the same. The prizes go to about five per cent of the
profession; as for the average medical man in the London suburbs, the
rates are so cut that I am credibly informed by one of them who studied
at Cambridge and Heidelberg, and on whose education hundreds of pounds
were spent, the fee for attendance and prescription in his suburban
district has been brought down to twenty-five cents. It will be seen
that it is not a question of making money or of the disgusting progress
towards smug respectability, which is known as “getting on,”--it is
positively a question of a bare living. Now, while a workingman who has
never known comfort, whose father has never known it before him, can
often stand a frightful amount of poverty without getting desperate,
the well-bred young man cannot; and the result is that the keenest and
most dangerous discontent comes from the educated classes, who are
leading the Socialist masses all over Europe. Some superficial people
think the remedy is to be found in inducing young men of the better
classes to abandon the so-called “respectable” occupations and go in
for manual labor. Let them cease, by all means, to be “respectable,”
but let not any one lay the flattering unction to his soul that this,
under existing economic conditions, is any solution. For what is the
difficulty about manual labor now? Why, that thousands of those already
engaged in it are not wanted; it is the difficulty of the unemployed,
the difficulty of over-production. In 1886, according to the Report
of the Washington Bureau of Statistics, there were at least one and
one-half million of unemployed men in the United States; and this state
of things has been almost if not quite paralleled in 1893. In London
lack of employment is chronic, and is growing to such huge proportions
that our cowardly, blind, public men dare not grapple with it. In
Australia the unemployed have been walking the streets of Melbourne by
the thousand. How absurd then it is to propose to add to the numbers of
workingmen when those already in the ranks cannot find means of living!
There is one method, alas, open to men, as there is always one method
open to tempted, poverty-stricken women,--the method of what I may call
intellectual prostitution; and many there be that go in at that gate.
Sick and weary of the penury and struggle that go with honesty, young
men of ability will deliberately sell themselves to the capitalist
who has cornered our intellectual as he has cornered our material
production, and will serve him for a good living. What numbers I have
known choose this path!--and I cannot blame them, for they are forced
into it by the conditions of modern life. It is useless preaching fine
morals to them; the conditions of life must be adapted to human nature
as it is, for human nature will not, you may be quite sure, suddenly
transform itself to suit the conditions. These, then, are the economic
motives which, combined with the moral and intellectual motives to
which I have previously given expression, are forcing young men of
education and good breeding into the ranks of the Socialists, and which
especially operate in the case of a body like the Fabian Society.
Readers will be asking by this time whether I am not going to set
forth the actual political programme or “platform,” as it is called
in America, of the Fabian Society. Yes, that is just what I am going
to do. As the Fabian Society holds that social transformation must
be gradual, unless there is to be a general smash-up, it proposes a
series of reforms for effecting the gradual change of society into
a really social democratic state. But these reforms, it will be
understood, are adopted with a distinct end in view, which fact makes
all the difference between people of principle and mere opportunists
who have no end in view other than the personal end of lining their
own pockets. The following, then, are the planks of the Fabian
political platform: Adult suffrage, Parliamentary and municipal,
one vote for each man and each woman of twenty-one and upwards who
are not in prison or in a lunatic asylum. The second ballot, as in
France, Germany and Switzerland, so that whoever is elected will have
an absolute majority of the votes polled. Payment of members by the
state and of election expenses by the district (it must be remembered
that at present representatives are not paid in England). Taxation of
unearned incomes by such means as a land tax, heavy death duties to
go to municipalities, and a progressive income tax. Municipalization
of land and local industries, so that free and honorable municipal
employment may be substituted for private charity, which, to vary a
well-known line of Shakespeare, is twice cursed,--it curseth him who
gives and him who takes. All education to be at the public cost for all
classes, including manual as well as book training. Nationalization
of all canals and railways, so that the public highways may belong to
the public, as they always did until the new era of steam, when they
got into the hands of capitalists. It is as ridiculous to pay Mr.
Vanderbilt if you happen to want to go from New York to Chicago as it
would be to pay him if you desired to take a walk down Fifth Avenue.
The eight hours day for wage-workers in all government and municipal
offices, in all monopolies like coal mines and railways, and in all
industries where the workers want it. Parish councils for the laborers,
with compulsory power to acquire land to build dwellings, to administer
schools and charities, and to engage in co-operative farming.
Such is the programme through the adoption of which the Fabian Society
believes that the country once called “merry England,” but the greater
portion of which is now dreary and sordid and cursed with poverty,
might again be really happy and be converted into a land of real and
not of sham freedom. And now a word, in conclusion, on an important
point,--the relation of the intellectual proletariat, as it has been
called, to the masses, of the educated young men to the bulk of
the working classes. Most of the members of the Fabian Society are
educated, middle-class people, though there are workingmen connected
with it also. What is to be the relation of these educated middle-class
people to the swarming multitudes of workers? This is a vital social
question, the most vital we have immediately before us. One remembers
what Matthew Arnold said in America,--that the salvation of modern
society lay in the hands of a remnant. I should be inclined to put it
rather differently, and to say that, if the social evolution is to be
peaceful and rational, it must be effected by the union of a cultivated
remnant with the masses of the toiling people. American optimism may
chafe at the little word “if.” Can there be any doubt, you may ask,
that we shall go on prosperously and peacefully? I reply, yes, there is
quite good enough ground for doubting this. As Mr. Pearson, the author
of that remarkable book on “National Life and Character,” which has
impressed us in England very deeply, has said, ancient civilization in
the times of the Antonines seemed as firm and strong as does ours, nay,
stronger, for it had, in the main, lasted as many centuries as ours has
lasted decades.
Stout was its arm, each nerve and bone
Seemed puissant and alive.
Had you predicted then to a Roman senator that the splendid Greco-Roman
cities would be given to the flames, and that the Roman Senate and
legions would be trampled down by ignorant hordes of barbarians, he
would have smiled, offered you another cup of Falernian wine, and
changed the subject. Yet we know this happened; and I confess I can
see nothing in our mushroom civilization which we have any particular
right to regard as inherently more enduring than the elaborate and
stately organism of Roman jurisprudence. But there are no barbarians!
Yes, there are; but they are not outside us,--they are in our midst.
Do you suppose that the grim victim of crushing poverty in a London
attic or a Berlin cellar cares one pin’s head for all the heritage
of the world’s thought which appeals to the highly educated? How are
these huge masses of poor people to be welded into a great phalanx,
to be induced to subordinate their passions to the demands of reason,
to look not merely at the needs of the moment, but at those of next
year, to realize that the world cannot be remade in a day, but yet
that it can be so reconstituted as to give all opportunities to live
as human beings should? Silly people are always talking nonsense about
the danger of “agitators.” I know all about agitators. I know nearly
every prominent agitator in Great Britain; and I can say confidently
that it is the agitators who have to hold back, to restrain the people
from rash and even mad action. The record of every English strike would
show that this was the case. If all the labor leaders and agitators
were silenced, it would be the very worst thing that could befall the
capitalist class. The masses are at present, at the very best, an army
of privates without officers. This is not their fault; it is their
misfortune. They have not had the training, the culture, which enables
them to meet rich men and their agents on equal ground. An English
statesman, whose name is known the world over, said privately to me
not long ago: “The labor men here in the House of Commons are all good
fellows, but they are no use as leaders; the principal men of either
party can twist them round their fingers with the greatest ease. If the
labor movement is to be a success, it must be led by educated men.” I
believe that verdict of one of the ablest and best-informed public men
now living to be true. To what does it point? To the union of culture
with labor, to reform this badly-jointed system. Only, be it observed,
it must be union on equal terms. There must be no lofty condescension
on the part of culture any more than base truckling on the part of
labor. It must be an equal copartnership, where each partner recognizes
that the other has something which he needs. And let me say, as one
who knows workmen, that, in a certain and very real way, culture has
as much to learn from labor as labor from culture. Let the cultured
man approach the laboring man on perfectly equal terms, in a cordial
and open way; and let both unite to deliver a groaning world from the
bondage of riches. English experience shows that this can be done;
and this idea is to a very great degree the _idée mère_ of the Fabian
Society, whose members have no higher ambition than to mingle freely
with the workmen and share in the common life. By this means the hatred
and suspicion felt by the French and German workmen towards any one who
wears a black coat is eliminated, and both labor and culture gain in
breadth, knowledge and sympathy, and the cause of rational progress is
rendered more secure. Walt Whitman has told us, in “Leaves of Grass,”
how he went “freely with powerful, uneducated persons,”--a gospel which
Mr. John Addington Symonds, in his essay on Whitman, tells us, saved
him from being a prig. And this gospel of free intercourse with the
so-called “common people,” who are neither saints nor great sinners,
but real men, more real than the conventional middle-class man can
ever afford to be, is the healthiest, best advice which I can give to
cultivated men.
THE FABIAN ESSAYS.
PREFACE.
The essays in this volume were prepared last year as a course of
lectures for delivery before mixed audiences in London and the
provinces. They have been revised for publication, but not recast. The
matter is put, not as an author would put it to a student, but as a
speaker with only an hour at his disposal has to put it to an audience.
Country readers may accept the book as a sample of the propaganda
carried on by volunteer lecturers in the workmen’s clubs and political
associations of London.[1] Metropolitan readers will have the advantage
of making themselves independent of the press critic by getting face
to face with the writers, stripping the veil of print from their
personality, cross-examining, criticising, calling them to account
amid surroundings which inspire no awe, and before the most patient
of audiences. For any Sunday paper which contains a lecture list will
shew where some, if not all, of the seven essayists may be heard for
nothing; and on all such occasions questions and discussion form part
of the procedure.
The projection and co-ordination of these lectures is not the work
of any individual. The nominal editor is only the member told off to
arrange for the publication of the papers, and see them through the
press with whatever editorial ceremony might be necessary. Everything
that is usually implied by the authorship and editing of a book has in
this case been done by the seven essayists, associated as the Executive
Council of the Fabian Society; and not one of the essays could be
what it is had the writer been a stranger to his six colleagues and
to the Society. But there has been no sacrifice of individuality--no
attempt to cut out every phrase and opinion the responsibility for
which would not be accepted by every one of the seven. Had the sections
been differently allotted, they would have been differently treated,
though the net result would probably have been the same. The writers
are all Social Democrats, with a common conviction of the necessity of
vesting the organization of industry and the material of production in
a State identified with the whole people by complete Democracy. But
that conviction is peculiar to no individual bias: it is a Capitol to
which all roads lead; and at least seven of them are represented in
these Fabian Essays; so that the reader need not fear oppression here,
any more than in the socialized State of the future, by the ascendancy
of one particular cast of mind.
There are at present no authoritative teachers of Socialism. The
essayists make no claim to be more than communicative learners.
LONDON, December, 1889.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In the year ending April, 1889, the number of lectures delivered by
members of the Fabian Society alone was upwards of 700.
THE BASIS OF SOCIALISM.
ECONOMIC.
BY G. BERNARD SHAW.
All economic analyses begin with the cultivation of the earth. To the
mind’s eye of the astronomer, the earth is a ball spinning in space
without ulterior motives. To the bodily eye of the primitive cultivator
it is a vast green plain, from which, by sticking a spade into it,
wheat and other edible matters can be made to spring. To the eye of the
sophisticated city man, this vast green plain appears rather as a great
gaming-table, your chances in the game depending chiefly on the place
where you deposit your stakes. To the economist, again, the green plain
is a sort of burial-place of hidden treasure, where all the forethought
and industry of man are set at naught by the caprice of the power which
hid the treasure. The wise and patient workman strikes his spade in
here, and with heavy toil can discover nothing but a poor quality of
barley, some potatoes and plentiful nettles, with a few dock leaves
to cure his stings. The foolish spendthrift on the other side of the
hedge, gazing idly at the sand glittering in the sun, suddenly realizes
that the earth is offering him gold--is dancing it before his listless
eyes lest it should escape him. Another man, searching for some more
of this tempting gold, comes upon a great hoard of coal, or taps a jet
of petroleum. Thus is Man mocked by Earth, his step-mother, and never
knows as he tugs at her closed hand whether it contains diamonds or
flints, good red wheat or a few clayey and blighted cabbages. Thus,
too, he becomes a gambler, and scoffs at the theorists who prate of
industry and honesty and equality. Yet against this fate he eternally
rebels. For since in gambling the many must lose in order that the few
may win; since dishonesty is mere shadow-grasping where every one is
dishonest; and since inequality is bitter to all except the highest,
and miserably lonely for him, men come greatly to desire that these
capricious gifts of Nature might be intercepted by some agency having
the power and the goodwill to distribute them justly according to the
labor done by each in the collective search for them. This desire is
Socialism; and, as a means to its fulfilment, Socialists have devised
communes, kingdoms, principalities, churches, manors, and finally,
when all these had succumbed to the old gambling spirit, the Social
Democratic State, which yet remains to be tried. As against Socialism,
the gambling spirit urges man to allow no rival to come between his
private individual powers and Step-mother Earth, but rather to secure
some acres of her and take his chance of getting diamonds instead of
cabbages. This is Private Property, or Unsocialism. Our own choice
is shewn by our continual aspiration to possess property, our common
hailing of it as sacred, our setting apart of the word Respectable for
those who have attained it, our ascription of pre-eminent religiousness
to commandments forbidding its violation, and our identification of law
and order among men with its protection. Therefore is it vital to a
living knowledge of our society that Private Property should be known
in every step of its progress from its source in cupidity to its end in
confusion.
Let us, in the manner of the Political Economist, trace the effects
of settling a country by private property with undisturbed law and
order. Figure to yourself the vast green plain of a country virgin
to the spade, awaiting the advent of man. Imagine then the arrival
of the first colonist, the original Adam, developed by centuries of
civilization into an Adam Smith, prospecting for an suitable patch of
Private Property. Adam is, as Political Economy fundamentally assumes
him to be, “on the make”; therefore he drives his spade into, and sets
up his stockade around, the most fertile and favorably situated patch
he can find. When he has tilled it, Political Economy inspired to
prophesy by the spectacle, metaphorically exhibits Adam’s little patch
of cultivation as a pool that will yet rise and submerge the whole
land. Let us not forget this trope: it is the key to the ever-recurring
phrase, “margin of cultivation,” in which, as may now be perceived,
there lurks a little unsuspected poetry. And truly the pool soon
spreads. Other Adams come, all on the make, and therefore all sure to
pre-empt patches as near as may be to that of the first Adam’s, partly
because he has chosen the best situation, partly for the pleasure of
his society and conversation, and partly because where two men are
assembled together there is a two-man power that is far more than
double one-man power, being indeed in some instances a quite new force,
totally destructive of the idiotic general hypothesis that society
is no more than the sum of the units which compose it. These Adams,
too, bring their Cains and Abels, who do not murder one another, but
merely pre-empt adjacent patches. And so the pool rises, and the margin
spreads more and more remote from the centre, until the pool becomes a
lake, and the lake an inland sea.
RENT.
But in the course of this inundation the caprices of Nature begin to
operate. That specially fertile region upon which Adam pitched is
sooner or later all pre-empted; and there is nothing for the new-comer
to pre-empt save soil of the second quality. Again, division of labor
sets in among Adam’s neighbors; and with it, of course, comes the
establishment of a market for the exchange of the products of their
divided labor. Now it is not well to be far afield from that market,
because distance from it involves extra cost for roads, beasts of
burden, time consumed in travelling thither and back again. All this
will be saved to Adam at the centre of cultivation, and incurred
by the new-comer at the margin of cultivation. Let us estimate the
annual value of Adam’s produce at £1,000, and the annual produce of
the new-comer’s land on the margin of cultivation at £500, assuming
that Adam and the new-comer are equally industrious. Here is a clear
advantage of £500 a year to the first comer. This £500 is economic
rent. It matters not at all that it is merely a difference of income,
and not an overt payment from a tenant to a landlord. The two men labor
equally; and yet one gets £500 a year more than the other through the
superior fertility of his land and convenience of its situation. The
excess due to that fertility is rent; and before long we shall find it
recognized as such and paid in the fashion with which we are familiar.
For why should not Adam let his patch to the new-comer at a rent of
£500 a year? Since the produce will be £1,000, the new-comer will have
£500 left for himself, or as much as he could obtain by cultivating a
patch of his own at the margin; and it is pleasanter, besides, to be
in the centre of society than on the outskirts of it. The new-comer
will himself propose the arrangement; and Adam may retire as an idle
landlord with a perpetual pension of £500 rent. The excess of fertility
in Adam’s land is thenceforth recognized as rent and paid, as it is
to-day, regularly by a worker to a drone. A few samples of the way
in which this simple and intelligible transaction is stated by our
economists may now, I hope, be quoted without any danger of their
proving so difficult as they appear in the text-books from which I have
copied them.
Stuart Mill[2] says that “the rent of land consists of the excess
of its return above the return to the worst land in cultivation.”
Fawcett[3] says that “the rent of land represents the pecuniary value
of the advantages which such land possesses over the worst land in
cultivation.” Professor Marshall[4] says that “the rent of a piece
of land is the excess of its produce over the produce of an adjacent
piece of land which would not be cultivated at all if rent were paid
for it.” Professor Sidgwick[5] cautiously puts it that “the normal
rent _per acre_ of any piece” [of land] “is the surplus of the value
of its produce over the value of the net produce per acre of the
least advantageous land that it is profitable to cultivate.” General
Walker[6] declares that “specifically, the rent of any piece of land is
determined by the difference between its annual yield and that of the
least productive land actually cultivated for the supply of the same
market, it being assumed that the quality of the land as a productive
agent is, in neither case, impaired or improved by such cultivation.”
All these definitions are offered by the authors as elaborations of
that given by their master Ricardo,[7] who says, “Rent is that portion
of the produce of the earth which is paid to the landlord for the use
of the original and indestructible powers of the soil.”
THE COUNTY FAMILY.
Let us return to our ideal country. Adam is retiring from productive
industry on £500 a year; and his neighbors are hastening to imitate
him as fresh tenants present themselves. The first result is the
beginning of a tradition that the oldest families in the country
enjoy a superior position to the rest, and that the main advantage of
their superior position is that they enjoy incomes without working.
Nevertheless, since they still depend on their tenants’ labor for their
subsistence, they continue to pay Labor, with a capital L, a certain
meed of mouth honor; and the resultant association of prosperity with
idleness, and praise with industry, practically destroys morality by
setting up that incompatibility between conduct and principle which
is the secret of the ingrained cynicism of our own time, and which
produces the curious Ricardian phenomenon of the man of business
who goes on Sunday to the church with the regularity of the village
blacksmith, there to renounce and abjure before his God the line of
conduct which he intends to pursue with all his might during the
following week.
According to our hypothesis, the inland sea of cultivation has now
spread into the wilderness so far that at its margin the return to
a man’s labor for a year is only £500. But as there is always a
flood-tide in that sea, caused by the incessant increase of population,
the margin will not stop there; it will at last encroach upon every
acre of cultivable land, rising to the snow line on the mountains and
falling to the coast of the actual salt water sea, but always reaching
the barrenest places last of all, because the cultivators are still,
as ever, on the make, and will not break bad land when better is to be
had. But suppose that now, at last, the uttermost belt of free land is
reached, and that upon it the yield to a man’s year’s labor is only
£100. Clearly now the rent of Adam’s primeval patch has risen to £900,
since that is the excess of its produce over what is by this time all
that is to be had rent free. But Adam has yielded up his land for £500
a year to a tenant. It is this tenant accordingly who now lets Adam’s
patch for £900 a year to the new-comer, who of course loses nothing
by the bargain, since it leaves him the £100 a year with which he
must be content anyhow. Accordingly he labors on Adam’s land; raises
£1,000 a year from it; keeps £100 and pays £900 to Adam’s tenant, who
pays £500 to Adam, keeping £400 for himself, and thus also becoming an
idle gentleman, though with a somewhat smaller income than the man of
older family. It has, in fact, come to this, that the private property
in Adam’s land is divided between three men, the first doing none of
the work and getting half the produce; the second doing none of the
work and getting two-fifths of the produce; and the third doing all
the work and getting only one-tenth of the produce. Incidentally also,
the moralist who is sure to have been prating somewhere about private
property leading to the encouragement of industry, the establishment
of a healthy incentive, and the distribution of wealth according to
exertion, is exposed as a futile purblind person, starting _a priori_
from blank ignorance, and proceeding deductively to mere contradiction
and patent folly.
All this, however, is a mere trifle compared to the sequel. When the
inland sea has risen to its confines--when there is nothing but a strip
of sand round the coast between the furrow and the wave--when the very
waves themselves are cultivated by fisherfolk--when the pastures and
timber forests have touched the snow line--when, in short, the land is
all private property, yet every man is a proprietor, though it may be
only of a tenant right. He enjoys fixity of tenure at what is called
a fair rent; that is, he fares as well as he could on land wholly his
own. All the rent is economic rent; the landlord cannot raise it nor
the tenant lower it; it is fixed naturally by the difference between
the fertility of the land for which it is paid and that of the worst
land in the country. Compared with the world as we know it, such a
state of things is freedom and happiness.
THE PROLETARIAT.
But at this point there appears in the land a man in a strange
plight--one who wanders from snow line to sea coast in search of land,
and finds none that is not the property of some one else. Private
property had forgotten this man. On the roads he is a vagrant; off
them he is a trespasser; he is the first disinherited son of Adam,
the first proletarian, one in whose seed all the generations of the
earth shall yet be blest, but who is himself for the present foodless,
homeless, shiftless, superfluous, and everything that turns a man into
a tramp or a thrall. Yet he is still a man with brain and muscle,
able to devise and execute, able to deal puissantly with land if he
only could get access to it. But how to get that access! Necessity is
the mother of Invention. It may be that this second Adam, the first
father of the great proletariat, has one of those scarce brains which
are not the least of Nature’s capricious gifts. If the fertile field
yields rent, why not the fertile brain? Here is the first Adam’s patch
still yielding its £1,000 a year to the labor of the tenant who, as we
have seen, has to pay £900 away in rent. How if the proletarian were
boldly to bid £1,000 a year to that man for the property? Apparently
the result would be the starvation of the proletarian, since he would
have to part with all the produce. But what if the proletarian can
contrive--invent--anticipate a new want--turn the land to some hitherto
undreamt-of use--wrest £1,500 a year from the soil and site that
only yielded £1,000 before? If he can do this, he can pay the full
£1,000 rent, and have an income of £500 left for himself. This is his
profit--the rent of his ability--the excess of its produce over that
of ordinary stupidity. Here then is the opportunity of the cunning
proletarian, the hero of that modern Plutarch, Mr. Samuel Smiles.
Truly, as Napoleon said, the career is open to the talented. But alas!
the social question is no more a question of the fate of the talented
than of the idiotic. In due replenishment of the earth there comes
another proletarian who is no cleverer than other men, and can do as
much, but not more than they. For him there is no rent of ability. How
then is he to get a tenant right? Let us see. It is certain that by
this time not only will the new devices of the renter of ability have
been copied by people incapable of inventing them; but division of
labor, the use of tools and money, and the economies of civilization
will have greatly increased man’s power of extracting wealth from
Nature. All this increase will be so much gain to the holder of a
tenant right, since his rent is a fixed payment out of the produce of
his holding, and the balance is his own. Therefore an addition to the
produce not foreseen by the landlord enriches the tenant. So that it
may well be that the produce of land on the margin of cultivation,
which, as we have seen, fixes the produce left to the cultivators
throughout the whole area, may rise considerably. Suppose the yield to
have doubled; then our old friends who paid £900 rent, and kept £100
for themselves, have now, though they still pay £900 rent, £1,100 for
themselves, the total produce having risen to £2,000. Now here is an
opportunity for our proletarian who is not clever. He can very well
offer to cultivate the land subject to a payment of, for instance,
£1,600 a year, leaving himself £400 a year. This will enable the last
holder of the tenant right to retire as an idle gentleman receiving a
net income of £700 a year, and a gross income of £1,600, out of which
he pays £900 a year rent to a landlord who again pays to the head
landlord £500. But it is to be marked that this £700 a year net is
not economic rent. It is not the difference between the best and the
worst land. It has nothing to do with the margin of cultivation. It is
a payment for the privilege of using land at all--for access to that
which is now a close monopoly; and its amount is regulated, not by what
the purchaser could do for himself on land of his own at the margin,
but simply by the landholder’s eagerness to be idle on the one hand,
and the proletarian’s need of subsistence on the other. In current
economic terms the price is regulated by supply and demand. As the
demand for land intensifies by the advent of fresh proletarians, the
price goes up; and the bargains are made more stringent. Tenant rights,
instead of being granted in perpetuity, and so securing for ever to
the tenant the increase due to unforeseen improvements in production,
are granted on leases for finite terms, at the expiration of which the
landlord can revise the terms or eject the tenant. The payments rise
until the original head rents and quit rents appear insignificant in
comparison with the incomes reaped by the intermediate tenant right
holders or middlemen. Sooner or later the price of tenant right will
rise so high that the actual cultivator will get no more of the produce
than suffices him for subsistence. At that point there is an end of
sub-letting tenant rights. The land’s absorption of the proletarians as
tenants paying more than the economic rent stops.
And now what is the next proletarian to do? For all his forerunners we
have found a way of escape: for him there seems none. The board is at
the door, inscribed “Only standing room left”; and it might well bear
the more poetic legend, _Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’ entrate_.
This man, born a proletarian, must die a proletarian, and leave his
destitution as an only inheritance to his son. It is not yet clear
that there is ten days’ life in him; for whence is his subsistence to
come if he cannot get at the land? Food he must have, and clothing;
and both promptly. There is food in the market, and clothing also;
but not for nothing: hard money must be paid for it, and paid on the
nail too; for he who has no property gets no credit. Money then
is a necessity of life; and money can only be procured by selling
commodities. This presents no difficulty to the cultivators of the
land, who can raise commodities by their labor; but the proletarian,
being landless, has neither commodities nor means of producing them.
Sell something he must. Yet he has nothing to sell--except himself.
The idea seems a desperate one; but it proves quite easy to carry out.
The tenant cultivators of the land have not strength enough or time
enough to exhaust the productive capacity of their holdings. If they
could buy men in the market for less than these men’s labor would add
to the produce, then the purchase of such men would be a sheer gain.
It would indeed be only a purchase in form: the men would literally
cost nothing, since they would produce their own price, with a surplus
for the buyer. Never in the history of buying and selling was there
so splendid a bargain for buyers as this. Aladdin’s uncle’s offer of
new lamps for old ones, was in comparison a catch-penny. Accordingly,
the proletarian no sooner offers himself for sale than he finds a rush
of bidders for him, each striving to get the better of the others by
offering to give him more and more of the produce of his labor, and to
content themselves with less and less surplus. But even the highest
bidder must have some surplus, or he will not buy. The proletarian, in
accepting the highest bid, sells himself openly into bondage. He is not
the first man who has done so; for it is evident that his forerunners,
the purchasers of tenant right, had been enslaved by the proprietors
who lived on the rents paid by them. But now all the disguise falls
off; the proletarian renounces not only the fruit of his labor, but
also his right to think for himself and to direct his industry as he
pleases. The economic change is merely formal; the moral change is
enormous. Soon the new direct traffic in men overspreads the whole
market, and takes the place formerly held by the traffic in tenant
rights. In order to understand the consequences, it is necessary to
undertake an analysis of the exchange of commodities in general, since
labor power is now in the market on the same footing as any other ware
exposed there for sale.
EXCHANGE VALUE.
It is evident that the custom of exchange will arise in the first
instance as soon as men give up providing each for his own needs by
his own labor. A man who makes his own tables and chairs, his own poker
and kettle, his own bread and butter, and his own house and clothes,
is jack-of-all-trades and master of none. He finds that he would get
on much faster if he stuck to making tables and chairs, and exchanged
them with the smith for a poker and kettle, with bakers and dairymen
for bread and butter, and with builders and tailors for a house and
clothes. In doing this, he finds that his tables and chairs are worth
so much--that they have an exchange value, as it is called. As a matter
of general convenience, some suitable commodity is set up to measure
this value. We set up gold, which in this particular use of it, is
called money. The chairmaker finds how much money his chairs are worth,
and exchanges them for it. The blacksmith finds out how much money his
pokers are worth, and exchanges them for it. Thus, by employing money
as a go-between, chairmakers can get pokers in exchange for their
chairs, and blacksmiths chairs for their pokers. This is the mechanism
of exchange; and once the values of the commodities are ascertained it
works simply enough. But it is a mere mechanism, and does not fix the
values or explain them. And the attempt to discover what does fix them
is beset with apparent contradictions which block up the right path,
and with seductive coincidences which make the wrong seem the more
promising.
The apparent contradictions soon shew themselves. It is evident that
the exchange value of anything depends on its utility, since no mortal
exertion can make a useless thing exchangeable. And yet fresh air and
sunlight, which are so useful as to be quite indispensable, have no
exchange value; whilst a meteoric stone, shot free of charge from the
firmament into the back garden, has a considerable exchange value,
although it is an eminently dispensable curiosity. We soon find that
this somehow depends on the fact that fresh air is plenty and meteoric
stones scarce. If by any means the supply of fresh air could be
steadily diminished, and the supply of meteoric stones, by celestial
cannonade or otherwise, steadily increased, the fresh air would
presently acquire an exchange value which would gradually rise, whilst
the exchange value of meteoric stones would gradually fall, until at
last fresh air would be supplied through a meter and charged for like
gas, and meteoric stones would be as unsaleable as ordinary pebbles.
The exchange value, in fact, decreases with the supply. This is due to
the fact that the supply decreases in utility as it goes on, because
when people have had some of a commodity, they are partly satisfied,
and do not value the rest so much. The usefulness of a pound of bread
to a man depends on whether he has already eaten some. Every man wants
a certain number of pounds of bread per week, no man wants much more;
and if more is offered he will not give much for it--perhaps not
anything. One umbrella is very useful: a second umbrella is a luxury:
a third is mere lumber. Similarly, the curators of our museums want a
moderate collection of meteoric stones; but they do not want a cartload
apiece of them. Now the exchange value is fixed by the utility, not of
the most useful, but of the least useful part of the stock. Why this
is so can readily be made obvious by an illustration. If the stock of
umbrellas in the market were sufficiently large to provide two for each
umbrella carrier in the community, then, since a second umbrella is
not so useful as the first, the doctrinaire course would be to ticket
half the umbrellas at, say, fifteen shillings, and the other half at
eight and sixpence. Unfortunately, no man will give fifteen shillings
for an article which he can get for eight and sixpence; and when the
public came to buy, they would buy up all the eight and sixpenny
umbrellas. Each person being thus supplied with an umbrella, the
remainder of the stock, though marked fifteen shillings, would be in
the position of second umbrellas, only worth eight and sixpence. This
is how the exchange value of the least useful part of the supply fixes
the exchange value of all the rest. Technically, it occurs by “the law
of indifference.” And since the least useful unit of the supply is
generally that which is last produced, its utility is called the final
utility of the commodity. The utility of the first or most useful unit
is called the total utility of the commodity. If there were but one
umbrella in the world, the exchange value of its total utility would be
what the most delicate person would pay for it on a very wet day sooner
than go without it. But practically, thanks to the law of indifference,
the most delicate person pays no more than the most robust: that
is, both pay alike the exchange value of the utility of the last
umbrella produced--or of the final utility of the whole stock of
umbrellas. These terms--law of indifference, total utility, and final
utility--though admirably expressive and intelligible when you know
beforehand exactly what they mean, are, taken by themselves, failures
in point of lucidity and suggestiveness. Some economists, transferring
from cultivation to utility our old metaphor of the spreading pool,
call final utility “marginal utility.” Either will serve our present
purpose, as I do not intend to use the terms again. The main point to
be grasped is, that however useful any commodity may be, its exchange
value can be run down to nothing by increasing the supply until there
is more of it than is wanted. The excess, being useless and valueless,
is to be had for nothing; and nobody will pay anything for a commodity
as long as plenty of it is to be had for nothing. This is why air
and other indispensable things have no exchange value, whilst scarce
gewgaws fetch immense prices.
These, then, are the conditions which confront man as a producer and
exchanger. If he produces a useless thing, his labor will be wholly
in vain: he will get nothing for it. If he produces a useful thing,
the price he will get for it will depend on how much of it there is
for sale already. If he increases the supply by producing more than is
sufficient to replace the current consumption, he inevitably lowers the
value of the whole. It therefore behooves him to be wary in choosing
his occupation, as well as industrious in pursuing it. His choice will
naturally fall on the production of those commodities whose value
stands highest relatively to the labor required to produce them--which
fetch the highest price in proportion to their cost, in fact. Suppose,
for example, that a maker of musical instruments found that it cost him
exactly as much to make a harp as to make a pianoforte, but that harps
were going out of fashion and pianofortes coming in. Soon there would
be more harps than were wanted, and fewer pianofortes: consequently
the value of harps would fall, and that of pianofortes rise. Since
the labor cost of both would be the same, he would immediately devote
all his labor to pianoforte-making; and other manufacturers would
do the same, until the increase of supply brought down the value of
pianofortes to the value of harps. Possibly fashion then might veer
from pianofortes to American organs, in which case he would make less
pianofortes and more American organs. When these, too, had increased
sufficiently, the exertions of the Salvation Army might create such a
demand for tambourines as to make them worth four times their cost of
production, whereupon there would instantly be a furious concentration
of the instrument-making energy on the manufacture of tambourines; and
this concentration would last until the supply had brought down the
profit[8] to less than might be gained by gratifying the public craving
for trombones. At last, as pianofortes were cheapened until they were
no more profitable than harps; then American organs until they were no
more profitable than pianos; and then tambourines until they were level
with American organs; so eventually trombones will pay no better than
tambourines; and a general level of profit will be attained, indicating
the proportion in which the instruments are wanted by the public. But
to skim off even this level of profit, more of the instruments may be
produced in the ascertained proportion until their prices fall to their
costs of production, when there will be no profit. Here the production
will be decisively checked, since a further supply would cause only
a loss; and men can lose money, without the trouble of producing
commodities, by the simple process of throwing it out of a window.
What occurred with the musical instruments in this illustration occurs
in practice with the whole mass of manufactured commodities. Those
which are scarce, and therefore relatively high in value, tempt us to
produce them until the increase of the supply reduces their value to
a point at which there is no more profit to be made out of them than
out of other commodities. The general level of profit thus attained is
further exploited until the general increase brings down the price of
all commodities to their cost of production, the equivalent of which
is sometimes called their normal value. And here a glance back to our
analysis of the spread of cultivation, and its result in the phenomenon
of rent, suggests the question What does the cost of production of
a commodity mean? We have seen that, owing to the differences in
fertility and advantage of situation between one piece of land and
another, cost of production varies from district to district, being
highest at the margin of cultivation. But we have also seen how the
landlord skims off as economic rent all the advantages gained by the
cultivators of superior soils and sites. Consequently, the addition
of the landlord’s rent to the expenses of production brings them up
even on the best land to the level of those incurred on the worst.
Cost of production, then, means cost of production on the margin of
cultivation, and is equalized to all producers, since what they may
save in labor per commodity is counterbalanced by the greater mass of
commodities they must produce in order to bring in the rent. It is
only by a thorough grasp of this levelling-down action that we can
detect the trick by which the ordinary economist tries to cheat us into
accepting the private property system as practically just. He first
shews that economic rent does not enter into cost of production on the
margin of cultivation. Then he shews that the cost of production on the
margin of cultivation determines the price of a commodity. Therefore,
he argues, first, that rent does not enter into price; and second, that
the value of commodities is fixed by their cost of production, the
implication being that the landlords cost the community nothing, and
that commodities exchange in exact proportion to the labor they cost.
This trivially ingenious way of being disingenuous is officially taught
as political economy in our schools to this day. It will be seen at
once that it is mere thimblerig. So far from commodities exchanging,
or tending to exchange, according to the labor expended in their
production, commodities produced well within the margin of cultivation
will fetch as high a price as commodities produced at the margin with
much greater labor. So far from the landlord costing nothing, he costs
all the difference between the two.
This, however, is not the goal of our analysis of value. We now see
how Man’s control over the value of commodities consists solely in his
power of regulating their supply. Individuals are constantly trying to
decrease supply for their own advantage. Gigantic conspiracies have
been entered into to forestall the world’s wheat and cotton harvests,
so as to force their value to the highest possible point. Cargoes of
East Indian spices have been destroyed by the Dutch as cargoes of
fish are now destroyed in the Thames, to maintain prices by limiting
supply. All rings, trusts, corners, combinations, monopolies and trade
secrets have the same object. Production and the development of the
social instincts are alike hindered by each man’s consciousness that
the more he stints the community the more he benefits himself, the
justification, of course, being that when every man has benefited
himself at the expense of the community, the community will benefit by
every man in it being benefited. From one thing the community is safe.
There will be no permanent conspiracies to reduce values by increasing
supply. All men will cease producing when the value of their product
falls below its cost of production, whether in labor or in labor _plus_
rent. No man will keep on producing bread until it will fetch nothing,
like the sunlight, or until it becomes a nuisance, like the rain in
the summer of 1888. So far, our minds are at ease as to the excessive
increase of commodities voluntarily produced by the labor of man.
WAGES.
I now ask you to pick up the dropped subject of the spread of
cultivation. We had got as far as the appearance in the market of
a new commodity--of the proletarian man compelled to live by the
sale of himself! In order to realize at once the latent horror of
this, you have only to apply our investigation of value, with its
inevitable law that only by restricting the supply of a commodity
can its value be kept from descending finally to zero. The commodity
which the proletarian sells is one over the production of which he
has practically no control. He is himself driven to produce it by an
irresistible impulse. It was the increase of population that spread
cultivation and civilization from the centre to the snowline, and at
last forced men to sell themselves to the lords of the soil: it is the
same force that continues to multiply men so that their exchange falls
slowly and surely until it disappears altogether--until even black
chattel slaves are released as not worth keeping in a land where men
of all colors are to be had for nothing. This is the condition of our
English laborers to-day: they are no longer even dirt cheap: they are
valueless, and can be had for nothing. The proof is the existence of
the unemployed, who can find no purchasers. By the law of indifference,
nobody will buy men at a price when he can obtain equally serviceable
men for nothing. What, then, is the explanation of the wages given to
those who are in employment, and who certainly do not work for nothing?
The matter is deplorably simple. Suppose that horses multiplied in
England in such quantities that they were to be had for the asking,
like kittens condemned to the bucket. You would still have to feed
your horse--feed him and lodge him well if you used him as a smart
hunter--feed him and lodge him wretchedly if you used him only as a
drudge. But the cost of keeping would not mean that the horse had an
exchange value. If you got him for nothing in the first instance--if
no one would give you anything for him when you were done with him,
he would be worth nothing, in spite of the cost of his keep. That is
just the case of every member of the proletariat who could be replaced
by one of the unemployed to-day. Their wage is not the price of
themselves; for they are worth nothing: it is only their keep. For bare
subsistence wages you can get as much common labor as you want, and do
what you please with it within the limits of a criminal code which is
sure to be interpreted by a proprietary-class judge in your favor. If
you have to give your footman a better allowance than your wretched
hewer of match wood, it is for the same reason that you have to give
your hunter beans and a clean stall instead of chopped straw and a
sty.[9]
CAPITALISM.
At this stage the acquisition of labor becomes a mere question of
provender. If a railway is required, all that is necessary is to
provide subsistence for a sufficient number of laborers to construct
it. If, for example, the railway requires the labor of a thousand
men for five years, the cost to the proprietors of the site is the
subsistence of a thousand men for five years. This subsistence is
technically called capital. It is provided for by the proprietors not
consuming the whole excess over wages of the produce of the labor of
their other wage workers, but setting aside enough for the subsistence
of the railway makers. In this way capital can claim to be the result
of saving, or, as one ingenious apologist neatly put it, the reward of
abstinence, a gleam of humor which still enlivens treatises on capital.
The savers, it need hardly be said, are those who have more money than
they want to spend: the abstainers are those who have less. At the
end of the five years, the completed railway is the property of the
capitalists; and the railway makers fall back into the labor market
as helpless as they were before. Sometimes the proprietors call the
completed railway their capital; but, strictly, this is only a figure
of speech. Capital is simply spare subsistence. Its market value,
indicated by the current rate of interest, falls with the increase of
population, whereas the market value of established stock rises with
it.[10] If Mr. Goschen, encouraged by his success in reducing Consols,
were to ask the proprietors of the London and North Western Railway to
accept as full compensation for their complete expropriation capital
just sufficient to make the railway anew, their amazement at his
audacity would at once make him feel the difference between a railway
and capital. Colloquially, one property with a farm on it is said to
be land yielding rent; whilst another, with a railway on it, is called
capital yielding interest. But economically there is no distinction
between them when they once become sources of revenue. This would
be quite clearly seen if costly enterprises like railways could be
undertaken by a single landlord on his own land out of his own surplus
wealth. It is the necessity of combining a number of possessors of
surplus wealth, and devising a financial machinery for apportioning
their shares in the produce to their shares in the capital contributed,
that modifies the terminology and external aspect of the exploitation.
But the modification is not an alteration: shareholder and landlord
live alike on the produce extracted from their property by the labor of
the proletariat.
“OVERPOPULATION.”
The introduction of the capitalistic system is a sign that the
exploitation of the laborer toiling for a bare subsistence wage has
become one of the chief arts of life among the holders of tenant
rights. It also produces a delusive promise of endless employment
which blinds the proletariat to those disastrous consequences of rapid
multiplication which are obvious to the small cultivator and peasant
proprietor. But indeed the more you degrade the workers, robbing them
of all artistic enjoyment, and all chance of respect and admiration
from their fellows, the more you throw them back, reckless, on the
one pleasure and the one human tie left to them--the gratification of
their instinct for producing fresh supplies of men. You will applaud
this instinct as divine until at last the excessive supply becomes
a nuisance: there comes a plague of men; and you suddenly discover
that the instinct is diabolic, and set up a cry of “overpopulation.”
But your slaves are beyond caring for your cries; they breed like
rabbits; and their poverty breeds filth, ugliness, dishonesty, disease,
obscenity, drunkenness, and murder. In the midst of the riches which
their labor piles up for you, their misery rises up too and stifles
you. You withdraw in disgust to the other end of the town from them;
you appoint special carriages on your railways and special seats in
your churches and theatres for them; you set your life apart from
theirs by every class barrier you can devise; and yet they swarm about
you still: your face gets stamped with your habitual loathing and
suspicion of them; your ears get so filled with the language of the
vilest of them that you break into it when you lose your self-control;
they poison your life as remorselessly as you have sacrificed theirs
heartlessly. You begin to believe intensely in the devil. Then comes
the terror of their revolting; the drilling and arming of bodies of
them to keep down the rest; the prison, the hospital, paroxysms of
frantic coercion, followed by paroxysms of frantic charity. And in the
meantime, the population continues to increase!
“ILLTH.”
It is sometimes said that during this grotesquely hideous march of
civilization from bad to worse, wealth is increasing side by side
with misery. Such a thing is eternally impossible; wealth is steadily
decreasing with the spread of poverty. But riches are increasing, which
is quite another thing. The total of the exchange values produced in
the country annually is mounting perhaps by leaps and bounds. But the
accumulation of riches, and consequently of an excessive purchasing
power, in the hands of a class, soon satiates that class with socially
useful wealth, and sets them offering a price for luxuries. The moment
a price is to be had for a luxury, it acquires exchange value, and
labor is employed to produce it. A New York lady, for instance, having
a nature of exquisite sensibility, orders an elegant rosewood and
silver coffin, upholstered in pink satin, for her dead dog. It is made;
and meanwhile a live child is prowling barefooted and hunger-stunted in
the frozen gutter outside. The exchange-value of the coffin is counted
as part of the national wealth; but a nation which cannot afford food
and clothing for its children cannot be allowed to pass as wealthy
because it has provided a pretty coffin for a dead dog. Exchange value
itself, in fact, has become bedevilled like everything else, and
represents, no longer utility, but the cravings of lust, folly, vanity,
gluttony, and madness, technically described by genteel economists as
“effective demand.” Luxuries are not social wealth; the machinery for
producing them is not social wealth; labor skilled only to manufacture
them is not socially useful labor; the men, women, and children who
make a living by producing them are no more self-supporting than
the idle rich for whose amusement they are kept at work. It is the
habit of counting as wealth the exchange values involved in these
transactions that makes us fancy that the poor are starving in the
midst of plenty. They are starving in the midst of plenty of jewels,
velvets, laces, equipages, and race-horses; but not in the midst of
plenty of food. In the things that are wanted for the welfare of the
people we are abjectly poor; and England’s social policy to-day may be
likened to the domestic policy of those adventuresses who leave their
children half-clothed and half-fed in order to keep a carriage and
deal with a fashionable dressmaker. But it is quite true that whilst
wealth and welfare are decreasing, productive power is increasing; and
nothing but the perversion of this power to the production of socially
useless commodities prevents the apparent wealth from becoming real.
The purchasing power that commands luxuries in the hands of the rich,
would command true wealth in the hands of all. Yet private property
must still heap the purchasing power upon the few rich and withdraw it
from the many poor. So that, in the end, the subject of the one boast
that private property can make--the great accumulation of so-called
“wealth” which it points so proudly to as the result of its power to
scourge men and women daily to prolonged and intense toil, turns out
to be a simulacrum. With all its energy, its Smilesian “self-help,”
its merchant-princely enterprise, its ferocious sweating and
slave-driving, its prodigality of blood, sweat and tears, what has it
heaped up, over and above the pittance of its slaves? Only a monstrous
pile of frippery, some tainted class literature and class art, and not
a little poison and mischief.
* * * * *
This, then, is the economic analysis which convicts Private Property of
being unjust even from the beginning, and utterly impossible as a final
solution of even the individualist aspect of the problem of adjusting
the share of the worker in the distribution of wealth to the labor
incurred by him in its production. All attempts yet made to construct
true societies upon it have failed; the nearest things to societies so
achieved have been civilizations, which have rotted into centres of
vice and luxury, and eventually been swept away by uncivilized races.
That our own civilization is already in an advanced stage of rottenness
may be taken as statistically proved. That further decay instead of
improvement must ensue if the institution of private property be
maintained, is economically certain. Fortunately, private property
in its integrity is not now practicable. Although the safety-valve
of emigration has been furiously at work during this century, yet
the pressure of population has forced us to begin the restitution
to the people of the sums taken from them for the ground landlords,
holders of tenant right, and capitalists, by the imposition of an
income tax, and by compelling them to establish out of their revenues
a national system of education, besides imposing restrictions--as yet
only of the forcible-feeble sort--on their terrible power of abusing
the wage contract. These, however, are dealt with by Mr. Sidney Webb
in the historic essay which follows. I should not touch upon them at
all, were it not that experience has lately convinced all economists
that no exercise in abstract economics, however closely deduced, is
to be trusted unless it can be experimentally verified by tracing
its expression in history. It is true that the process which I have
presented as a direct development of private property between free
exchangers had to work itself out in the Old World indirectly and
tortuously through a struggle with political and religious institutions
and survivals quite antagonistic to it. It is true that cultivation
did not begin in Western Europe with the solitary emigrant pre-empting
his private property, but with the tribal communes in which arose
subsequently the assertion of the right of the individual to private
judgment and private action against the tyranny of primitive society.
It is true that cultivation has not proceeded by logical steps from
good land to less good; from less good to bad; and from bad to worse:
the exploration of new countries and new regions, and the discovery of
new uses for old products, has often made the margin of cultivation
more fruitful than the centre, and, for the moment (whilst the centre
was shifting to the margin), turned the whole movement of rent and
wages directly counter to the economic theory. Nor is it true that,
taking the world as one country, cultivation has yet spread from the
snowline to the water’s edge. There is free land still for the poorest
East End match-box maker if she could get there, reclaim the wilderness
there, speak the language there, stand the climate there, and be
fed, clothed, and housed there whilst she cleared her farm; learned
how to cultivate it; and waited for the harvest. Economists have
been ingenious enough to prove that this alternative really secures
her independence; but I shall not waste time in dealing with that.
Practically, if there is no free land in England, the economic analysis
holds good of England, in spite of Siberia, Central Africa, and the
Wild West. Again, it is not immediately true that men are governed in
production solely by a determination to realize the maximum of exchange
value. The impulse to production often takes specific direction in the
first instance; and a man will insist on producing pictures or plays
although he might gain more money by producing boots or bonnets. But,
his specific impulse once gratified, he will make as much money as he
can. He will sell his picture or play for a hundred pounds rather than
for fifty. In short, though there is no such person as the celebrated
“economic man,” man being wilful rather than rational, yet when the
wilful man has had his way he will take what else he can get; and so
he always does appear, finally if not primarily, as the economic man.
On the whole, history, even in the Old World, goes the way traced
by the economist. In the New World the correspondence is exact. The
United States and the Colonies have been peopled by fugitives from
the full-blown individualism of Western Europe, pre-empting private
property precisely as assumed in this investigation of the conditions
of cultivation. The economic relations of these cultivators have not
since put on any of the old political disguises. Yet among them, in
confirmation of the validity of our analysis, we see all the evils of
our old civilizations growing up; and though with them the end is not
yet, still it is from them to us that the great recent revival of the
cry for nationalization of the land has come, articulated by a man who
had seen the whole tragedy of private property hurried through its acts
with unprecedented speed in the mushroom cities of America.
On Socialism the analysis of the economic action of Individualism
bears as a discovery, in the private appropriation of land, of the
source of those unjust privileges against which Socialism is aimed.
It is practically a demonstration that public property in land is the
basic economic condition of Socialism. But this does not involve at
present a literal restoration of the land to the people. The land is
at present in the hands of the people: its proprietors are for the
most part absentees. The modern form of private property is simply a
legal claim to take a share of the produce of the national industry
year by year without working for it. It refers to no special part
or form of that produce; and in process of consumption its revenue
cannot be distinguished from earnings, so that the majority of
persons, accustomed to call the commodities which form the income
of the proprietor his private property, and seeing no difference
between them and the commodities which form the income of a worker,
extend the term private property to the worker’s subsistence also,
and can only conceive an attack on private property as an attempt to
empower everybody to rob everybody else all round. But the income of a
private proprietor can be distinguished by the fact that he obtains it
unconditionally and gratuitously by private right against the public
weal, which is incompatible with the existence of consumers who do not
produce. Socialism involves discontinuance of the payment of these
incomes, and addition of the wealth so saved to incomes derived from
labor. As we have seen, incomes derived from private property consist
partly of economic rent; partly of pensions, also called rent, obtained
by the sub-letting of tenant rights; and partly of a form of rent
called interest, obtained by special adaptations of land to production
by the application of capital: all these being finally paid out of the
difference between the produce of the worker’s labor and the price
of that labor sold in the open market for wages, salary, fees, or
profits.[11] The whole, except economic rent, can be added directly to
the incomes of the workers by simply discontinuing its exaction from
them. Economic rent, arising as it does from variations of fertility
or advantages of situation, must always be held as common or social
wealth, and used, as the revenues raised by taxation are now used, for
public purposes, among which Socialism would make national insurance
and the provision of capital matters of the first importance.
The economic problem of Socialism is thus solved; and the political
question of how the economic solution is to be practically applied
does not come within the scope of this essay. But if we have got
as far as an intellectual conviction that the source of our social
misery is no eternal well-spring of confusion and evil, but only an
artificial system susceptible of almost infinite modification and
readjustment--nay, of practical demolition and substitution at the will
of Man, then a terrible weight will be lifted from the minds of all
except those who are, whether avowedly to themselves or not, clinging
to the present state of things from base motives. We have had in this
century a stern series of lessons on the folly of believing anything
for no better reason than that it is pleasant to believe it. It was
pleasant to look round with a consciousness of possessing a thousand
a year, and say, with Browning’s David, “All’s love; and all’s law.”
It was pleasant to believe that the chance we were too lazy to take in
this world would come back to us in another. It was pleasant to believe
that a benevolent hand was guiding the steps of society; overruling
all evil appearances for good; and making poverty here the earnest of
a great blessedness and reward hereafter. It was pleasant to lose the
sense of worldly inequality in the contemplation of our equality before
God. But utilitarian questioning and scientific answering turned all
this tranquil optimism into the blackest pessimism. Nature was shewn
to us as “red in tooth and claw”: if the guiding hand were indeed
benevolent, then it could not be omnipotent; so that our trust in it
was broken: if it were omnipotent, it could not be benevolent; so that
our love of it turned to fear and hatred. We had never admitted that
the other world, which was to compensate for the sorrows of this, was
open to horses and apes (though we had not on that account been any
the more merciful to our horses); and now came Science to shew us the
corner of the pointed ear of the horse on our own heads, and present
the ape to us as our blood relation. No proof came of the existence of
that other world and that benevolent power to which we had left the
remedy of the atrocious wrongs of the poor; proof after proof came
that what we called Nature knew and cared no more about our pains
and pleasures than we know or care about the tiny creatures we crush
underfoot as we walk through the fields. Instead of at once perceiving
that this meant no more than that Nature was unmoral and indifferent,
we relapsed into a gross form of devil worship, and conceived Nature
as a remorselessly malignant power. This was no better than the old
optimism, and infinitely gloomier. It kept our eyes still shut to the
truth that there is no cruelty and selfishness outside Man himself;
and that his own active benevolence can combat and vanquish both. When
the Socialist came forward as a meliorist on these lines, the old
school of political economists, who could see no alternative to private
property, put forward in proof of the powerlessness of benevolent
action to arrest the deadly automatic production of poverty by the
increase of population, the very analysis I have just presented. Their
conclusions exactly fitted in with the new ideas. It was Nature at
it again--the struggle for existence--the remorseless extirpation of
the weak--the survival of the fittest--in short, natural selection
at work. Socialism seemed too good to be true: it was passed by as
merely the old optimism foolishly running its head against the stone
wall of modern science. But Socialism now challenges individualism,
scepticism, pessimism, worship of Nature personified as a devil,
on their own ground of science. The science of the production and
distribution of wealth is Political Economy. Socialism appeals to
that science, and, turning on Individualism its own guns, routs it
in incurable disaster. Henceforth the bitter cynic who still finds
the world an eternal and unimprovable doghole, with the placid person
of means who repeats the familiar misquotation, “The poor ye shall
have always with you,” lose their usurped place among the cultured,
and pass over to the ranks of the ignorant, the shallow, and the
superstitious. As for the rest of us, since we were taught to revere
proprietary respectability in our unfortunate childhood, and since we
found our childish hearts so hard and unregenerate that they secretly
hated and rebelled against respectability in spite of that teaching,
it is impossible to express the relief with which we discover that
our hearts were all along right, and that the current respectability
of to-day is nothing but a huge inversion of righteous and scientific
social order weltering in dishonesty, uselessness, selfishness, wanton
misery, and idiotic waste of magnificent opportunities for noble and
happy living. It was terrible to feel this, and yet to fear that it
could not be helped--that the poor must starve and make you ashamed
of your dinner--that they must shiver and make you ashamed of your
warm overcoat. It is to economic science--once the Dismal, now the
Hopeful--that we are indebted for the discovery that though the evil
is enormously worse than we knew, yet it is not eternal--not even very
long lived, if we only bestir ourselves to make an end of it.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] “Principles of Political Economy,” Vol. I, Index to chap. xvi
(1865).
[3] “Manual of Political Economy,” Book II, chap. iii, p. 116 (1876).
[4] “Economics of Industry,” Book II, chap. iii, sec. 3, p. 84 (1879).
[5] “Principles of Political Economy,” Book II, chap. vii, p. 301
(1883).
[6] “Brief Text-book of Political Economy,” chap. ii, sec. 216, p. 173
(1885).
[7] “Principles of Political Economy and Taxation,” chap. ii. p. 34
(1817).
[8] Profit is here used colloquially to denote the excess of the value
of an article over its cost.
[9] When one of the conditions of earning a wage is the keeping up
of a certain state, subsistence wages may reach a figure to which
the term seems ludicrously inappropriate. For example, a fashionable
physician in London cannot save out of £1,000 a year; and the post
of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland can only be filled by a man who brings
considerable private means to the aid of his official salary of £20,000.
[10] The current rate must, under present conditions, eventually fall
to zero, and even become “negative.” By that time shares which now
bring in a dividend of 100 per cent, may very possibly bring in 200
or more. Yet the fall of the rate has been mistaken for a tendency of
interest to disappear. It really indicates a tendency of interest to
increase.
[11] This excess of the product of labor over its price is treated as
a single category with impressive effect by Karl Marx, who called it
“surplus value” (_mehrwerth_).
HISTORIC.
BY SIDNEY WEBB.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DEMOCRATIC IDEAL.
In discussing the historic groundwork of Socialism, it is worth
remembering that no special claim is made for Socialism in the
assertion that it possesses a basis in history. Just as every human
being has an ancestry, unknown to him though it may be; so every idea,
every incident, every movement has in the past its own long chain of
causes, without which it could not have been. Formerly we were glad to
let the dead bury their dead: nowadays we turn lovingly to the records,
whether of persons or things; and we busy ourselves willingly among
origins, even without conscious utilitarian end. We are no longer
proud of having ancestors, since every one has them; but we are more
than ever interested in our ancestors, now that we find in them the
fragments which compose our very selves. The historic ancestry of the
English social organization during the present century stands witness
to the irresistible momentum of the ideas which Socialism denotes. The
record of the century in English social history begins with the trial
and hopeless failure of an almost complete industrial individualism,
in which, however, unrestrained private ownership of land and capital
was accompanied by subjection to a political oligarchy. So little
element of permanence was there in this individualistic order that,
with the progress of political emancipation, private ownership of the
means of production has been, in one direction or another, successively
regulated, limited and superseded, until it may now fairly be claimed
that the Socialist philosophy of to-day is but the conscious and
explicit assertion of principles of social organization which have been
already in great part unconsciously adopted. The economic history
of the century is an almost continuous record of the progress of
Socialism.[12]
Socialism, too, has in the record of its internal development a history
of its own. Down to the present generation, the aspirant after social
regeneration naturally vindicated the practicability of his ideas by
offering an elaborate plan with specifications of a new social order
from which all contemporary evils were eliminated. Just as Plato had
his Republic and Sir Thomas More his Utopia, so Babœuf had his Charter
of Equality, Cabet his Icaria, St. Simon his Industrial System, and
Fourier his ideal Phalanstery. Robert Owen spent a fortune in pressing
upon an unbelieving generation his New Moral World; and even Auguste
Comte, superior as he was to many of the weaknesses of his time, must
needs add a detailed Polity to his Philosophy of Positivism.
The leading feature of all these proposals was what may be called their
statical character. The ideal society was represented as in perfectly
balanced equilibrium, without need or possibility of future organic
alteration. Since their day we have learned that social reconstruction
must not be gone at in this fashion. Owing mainly to the efforts of
Comte, Darwin and Herbert Spencer, we can no longer think of the
ideal society as an unchanging state. The social ideal, from being
static, has become dynamic. The necessity of the constant growth and
development of the social organism has become axiomatic. No philosopher
now looks for anything but the gradual evolution of the new order
from the old, without breach of continuity or abrupt change of the
entire social tissue at any point during the process. The new becomes
itself old, often before it is consciously recognized as new; and
history shews us no example of the sudden substitutions of Utopian and
revolutionary romance.
Though Socialists have learnt this lesson[13] better than most of
their opponents, the common criticism of Socialism has not yet noted
the change, and still deals mainly with the obsolete Utopias of the
pre-evolutionary age. Parodies of the domestic details of an imaginary
Phalanstery, and homilies on the failure of Brook Farm or Icaria, may
be passed over as belated and irrelevant now that Socialists are only
advocating the conscious adoption of a principle of social organization
which the world has already found to be the inevitable outcome of
Democracy and the Industrial Revolution. For Socialism is by this time
a wave surging throughout all Europe; and for want of a grasp of the
series of apparently unconnected events by which and with which it has
been for two generations rapidly coming upon us--for want, in short,
of knowledge of its intellectual history, we in England to-day see
our political leaders in a general attitude of astonishment at the
changing face of current politics; both great parties drifting vaguely
before a nameless undercurrent which they fail utterly to recognize or
understand.[14] With some dim impression that Socialism is one of the
Utopian dreams they remember to have heard comfortably disposed of in
their academic youth as the impossible ideal of Humanity-intoxicated
Frenchmen, they go their ways through the nineteenth century as a
countryman blunders through Cheapside. One or two are history fanciers,
learned in curious details of the past: the present eludes these no
less than the others. They are so near to the individual events that
they are blind to the onward sweep of the column. They cannot see the
forest for the trees.
History not only gives the clue to the significance of contemporary
events; it also enables us to understand those who have not yet found
that clue. We learn to class men and ideas in a kind of geological
order in time. The Comte de Paris gives us excellent proofs that
in absolute monarchy lies the only safety of social order. He is
a survival: the type flourished in the sixteenth century; and the
splendid fossils of that age can be studied in any historic museum.
Lord Bramwell will give cogent reasons for the belief that absolute
freedom of contract, subject to the trifling exception of a drastic
criminal law, will ensure a perfect State. His lordship is a survival
from a nearer epoch: about 1840 this was as far as social science had
got; and there are still persons who have learnt nothing of later
date. When I see the Hipparion at South Kensington I do not take his
unfamiliar points to be those of a horse of a superior kind: I know
that he is an obsolete and superseded pattern, from which the horse has
developed. Historic fossils are more dangerous; for they are left at
large, and are not even excluded from Downing Street or Westminster.
But against the stream of tendencies they are ultimately powerless.
Though they sometimes appear victorious, each successive struggle takes
place further down the current which they believe themselves to be
resisting.
The main stream which has borne European society towards Socialism
during the past one hundred years is the irresistible progress of
Democracy. De Tocqueville drove and hammered this truth into the
reluctant ears of the Old World two generations ago; and we have all
pretended to carry it about as part of our mental furniture ever
since. But like most epigrammatic commonplaces, it is not generally
realized; and De Tocqueville’s book has, in due course, become a
classic which every one quotes and nobody reads. The progress of
Democracy is, in fact, often imagined, as by Sir Henry Maine, to
be merely the substitution of one kind of political machinery for
another; and there are many political Democrats to-day who cannot
understand why social or economic matters should be mixed up with
politics at all. It was not for this that they broke the power of
the aristocracy: they were touched not so much with love of the many
as with hatred of the few;[15] and, as has been acutely said--though
usually by foolish persons--they are Radicals merely because they are
not themselves lords. But it will not long be possible for any man to
persist in believing that the political organization of society can be
completely altered without corresponding changes in economic and social
relations. De Tocqueville expressly pointed out that the progress
of Democracy meant nothing less than a complete dissolution of the
nexus by which society was held together under the old _régime_. This
dissolution is followed by a period of anarchic spiritual isolation
of the individual from his fellows, and to that extent by a general
denial of the very idea of society. But man is a social animal; and
after more or less interval there necessarily comes into existence a
new nexus, differing so entirely from the old-fashioned organization
that the historic fossil goes about denying that it is a nexus at all,
or that any new nexus is possible or desirable. To him, mostly through
lack of economics, the progress of Democracy is nothing more than the
destruction of old political privileges; and, naturally enough, few can
see any beauty in mere dissolution and destruction. Those few are the
purely political Radicals abhorred of Comte and Carlyle: they are in
social matters the empiricist survivals from a pre-scientific age.
The mere Utopians, on the other hand, who wove the baseless fabric of
their visions of reconstructed society on their own private looms,
equally failed, as a rule, to comprehend the problem of the age. They
were, in imagination, resuscitated Joseph the Seconds, benevolent
despots who would have poured the old world, had it only been fluid,
into their new moulds. Against their crude plans the Statesman, the
Radical, and the Political Economist were united; for they took no
account of the blind social forces which they could not control,
and which went on inexorably working out social salvation in ways
unsuspected by the Utopian.
In the present Socialist movement these two streams are united:
advocates of social reconstruction have learnt the lesson of Democracy,
and know that it is through the slow and gradual turning of the popular
mind to new principles that social reorganization bit by bit comes.
All students of society who are abreast of their time, Socialists
as well as Individualists, realize that important organic changes
can only be (1) democratic, and thus acceptable to a majority of the
people, and prepared for in the minds of all; (2) gradual, and thus
causing no dislocation, however rapid may be the rate of progress;
(3) not regarded as immoral by the mass of the people, and thus not
subjectively demoralizing to them; and (4) in this country at any rate,
constitutional and peaceful. Socialists may therefore be quite at one
with Radicals in their political methods. Radicals, on the other hand,
are perforce realizing that mere political levelling is insufficient to
save a State from anarchy and despair. Both sections have been driven
to recognize that the root of the difficulty is economic; and there is
every day a wider consensus that the inevitable outcome of Democracy is
the control by the people themselves, not only of their own political
organization, but, through that also, of the main instruments of
wealth production; the gradual substitution of organized co-operation
for the anarchy of the competitive struggle; and the consequent
recovery, in the only possible way, of what John Stuart Mill calls “the
enormous share which the possessors of the instruments of industry are
able to take from the produce.”[16] The economic side of the democratic
ideal is, in fact, Socialism itself.
THE DISINTEGRATION OF THE OLD SYNTHESIS.
At the middle of the last century Western Europe was still organized on
a system of which the basis was virtually a surviving feudalism. The
nexus between man and man was essentially a relation of superiority and
inferiority. Social power still rested either with the monarch, or with
the owners of large landed estates. Some inroads had already been made
in the perfect symmetry of the organization, notably by the growth of
towns, and the rise of the still comparatively small trading class; but
the bulk of the population was arranged in an hierarchical series of
classes, linked to one another by the bond of Power.
We are apt to think of England as differing in this respect from
Continental Europe, and to imagine that our popular freedom was won
in 1688, if not in 1648, or even as far back as Magna Charta itself.
But as regards the people at large, this was, in the main, merely a
difference in political form. In England the aristocratic oligarchy had
prevailed over the monarch; in France the King had defeated the Fronde.
For the mass of the people in either country there was nothing but
obedience.
Even in England the whole political administration was divided between
the king and the great families; and not one person in 500 possessed
so much as a vote. As lately as 1831 one hundred and fifty persons
returned a majority of the House of Commons (Molesworth, “History of
the Reform Bill,” p. 347). The Church, once a universal democratic
organization of international fraternity, had become a mere _appanage_
of the landed gentry. The administration of justice and of the
executive government was entirely in their hands, while Parliament was
filled with their leaders or nominees. No avenue of advancement existed
for even exceptionally gifted sons of the people; and the masses found
themselves born into a position of lifelong dependence upon a class of
superior birth.
The economic organization was of a similar character. Two-thirds of
the population tilled the soil, and dwelt in lonely hamlets scattered
about the still sparsely inhabited country. Though possessing the
remnants of ancient communal rights, they were practically dependent on
the farmers of the parish, who fixed their wages by a constant tacit
conspiracy.[17] The farmers themselves were the obedient serfs of the
large proprietors, to whom they paid a customary rent. Though nominally
free to move, both farmers and laborers were practically fettered to
the manor by their ignorance and their poverty;[18] and though the lord
had lost the criminal jurisdiction of his manorial courts, his powers
as Justice of the Peace formed a full equivalent. His unrestrained
ownership of the land enabled him to take for himself as rent the
whole advantage of all but the very worst of the soils in use; and
the lingering manorial rights gave him toll even from that worst.
Throughout the countryside his word was law and his power irresistible.
It was a world whose nexus was might, economic and political, tempered
only by custom and lack of stimulus to change. The poor were not
necessarily worse off in material matters than they are now; the
agricultural laborer, indeed, was apparently better off in 1750 than
at any other time between 1450 and 1850.[19] But it was a world still
mainly mediæval in political, in economic, and in social relations;
a world of status and of permanent social inequalities not differing
essentially from the feudalism of the past.
The system had, however, already begun to decay. The rise of the towns
by the growth of trade gradually created new centres of independence
and new classes who broke the bonds of innate status. The intrusion
of the moneyed city classes and the Indian “Nabobs” into the rural
districts tended to destroy the feudal idea. The growth of new sects
in religion made fresh points of individual resistance, degenerating
often into spiritual anarchy or unsocial quietism. The spread of
learning built up a small but active disintegrating force of those
who had detected the shams around them. But the real Perseus who was
to free the people from their political bondage was Newcomen or Watt,
Hargreaves or Crompton, Kay or Arkwright, whichever may be considered
to have contributed the main stroke towards the Industrial Revolution
of the last century.[20] From the inventions of these men came the
machine industry with its innumerable secondary results--the Factory
System and the upspringing of the Northern and Midland industrial
towns,[21] and the evangelization of the waste places of the earth
by the sale of grey shirtings. Throughout one-third of England the
manor gave way to the mill or the mine; and the feudal lord had to
slacken his hold of political and social power in order to give full
play to the change which enriched him with boundless rents and mining
royalties. And so it happened in England that the final collapse of
mediævalism came, not by the Great Rebellion nor by the Whig Treason of
1688, nor yet by the rule of the Great Commoner, but by the Industrial
Revolution of the eighteenth century, which created the England of
to-day. Within a couple of generations the squire faded away before
the mill-owner; and feudalism lingered thenceforth only in the rapidly
diminishing rural districts, and in the empty remnants of ceremonial
organization. The mediæval arrangement, in fact, could not survive the
fall of the cottage industry; and it is, fundamentally, the use of new
motors which has been for a generation destroying the individualist
conception of property. The landlord and the capitalist are both
finding that the steam-engine is a Frankenstein which they had better
not have raised; for with it comes inevitably urban Democracy, the
study of Political Economy, and Socialism.
The event which brought to a head the influences making for political
change was the French Revolution. The fall of the Bastille was hailed
by all who had been touched by the new ideas. “How much the greatest
event it is that ever happened in the world! and how much the best!”
wrote Charles James Fox.[22] It shewed, or seemed to shew, to men that
a genuine social reconstruction was not only desirable, but possible.
The National Assembly, respectable old oligarchy as it was, pointed the
way to legislative fields not even yet completely worked out.
When the rulers of England perceived that in France at least Humpty
Dumpty was actually down, the effect at first was to tighten the
existing organization. The mildest agitation was put down with a
cruelly strong hand. The Whig party in the House of Commons sank to
half-a-dozen members. Prices were kept up and wages down, while the
heaviest possible load of taxation was imposed on the suffering people.
Then came the Peace, and Castlereagh’s “White Terror,” culminating in
the “massacre of Peterloo” (1819) and Lord Sidmouth’s infamous “Six
Acts.” But the old order was doomed. The suicide of Castlereagh was
not only the end of the man, but also the sign of the collapse of the
system. With a series of political wrenches there came the Repeal of
the Test and Corporation Acts (1828), Catholic Emancipation (1829), the
beginnings of legal and administrative reform, and finally the great
Reform Bill of 1832, by which the reign of the middle class superseded
aristocratic rule. But the people were no more enfranchised than they
had been before. The Factory had beaten the Manor for the benefit, not
of the factory hand, but of the millowner. Democracy was at the gates;
but it was still on the wrong side of them. Its entry, however, was
only a matter of time. Since 1832 English political history is the
record of the reluctant enfranchisement of one class after another, by
mere force of the tendencies of the age. None of these enfranchised
classes has ever sincerely desired to admit new voters to share the
privileges and submerge the power which it had won; but each political
party in turn has been driven to “shoot Niagara” in order to compete
with its opponents. The Whig Bill of 1832 enfranchised the middle-class
for Parliament: the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 gave them the
control of the provincial towns. After a generation of agitation,
it was ultimately the Tory party which gave the townspeople in 1867
Household Suffrage. Eleven years later a Conservative majority passed
Sir Charles Dilke’s Act enfranchising the tenement occupier (1878).
In 1885 the Liberals, intending permanently to ruin their opponents,
gave the vote to the agricultural laborer; and last year (1888) it was
the Tories, not to be outdone, who gave him the control of the local
administration of the counties, and placed the government of London in
the hands of a popularly elected council. Neither party can claim much
credit for its reform bills, extorted as they have been, not by belief
in Democracy, but by fear of the opposing faction. Even now the citizen
is tricked out of his vote by every possible legal and administrative
technicality; so that more than one-third of our adult men are
unenfranchised,[23] together with the whole of the other sex. Neither
the Conservative party nor the self-styled “Party of the Masses” gives
proof of any real desire to give the vote to this not inconsiderable
remnant; but both sides pay lip-homage to Democracy; and everyone knows
that it is merely a waiting race between them as to which shall be
driven to take the next step. The virtual completion of the political
revolution is already in sight; and no more striking testimony can be
given of the momentum of the new ideas which the Fall of the Bastille
effectually spread over the world than this democratic triumph in
England, within less than a century, over the political mediævalism of
ten centuries growth.
The full significance of this triumph is as yet unsuspected by the
ordinary politician. The industrial evolution has left the stranger
a landless stranger in his own country. The political evolution is
rapidly making him its ruler. Samson is feeling for his grip on the
pillars.
THE PERIOD OF ANARCHY.
The result of the industrial revolution, with its dissolution of
mediævalism amid an impetuous reaction against the bureaucratic tyranny
of the past, was to leave all the new elements of society in a state
of unrestrained license. Individual liberty, in the sense of freedom to
privately appropriate the means of production, reached its maximum at
the commencement of the century. No sentimental regulations hindered
the free employment of land and capital to the greatest possible
pecuniary gain of the proprietors, however many lives of men, women
and children were used up in the process. Ignorant or unreflecting
capitalists still speak of that terrible time with exultation. “It was
not five per cent or ten per cent,” says one, “but thousands per cent
that made the fortunes of Lancashire.”
Mr. Herbert Spencer and those who agree in his worship of
Individualism[24] apparently desire to bring back the legal position
which made possible the “white slavery” of which the “sins of
legislators” have deprived us; but no serious attempt has ever been
made to get repealed any one of the Factory Acts. Women working half
naked in the coal mines; young children dragging trucks all day in the
foul atmosphere of the underground galleries; infants bound to the
loom for fifteen hours in the heated air of the cotton mill, and kept
awake only by the onlooker’s lash; hours of labor for all, young and
old, limited only by the utmost capabilities of physical endurance;
complete absence of the sanitary provisions necessary to a rapidly
growing population: these and other nameless iniquities will be found
recorded as the results of freedom of contract and complete _laisser
faire_ in the impartial pages of successive blue-book reports.[25] But
the Liberal mill-owners of the day, aided by some of the political
economists, stubbornly resisted every attempt to interfere with their
freedom to use “their” capital and “their” hands as they found most
profitable, and (like their successors to-day) predicted of each
restriction as it arrived that it must inevitably destroy the export
trade and deprive them of all profit whatsoever.
But this “acute outbreak of individualism, unchecked by the old
restraints, and invested with almost a religious sanction by a certain
soulless school of writers,”[26] was inevitable, after the economic
blundering of governments in the eighteenth century. Prior to the
scientific investigation of economic laws, men had naturally interfered
in social arrangements with very unsatisfactory results. A specially
extravagant or a specially thrifty king debased the currency, and then
was surprised to find that in spite of stringent prohibitions prices
went up and all good money fled the country. Wise statesmen, to keep
up wages, encouraged the woollen manufactures of England by ruining
those of Ireland, and were then astonished to find English wages cut
by Irish pauper immigration. Benevolent parliaments attempted to raise
the worker’s income by poor law allowances, and then found that they
had lowered it. Christian kings eliminated half the skilled artisans
from their kingdoms, and then found that they had ruined the rest by
disabling industry. Government inspectors ordered how the cloth should
be woven, what patterns should be made, and how broad the piece should
be, until the manufacturers in despair cried out merely to be let alone.
When the early economists realized how radically wrong had been even
the well-meant attempts to regulate economic relations by legislation,
and how generally these attempts multiplied private monopolies, they
leaned in their deductions heavily towards complete individual liberty.
The administration of a populous state is such a very difficult
matter, and when done on false principles is so certain to be badly
done, that it was natural to advocate rather no administration at all
than the interference of ignorant and interested bunglers. Nature,
glorified by the worship of a famous school of French philosophers
and English poets, and as yet unsuspected of the countless crimes of
“the struggle for existence,” appeared at least more trustworthy than
Castlereagh. Real Democratic administration seemed, in the time of
the “White Terror,” and even under the milder Whig hypocrisy which
succeeded it, hopelessly remote. The best thing to work and fight for
was, apparently, the reduction to impotence and neutrality of all the
“Powers that Be.” Their influence being for the moment hostile to the
people, it behooved the people to destroy their influence altogether.
And so grew up the doctrine of what Professor Huxley has since called
“Administrative Nihilism.” It was the apotheosis of _Laisser Faire,
Laisser Aller_.
Though the economists have since had to bear all the blame for what
nearly everyone now perceives to have been an economic and social
mistake, neither Hume nor Adam Smith caught the _laisser faire_ fever
to as great an extent as their French contemporaries and imitators. The
English industrial position was not the same as that of France. The
“mercantile system” by which, as by “Fair Trade” to-day, foreign trade
was to be regulated and encouraged according as it tended to cause
the stock of goods, especially coin and bullion, to increase in the
country, was the same on both sides of the Channel. But our political
revolution had already been partly accomplished; and the more obvious
shackles of feudalism had been long since struck off. No Englishman was
compelled to grind his corn at the mill of the lord of the manor;[27]
to give up unpaid days to plough the lord’s field and cart the lord’s
hay; or to spend his nights in beating the waters of the lord’s marsh
so that the croaking of the frogs might not disturb the lord’s repose.
Our labor dues had long before been commuted for money payments;
and these had become light owing to the change in currency values.
Our apprenticeship laws and guild regulations were becoming rapidly
inoperative. No vexatious excise or gabelle hampered our manufactures.
Tyranny there was, enough and to spare, and economic spoliation; but
they did not take the form of personal interferences and indignities.
The non-noble Frenchman was bond, and he knew it; the middle-class
Englishman to a great extent thought himself free: his economic
servitude, though it galled him, was not clearly distinguishable
from the niggardliness of nature. The landlord in France was an
obvious tyrant: here he certainly caused (by the abstraction of the
economic rent) an artificial barrenness of the workers’ labor; but
the barrenness was so old and had been so constant that it was not
seen to be artificial, and was not resented as such. No peasant rebels
against the blight. Accordingly, we have, since 1381, never had in
England a burning of the _chateaux_; and, accordingly, too, Adam Smith
is no complete champion of _laisser faire_, though his great work
was effective mainly in sweeping away foreign trade restrictions and
regulations, and in giving viability to labor by establishing the
laborer’s geographical freedom to move and to enter into the wage
contract when and where he best could. The English economists, stopping
illogically short of the complete freedom preached by Rousseau and
Godwin and the scientific Anarchists of to-day, advocated just as much
freedom as sufficed to make the fortunes of Lancashire capitalists and
to create the modern proletariat. The Utilitarians are appropriately
coupled with the Political Economists in connexion with this phase of
thought. Although Adam Smith did not belong to their school, almost
the whole work of developing and popularizing the new science was done
by them. It was not until after the Peace--when Bentham and James Mill
were in full vigor, and soon to be reinforced by Austin, Villiers,
John Stuart Mill, Roebuck, Grote, Ricardo, and others--that Political
Economy became a force in England. The motive and enthusiasm for the
new science undoubtedly came from the Utilitarian ethics. If the sole
masters of man were pleasure and pain, the knowledge of the natural
laws expressing the course of social action, and thus regulating
pleasure and pain, became of vital importance. If it is God’s will, as
Paley and Austin asserted, that men should seek for happiness, than
the study of how to obtain economic comfort becomes a sacred duty,
and has ever been so regarded by such rational divines as Malthus,
Chalmers, Maurice, Kingsley, and the young High Church party of to-day.
Christianity and the course of modern thought began to join hands;
and we may see in Bishop Berkeley and Paley the forerunners of such a
development as the Guild of St. Matthew.[28]
The Utilitarian philosophy, besides aiding in the popularization of
economic science, strongly influenced its early character. The tendency
to _Laisser Faire_ inherited from the country and century of upheaval
and revolt against authority, was fostered by Bentham’s destructive
criticism of all the venerable relics of the past. What is the use
of it, he asked, of every shred of social institution then existing.
What is the net result of its being upon individual happiness? Few
of the laws and customs--little, indeed, of the social organization
of that time could stand this test. England was covered with rotten
survivals from bygone circumstances; the whole administration was an
instrument for class domination and parasite nurture; the progress
of the industrial revolution was rapidly making obsolete all laws,
customs, proverbs, maxims, and nursery tales; and the sudden increase
of population was baffling all expectations and disconcerting all
arrangements. At last it came to be carelessly accepted as the teaching
both of philosophy and of experience that every man must fight for
himself; and “the devil take the hindmost” became the accepted
social creed of what was still believed to be a Christian nation.
Utilitarianism became the Protestantism of Sociology, and “how to make
for self and family the best of both worlds” was assumed to be the
duty, as it certainly was the aim, of every practical Englishman.
THE INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL REVOLT, AND ITS POLITICAL OUTCOME.
The new creed of “Philosophic Radicalism” did not have matters all its
own way. Its doctrines might suit mill-owners and merchant princes,
and all who were able to enjoy the delight of their own strength in
the battle of life. But it was essentially a creed of Murdstones and
Gradgrinds; and the first revolt came from the artistic side. The “nest
of singing birds” at the Lakes would have none of it, though De Quincey
worked out its abstract economics in a manner still unsurpassed.
Coleridge did his best to drown it in German Transcendentalism. Robert
Owen and his following of enthusiastic communistic co-operators
steadfastly held up a loftier ideal. The great mass of the wage earners
never bowed the knee to the principles upon which the current “White
Slavery” was maintained. But the first man who really made a dint in
the individualist shield was Carlyle, who knew how to compel men to
listen to him. Oftener wrong than right in his particular proposals, he
managed to keep alive the faith in nobler ends than making a fortune
in this world and saving one’s soul in the next. Then came Maurice,
Kingsley, Ruskin, and others who dared to impeach the current middle
class cult; until finally, through Comte and John Stuart Mill, Darwin
and Herbert Spencer, the conception of the Social Organism has at last
penetrated to the minds, though not yet to the books, even of our
professors of Political Economy.
Meanwhile, caring for none of these things, the practical man had been
irresistibly driven in the same direction. In the teeth of the current
Political Economy, and in spite of all the efforts of the millowning
Liberals, England was compelled to put forth her hand to succor and
protect her weaker members. Any number of Local Improvement Acts,
Drainage Acts, Truck Acts, Mines Regulation Acts, Factory Acts, Public
Health Acts, Adulteration Acts, were passing into law.[29] The liberty
of the property owner to oppress the propertyless by the levy of the
economic tribute of rent and interest began to be circumscribed, pared
away, obstructed and forbidden in various directions. Slice after slice
has gradually been cut from the profits of capital, and therefore
from its selling value, by socially beneficial restrictions on its
user’s liberty to do as he liked with it. Slice after slice has been
cut off the incomes from rent and interest by the gradual shifting of
taxation from consumers to persons enjoying incomes above the average
of the kingdom.[30] Step by step the political power and political
organization of the country have been used for industrial ends, until
to-day the largest employer of labor is one of the ministers of the
Crown (the Postmaster-General); and almost every conceivable trade
is, somewhere or other, carried on by parish, municipality, or the
National Government itself without the intervention of any middleman
or capitalist. The theorists who denounce the taking by the community
into its own hands of the organization of its own labor as a thing
economically unclean, repugnant to the sturdy individual independence
of Englishmen, and as yet outside the sphere of practical politics,
seldom have the least suspicion of the extent to which it has already
been carried.[31] Besides our international relations and the army,
navy, police, and the courts of justice, the community now carries on
for itself, in some part or another of these islands, the post-office,
telegraphs, carriage of small commodities, coinage, surveys, the
regulation of the currency and note issue, the provision of weights
and measures, the making, sweeping, lighting, and repairing of
streets, roads, and bridges, life insurance, the grant of annuities,
shipbuilding, stockbroking, banking, farming, and money-lending. It
provides for many thousands of us from birth to burial--midwifery,
nursery, education, board and lodging, vaccination, medical attendance,
medicine, public worship, amusements, and interment. It furnishes
and maintains its own museums, parks, art galleries, libraries,
concert-halls, roads, streets, bridges, markets, slaughter-houses,
fire-engines, lighthouses, pilots, ferries, surf-boats, steam-tugs,
life-boats, cemeteries, public baths, washhouses, pounds, harbors,
piers, wharves, hospitals, dispensaries, gasworks, waterworks,
tramways, telegraph cables, allotments, cow meadows, artizans’
dwellings, schools, churches, and reading-rooms. It carries on and
publishes its own researches in geology, meteorology, statistics,
zoology, geography, and even theology. In our Colonies the English
Government further allows and encourages the communities to provide for
themselves railways, canals, pawn-broking, theatres, forestry, cinchona
farms, irrigation, leper villages, casinos, bathing establishments,
and immigration, and to deal in ballast, guano, quinine, opium, salt,
and what not. Every one of these functions, with those of the army,
navy, police, and courts of justice, were at one time left to private
enterprise, and were a source of legitimate individual investment
of capital. Step by step the community has absorbed them, wholly or
partially; and the area of private exploitation has been lessened.
Parallel with this progressive nationalization or municipalization of
industry, there has gone on the elimination of the purely personal
element in business management. The older economists doubted whether
anything but banking and insurance could be carried on by joint
stock enterprise: now every conceivable industry, down to baking and
milk-selling, is successfully managed by the salaried officers of large
corporations of idle shareholders. More than one-third of the whole
business of England, measured by the capital employed,[32] is now done
by joint stock companies, whose shareholders could be expropriated by
the community with no more dislocation of the industries carried on
by them than is caused by the daily purchase of shares on the Stock
Exchange.
Besides its direct supersession of private enterprise, the State now
registers, inspects, and controls nearly all the industrial functions
which it has not yet absorbed. In addition to births, marriages,
deaths, and electors, the State registers all solicitors, barristers,
notaries, patent agents, brokers, newspaper proprietors, playing-card
makers, brewers, bankers, seamen, captains, mates, doctors, cabmen,
hawkers, pawnbrokers, tobacconists, distillers, plate dealers,
game dealers; all insurance companies, friendly societies, endowed
schools and charities, limited companies, lands, houses, deeds, bills
of sale, compositions, ships, arms, dogs, cabs, omnibuses, books,
plays, pamphlets, newspapers, raw cotton movements, trademarks, and
patents; lodging-houses, public-houses, refreshment-houses, theatres,
music-halls, places of worship, elementary schools, and dancing rooms.
Nor is the registration a mere form. Most of the foregoing are also
inspected and criticised, as are all railways, tramways, ships,
mines, factories, canal-boats, public conveyances, fisheries,
slaughter-houses, dairies, milkshops, bakeries, baby-farms, gasmeters,
schools of anatomy, vivisection laboratories, explosive works, Scotch
herrings, and common lodging-houses.
The inspection is often detailed and rigidly enforced. The State in
most of the larger industrial operations prescribes the age of the
worker, the hours of work, the amount of air, light, cubic space, heat,
lavatory accommodation, holidays and mealtimes; where, when and how
wages shall be paid; how machinery staircases, lift holes, mines and
quarries are to be fenced and guarded; how and when the plant shall
be cleaned, repaired and worked. Even the kind of package in which
some articles shall be sold is duly prescribed, so that the individual
capitalist shall take no advantage of his position. On every side he is
being registered, inspected, controlled and eventually superseded by
the community; and in the meantime he is compelled to cede for public
purposes an ever-increasing share of his rent and interest.
Even in the fields still abandoned to private enterprise, its
operations are thus every day more closely limited, in order that the
anarchic competition of private greed, which at the beginning of the
century was set up as the only infallible beneficent principle of
social action, may not utterly destroy the State. All this has been
done by “practical” men, ignorant, that is to say, of any scientific
sociology, believing Socialism to be the most foolish of dreams,
and absolutely ignoring, as they thought, all grandiloquent claims
for social reconstruction. Such is the irresistible sweep of social
tendencies, that in their every act they worked to bring about the very
Socialism they despised; and to destroy the Individualistic faith which
they still professed. They builded better than they knew.
It must by no means be supposed that these beginnings of social
reorganization have been effected, or the proposals for their
extension brought to the front, without the conscious efforts of
individual reformers. The “Zeitgeist” is potent; but it does not pass
Acts of Parliament without legislators, or erect municipal libraries
without town councillors. Though our decisions are moulded by the
circumstances of the time, and the environment at least roughhews our
ends, shape them as we will; yet each generation decides for itself.
It still rests with the individual to resist or promote the social
evolution, consciously or unconsciously, according to his character
and information. The importance of complete consciousness of the
social tendencies of the age lies in the fact that its existence and
comprehensiveness often determine the expediency of our particular
action: we move with less resistance with the stream than against it.
The general failure to realize the extent to which our unconscious
Socialism has already proceeded--a failure which causes much time
and labor to be wasted in uttering and elaborating on paper the
most ludicrously unpractical anti-Socialistic demonstrations of the
impossibility of matters of daily occurrence--is due to the fact that
few know anything of local administration outside their own town. It is
the municipalities which have done most to “socialize” our industrial
life; and the municipal history of the century is yet unwritten. A few
particulars may here be given as to this progressive “municipalization”
of industry. Most of us know that the local governments have assumed
the care of the roads, streets and bridges, once entirely abandoned
to individual enterprise, as well as the lighting and cleansing of
all public thoroughfares, and the provision of sewers, drains and
“storm-water courses.” It is, perhaps, not so generally known that no
less than £7,500,000 is annually expended on these services in England
and Wales alone, being about five per cent of the rent of the country.
The provision of markets, fairs, harbors, piers, docks, hospitals,
cemeteries and burial-grounds is still shared with private capitalists;
but those in public hands absorb nearly £2,000,000 annually. Parks,
pleasure grounds, libraries, museums, baths and washhouses cost the
public funds over half a million sterling. All these are, however,
comparatively unimportant services. It is in the provision of gas,
water and tramways that local authorities organize labor on a large
scale. Practically half the gas consumers in the kingdom are supplied
by public gas works, which exist in 168 separate localities, with
an annual expenditure of over three millions.[33] It need hardly be
added that the advantage to the public is immense, in spite of the
enormous price paid for the work in many instances; and that the
further municipalization of the gas industry is proceeding with great
rapidity, no fewer than twelve local authorities having obtained loans
for the purpose (and one for electric lighting) in a single year
(Local Government Board Report, 1887-8, c--5526, pp. 319-367). With
equal rapidity is the water supply becoming a matter of commercial
organization, the public expenditure already reaching nearly a million
sterling annually. Sixty-five local authorities borrowed money for
water supply in 1887-8, rural and urban districts being equally
represented (c--5550, pp. 319-367). Tramways and ferries are undergoing
the same development. About thirty-one towns, including nearly all
the larger provincial centres, own some or all of their own tramways.
Manchester, Bradford, Birmingham, Oldham, Sunderland and Greenock lease
their undertakings; but among the municipalities Huddersfield has the
good sense to work its lines without any “middleman” intervention,
with excellent public results. The tramway mileage belonging to local
authorities has increased five-fold since 1878, and comprises more than
a quarter of the whole (House of Commons Return, 1887-8, No. 347). The
last important work completed by the Metropolitan Board of Works was
the establishment of a “free steam ferry” on the Thames, charged upon
the rates. This is, in some respects, the most significant development
of all. The difference between a free steam ferry and a free railway is
obviously only one of degree.
A few more cases are worth mentioning. Glasgow builds and maintains
seven public “common lodging houses”; Liverpool provides science
lectures; Manchester builds and stocks an art gallery; Birmingham
runs schools of design; Leeds creates extensive cattle markets; and
Bradford supplies water below cost price. There are nearly one hundred
free libraries and reading rooms. The minor services now performed by
public bodies are innumerable.[34] This “Municipal Socialism” has been
rendered possible by the creation of a local debt now reaching over
£181,000,000.[35] Nearly £10,000,000 is annually paid as interest and
sinking fund on the debt; and to this extent the pecuniary benefit of
municipalization is diminished. The full advantages[36] of the public
organization of labor remain, besides a considerable pecuniary profit;
whilst the objective differentiation of the economic classes (by the
separation of the idle _rentier_ from the manager or _entrepreneur_)
enormously facilitates popular comprehension of the nature of the
economic tribute known as interest. To the extent, moreover, that
additional charges are thrown upon the rates, the interest paid to
the capitalist is levied mainly at the cost of the landlord, and we
have a corresponding “nationalization” of so much of the economic
rent. The increase in the local rates has been 36 per cent, or nearly
£7,000,000, in eleven years, and is still growing. They now amount to
over twenty-six millions sterling in England and Wales alone, or about
17 per cent of the rental of the country (C--5550, p. clxxiv).
Nor is there any apparent prospect of a slackening of the pace of this
unconscious abandonment of individualism. No member of Parliament
has so much as introduced a Bill to give effect to the anarchist
principles of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s “Man _versus_ the State.” The
not disinterested efforts of the Liberty and Property Defence League
fail to hinder even Conservative Parliament from further Socialistic
legislation. Mr. Gladstone remarked to a friend in 1886 that the Home
Rule question would turn the Liberal party into a Radical party. He
might have said that it would make both parties Socialistic. Free
elementary and public technical education is now practically accepted
on both sides of the House, provided that the so-called “voluntary
schools,” themselves half maintained from public funds, are not
extinguished. Mr. Chamberlain and the younger Conservatives openly
advocate far reaching projects of social reform through state and
municipal agency, as a means of obtaining popular support. The National
Liberal Federation adopts the special taxation of urban ground values
as the main feature in its domestic programme,[37] notwithstanding
that this proposal is characterized by old-fashioned Liberals as sheer
confiscation of so much of the landlords’ property. The London Liberal
and Radical Union, which has Mr. John Morley for its president, even
proposes that the County Council shall have power to rebuild the London
slums at the sole charge of the ground landlord.[38] It is, therefore,
not surprising that the Trades Union Congress should now twice have
declared in favor of “Land Nationalization” by large majorities, or
that the bulk of the London County Council should be returned on
an essentially Socialistic platform. The whole of the immediately
practicable demands of the most exacting Socialists are, indeed, now
often embodied in the current Radical programme; and the following
exposition of it, from the pages of the _Star_ newspaper, August 8,
1888, may serve as a statement of the current Socialist demands for
further legislation.[39]
REVISION OF TAXATION.
_Object._--Complete shifting of burden from the workers, of whatever
grade, to the recipients of rent and interest, with a view to the
ultimate and gradual extinction of the latter class.
_Means._--1. Abolition of all customs and excise duties, except those
on spirits. 2. Increase of income tax, differentiating in favor of
earned as against unearned incomes, and graduating cumulatively by
system of successive levels of abatement. 3. Equalization and increase
of death duties and the use of the proceeds as capital, not income.
4. Shifting of local rates and house duty from occupier to owner, any
contract to the contrary notwithstanding. 5. Compulsory redemption of
existing land tax and reimposition on all ground rents and increased
values. 6. Abolition of fees on licenses for employment. 7. Abolition
of police-court fees.
EXTENSION OF FACTORY ACTS.
_Object._--To raise, universally, the standard of comfort by obtaining
the general recognition of a minimum wage and a maximum working day.
_Means._--1. Extension of the general provisions of the Factory
and Workshops Acts (or the Mines Regulation Acts, as the case may
be) to all employers of labor. 2. Compulsory registration of all
employers of more than three (?) workers. 3. Largely increased number
of inspectors, and these to include women, and to be mainly chosen
from the wage-earning class. 4. Immediate reduction of maximum hours
to eight per day in all Government and municipal employment, in all
mines, and in all licensed monopolies such as railways, tramways,
gasworks, waterworks, docks, harbors, etc.; and in any trade in which
a majority of the workers desire it. 5. The compulsory insertion
of clauses in all contracts for Government or municipal supplies,
providing (_a_) that there shall be no sub-contracting, (_b_) that no
worker shall be employed more than eight hours per day, and (_c_) that
no wages less than a prescribed minimum shall be paid.
EDUCATIONAL REFORM.
_Object._--To enable all, even the poorest, children to obtain not
merely some, but the best education they are capable of.
_Means._--1. The immediate abolition of all fees in public elementary
schools, Board or voluntary, with a corresponding increase in the
Government grant. 2. Creation of a Minister for Education, with
control over the whole educational system, from the elementary school
to the University, and over all educational endowments. 3. Provision
of public technical and secondary schools wherever needed, and
creation of abundant public secondary scholarships. 4. Continuation,
in all cases, of elementary education at evening schools. 5.
Registration and inspection of all private educational establishments.
RE-ORGANIZATION OF POOR LAW ADMINISTRATION.
_Object._--To provide generously, and without stigma, for the aged,
the sick, and those destitute through temporary want of employment,
without relaxing the “tests” against the endowment of able-bodied
idleness.
_Means._--1. The separation of the relief of the aged and the sick
from the workhouse system, by a universal system of aged pensions,
and public infirmaries. 2. The industrial organization and technical
education of all able-bodied paupers. 3. The provision of temporary
relief works for the unemployed. 4. The supersession of the Boards of
Guardians by the local municipal authorities.
EXTENSION OF MUNICIPAL ACTIVITY.
_Object._--The gradual public organization of labor for all public
purposes, and the elimination of the private capitalist and middleman.
_Means._--1. The provision of increased facilities for the acquisition
of land, the destruction without compensation of all dwellings found
unfit for habitation, and the provision of artisan dwellings by the
municipality. 2. The facilitation of every extension of municipal
administration, in London and all other towns, of gas, water, markets,
tramways, hospitals, cemeteries, parks, museums, art galleries,
libraries, reading-rooms, schools, docks, harbors, rivers, etc. 3. The
provision of abundant facilities for the acquisition of land by local
rural authorities, for allotments, common pastures, public halls,
reading-rooms, etc.
AMENDMENT OF POLITICAL MACHINERY.
_Object._--To obtain the most accurate representation and expression
of the desires of the majority of the people at every moment.
_Means._--1. Reform of registration so as to give a vote, both
Parliamentary and municipal, to every adult. 2. Abolition of any
period of residence as a qualification for registration. 3. Bi-annual
registration by special public officer. 4. Annual Parliaments.
5. Payment of election expenses, including postage of election
addresses and polling cards. 6. Payment of all public representatives,
parliamentary, county, or municipal. 7. Second ballot. 8. Abolition or
painless extinction of the House of Lords.[40]
This is the programme to which a century of industrial revolution has
brought the Radical working man. Like John Stuart Mill,[41] though less
explicitly, he has turned from mere political Democracy to a complete,
though unconscious, Socialism.[42]
THE NEW SYNTHESIS.
It need hardly be said that the social philosophy of the time did
not remain unaffected by the political evolution and the industrial
development. Slowly sinking into men’s minds all this while was the
conception of a new social nexus, and a new end of social life. It
was discovered (or rediscovered) that a society is something more
than an aggregate of so many individual units--that it possesses
existence distinguishable from those of any of its components. A
perfect city became recognized as something more than any number of
good citizens--something to be tried by other tests, and weighed in
other balances than the individual man. The community must necessarily
aim, consciously or not, at its continuance as a community; its life
transcends that of any of its members; and the interests of the
individual unit must often clash with those of the whole. Though
the social organism has itself evolved from the union of individual
men, the individual is now created by the social organism of which
he forms a part: his life is born of the larger life; his attributes
are moulded by the social pressure; his activities, inextricably
interwoven with others, belong to the activity of the whole. Without
the continuance and sound health of the social organism, no man can
now live or thrive; and its persistence is accordingly his paramount
end. His conscious motive for action may be, nay, always must be,
individual to himself; but where such action proves inimical to the
social welfare, it must sooner or later be checked by the whole, lest
the whole perish through the error of its member. The conditions of
social health are accordingly a matter for scientific investigation.
There is, at any moment, one particular arrangement of social relations
which involves the minimum of human misery then and there possible
amid the “niggardliness of nature.” Fifty years ago it would have been
assumed that absolute freedom in the sense of individual or “manly”
independence, plus a criminal code, would spontaneously result in
such an arrangement for each particular nation; and the effect was
the philosophic apotheosis of _Laisser Faire_. To-day every student
is aware that no such optimistic assumption is warranted by the facts
of life.[43] We know now that in natural selection at the stage of
development where the existence of civilized mankind is at stake, the
units selected from are not individuals, but societies. Its action at
earlier stages, though analogous, is quite dissimilar. Among the lower
animals physical strength or agility is the favored quality; if some
heaven-sent genius among the cuttlefish developed a delicate poetic
faculty, this high excellence would not delay his succumbing to his
hulking neighbor. When, higher up in the scale, mental cunning became
the favored attribute, an extra brain convolution, leading primitive
man to the invention of fire or tools, enabled a comparatively puny
savage to become the conqueror and survivor of his fellows.
Brain culture accordingly developed apace; but we do not yet thoroughly
realize that this has itself been superseded as the “selected”
attribute, by social organization. The cultivated Athenians, Saracens,
and Provençals went down in the struggle for existence before their
respective competitors, who, individually inferior, were in possession
of a, at that time, more valuable social organization. The French
nation was beaten in the last war, not because the average German was
an inch and a half taller than the average Frenchman, or because he
had read five more books, but because the German social organism, was,
for the purposes of the time, superior in efficiency to the French.
If we desire to hand on to the after-world our direct influence, and
not merely the memory of our excellence, we must take even more care
to improve the social organism of which we form part, than to perfect
our own individual developments. Or rather, the perfect and fitting
development of each individual is not necessarily the utmost and
highest cultivation of his own personality, but the filling, in the
best possible way, of his humble function in the great social machine.
We must abandon the self-conceit of imagining that we are independent
units, and bend our jealous minds, absorbed in their own cultivation,
to this subjection to the higher end, the Common Weal. Accordingly,
conscious “direct adaptation” steadily supplants the unconscious and
wasteful “indirect adaptation” of the earlier form of the struggle for
existence; and with every advance in sociological knowledge, Man is
seen to assume more and more, not only the mastery of “things,” but
also a conscious control over social destiny itself.
This new scientific conception of the Social Organism, has put
completely out of countenance the cherished principles of the Political
Economist and the Philosophic Radical. We left them sailing gaily
into Anarchy on the stream of _Laisser Faire_. Since then the tide
has turned. The publication of John Stuart Mill’s “Political Economy”
in 1848 marks conveniently the boundary of the old individualist
Economics. Every edition of Mill’s book became more and more
Socialistic. After his death the world learnt the personal history,
penned by his own hand,[44] of his development from a mere political
democrat to a convinced Socialist.
The change in tone since then has been such that one competent
economist, professedly[45] anti-Socialist, publishes regretfully to the
world that all the younger men are now Socialists, as well as many of
the older Professors. It is, indeed, mainly from these that the world
has learnt how faulty were the earlier economic generalizations, and
above all, how incomplete as guides for social or political action.
These generalizations are accordingly now to be met with only in
leading articles, sermons, or the speeches of Ministers or Bishops.[46]
The Economist himself knows them no more.
The result of this development of Sociology is to compel a revision
of the relative importance of liberty and equality as principles to
be kept in view in social administration. In Bentham’s celebrated
“ends” to be aimed at in a civil code, liberty stands predominant
over equality, on the ground that full equality can be maintained
only by the loss of security for the fruits of labor. That exposition
remains as true as ever; but the question for decision remains, how
much liberty? Economic analysis has destroyed the value of the old
criterion of respect for the equal liberty of others. Bentham, whose
economics were weak, paid no attention to the perpetual tribute on the
fruits of others’ labor which full private property in land inevitably
creates. In his view, liberty and security to property meant that every
worker should be free to obtain the full result of his own labor; and
there appeared no inconsistency between them. The political economist
now knows that with free competition and private property in land and
capital, no individual can possibly obtain the full result of his
own labor. The student of industrial development, moreover, finds it
steadily more and more impossible to trace what is precisely the result
of each separate man’s toil. Complete rights of liberty and property
necessarily involve, for example, the spoliation of the Irish cottier
tenant for the benefit of Lord Clanricarde. What then becomes of the
Benthamic principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number?
When the Benthamite comes to understand the Law of Rent, which of the
two will he abandon? For he cannot escape the lesson of the century,
taught alike by the economists, the statesmen, and the “practical men,”
that complete individual liberty, with unrestrained private ownership
of the instruments of wealth production, is irreconcilable with the
common weal. The free struggle for existence among ourselves menaces
our survival as a healthy and permanent social organism. Evolution,
Professor Huxley[47] declares, is the substitution of consciously
regulated co-ordination among the units of each organism, for blind
anarchic competition. Thirty years ago Herbert Spencer demonstrated
the incompatibility of full private property in land with the modern
democratic State;[48] and almost every economist now preaches the
same doctrine. The Radical is rapidly arriving, from practical
experience, at similar conclusions; and the steady increase of the
government regulation of private enterprise, the growth of municipal
administration, and the rapid shifting of the burden of taxation
directly to rent and interest, mark in treble lines the statesman’s
unconscious abandonment of the old Individualism, and our irresistible
glide into collectivist Socialism.
It was inevitable that the Democracy should learn this lesson. With the
masses painfully conscious of the failure of Individualism to create
a decent social life for four-fifths of the people,[49] it might have
been foreseen that Individualism could not survive their advent to
political power. If private property in land and capital necessarily
keeps the many workers permanently poor (through no fault of their
own), in order to make the few idlers rich (from no merit of their
own), private property in land and capital will inevitably go the way
of the feudalism which it superseded. The economic analysis confirms
the rough generalization of the suffering people. The history of
industrial evolution points to the same result; and for two generations
the world’s chief ethical teachers have been urging the same lesson. No
wonder the heavens of Individualism are rolling up before our eyes like
a scroll; and even the Bishops believe and tremble.[50]
It is, of course, possible, as Sir Henry Maine and others have
suggested, that the whole experience of the century is a mistake, and
that political power will once more swing back into the hands of a
monarch or an aristocratic oligarchy. It is, indeed, want of faith in
Democracy which holds back most educated sympathisers with Socialism
from frankly accepting its principles. What the economic side of such
political atavism would be it is not easy to forecast. The machine
industry and steam power could hardly be dismissed with the caucus
and the ballot-box. So long, however, as Democracy in political
administration continues to be the dominant principle, Socialism may
be quite safely predicted as its economic obverse, in spite of those
freaks or aberrations of Democracy which have already here and there
thrown up a short-lived monarchy or a romantic dictatorship. Every
increase in the political power of the proletariat will most surely be
used by them for their economic and social protection. In England, at
any rate, the history of the century serves at once as their guide and
their justification.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] See “Socialism in England” (American Economic Association, vol.
iv, part 2, May, 1889), in which a portion of this essay has been
embodied.
[13] “I am aware that there are some who suppose that our present
bourgeois arrangements must be totally destroyed and others substituted
almost at a blow. But however successful a revolution might be, it
is certain that mankind cannot change its whole nature all at once.
Break the old shell, certainly; but never forget the fact that the new
forms _must_ grow out of the old” (H. M. Hyndman, “Historical Basis of
Socialism,” 1883, p. 305).
[14] See the article on “Socialism in English Politics,” by William
Clarke, in the _Political Science Quarterly_, December, 1888.
[15] Even Bentham said this of James Mill (Bain’s Life of J. M., p.
461), of whom it was hardly true.
[16] “Principles of Political Economy,” last edition, 1865, p. 477
(quoting from Feugueray.)
[17] Referred to in a celebrated passage by Adam Smith, “Wealth of
Nations,” book 1, chap. viii.
[18] Not to mention the restrictions imposed by the law of “Settlement”
(13 and 14 Charles II., chap. 12), which enabled two justices summarily
to send back to his village any migrating laborer.
[19] This was noticed by Malthus, “Principles of Political Economy,”
p. 225; see also Prof. Thorold Rogers, “History of Agriculture and
Prices,” and “Six Centuries of Work and Wages.”
[20] Further detail will be found in the following essay. See also
Arnold Toynbee’s “Industrial Revolution.”
[21] Between 1801-1845 the population of Manchester grew 109 per cent,
Glasgow 108 per cent, Liverpool 100 per cent, and Leeds 99 per cent
(Report of Commissioners on State of Health of Large Towns, 1843-45).
[22] W. J. Lecky, “History of the Eighteenth Century,” vol. v, p. 453.
[23] The number of registered electors at the date of the last Election
(1886) was 5,707,823, out of an adult male population of over nine
millions.
[24] Few, however, of Mr. Spencer’s followers appear to realize that
he presupposes Land Nationalization as the necessary condition of an
Individualist community (see “Social Statics,” _passim_).
[25] It is sometimes asserted nowadays that the current descriptions
of factory life under the _régime_ of freedom of contract are much
exaggerated. This is not the case. The horrors revealed in the reports
of official enquiries even exceed those commonly quoted. For a full
account of the legislation, and the facts on which it was founded, see
Von Plener’s “English Factory Legislation.” The chief official reports
are those of the House of Commons Committee of 1815-6, House of Lords
Committee, 1819, and Royal Commission, 1840. Marx (“Capital”) gives
many other references. See also F. Engels’ “Condition of the English
Working Classes.”
[26] Prof. H. S. Foxwell (University College, London, p. 249 of Essay
on the “Claims of Labor” (Edinburgh: Co-operative Printing Company,
1886).)
[27] This statement, though generally true of England, is not
absolutely so. It needed an Act of Parliament in 1758 (32 George II,
c. 61) to free the inhabitants of the “village” of Manchester from the
obligation to grind all their corn and grain at the manorial watermills
(Clifford’s “History of Private Bill Legislation,” vol. ii, p. 478).
Even so late as 1809 they had to obtain the consent of Sir Oswald
Mosley, the lord of the manor, before a company could be incorporated
to provide a water supply (_Ibid._, p. 480). Leeds was theoretically
compelled to grind its corn, grain and malt at the lord’s mills down to
1839, and actually had then to pay £13,000 to extinguish this feudal
“due” (_Ibid._, p. 498).
[28] See its organ, the _Church Reformer_. London; 8 Duke Street,
Adelphi.
[29] The beginning of factory legislation is to be found in the “Morals
and Health Act,” 42 Geo. III, c. 73 (1802). Others followed in 1819,
1825, and 1831; but their provisions were almost entirely evaded owing
to the absence of inspectors. After the Reform Bill more stringent
enactments in 1833, 1844, and 1847 secured some improvement. The Act
of 1878 consolidated the law on the subject. The Radical and Socialist
proposals for further development in this direction will be found at
page 55. Nearly 400 Local Improvement Acts had been passed up to 1845.
In the succeeding years various general Acts were passed, which were
henceforth incorporated by reference in all local Acts. The first
“Public Health Act” was passed in 1848; and successive extensions were
given to this restrictive legislation with sanitary ends in 1855,
1858, 1861, and 1866. Consolidating Acts in 1871, and finally in 1875,
complete the present sanitary code, which now forms a thick volume of
restrictions upon the free use of land and capital.
[30] The _minimum_ income chargeable to Income Tax (£150) closely
corresponds with the _average_ family income. See Fabian Tract, No. 5,
“Facts for Socialists.”
[31] See “The Progress of Socialism.” (London: The Modern Press, 13
Paternoster Row, E. C. Price One Penny.)
[32] See “Capital and Land” (Fabian Tract, No. 7), page 7.
[33] Government Return for 1887-8, see “Board of Trade Journal,”
January, 1889, pp. 76-8.
[34] It is not generally known that the Corporation of London actually
carried on the business of fire insurance from 1681 to 1683, but was
compelled to abandon it through the opposition of those interested in
private undertakings, who finally obtained a mandamus in the Court of
King’s Bench to restrain the civic competitor (Walford’s Insurance
Cyclopædia, vol. iii, pp. 445-446).
[35] C--5550, p. 436. This, by the way, is just about one year’s
rental. We pay every year to the landlords for permission to live
in England as much as the whole outstanding cost of the magnificent
property of the local governing authorities.
[36] See “The Government Organization of Labor,” Report by a Committee
of the Fabian Society, 1886.
[37] See Report of the Annual Meeting at Birmingham, September, 1888.
[38] See resolutions adopted by the Council, at the instance of the
Executive and General Committee, February 8th, 1889. (_Daily News_, 9th
February.) Professor Stuart, M.P., has now introduced a Bill embodying
these astonishing proposals.
[39] It is interesting to compare this programme, with its primary
insistence on economic and social reform, with the bare political
character of the “Five Points” of the Chartists, viz., Manhood
Suffrage, Vote by Ballot, Annual Parliaments, Payment of Members
relieved from the property qualification, and Equal Electoral Districts.
[40] It need hardly be said that schemes of “free land,” peasant
proprietorship, or leasehold enfranchisement, find no place in the
modern programme of the Socialist Radical, or Social Democrat. They
are survivals of the Individualistic Radicalism which is passing
away. Candidates seeking a popular “cry” more and more avoid these
reactionary proposals.
[41] “Autobiography,” p. 231-2. See also Book IV. of the “Principles of
Political Economy” (Popular edition, 1865).
[42] For a forecast of the difficulties which this programme will
have to encounter as its full scope and intention become more clearly
realized, see the eighth essay in this volume, by Hubert Bland.
[43] See “Darwinism and Politics,” by D. G. Ritchie, Fellow and Tutor
of Jesus College, Oxford (London: Swan, Sonneshein & Co., 1889).
[44] “Autobiography,” pp. 231-2.
[45] Rev. F. W. Aveling, Principal of Taunton Independent College, in
leaflet “Down with the Socialists,” August, 1888. See also Professor H.
Sedgwick on “Economic Socialism,” _Contemporary Review_, November, 1886.
[46] That is to say, unfortunately, in nearly all the utterances which
profess to guide our social and political action.
[47] _Contemporary Review_, February, 1888.
[48] “Social Statistics,” _passim_.
[49] See Professor Leone Levi’s letter to the _Times_, 13th August,
1886, and Mr. Frederic Harrison’s speech at the Industrial Remuneration
Conference held in January, 1885 (Report, p. 429).
[50] See Report of the Lambeth Episcopal Conference, 1888; subject,
“Socialism”: also the proceedings of the Central Conference of Diocesan
Councils, June, 1889 (paper on Socialism by Canon Furse).
INDUSTRIAL.
BY WILLIAM CLARKE, M.A.
My object in the following paper is to present a brief narrative of
the economic history of the last century or century and a half. From
this I wish to draw a moral. That moral is that there has been and
is proceeding an economic evolution, practically independent of our
individual desires or prejudices; an evolution which has changed for
us the whole social problem by changing the conditions of material
production, and which _ipso facto_ effects a revolution in our modern
life. To learn clearly what that revolution is, and to prepare
ourselves for taking advantage of it in due course--this I take to be
briefly what is meant by Socialism. The ignorant public, represented
by, let us say, the average bishop or member of Parliament, hears of
the “Social Revolution” and instantly thinks of street riots, noyades,
with a _coup d’état_: a 10th of August, followed perhaps by its Nemesis
in an 18th Brumaire. But these are not the Social Revolution. That
great change is proceeding silently every day. Each new line of railway
which opens up the trackless desert, every new machine which supplants
hand labor, each fresh combination formed by capitalists, every new
labor organization, every change in prices, each new invention--all
these forces and many more are actually working out a social revolution
before our eyes: for they are changing fundamentally the economic basis
of life. There may possibly come some one supreme moment of time in
which a great dramatic incident will reveal to men the significance
of the changes which have led up to it, and of which it is merely
the final expression. And future historians may write of that as The
Revolution just as historians now write of the fall of the Bastille,
or the execution of Louis XVI, as though these events constituted the
French Revolution, instead of being the final terms in a long series
of events which had been loosening the fabric of French feudalism
through several generations. The true prophet is not an ignorant
soothsayer who foretells some Armageddon, but rather he who perceives
the inevitable drift and tendency of things. Somewhat in this spirit
we may consider the economic history of the modern industrial era in
order to discern its meaning, to see what it has led up to, and what,
consequently, are the problems with which we find ourselves confronted
to-day.
Had we visited a village or small town in England where industrial
operations were going on one hundred and fifty years ago, what should
we have found? No tall chimney, vomiting its clouds of smoke, would
have been visible; no huge building with its hundred windows blazing
with light would have loomed up before the traveller as he entered the
town at dusk; no din of machinery would have been heard; no noise of
steam hammers; no huge blast furnaces would have met his eye, nor would
miles of odors wafted from chemical works have saluted his nostrils. If
Lancashire had been the scene of his visit he would have found a number
of narrow red-brick houses with high steps in front, and outside wooden
shutters such as one may still see in the old parts of some Lancashire
towns to-day. Inside each of these houses was a little family workshop,
containing neither master nor servant, in which the family jointly
contributed to produce by the labor of their hands a piece of cotton
cloth. The father provided his own warp of linen yarn, and his cotton
wool for weft. He had purchased the yarn in a prepared state, while
the wool for the weft was carded and spun by his wife and daughters,
and the cloth was woven by himself and his sons. There was a simple
division of labor in the tiny cottage factory; but all the implements
necessary to produce the cotton cloth were owned by the producers.
There was neither capitalist nor wage-receiver: the weaver controlled
his own labor, effected his own exchange, and received himself the
equivalent of his own product. Such was the germ of the great English
cotton manufacture. Ferdinand Lasselle said: “Society consists of
ninety-six proletaires and four capitalists. That is your State.” But
in old Lancashire there was neither capitalist nor proletaire.
Or even much later had one visited--Stafford, let us say, one would
not have found the large modern shoe-factory, with its bewildering
variety of machines, each one with a human machine by its side. For
shoemaking then was a pure handicraft, requiring skill, judgment and
some measure of artistic sense. Each shoemaker worked in his own little
house, bought his own material from the leather merchant, and fashioned
every part of the shoe with his own hand, aided by a few simple and
inexpensive tools. He believed there was “nothing like leather,” and
had not yet learned the art of putting on cheap soles, _not_ made of
leather, to cheap boots, which, in a month’s time, will be almost worn
out. Very likely the shoemaker had no vote; but he was never liable
to be locked out by his employer, or to be obliged to go on strike
against a reduction of wages, with his boy in prison for satisfying
hunger at the expense of the neighboring baker, or his girl on the
streets to pay for her new dress. Such was the simple industrialism of
our great-great-grandfathers. But their mode of life was destined to
change. All progress, says Mr. Herbert Spencer, is differentiation; and
this formidable factor began to appear in the quiet, sleepy, English
country. About 1760 a large share of calico-printing was transferred
from London to Lancashire, where labor was then cheaper. There was a
consequent fall in prices, and an increased demand for calicoes of
linen warp and cotton weft. Then the Manchester dealers, instead of
buying fustians and calicoes from the weaver, began to furnish him
with the materials for his cloth, and to pay him a fixed price per
piece for the work when executed. So the Manchester dealer became
what the French call an _entrepreneur_; and the transformation of
the independent weaver into a wage receiver began. The iron law of
wages and the unemployed question also began to loom dimly up. For
as the weaver came to hire himself to the dealer, so the weaver let
out part of his work; and it frequently happened that the sum which
the master weaver received from his employer was less than what he
found himself compelled to pay to those whom he employed in spinning.
“He durst not, however, complain,” says Mr. Watts in his article on
cotton (Encyclopædia Britannica), “much less abate the spinner’s price,
lest his looms should be unemployed.” The quantity of yarn producible
under this simple system by the aid of the one-thread wheel was very
small. The whole did not exceed in quantity what 50,000 spindles of
our present machinery can yield. As one man can now superintend 2,000
spindles, it will be seen that twenty-five men with machinery can
produce as much as the whole population of old Lancashire. In 1750 the
first important invention in the cotton industry was made in the shape
of the fly-shuttle, invented by Kaye of Bury. In 1760 improvements were
made in the carding process. In 1767 the spinning-jenny was invented by
Hargreaves, and this was at length brought to work as many as eighty
spindles. The ingenious Hargreaves had ample opportunity for practical
study of the “unemployed” question; for the spinners, some of whom were
forced into idleness by the new invention, broke into his house and
destroyed his machine. Shortly after, there was a general rising over
industrial Lancashire: the poor hand-workers, whose prophetic souls
were evidently dreaming on things to come, scouring the country and
breaking in pieces every carding and spinning machine they could find.
Progress by differentiation, however, heeded not the second sight of
Lancashire workers. In 1769, Arkwright contrived the spinning frame,
and obtained his patent for spinning with rollers. In 1775, Crompton,
of Bolton, invented the mule-jenny, enabling warps of the finest
quality to be spun. In 1792, further improvements in this machine
were made by Pollard, of Manchester, and Kelly, of Glasgow. In 1785,
steam was first applied to the spinning of cotton in Nottinghamshire.
In 1784 the Rev. E. Cartwright, of Kent, invented power-loom weaving,
and completed and patented his invention in August, 1787. Here, then,
within a period of about forty years, was a series of mechanical
inventions which had the effect of absolutely changing the method of
production, and enormously increasing the output; of dividing the
labor of producing, which had formerly been effected by a single
family within the walls of a single room, between scores and hundreds
of people, each of whom only undertook a single process in a complex
operation; of massing together hundreds of thousands of people under
new conditions; of bringing a heretofore isolated district into
intimate relations with distant foreign lands: and of separating the
work of spinning or weaving from the ownership of the instruments by
whose aid the work was done. The independent weaver was gone; or rather
he was subjected, like an amœba, to a process of fission, but with
this difference: that whereas the amœba produces by fission other
similar amœbæ, the weaver was differentiated into a person called an
employer and another called an employé or “hand.” Multiply this “hand”
by thousands, and we get the mill or factory, divided into departments,
each with its special detail of work, each detail fitting into all the
rest, each machine taking up the work where the last machine left it,
and each contributing its share to the joint product. Multiply the
employer; add enormously to the aggregate of his capital; remove the
barrier of national frontiers from his operations; relieve him of the
duty of personal supervision; and we get the joint-stock capitalist.
Pause a moment to consider the famous world-events which made so much
noise while these industrial processes were going on. The conquest
of Canada, the victories of Clive in India, the Seven Years’ War,
the successful revolt of the American colonies, the Declaration of
Independence and formation of the American Constitution, the deeds of
Frederic the Great, Pitt’s accession to power, Washington’s election
to the Presidency, the Fall of the Bastille, the death of Mirabeau,
the fall of the old French monarchy, the National Convention--all
these great events which shook the world were contemporary with the
industrial revolution in England; and that revolution was in promise
and potency more important than them all.
I will glance at the development of another great industry, that of
iron. In former times iron was largely worked in the south of England,
notably in Sussex, in a district now purely agricultural. By the middle
of the 18th century, important iron industries had begun to cluster
round Coalbrookdale; and here many of the industrial changes in the
working of iron were first introduced. From 1766 to 1784 improvements
were made in the mode of working malleable iron and of transferring
cast into wrought iron. The puddling forge was invented in 1784; and
it gave an immense impetus to the manufacture. In 1828 the use of the
hot blast was substituted for cold air; in 1842 Nasmyth invented the
steam-hammer; and in 1856 the Bessemer process of making steel was
patented. Subsequently we have the Siemens regenerative furnace and
gas producer, the use of machinery in lieu of hand labor for puddling,
the casting of steel under great pressure, and the improvements in
the Bessemer process. As a result of these inventions the increase
in the production of steel during the last few years, especially in
the United States and Great Britain, has been enormous. In all this
we see the same series of phenomena, all tending to huge monopolies.
Machinery supplants hand labor; production is greatly stimulated; the
immense capital needed enables only the large producers to survive in
the competitive conflict; and we get as the net result well defined
aggregations of capital on the one hand, and dependent machine minders
on the other.
I have alluded to the shoe industry as having been formerly a pure
handicraft. Simple machine processes for fastening soles and heels to
inner soles began to be adopted in 1809; and from that time onward
successive inventions have converted the pure handicraft into one of
the most mechanical industries in the world. In the United States in
1881 no less than 50,000,000 pairs of boots and shoes were sewn by
the Blake-Mackay machines. A visitor to a shoe factory to-day will
see the following machines: for cutting leather, for pressing rollers
for sole leather, for stamping out sole and heel pieces, for blocking
and crimping, for moulding uppers or vamps, for vamp-folding, for
eyeletting, lasting, trimming and paring, scouring, sand-papering
and burnishing, for stamping, peg-cutting, and nail-rasping. It is
well to witness all these processes going on in one large factory in
order to grasp fully the idea that the old individual industry of the
last century is almost as extinct as the mastodon--that the worker in
a shoe factory to-day is, so to speak, a machine in a vast complex
system. The great industry has supplanted the small one; such great
industry involves the aggregation of capital: consequently competition
on the part of the small producer is hopeless and impossible. Thus
in the proletarian class the intensity of the struggle for existence
is increased, keeping down wages and ever widening the margin of the
unemployed class. The small producer must become a wage earner either
as manager, foreman, or workman. As well attempt to meet Gatling guns
with bow and arrows, or steel cruisers armed with dynamite bombs
with the little cockle-shells in which Henry V’s army crossed over
to win the field of Agincourt, as to set up single shoe-makers or
cotton-weavers against the vast industrial armies of the world of
machinery. The revolution is confined to no one industry, to no one
land. While most fully developed in England, it is extending to most
industries and to all lands. Prince Kropotkin, it is true, reminds us
in an interesting article in the _Nineteenth Century_ for October,
1888, that a number of small industries can still be found in town
and country. That is so, no doubt; and it is not unlikely that for
a long time to come many small trades may exist, and some may even
flourish. But the countries in which small industries flourish most
are precisely those in which there is least machine industry, and
where consequently capitalism is least developed. In no country, says
Kropotkin, are there so many small producers as in Russia. Exactly:
and in no country is there so little machinery or such an inefficient
railway system in proportion to population and resources. On the other
hand, in no country is machinery so extensively used as in the United
States; and it is precisely that country which contains the fewest
small industries in proportion to population and resources. Many of the
small industries, too, as Kropotkin admits, are carried on by persons
who have been displaced by machines, and who have thus been thrown
unemployed on the labor market; or who have drifted into large towns,
especially into London, because in the country there was no work for
them. At best the great majority of these people earn but a scanty and
precarious living; and, judging from the number of hawkers and vendors
who wander about suburban streets and roads without selling anything,
one would imagine that great numbers can scarcely make any living at
all.
Furthermore, when Kropotkin refers to the sweaters’ victims, and to the
people in country places who make on a small scale clothes or furniture
which they dispose of to the dealers in large towns, and so forth, let
it be remembered that so long as human labor is cheaper than machinery
it will be utilized by capitalists in this way. The capitalist uses
or does not use machinery according as it pays or does not pay; and
if he can draw to an unlimited extent on the margin of unemployed
labor, paying a bare subsistence wage, he will do so, as the evidence
given before the House of Lords Committee on Sweating shews. While
admitting then that a good many small industries exist, and that some
will continue to exist for an indefinite time, I do not think that
such facts make against the general proposition that the tendency is
to large production by machinery, involving the grouping of men and
the massing of capital, with all the economic and social consequences
thereby involved.
Even agriculture, that one occupation in which old-fashioned
individualism might be supposed safe, is being subjected to capitalism.
The huge farms of Dakota and California, containing single fields
of wheat miles long, are largely owned by joint stock corporations
and cultivated exclusively by machinery. It was the displacement of
human labor by machinery on these farms as well as the crises in
mining operations which helped to bring about the phenomenon of an
unemployed class in the richest region of the world, and led Mr.
Henry George to write his “Progress and Poverty.” These huge farms,
combined with the wheat “corners” in New York and Chicago and the great
railway corporations of America, have played havoc with many of the
small farmers of the Mississippi Valley, as the statistics respecting
mortgaged farms will show. And when it is remembered that the American
farmer will be more and more obliged to meet the growing competition of
the wheat of India, produced by the cheapest labor in the world, his
prospect does not appear to be very bright.
In order to perceive clearly the immense development of machine
industry and the consequent displacement of labor, one must resort
to figures, mere rhetoric being of no avail. The following figures
are cited from the United States, because American public statistics
are so much better than British, being both more complete and more
accessible. The facts are taken from the first Annual Report of the
United States Commissioner of Labor Statistics in Washington for 1886.
The Commissioner, inquiring into the industrial crisis, finds that it
is mainly due to the immense development of machine industry under the
joint-stock system; and he takes up various trades one after another
to show how labor has been displaced by machinery. In the timber
business, he says, twelve laborers with a Bucker machine will dress
12,000 staves. The same number of men by hand labor would have dressed
in the same time only 2,500. In the manufacture of paper a machine
now used for drying and cutting, run by four men and six girls, will
do the work formerly done by 100 persons, and do it much better. In
the manufacture of wall-paper the best evidence puts the displacement
in the proportion of a hundred to one. In a phosphate mine in South
Carolina ten men accomplish with machinery what 100 men handle without
it in the same time. There has been a displacement of 50 per cent in
the manufacture of rubber boots and shoes. In South Carolina pottery
the product is ten times greater by machine processes than by muscular
labor. In the manufacture of saws, experienced men consider that there
has been a displacement of three men out of five. In the weaving of
silk the displacement has been 95 per cent, and in the winding of silk
90 per cent. A large soap manufacturing concern carefully estimates the
displacement of labor in its works at 50 per cent. In making wine in
California a crushing machine has been introduced with which one man
can crush and stem 80 tons of grapes in a day, representing an amount
of work formerly requiring eight men. In woollen goods modern machinery
has reduced muscular labor 33 per cent in the carding department, 50
per cent in the spinning, and 25 per cent in the weaving. In some
kinds of spinning one hundred to one represents the displacement. In
the whole United States in 1886 the machinery was equal to 3,500,000
horse power. If men only had been employed, it would have required
21,000,000 to turn out the actual total product: the real number was
four millions. To do the work accomplished in 1886 in the United
States by power machinery and on the railways would have required men
representing a population of 172,500,000. The actual population of the
United States in 1886 was something under 60,000,000, or a little more
than one-third.
Commenting on these very remarkable statistics, the Labor Commissioner
says: “The apparent evils resulting from the introduction of machinery
and the consequent subdivision of labor have to a large extent, of
course, been offset by advantages gained; but it must stand as a
positive statement, which cannot be successfully controverted, that
this wonderful introduction and extension of power machinery is one
of the prime causes, if not the prime cause, of the novel industrial
condition in which the manufacturing nations find themselves.” One of
the results of the “novel industrial condition” in America in 1885, was
an unemployed class variously estimated at from one to two millions
of men, the condition of many of whom as tramps, furnished subjects
for some very sorry jests to the American press. Such facts as are
here suggested, will show how a new country may soon be reduced to a
condition which aggregated capital on the one hand and unemployed labor
on the other, render little better than that of an old European State
with its centuries of misery and oppression. And incidentally they also
show that such a nostrum as emigration, if intended not as a palliative
but as a solution, is simply quackery. The inference would seem to
be irresistible. Just as fast as capitalists find it profitable to
introduce improved machinery, as fast also will the helplessness of a
growing number of the proletariat increase. The “unemployed” question
is the sphinx which will devour us if we cannot answer her riddle.
The wonderful expansion of Lancashire perhaps affords the best
illustration of the change from individual to collective industry.
A cotton-mill in one of the dismal “hell-holes,” called towns in
Lancashire, is a wonderful place, full of bewildering machines. Here
is a machine called an “opener,” by which 15,000 lbs. of cotton can be
opened in 56 hours. There is a throstle, the spindles of which make
from 6,000 to 7,000 revolutions per minute. Here is a man who, with
the aid of two piecers to take up and join the broken ends, can work
2,000 spindles. Among the distinct separate machines used are opener,
scutcher and lap machine, drawing frame, slubbing frame, intermediate
frame, roving frame, throstle, self-acting mule and hand mule, doubling
frame, and mule doublers or twiners. By means of these appliances
the following results have been attained. Within eight years, from
1792 to 1800, the quantity of cotton exported from the United States
to Lancashire had increased from 138,000 lbs. to 18,000,000 lbs. In
1801 Lancashire took 84,000 bales of cotton from the United States;
in 1876 she took 2,075,000 bales; and whereas in the former year only
14,000 bales came from India, in 1876 from that country came 775,000
bales, besides a great increase in Brazilian cotton, and a new import
of 332,000 bales from Egypt. In 1805, one million pieces of calico
were sold in the Blackburn market during the whole year; and that was
considered a very large sale. In 1884, according to Ellison’s Annual
Review of the Cotton Trade, there were exported 4,417,000,000 yards of
piece goods besides the vast quantity produced for home consumption.
In 1875, in place of the little cottages with their hand-looms of
a century before, Lancashire contained 2,655 cotton factories with
37,515,772 spinning spindles and 463,118 power looms; and she produced
yarn and piece goods to the weight of 1,088,890,000 lbs. and of the
value of £95,447,000. See, too, how through the use of machinery the
cost of production had been lowered. In 1790 the price of spinning the
yarn known technically as No. 100 was 4s. per lb.: in 1826 it had been
reduced to 6¹⁄₂d. The sale price of yarn No. 100 in 1786 was 38s.: in
1793 it was reduced to 15s. 1d., in 1803 to 8s. 4d., in 1876 to 2s.
6d. The decreased cost in each case followed on economy in production,
itself dependent on increased differentiation in machinery; that in
turn involving larger and larger capital, and that again necessitating
aggregation and the crushing out of small concerns which could not
command machinery or sell at a profit in competition with it.
Speculating on the possibility of foreign competition destroying
the industrial supremacy of Lancashire, Mr. Watts writes in the
Encyclopædia Britannica: “It may perhaps be sufficient to recall to
our readers the small part of the cost of the commodity which now
belongs to the labor of the hand, and the daily diminution which is
taking place even of that part, by the introduction of new mechanical
substitutes.”[51] Mr. Watts wrote as a expert; and the inference
one is compelled to draw from his dictum is that concentration of
capital and growth of monopoly must continue to develop; and that the
“unemployed” problem must force itself on Lancashire. One who is not
an expert will only venture to criticise with great diffidence Mr.
Watts’s optimistic tone; but it is well to point out that in India
capitalists can command the cheapest labor in the world--labor too, at
present entirely unregulated by law. The cotton of India, and also of
Asiatic Russia, is spun and woven near to where it is grown, and where
it can easily command the great Asiatic market. One is not surprised to
find therefore that the Bombay cotton mills are already giving cause
for some anxiety in Lancashire; and there seems no rational ground for
supposing that that anxiety will decrease; in which case the increasing
competition would seem to involve in Lancashire either immense
development of machinery or reduction in wages in order to cheapen
the cost of production. Either alternative forces the social problem
forward.
I now pass on to consider the social problem as it has actually been
forced on the attention of the British Government through the new
industrial conditions.
The unrestrained power of capitalism very speedily reduced a large
part of England to a deplorable condition. The Mrs. Jellybys of the
philanthropic world were busy ministering to the wants of Borioboola
Gha by means of tracts and blankets, neither of which were of the
slightest use to those for whom they were intended. But Borioboola Gha
was an earthly paradise compared with civilized England. There was
not a savage in the islands of the Pacific who was not better fed,
happier, healthier, and more contented than the majority of the workers
in the industrial parts of England. Children, it was discovered, were
transferred in large numbers to the north, where they were housed in
pent-up buildings adjoining the factories, and kept to long hours of
labor. The work was carried on day and night without intermission; so
that the beds were said never to become cold, inasmuch as one batch
of children rested while another batch went to the looms, only half
the requisite number of beds being provided for all. Epidemic fevers
were rife in consequence. Medical inspectors reported the rapid spread
of malformation of the bones, curvature of the spine, heart diseases,
rupture, stunted growth, asthma, and premature old age among children
and young persons: the said children and young persons being worked by
manufacturers without any kind of restraint. Manufacturing profits in
Lancashire were being at the same time reckoned at hundreds and even
thousands per cent. The most terrible condition of things existed in
the mines, where children of both sexes worked together, half naked,
often for sixteen hours a day. In the fetid passages, children of
seven, six, and even four years of age, were found at work. Women were
employed underground, many of them even while pregnant, at the most
exhausting labor. After a child was born, its mother was at work again
in less than a week, in an atmosphere charged with sulphuric acid. In
some places women stood all day knee-deep in water and subject to an
intense heat. One woman when examined avowed that she was wet through
all day long, and had drawn coal carts till her skin came off. Women
and young children of six years old drew coal along the passages of
the mines, crawling on all fours with a girdle passing round their
waists, harnessed by a chain between their legs to the cart. A
sub-commissioner in Scotland reported that he “found a little girl,
six years of age, carrying half a cwt., and making regularly fourteen
long journeys a day. The height ascended and the distance along the
road exceeded in each journey the height of St. Paul’s Cathedral.”
“I have repeatedly worked,” said one girl seventeen years of age,
“for twenty-four hours.” The ferocity of the men was worse than that
of wild beasts; and children were often maimed and sometimes killed
with impunity. Drunkenness was naturally general. Short lives and
brutal ones were the rule. The men, it was said, “die off like rotten
sheep; and each generation is commonly extinct soon after fifty.”
Such was a large part of industrial England under the unrestrained
rule of the capitalist. There can be no doubt that far greater misery
prevailed than in the Southern States during the era of slavery. The
slave was property--often valuable property; and it did not pay his
owner to ill-treat him to such a degree as to render him useless as a
wealth-producer. But if the “free” Englishman were injured or killed,
thousands could be had to fill his place for nothing.
Had this state of things continued we should have returned to a state
of nature with a vengeance. Of man thus depicted we may say with
Tennyson:
“Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match’d with him.”
It was evident that capitalist monopoly must be restrained, reluctant
as English statesmen brought up under the commercial system were to
interfere. The zenith of _laisser faire_ was at the close of the last
century; but a great fabric often looks most imposing shortly before
it begins to collapse. The first piece of labor legislation was the
Morals and Health Act of 1802, which interfered with the accommodation
provided to children by the employers, to which reference has been
made. The Cotton Mills Act was passed in 1819, partly owing to the
exertions of Robert Owen. It limited the age at which children
might work in factories; and it limited the time of their labor to
seventy-two hours per week. Seventy-two hours for a child of nine who
ought to have been playing in the green fields! And even that was a
vast improvement on the previous state of things. Saturday labor was
next shortened by an Act passed by the Radical politician, Sir John
Cam Hobhouse, in 1825. Workmen, Radicals, Tories and Philanthropists
then joined in an agitation under Mr. Richard Oastler, a Conservative
member of Parliament, to secure a Ten Hours’ Bill. Hobhouse tried by
a Bill introduced in 1831 to reduce the time in textile industries;
but he was beaten by the northern manufacturers. However, Althorp, the
Whig leader, who had helped to defeat Hobhouse, was obliged himself
to introduce a measure by which night work was prohibited to young
persons, and the hours of work were reduced to sixty-nine a week.
Cotton-mill owners were at the same time disqualified for acting as
justices in cases of infringement of the law. This measure is regarded
by Dr. E. Von Plener in his useful manual as the first real Factory
Act. Mr. Thomas Sadler, who had succeeded Oastler as leader in the
cause of the factory operatives, brought in a Bill in 1832 limiting the
hours of labor for persons under eighteen; but it was met by a storm of
opposition from manufacturing members and withdrawn.
To Sadler succeeded that excellent man, who has perhaps done more for
the working-classes than any other public man of our time, Lord Ashley,
better known as Lord Shaftesbury. And here let me pause to point out
that it was the Radicals and a large section of the Tories who took
the side of the operatives against the Whigs, official Conservatives
and manufacturing class. The latter class is sometimes regarded as
Liberal. I think the truth is, that it captured and held for some
time the Liberal fort, and made Liberalism identical with its policy
and interests. If the men of this class had the cynical candor of
Mr. Jay Gould, they might have imitated his reply when examined by a
legislative committee: “What are your politics, Mr. Gould?” “Well,
in a Republican district I am Republican, in a Democratic district
I am a Democrat; but I am always an Erie Railroad man.” One of Lord
Ashley’s strong opponents was Sir Robert Peel, the son of a Lancashire
capitalist; but the most bitter and persistent was Mr. John Bright.
Lord Ashley introduced a Ten Hours’ Bill which included adults. Lord
Althorp refused to legislate for adults, but himself passed an Act in
1833 prohibiting night work to those under eighteen; fixing forty-eight
hours per week as the maximum for children, and sixty-nine for young
persons; also providing for daily attendance at school, and certain
holidays in the year. As this Act repealed that of 1831, manufacturers
were again eligible to sit as justices in factory cases; and although
numerous infractions were reported by inspectors, the offenders in many
cases got off scot free. In 1840 Lord Ashley brought to the notice of
Parliament the condition of young people employed in mines; and through
his activity was passed the first Mining Act, prohibiting underground
work by women and by boys under ten. Peel then passed a consolidating
Factory Act in 1844. Lord Ashley proposed to restrict to ten per day
the working hours for young persons; but Peel defeated the proposal by
threatening to resign if it were carried. By the Act of 1844 the labor
of children was limited to six and a half hours per day; and they had
to attend school three hours daily during the first five days of the
week. The next year, 1845, Lord Ashley secured the passage of a Bill
forbidding night work to women. In 1847 Mr. Fielden introduced a Bill
limiting the time of labor for all women and young persons to eleven
hours per day, and after May, 1848, to ten hours. Peel and the factory
owners opposed; but the Bill was carried. The Act of 1850 further
reduced the legal working day for women and young persons; and an Act
of 1853 prohibited the employment of children before 6 A.M. or after 6
P.M. In 1860 bleaching and dyeing works were subjected to the factory
laws. Further legislation on this branch of industry took place in
1870. A Mines Act was passed in 1860, and made more stringent in 1862
with reference to safety and ventilation. Acts with reference to the
lace industry were passed in the years 1861-64, to bakehouses in 1863,
chimney-sweeping and pottery works in 1864. The Workshops Regulation
Act, relating to small trades and handicrafts, was passed in 1867, and
a consolidating Factory and Workshops Act in 1871. The Act now in force
is the Factory and Workshops Act, 1878, modified in respect of certain
industries by the Act of 1883. Further Acts relative to the regulations
of mines were passed in 1872 and 1887.
This brief and imperfect survey of the legislation which has destroyed
the _régime_ of _laisser faire_ is sufficient for my purpose to
prove: (1) That with private property in the necessary instruments of
production, individual liberty as understood by the eighteenth century
reformers must be more and more restricted, _i. e._, that in our
existing economic condition individualism is impossible and absurd.
(2) That even hostile or indifferent politicians have been compelled
to recognize this. (3) That unrestrained capitalism tends as surely to
cruelty and oppression as did feudalism or chattel slavery. (4) That
the remedy has been, as a matter of fact, of a Socialistic character,
involving collective checking of individual greed and the paring of
slices off the profits of capital in the interests of the working
community. These four propositions can scarcely be contested.
The immense development of English industry under the conditions
previously set forth was due in great degree to the fact that England
had secured an immense foreign market in which she had for a long time
no formidable rival. Most of the wars in which England was engaged
during the eighteenth century are quite unintelligible until it is
understood that they were commercial wars intended to secure commercial
supremacy for England. The overthrow of the Stuart monarchy was
directly associated with the rise to supreme power of the rich middle
class, especially the London merchants. The revolution of 1688 marks
the definite advent to political power of this class, which found
the Whig party the great instrument for effecting its designs. The
contrast between the old Tory squire who stood for Church and King,
and the new commercial magnate who stood by the Whigs and the House
of Hanover, is well drawn by Sir Walter Scott in “Rob Roy.” The Banks
of England and Scotland and the National Debt are among the blessings
conferred on their descendants by the new mercantile rulers. They also
began the era of corruption in politics which is always connected
closely with predominance of capitalists in the State, as we see in
France, the United States and the British Colonies. “The desire of
the moneyed classes,” says Mr. Lecky,[52] “to acquire political power
at the expense of the country gentlemen was the first and one of the
chief causes of that political corruption which soon overspread the
whole system of parliamentary government.” What remained of the old
aristocracy often found it convenient to form alliances with the new
plutocracy; and it was this combination which governed England during
the eighteenth century, and which specially determined her foreign
policy. That policy was directed towards the securing of foreign
markets and the extension of English trade. Napoleon’s sneer at the
“nation of shopkeepers” was not undeserved. The conquest of Canada, the
conquest of India under Clive and Warren Hastings--the latter an agent
of a great capitalist body, who illustrated well in his Indian career
the methods of his class--the Colonial policy, the base destruction of
Irish manufactures in the interest of English capitalists, were all
part of the same scheme. The policy was successfully consummated in
the war waged by Pitt against the French Revolution. That revolution
was itself brought about mainly by poverty. Not only was the French
peasantry beggared; but some of the new machinery which had been
brought from England had thrown many persons out of work. It was mainly
unemployed workmen who stormed and captured the Bastille.[53] The chief
counterblast to the Revolution was prepared by Pitt. What were his
motives? The Austrian and Prussian monarchs, the emigrant nobles, the
imbecile English king and the Tory English bishops may perhaps have
seriously believed that England was fighting for altar and throne. But
Pitt was under no such delusion. While he derived from his illustrious
father a real pride in England, his divinities were rather the ledger
and the cash-box. He was no bigot: even while an undergraduate at
Cambridge he was a close student of Adam Smith; he started in public
life as a reformer, and his refusal to bow to the ignorant prejudices
of George III cost him office in 1801. It has been abundantly proved
that at first he felt no violent antipathy to the Revolution. A long
period elapsed before he was brought to join the monarchical alliance.
But he was essentially the great capitalist statesman, the political
successor of Walpole, the political predecessor of Peel. He saw that
French conquest might threaten seriously the English social fabric, and
that if England’s chief rival were struck down, the English commercial
class might gain control of the world’s commerce. To secure that end he
skilfully welded together all the moneyed interests, the contractors,
landlords, financiers and shopkeepers; and he tried to persuade the
simpler portion of the country that he was fighting for the sacred
cause of religion and morality. Those who resisted him he flung into
prison or transported beyond the seas. When the long war was brought to
an end, the working-classes were in a wretched condition; although in
those days also there were sophistical politicians who tried to prove
that never had the people so much reason to be contented. When, in
1823, the Lancashire weavers petitioned Parliament to look into their
grievances, an honorable member, who had presumably dined well if
not wisely, had the audacity to declare that the weavers were better
off than the capitalists--an observation not dissimilar to those we
have heard in more recent times. As a matter of fact, the landlords,
through protection and high rents--the capitalists, through enormous
profits, were enriched “beyond the dreams of avarice.” But the time
had come for a conflict between these two classes: the conflict which
is known as the Free Trade controversy. Protection was no longer
needed by the manufacturers, who had supremacy in the world-market,
unlimited access to raw material, and a long start of the rest of the
world in the development of machinery and in industrial organization.
The landlord class, on the other hand, was absolutely dependent on
Protection, because the economic isolation of England by means of
import duties maintained the high prices of food which were the source
of the high agricultural rents. Capitalist interests, on the contrary,
were bound up with the interaction between England and the rest of the
world; and the time had come when the barriers which had prevented that
interaction must be pulled down. The triumph of Free Trade therefore
signifies economically the decay of the old landlord class pure and
simple, and the victory of capitalism. The capitalist class was
originally no fonder of Free Trade than the landlords. It destroyed in
its own interest the woollen manufacture in Ireland; and it would have
throttled the trade of the Colonies had it not been for the successful
resistance of Massachusetts and Virginia. It was Protectionist so long
as it suited its purpose to be so. But when cheap raw material was
needed for its looms, and cheap bread for its workers: when it feared
no foreign competitor, and had established itself securely in India, in
North America, in the Pacific; then it demanded Free Trade. “Nothing in
the history of political imposture,” says Mr. Lecky, “is more curious
than the success with which, during the Anti-Corn Law agitation, the
notion was disseminated that on questions of Protection and Free Trade
the manufacturing classes have been peculiarly liberal and enlightened,
and the landed classes peculiarly selfish and ignorant. It is indeed
true that when in the present century the pressure of population
on subsistence had made a change in the Corn Laws inevitable, the
manufacturing classes placed themselves at the head of a Free Trade
movement from which they must necessarily have derived the chief
benefit, while the entire risk and sacrifice were thrown upon others.
But it is no less true that there is scarcely a manufacture in England
which has not been defended in the spirit of the narrowest and most
jealous monopoly; and the growing ascendancy of the commercial classes
after the Revolution is nowhere more apparent than in the multiplied
restrictions of the English Commercial Code.”[54]
Cheap raw material having been secured by the English manufacturer
through a series of enactments extending over a generation; and
machinery having been so developed as to enormously increase
production, England sent her textile and metal products all over the
world; and her manufacturers supported exactly that policy which
enabled them to secure markets for their goods or raw produce to work
up in their mills. Cobdenism was in the ascendant; and the State was
more and more regarded from the commercial point of view. The so-called
“Manchester school” was in the main a peace party, because war weakens
that confidence on which commerce is based. But this attachment to
peace principles did not prevent Cobden himself from declaring for a
powerful navy as an instrument of commercial insurance. Nor did it
prevent Manchester from supporting Palmerston’s nefarious Chinese
policy in 1857, or the equally nefarious aggression in Egypt in 1882:
both being regarded as helpful to Manchester trade. In behalf of this
extension of English trade to new markets war has been made on China,
Egypt, the Soudan, Burmah, and Thibet. Germany follows England with
cautious tread. Adventurers like Emin, Stanley, and Bartelott are
employed to “open up” Africa to the gentle influences of civilization
by the agency of rum and revolver, under the pretence of putting down
the slave trade. France, not to be behind, exploits Tonquin in the
interests of Paris speculators. An unscrupulous government in Italy
attempts to divert the attention of the country from domestic reforms
to expeditions in Africa in the interests of moneyed people in Europe.
Perhaps the greatest move is yet to come: the move on the vast market
of China. For this England, America, France, and Germany will compete.
Tentative steps are already being taken. By her absorption of Burmah
and her operations in Thibet, England is approaching nearer to China.
By her acquisition of Tonquin, France has been brought into actual
contact with China. America will probably, by a judicious reduction
of her tariff, compete with England all over the Pacific, and will
send her goods from the Atlantic ports through the Panama or Nicaragua
Canal of the near future. In short, the machinery for the wholesale
exploitation of Asia and Africa is in rapid progress. The whole globe
will soon be the private property of the capitalist class.
The appropriation of the planet has been powerfully aided by the
developments of transport and communication in our time: indeed, it
would have been impossible without them. The mere application of
machinery to production could not have produced the economic results
of to-day but for the shrinkage of the globe caused by railways and
telegraphs. For it is through these inventions that the capitalist
class has become cosmopolitan, has broken up old habits, destroyed
local associations, spared nothing either beautiful or venerable
where profit was concerned. It has assimilated the conditions of life
in various lands, and has brought about a general uniformity which
accounts for much of the ennui felt in modern life.
As England was the first country to develop machine industry, so
was she the first to develop railways and to form a powerful steam
mercantile marine. Through the latter agency she has now in her
hands about sixty-four per cent of the carrying trade of the world.
Within sixty years about 350,000 miles of railway have been built
throughout the globe. Atlantic and Pacific are united by several
lines of steel; while the locomotive has penetrated remote regions
of Africa inhabited by barbarous tribes, and wastes of central Asia
where it confronts the relics of the dead and buried civilizations.
This immense power, the greatest in the modern world, is mainly in
the hands of monopolist corporations, among whom there is the same
necessary tendency to aggregation, only far more marked, as is found
in productive industries. The first small lines built to connect towns
not far off have been added to others bit by bit; as from the original
Stockton and Darlington Railway, less than twenty miles long, we get
the great and wealthy North Eastern Railway of to-day. In America a
single corporation controls as much as 7,000 miles of rail: and the
end of the century will perhaps see the great Siberian Pacific in
actual existence. As in railways, so in steam vessels. Huge fleets
like the Cunard, the Orient, the Messageries Maritimes, are owned by
cosmopolitan capital, and sustain the traffic and commerce, not of a
country, not even of a continent, but of the whole world. Such is the
immense revolution in the methods of distribution effected in our time
by the operation of capitalism.
We must now consider what the term “capitalist” is coming to signify.
Had the term been used half a century ago it would have connoted a
class, unscrupulous perhaps in the main, with low aims, little culture,
and less fine sympathy or imagination. It was nevertheless a socially
useful class, which at that time performed real service. It is a
leading thought in modern philosophy that in its process of development
each institution tends to cancel itself. Its special function is born
out of social necessities: its progress is determined by attractions
or repulsions which arise in society, producing a certain effect which
tends to negate the original function. Thus early society among the
Aryan peoples of Europe develops a leader in war or council who grows,
by processes which in England, _e. g._, can be clearly traced, into a
king with genuine functions, a leader of the people in war like William
I, or a powerful civil ruler and statesman like Henry I. The fact that
such men were brutal or wicked is of little account: the important
fact about them is, that in a barbarous chaotic society they performed
some indispensable services. But the very putting forth of the kingly
power arouses antagonism; then produces armed resistance by a combined
group; and finally leads to overthrow either by the destruction of the
king or by depriving him of all real power and reducing him to a mere
ornamental puppet. The very power originally believed to be beneficent
becomes tyrannical: it needs to be checked more and more, until finally
it practically ceases to exist, and the curious paradox is seen of a
monarch who does not rule. History proves abundantly that men do not
rise and overthrow wicked and corrupt rulers merely because they are
wicked and corrupt. It is part of the terrible irony of history that
a Louis XV dies in his bed, while a William the Silent or a Lincoln
falls a victim to the assassin. What men do not long tolerate is either
obstructiveness or uselessness.
Now, if we apply these ideas to the evolution of the capitalist,
what is it we see? The capitalist was originally an _entrepreneur_,
a manager who worked hard at his business, and who received what
economists have called the “wages of superintendence.” So long as
the capitalist occupied that position, he might be restrained and
controlled in various ways; but he could not be got rid of. His “wages
of superintendence” were certainly often exorbitant; but he performed
real functions; and society, as yet unprepared to take those functions
upon itself, could not afford to discharge him. Yet, like the King, he
had to be restrained by the legislation already referred to; for his
power involved much suffering to his fellows. But now the capitalist is
fast becoming absolutely useless. Finding it easier and more rational
to combine with others of his class in a large undertaking, he has
now abdicated his position of overseer, has put in a salaried manager
to perform his work for him, and has become a mere rent or interest
receiver. The rent or interest he receives is paid for the use of a
monopoly which not he, but a whole multitude of people, created by
their joint efforts.
It was inevitable that this differentiation of manager and capitalist
should arise. It is part of the process of capitalist evolution due
to machine industry. As competition led to waste in production, so it
led to the cutting of profits among capitalists. To prevent this the
massing of capital was necessary, by which the large capitalists could
undersell his small rivals by offering, at prices below anything they
could afford to sell at, goods produced by machinery and distributed
by a plexus of agencies initially too costly for any individual
competitor to purchase or set on foot. Now for such massive capitals,
the contributions of several capitalists are needed; and hence has
arisen the Joint Stock Company or _Compagnie Anonyme_. Through this new
capitalist agency a person in England can hold stock in an enterprise
at the Antipodes which he has never visited and never intends to
visit, and which, therefore, he cannot “superintend” in any way. He
and the other shareholders put in a manager with injunctions to be
economical. The manager’s business is to earn for his employers the
largest dividends possible: if he does not do so he is dismissed. The
old personal relation between the workers and the employer is gone;
instead thereof remains merely the cash nexus. To secure high dividends
the manager will lower wages. If that is resisted there will probably
be either a strike or lock-out. Cheap labor will be perhaps imported by
the manager; and if the work-people resist by intimidation or organized
boycotting, the forces of the State (which they help to maintain) will
be used against them. In the majority of cases they must submit.
Such is a not unfair picture of the relation of capitalist to workman
to-day: the former having become an idle dividend-receiver. The dictum
of orthodox political economy, uttered by so competent an authority as
the late Professor Cairnes, runs:--
“It is important, on moral no less than on economic grounds, to
insist upon this, that no public benefit of any kind arises from the
existence of an idle rich class. The wealth accumulated by their
ancestors and others on their behalf, where it is employed as capital,
no doubt helps to sustain industry; but what they consume in luxury
and idleness is not capital, and helps to sustain nothing but their
own unprofitable lives. By all means they must have their rents and
interest, as it is written in the bond; but let them take their proper
place as drones in the hive, gorging at a feast to which they have
contributed nothing.”[55]
The fact that the modern capitalist may be not only useless but
positively obstructive was well illustrated at a meeting of the
shareholders of the London and South Western Railway on 7th February
last. Three shareholders urged a reduction in third-class fares. The
chairman pointed out the obvious fact that such a reduction would
probably lower the dividend, and asked the meeting if that was what
they wished. He was, of course, answered by a chorus of “No, no!” and
all talk of reduction of fares was at an end. Here is a plain sample
(hundreds might be quoted) of the evident interests of the public being
sacrificed to those of the capitalist.
That joint-stock capitalism is extending rapidly everyone knows. In
the United States, according to Mr. Bryce, the wealth of joint-stock
corporations is estimated at one-fourth of the total value of all
property.[56] In England every kind of business, from breweries, banks,
and cotton-mills down to automatic sweetmeat machines, is falling into
the hands of the joint-stock capitalist, and must continue to do so.
Twenty years ago who would have supposed that a brewery like that of
Guinness or such a banking firm as Glyn Mills, and Co. would become
a joint-stock company? Yet we know it is so to-day. Capitalism is
becoming impersonal and cosmopolitan. And the combinations controlling
production become larger and fewer. Baring’s are getting hold of the
South African diamond fields: A few companies control the whole
anthracite coal produce of Pennsylvania. Each one of us is quite “free”
to “compete” with these gigantic combinations, as the Principality of
Monaco is “free” to go to war with France should the latter threaten
her interests. The mere forms of freedom remain; but monopoly renders
them nugatory. The modern State, having parted with the raw material
of the globe, cannot secure freedom of competition to its citizens;
and yet it was on the basis of free competition that capitalism rose.
Thus we see that capitalism has cancelled its original principle--is
itself negating its own existence. Before considering its latest
forms, attention may here be conveniently directed to the Co-operative
movement, which is, on one side at any rate, closely allied to the
joint-stock development.
The Co-operative movement had in England a Socialistic origin: for
its founder was Robert Owen. As Mr. Seligman says very truly in
the _Political Science Quarterly_: “Owen was the founder of the
Co-operative movement in England, a fact often ignored by those who
glibly use the word to-day with an utter failure to discern its
true significance.” And Owen himself avowed that his grand ultimate
object was “community in land,” with which he hoped would be combined
“unrestrained co-operation on the part of all, for every purpose of
human life.” It is thus important to associate co-operation with Robert
Owen--_clarum et venerabile nomen_--because there are many persons who
suppose that co-operation began with the Rochdale Pioneers in 1844.
What the Rochdale movement really did was to commence the process of
joint-stock shop-keeping, a very different thing from that which Owen
had in view.
A powerful impetus was given to co-operation by the Christian Socialist
movement under Maurice and Kingsley. “Of all narrow, conceited,
hypocritical, anarchic and atheistic schemes of the Universe,” said
Kingsley, “The Cobden and Bright one is exactly the worst.” The
orthodox economic conclusions of the day fared badly at Kingsley’s
hands. “The man who tells us,” said he, “that we ought to investigate
Nature, simply to sit patiently under her, and let her freeze, and
ruin, and starve, and stink us to death, is a goose, whether he
calls himself a chemist or a political economist.” These Christian
Socialist leaders felt deeply the anguish and poverty of the workers
and the selfish apathy of the rich. “Mammon,” says Kingsley, “shrieks
benevolently whenever a drunken soldier is flogged; but he trims his
paletot and adorns his legs with the flesh of men and the skins of
women, with degradation, pestilence, heathendom, and despair; and then
chuckles complacently over his tailor’s bills. Hypocrite! straining
at a gnat and swallowing a camel.” All this is very admirable; but
cheap clothes are not made solely or chiefly for Mammon, but for
the masses, who are poor people. It is part of the sad irony of the
situation that the great majority are obliged to accept the alternative
of cheap clothes or none at all. And as the English climate and the
British matron combine to exercise an absolute veto over the latter
form of prehistoric simplicity, it follows that one portion of the
working-classes must, in order to be clothed, connive at the sweating
of another portion.
The _Christian Socialist_, which was the organ of Maurice and
Kingsley, betrayed great simplicity as to the real nature of the
economic problem. It neglected Owen’s principle of “community in
land,” and supposed that by working together and selling articles
of good quality at a fair price poverty could be eliminated, while
yet every worker in the community was paying his tribute of economic
rent to the owners of the instruments of production. Thus the
movement had no economic basis; and when the moral idealism had
departed from it, no wonder that it degenerated into mere “divvy”
hunting and joint-stock shop-keeping. The economic advantages of
joint-stock shop-keeping are thus summed up by Mr. Robert Somers in
the “Encyclopædia Britannica” (Art., “Co-operation”): “Wholesome
commodities, ready-money payments, a dividend of from five to ten
per cent on share capital, and a bonus to non-members on the amount
of their purchases.” As joint-stock shop-keeping, co-operation is a
useful and cheap method of distribution, which has doubtless benefited
a considerable number of persons; but the notion that it can solve the
economic problem before society is “chimerical,” as Dr. J. K. Ingram
tells us is the opinion of modern economists.[57] This, indeed, might
only be expected from the fact that 961 out of every 1,000 persons
in England die without furniture, investments, or effects worth
£300.[58] Economically considered, co-operation is, now that the
initial enthusiasm has died out of it, a subsidiary branch of the great
joint-stock enterprise. Ethically considered, its results are often
doubtful. In its chief stronghold, Lancashire, one observes a narrow
selfishness among its votaries, which could not be surpassed in the
most genteel quarters of Bayswater. Its ideal is not the raising of
the working class as a whole, but the raising of certain persons out
of the working into the middle class. If the advocates of co-operation
will abate their pretensions, and claim merely (1) that their method
is a useful and economic means of distribution among the lower-middle
and upper-working classes; and (2) that by its agency working men can
learn the important functions of organization and administration, their
claim will be freely admitted. But if they go further their vaulting
ambition will o’erleap itself. At the present rate of progress made
by co-operative societies as compared with joint-stock capitalist
companies, several generations will be in their graves before any deep
or general impression is made. And meanwhile, unless economic rent is
diverted from the class which at present absorbs it to the community
which creates it, co-operators, like the rest of us, must pay tribute
to the lords of the soil and of money. But the noteworthy fact about
co-operation, is that its very existence testifies to the process of
industrial and capitalist aggregation here insisted on as the great
social factor of our period. For co-operative societies supersede
individual by social distribution, effecting it without the waste
attendant on a number of little shops all competing against each other,
the owners of none of which can make a decent living. Co-operation,
therefore, well illustrates the economic evolution of the present age.
I now come to treat of the latest forms of capitalism, the “ring” and
the “trust,” whereby capitalism cancels its own principles, and, as a
seller, replaces competition by combination. When capitalism buys labor
as a commodity it effects the purchase on the competitive principle.
Its indefinitely extended market enables it to do so; for it knows
that the workman must sell his labor to secure the means to live.
Other things being equal, therefore, it buys its labor in the cheapest
market. But when it turns round to face the public as a seller, it
casts the maxims of competition to the winds, and presents itself as
a solid combination. Competition, necessary at the outset, is found
ultimately, if unchecked, to be wasteful and ruinous. It entails
great expense in advertising; it necessitates the employment of much
unproductive labor; it tends to the indefinite lowering of prices; it
produces gluts and crises, and renders business operations hazardous
and precarious. To escape these consequences, the competing persons or
firms agree to form a close combination to keep up prices, to augment
profits, to eliminate useless labor, to diminish risk, and to control
the output. This is a “ring,” which is thus a federation of companies.
The best examples of “rings” and “pools” are to be found in America,
where capitalism is more unrestrained and bolder in its operations than
in Europe; and also where nearly all the active intellect is attracted
to those commercial pursuits that dominate American life.
The individualist devotees of _laisser faire_ used to teach us
that when restrictions were removed, free competition would settle
everything. Prices would go down, and fill the “consumer” with joy
unspeakable; the fittest would survive; and as for the rest--it was
not very clear what would become of them, and it really didn’t matter.
No doubt the “consumer” has greatly benefited by the increase in
production and the fall in prices; but where is “free competition”
now? Almost the only persons still competing freely are the small
shopkeepers, trembling on the verge of insolvency, and the workingmen,
competing with one another for permission to live by work. Combination
is absorbing commerce. Here are a few instances of the formation of
rings.
A steel rail combination was some years ago formed among previously
competing firms in America. This combination discovered that too many
rails were being made and that prices were being cut. Accordingly, one
of the mills in the combination--the Vulcan mill of St. Louis--was
closed, and stood smokeless for years: its owners meanwhile receiving a
subsidy of $400,000 a year from the other mills in the combination for
_not_ making rails. That is how the owners of the Vulcan mill earned
their “wages of superintendence.” It is needless to add that no payment
was made to the men for _not_ working: they were thrown on the streets
to meditate on the right to “liberty and the pursuit of happiness,”
secured to them by the Declaration of Independence.
Or, again, take the case of the anthracite coal lands of Pennsylvania,
occupying an area of some 270,000 acres, and held by the Reading
Coal and Iron Company, the Lehigh Valley Railroad, the Delaware,
Lackawanna and Western Railroad, the Delaware and Hudson Railroad,
the Pennsylvania Railroad, the Pennsylvania Coal Company, and smaller
firms and corporations tributary to these. The rich owners, popularly
known as the “coal barons,” agree to fix absolutely the wholesale price
of coal, always securing an immense rise just before the winter sets
in. There is no such thing known or possible as free trade or open
competition in the anthracite coal produce of America.
Combinations in the United States have been made by the Western
millers, the New York icemen, Boston fish dealers, manufacturers of
sewer-pipe, copper miners, makers of lamps, pottery, glass, hoop-iron,
shot, rivets, candy, starch, sugar, preserved fruits, glucose, chairs,
vapor stoves, lime, rubber, screws, chains, harvesting machinery, pins,
salt, hardware, type, brass tubing, silk and wire. In these trades
freedom of production and sale has been for a time partially or wholly
destroyed. The American business man is very angry when boycotting
is resorted to by workmen; but he is quite ready to boycott others
when his interests lead that way. The stamped tinware makers in 1882,
formed a ring and expelled members who sold at lower prices than the
fixed rates, and refused to allow anyone in the pool to sell to the
offenders. Some of the previous facts are taken from an article by Mr.
Henry D. Lloyd,[59] who has investigated capitalist combinations with
much knowledge and insight. From the same article I quote the following:
“On the 1st of April, 1882, when the rest of us were lost in the
reckless gaity of All Fools’ Day, forty-one tack manufacturers
found out that there were too many tacks, and formed the Central
Manufacturing Company of Boston, with 3,000,000 dollars capital. The
tack-mills in the combination ran about three days in the week. When
this combination a few weeks ago silenced a Pittsburg rival by buying
him out, they did not remove the machinery. The dead chimneys and idle
machines will discourage new men from starting another factory, or can
be run to ruin them if they are not to be discouraged in any other
way. The first fruits of the tack-pool were an increase of prices to
twice what they had been.”
Again I quote Mr. Lloyd:
“The men who make our shrouds and coffins have formed a close
corporation known as the ‘National Burial Case Association,’ and held
their annual convention in Chicago last year. Their action to keep up
prices and keep down the number of coffins was secret, lest mortality
should be discouraged.”
From coffins to crackers is a short step in the study of capitalist
methods:
“The Western Cracker Bakers’ Association met in Chicago, in February,
to consider among other things ‘the reprehensible system of cutting
prices’ (_i. e._, the reprehensible system of free competition which
capitalists in buying labor tell us is our salvation). They first had
a banquet. After their ‘merriment and diversion’ the revellers, true
to Adam Smith’s description, turned to consider ‘some contrivance to
raise prices.’ ‘The price-lists were perfected,’ said the newspaper
report; ‘and then they adjourned.’”
In 1875 broke out a severe competition among the fire insurance
companies, upon the collapse of a previous pool; and the competition
cost them in New York City alone $17,500,000 in seven years.
Consequently in 1882 they made a new combination which covered the
whole country, and which Mr. Lloyd declares to be wealthy, cohesive,
and powerful. Though there is no pool or ring, I am credibly informed
that there is a common understanding among the fire insurance companies
of London. One of the most noted of combinations has been the great
Copper Syndicate which attracted world-wide attention early in 1888.
It was formed by some French speculators in October, 1887, and during
the eighteen months of its existence, maintained copper at a purely
arbitrary price in all the markets of the world. At its head was M.
Eugène Secretan, managing director of the Société des Métaux, the
world’s largest buyer of, and dealer in, manufactured copper. The
syndicate’s agents bought all the copper that was visible and for
sale, the result of their speculation being that the price of copper
in the London market rose from less than £40 to over £80 a ton, and
the price of Lake Superior copper in America rose from 10¹⁄₂ cents to
17³⁄₄ cents per pound. M. Secretan informed a London journal that his
designs were purely philanthropic. “Our only purpose,” said he, “is
that every miner, dealer and manufacturer should have fair remuneration
for his work.” Thanks to M. Secretan’s philanthropy, copper, tin, lead
and spelter rose enormously in price; several trades were more or
less paralysed; and in France large numbers of workmen were thrown
out of employment. And let it not be supposed that the suicide of M.
Denfert-Rochereau, which heralded the collapse of this first attempt
to corner the world’s copper--a collapse due to a miscalculation of
the extent to which the supply of copper could increase under the
stimulus of high prices--offers us any security against a repetition
of the attempt. On the contrary, it has shewn how the thing may be
safely done. The metal hoarded by the unlucky speculators is still so
far cornered that it has been kept off the market up to the present,
prices being not yet normal. “To a regular trust it must and will come
at last,” says Mr. E. Benjamin Andrews, of Cornell University. “Nor
has aught taken place to indicate that a Copper Trust, organized like
the Standard Oil Trust, with its energy and relentless methods, would
fail.”[60]
The Individualist who supposes that Free Trade plus private property
will solve all economic problems is naturally surprised at these
“rings,” which upset all his crude economic notions; and he very
illogically asks for legislation to prevent the natural and inevitable
results of the premises with which he starts. It is amusing to note
that those who advocate what they call self-reliance and self-help are
the first to call on the State to interfere with the natural results of
that self-help, of that private enterprise, when it has overstepped a
purely arbitrary limit. Why, on ordinary commercial principles, should
not a copper syndicate grasp all the copper in the world? It is merely
the fittest surviving. The whole case against Socialism is assumed by
its most intelligent opponents to lie in that Darwinian theory. And yet
when the copper syndicate or the “coal barons” survive, they arouse
against themselves the fiercest and, from the commercial point of view,
the most unreasonable antagonism. As sin when it is finished is said
to bring forth death, so capitalism when it is finished brings forth
monopoly. And one might as well quarrel with that plain fact as blame
thorns because they do not produce grapes, or thistles because they are
barren of figs.
The story of the growth of capitalism is not yet complete. The
“ring” is being succeeded by a more elaborate organization known as
the “trust.” Although in England great combinations like the Salt
Union are rapidly rising, yet we must again travel to America to
learn what the so-called “trust” is. The fullest information on the
subject of trusts is contained in a report of a Committee of the New
York State Legislature, which was appointed to investigate the new
combination. The following trusts were inquired into: Sugar, milk,
rubber, cotton-seed oil, envelope, elevator, oil-cloth, Standard oil,
butchers’, glass, and furniture. A trust is defined by the Committee as
a combination “to destroy competition and to restrain trade through the
stockholders therein combining with other corporations or stockholders
to form a joint-stock company of corporations, in effect renouncing
the powers of such several corporations, and placing all powers in the
hands of trustees.” The general purposes and effects are stated to
be “to control the supply of commodities and necessities; to destroy
competition; to regulate the quality; and to keep the cost to the
consumer at prices far beyond their fair and equitable value.” It
is unnecessary to deal with all these trusts, which possess certain
features in common. I will select one or two, particularly the great
Standard Oil Trust and the Cotton-seed Oil Trust.
The Standard Oil Trust is probably the largest single business
monopoly in the world, the value of all its included interests being
estimated, according to the evidence submitted, at £29,600,000. In the
report it is described as “one of the most active and possibly the
most formidable monied power on this continent. Its influence reaches
into every State, and is felt in remote villages; and the products of
its refineries seek a market in almost every seaport on the globe.”
The germ of this huge monopoly was a small petroleum refinery near
Cleveland, bought by one Rockefeller, a book-keeper in a store, and a
friend of his, a porter, with borrowed money. Rockefeller formed an
acquaintance with a rich whiskey distiller, who advanced money and
put his son-in-law Flagler into the business. This person’s doctrines
are thus described: “He says that there is no damned sentiment about
business; that he knows no friendship in trade; and that if he gets
his business rival in a hole he means to keep him there.” Such a man
is eminently fitted to be the founder of a monopoly: he is a hero of
self-help; for he helps himself to anything he can lay his hands on.
A second refinery was established in Ohio, and a warehouse opened in
New York. The concern grew, and was incorporated as the Standard Oil
Company. It is charged with having secured special legislation by
judicious expenditure in the lobbies of the Ohio and Pennsylvania
Legislatures. By entering into arrangements with the trunk railway
lines, it secured special rates for transit. New refineries were
established and new oil lands in Pennsylvania acquired; the capital
was increased; and an enormous yearly business was done. After a time
the company controlled every avenue of transportation; managed all
the largest refineries in the land; and was able to shut off every
competitor from either receiving supplies or shipping its products.
New companies, nominally distinct, but all under the control of the
same men, were incorporated in New Jersey, Ohio, West Virginia and
other States. The monopoly elected one of its chief stockholders
into the United States Senate, it is said, through bribery in the
Ohio Legislature over which body it certainly acquired strong hold.
These tactics were known as “coal oil politics.” All the dirty work
was, of course, done through agents, the directors pretending perfect
innocence. In 1882 the Standard Oil Companies were consolidated in the
Standard Oil Trust.[61] The stockholders surrendered their stock to the
trustees, nine in number, created under the agreement, and received
certificates in the place thereof, the representatives of the trust
and the stockholders in the refineries making a joint valuation of the
refineries, and the certificates being issued to that amount. Thus the
separate concerns were merged in one gigantic business, controlled by
nine men (owning a majority of the stock), having a monopoly of nearly
all the oil lands in America, controlling legislative votes, forming a
solid alliance with the railway and shipping interests, and determining
to a gallon how much oil shall be produced and refined, and to a
fraction of a cent what shall be its price. In 1887 there was a cash
dividend of 10 per cent. declared, besides a stock dividend of 20 per
cent. on the certificates of four years’ aggregation. In addition to
the enormous stock they hold, the trustees receive an annual salary of
£5,000. What are the economic results of this combination? It has not
raised prices, as the trusts were charged by the committee with doing.
On the contrary there has been a steady decrease in price during the
decade 1877-1887. The consumption of oil has also enormously increased.
The working and producing expenses have been greatly lowered by the
dismissal of needless labor and vast improvements in machinery; the
pipe lines controlled by the trust having displaced 5,700 teams of
horses and 11,400 men in handling the oil. Thus of this trust we may
say that though the means used to establish it were morally doubtful or
even bad, the political results disastrous, the economic results have
been beneficial, except in the matter of helping to form an unemployed
class through the dismissal of needless labor consequent on the
development of machinery.
The Cotton-seed Oil Trust was organized two or three years ago in the
State of Arkansas.[62] Upwards of seventy different companies had been
competing with each other and consequently suffering heavy losses.
Their mills being comparatively small and equipped with imperfect
machinery, they were glad to combine; and those that did not were
forced to close. The seventy corporations, the vast majority of the
members of which had agreed to the combination, surrendered their stock
to a body of trustees and received in return $100 certificates. The
various mills send a monthly report to the trust; and if the officers
in a given mill do not sell at the terms imposed, they are dismissed
by the trust.[63] The object of the trust was declared by a witness
to be to prevent bankruptcy, to improve methods, to find markets, to
develop the enterprise and to make money. The economic result has been
displacement of labor by the machinery and great economy in production.
Incidentally it came out that much cotton-seed oil was sold to the
French and Italian buyers, who mix it with a little olive oil and
export it back to America and to England, where a confiding public
purchases it as pure Tuscan olive oil--an interesting illustration of
international trade morality.
An examination of the milk and butchers’ trust ought to be a revelation
to those who imagine that trade is “free,” and that competition rules.
On April 29th, 1885, the directors of the Milk Exchange met in New York
and unanimously resolved:
“That on the first day of May next, and until otherwise ordered,
the market price of milk produced from meadow hay and sound cereals
be 2¹⁄₂ cents per quart, and that produced from brewers’ grains and
glucose and corn starch refuse be 2 cents per quart.”[64]
A representative of the Sheep and Lamb Butchers’ Mutual Benefit
Association testified that the members of that body agreed that they
would only buy sheep and calves from the Sheep Brokers’ Association,
a penalty for violation of this rule being imposed at the rate of 15
cents a head per sheep or calf. The absolute despotism, and the system
of espionage involved in such regulation is obvious. Here is a copy of
a document issued by this body:
“New York, January 9, 1888. Permission has been granted by the board
of trustees of this association to Simon Strauss to buy sheep and
lambs in New York markets, providing he buys no sheep and lambs from
outsiders, under penalty of 15 cents per head fine. Richard S. Tobin,
Secretary.”[65]
Occasionally the Association relaxed. On November 5th, 1887, according
to its minutes,
“The application of John Healey, No. 2, to be granted the privilege of
buying a few sheep and lambs without the 15 cents being charged to the
brokers, was favorably acted upon.”
This is not a record of Bagdad under the caliphs, but of the Republican
State of New York! The threatened despotism of Socialism has been often
eloquently dwelt on; but what of the actual despotism of to-day?
Now what does this examination of trusts show? That, granted private
property in the raw material out of which wealth is created on a huge
scale by the new inventions which science has placed in our hands, the
ultimate effect must be the destruction of that very freedom which
the modern democratic State posits as its first principle. Liberty to
trade, liberty to exchange products, liberty to buy where one pleases,
liberty to transport one’s goods at the same rate and on the same terms
enjoyed by others, subjection to no _imperium in imperio_: these surely
are all fundamental democratic principles. Yet by monopolies every one
of them is either limited or denied. Thus capitalism is apparently
inconsistent with democracy as hitherto understood. The development
of capitalism and that of democracy cannot proceed without check on
parallel lines. Rather are they comparable to two trains approaching
each other from different directions on the same line. Collision
between the opposing forces seems inevitable.
But both democracy and the new capitalist combinations which threaten
it are inevitable growths of an evolutionary process. We are therefore
brought to consider the question whether the ring, syndicate, or trust
either can or ought to be destroyed. These combinations can be shown to
be the most economical and efficient methods of organizing production
and exchange. They check waste, encourage machinery, dismiss useless
labor, facilitate transport, steady prices, and raise profits--i.e.,
they best effect the objects of trade from the capitalist’s point
of view. Now, the opponents of Socialism say that without this
enterprising capitalist we cannot live. He “provides employment,” they
say. Well, if we need him, we must obviously pay his price. If he has
a natural monopoly of a function indispensable to social progress,
society must concede the terms he imposes. These terms are briefly
large combinations of capitalist ownership. In this way he can best
organize business; if we do not choose to let him do it in this way,
he will not do it for us at all. From his point of view that is a fair
position to take up; and it places the Individualist opponent of trusts
in an awkward dilemma. For he must either submit to trusts or give up
capitalists, in which latter case he becomes a Socialist. The answer of
Socialism to the capitalist is that society can do without him, just
as society now does without the slave-owner or feudal lord, both of
whom were formerly regarded as necessary to the well-being and even the
very existence of society. In organizing its own business for itself,
society can employ, at whatever rate of remuneration may be needed to
call forth their powers, those capitalists who are skilled organizers
and administrators. But those who are mere dividend-receivers will no
longer be permitted to levy a contribution on labor, but must earn
their living by useful industry as other and better people have to do.
It may be said that society is not yet ripe for this transformation,
nor is it. The forms of the democratic State are not yet perfected, nor
has the economic evolution yet proceeded generally far enough, even in
England, not to speak of the less advanced European countries. Much yet
remains to be done through both the education of the intellect and the
development of a nobler public spirit. But on the other hand we seem
to be rapidly approaching such an _impasse_ that some very large and
definite extension of collective authority must be made. This would
seem to involve on one side general reduction of the hours of labor,
and on the other an attempt to absorb by the community a portion of
those social values which it creates. In reference to ground values it
may be anticipated that local democratic authorities will secure them
for the benefit of the people by any means which may be found expedient.
As regards the great combinations of capital, State action may take
one of three courses. It may prohibit and dissolve them; it may tax
and control them; or it may absorb and administer them. In either
case the Socialist theory is _ipso facto_ admitted, for each is a
confession that it is well to exercise a collective control over
industrial capital. If the first of these courses is taken a distinctly
retrogressive policy is definitely adopted, a policy of alarm at what
Mr. Cleveland called the “communism of capital,” a policy of reversion
to the chaos of “free competition,” and of cession of the undoubted
benefits which combination has secured. Such a policy would signify the
forcible prevention of acquisition of property, the very thing dearest
to the Individualist. If the powers of acquisition, now evidently
dependent on combination, are to be restricted, what becomes of the
“incentive to industry,” the “reward of abstinence,” and all the rest
of the worn out phrases which have so often done duty in the place
of argument? If the syndicate or the trust represents the legitimate
outcome of capitalism--if it is necessary to give order to trade and
to prevent the ruinous waste of unrestricted competition, how absurd
it is for the State to say to the capitalist: “You shall carry your
privileges of acquisition just up to the point where competition is
likely to ruin you; but there you shall stop. Immediately you and
your friends combine to prevent waste, to regulate production and
distribution, to apply new methods of manufacture, we shall absolutely
prevent you or restrain you by vexatious regulations.” To which the
capitalist may be supposed to reply: “I cannot fulfil my function in
society at this serious risk. I shall never know security--never be
even moderately sure of reaping that reward to which I am admittedly
entitled. If you intend to fetter my action in this way after having
proclaimed me free to own the raw material out of which wealth is
made--if you compel me to stop at a purely arbitrary line, I must
inform you that I am not going to undertake business on such terms.”
Would not the capitalist say something like this; and from his point of
view would he not be right?
If it were instantly possible to do so, we should take the capitalist
at his word; appropriate the necessary instruments of production;
and make them common property, the values they create accruing to
the community. But the human race generally contrives to exhaust
every device which stupidity can suggest before the right line of
action is ultimately taken. I think therefore that some probably
inefficient method of taxation and public control over combinations
will, as a matter of fact, be adopted. Such legislation will immensely
restrict individual liberty in certain directions, will produce much
friction, and may possibly hamper production; until by a long series
of experiments men shall discover what is the most reasonable way of
acquiring for the community as a whole the wealth which it produces.
But in any case individualism or anything whatever in the nature of
_laisser faire_ goes by the board.
And now, finally, what is the immediate policy for rational students
of economics and genuine social reformers to adopt? Their motto must
be, _Nulla vestigia retrorsum_. To all quack proposals they must offer
a steady resistance. These proposals will take the form of attempts to
bring back some economic condition out of which society has emerged.
One quack will desire to revive the old British yeomanry; another will
talk nonsense about “Fair Trade;” a third will offer to the rustic
“three acres and a cow”; while a fourth will see salvation in getting
rid of primogeniture and entail and “planting” prosperous laborers
on the soil--as though the laborers grew there like trees. Those who
understand the economic crisis may be ready and eager to support any
reform, however small, which is a genuine step forward: but they cannot
support any effort to call back the past. They may help to build a
new bridge across the gulf that separates us from the Co-operative
Commonwealth; but they can never repair the old broken-down structure
which leads back to Individualism. Instead, therefore, of attempting
to undo the work which capitalists are unconsciously doing for the
people, the real reformer will rather prepare the people, educated
and organized as a true industrial democracy, to take up the threads
when they fall from the weak hands of a useless possessing class. By
this means will the class struggle, with its greed, hate, and waste,
be ended, and the life hinted at by Whitman in his “Song of the
Exposition” be attained:
“Practical, peaceful life, the people’s life, the People themselves,
Lifted, illumined, bathed in peace--elate, secure in peace.”
FOOTNOTES:
[51] Enc. Brit., art. “Cotton.”
[52] “History of the Eighteenth Century,” i. 202.
[53] See the evidence contained in Vol. I of Mr. Morse Stephen’s
“History of the French Revolution.”
[54] History of the Eighteenth Century, iv, 450.
[55] “Some Leading Principles of Political Economy,” p. 32.
[56] “The American Commonwealth,” iii, note on p. 421.
[57] “Encyclopædia Britannica”: Art., “Political Economy.”
[58] Mulhall: “Dictionary of Statistics.”
[59] “Lords of Industry.” _North American Review_, June, 1884.
[60] Quarterly Journal of Economics, July, 1889.
[61] Report of Senate Committee, p. 419.
[62] Report of Senate Committee, p. 233, _et seq._
[63] Report, p. 244.
[64] Report of Senate Committee, p. 305.
[65] Report of Senate Committee, p. 497.
MORAL.
BY SYDNEY OLIVIER.
The argument of this fourth instalment of Socialist criticism may be
provisionally described as an attempt to justify Socialist ideals
by the appeals to canons of moral judgment accepted generally and
supported by the results of positive ethical science. The previous
essays have made it clear that we are dealing with Socialism in
that restricted sense in which it is defined by Schaeffle,[66] as
having for its aim “the replacement of private capital by collective
capital: that is, by a method of production which, upon the basis of
the collective property of the sum of all the members of the society
in the instruments of production, seeks to carry on a co-operative
organization of national work.” We are not dealing with Socialism as a
religion, nor as concerned with questions of sex or family: we treat it
throughout as primarily a property-form, as the scheme of an industrial
system for the supply of the material requisites of human social
existence.
If it were admitted that the establishment of such a system would
guarantee just this much--that abject poverty should be done away, and
that every man and woman should be ensured the opportunity of obtaining
sufficient food and covering in return for a moderate day’s work, we
might still be far from convincing some people that the realization of
that ideal will be a good thing for the world. There are still a great
many who, though they may not join in the common prophecy that the
chief results of such a system would be an increase in beer-drinking
and other stupid self-indulgence,[67] yet regard starvation and misery
as part of the inevitable order of nature, and as necessary conditions
of progress, conducive to the survival of what they are pleased to
call the “fittest” types of life. Such critics see danger to progress
in any attempt to enrol intelligence and adaptiveness into conscious
combination against starvation and misery, to extinguish by concerted
effort survivals of the accidents of primitive barbarism against
which as individuals we are always struggling. This aim of Socialism,
accordingly, does not wholly commend itself to their moral judgment,
to their opinion of what is _good_ in the widest sense, although
they may willingly admit that the aim possesses a certain element of
shortsighted good intention. Other persons, influenced by religious
conceptions older than that of progress, and regarding morality less
as determined by reference to that end than as a concern of the
individual, a certain state of the soul of each man, are inclined to
view the material evils which Socialists desire to get rid of, as a
necessary schooling and discipline without which individual morality
would decay.
Against these doctrines Socialists would maintain that the ordering
of our national life, and of the relations between individuals and
social groups throughout the world in accordance with the principles
of Socialism, is the effectual and indispensable process for ensuring
to the mass of mankind the advantages of progress already effected and
its continued and orderly development, and for the realisation, in
individuals and the State, of the highest morality as yet imagined by
us.
It may be well at this point to anticipate a challenge to define what
is meant by the word “Morality,” and to briefly explain the position
which will be assumed, and the method which will be followed throughout
the succeeding observations. It must be remembered that the subject
of this essay is “The Moral Aspect of the Basis of Socialism,” and
not “The Socialist View of the Basis of Morals.” We may therefore
conscientiously steer clear of the whirlpool of agelong controversy as
to what that basis is, merely noting as we pass that any metaphysic
of Ethics being necessarily universal, there is in this sense no
special ethic or morality of Socialism. By such cautious procedure we
sacrifice indeed the fascinating ambition to exhibit, by impressive
dialectic pageant of deduction from first principles, the foundation
of formal Socialism in the Idea that informs the universe. But we also
avoid the certainty of losing, at the very outset of our attempted
demonstration, the company of all but that minority who might assent
to our fundamental propositions. A further sacrifice we shall make, in
descending to the unpretentious methods of empiricism; for we thereby
renounce the right of appeal to that theologic habit of mind common
to Socialists with other pious persons. Mr. Henry George, educated
under the American Constitution, may share the familiarity of its
framers with the intentions of the Creator and the natural rights of
Man. He may prove, as did Mr. Herbert Spencer in his generous youth,
that private property in land is incompatible with the fundamental
right of each individual to live and to own the product of his labor.
But positive ethical science knows nothing of natural and fundamental
rights: it knows nothing of individual liberty, nothing of equality,
nothing of underlying unity. Yet here again our loss has some redress;
for a brief survey will assure us that various schools of moral
philosophy, differing in their characteristic first principles, are
converging in the justification of Socialism; and that the practical
judgments of contemporary mankind as to what sort of conduct is
“moral,” and what conditions make for the increase of “common
morality,” are in practice largely coincident. They offer, at least,
a body of provisional opinion, or prejudice, to which we can appeal
in presenting Socialism for criticism of its morality. The tribunal
is by no means infallible: still, the common contemporary sense of
humanity may count for something. But in approaching the criticism of
Socialism from the point of view of ethics, we are bound to go a little
deeper than this. While accepting the phenomena of current opinion on
morality as part of our material, we must follow the explorations of
ethical speculation into the causes and history of the development
of those opinions. By examining the genesis of convictions that this
or that kind of action is good or bad, moral or immoral, we shall be
helped to form a judgment as to which appears likely to persist and
be strengthened, and which to be modified, weakened, or forgotten. If
the claim of Socialism rests on judgments of the latter class, we may
know that it is a moribund bantling; if they preponderate among the
obstacles to its credit, we may prophesy encouragingly of it; if it is
supported by those judgments whose persistence seems essential to the
survival of the individual and of society, we may be assured of its
realisation in the future.
Socialism appears as the offspring of Individualism, as the outcome
of individualist struggle, and as the necessary condition for the
approach to the individualist ideal. The opposition commonly assumed
in contrasting the two is an accident of the now habitual confusion
between personality and personalty, between a man’s life and the
abundance of things that he has. Socialism is merely Individualism
rationalized, organized, clothed, and in its right mind. Socialism is
taking form in advanced societies and the social revolution must be
brought to its formal accomplishment through the conscious action of
innumerable individuals seeking an avenue to rational and pleasant
existence for themselves and for those whose happiness and freedom
they desire as they do their own. All conscious action, all conscious
modification of conditions, is inspired by the desire of such personal
relief, satisfaction, or expression, by the attempt to escape from
some physical or intellectual distress. “Subjective volition, passion
it is,” says Hegel, “that sets men in activity: men will not interest
themselves for anything unless they find their individuality gratified
by its attainment.” This common end, this desire of personal relief
or satisfaction, we see throughout recorded or indicated history
impelling every living creature on the earth; merging itself, as we
trace it backwards, in the mere apparent will to live of organisms
not recognized as conscious, and in the indestructible energy of the
inorganic. The field of activity thus conceived presents a panorama of
somewhat large extent; but a very small division of it is all that we
shall have to do with. For morality, whatever be its nature and basis,
certainly does not become recognizable to us, we cannot attribute the
quality of rightness or wrongness, until the formation of society has
begun, until individuals are in conscious relation with individuals
other than themselves.
If we could imagine an individual absolutely isolated, and having
no relation at all with other sentient beings, _we_ could not say
that it was moral or immoral for him to eat, drink, sleep, breathe,
wash himself, take exercise, cough, sneeze, and the like, just as
much or as little, when or where he felt inclined. His conduct in
these activities must appear to us absolutely indifferent. We may
have some vague reflected suppositions as to what is necessary for
the dignity and development of the man’s “self,” as we might call
it; but this is a matter about which the man may pretend to know
as much as we do; and we have really no valid ground for prejudice
against the habits of the recluse Indian fakir, who has, on the
other hand, considerable claims to be regarded as a peculiarly holy
individual. But of every man living in society we can say, that if he
starves himself into inefficiency; if he gorges or fuddles himself;
if he sleeps unseasonably; if he abstains from the fresh air, the
cleanliness, and the exercise, necessary to keep his body healthy and
his presence pleasant; if he destroys his powers by over-work; then he
is acting wrongly, immorally, unreasonably, in extreme cases insanely.
(Insanity is only the name we give to abnormal deviation from what
are accepted as reasonable and intelligible desires and behavior.)
And if this is the case with actions of the kind loosely described as
self-regarding, with those which most nearly concern the agent’s own
person, much more is it so with the kind of actions which necessarily
and invariably affect other persons. Those relations of the individual
with his fellows in which subjective morality is chiefly recognized,
have no existence at all apart from society. Subjective morality,
then, being only distinguishable in the State, the extent of our
panorama is already much diminished; for in every gentile or national
society, and to some degree in the World-State of to-day, we find the
individualist activity, the desire and passion of the human unit, very
largely exercising itself in accordance with what we call a moral
habit. Innumerable types of society have been formed in the process of
life-development. In the oldest of these we recognize the elements of a
conventional morality, similar to that by which our own human society
is held together. We consider the ways of the ant; and we see that they
are wise.
We find that in all societies those actions and habits are approved as
moral which tend to preserve the existence of society and the cohesion
and convenience of its members; and that those which are or seem to be
fraught with contrary tendencies are considered immoral. It is plain
that no society in which these judgments were habitually reversed
could continue in existence; and this fact will account for much of
that general inherited disposition to actions socially beneficial,
and inherited repugnance to those presumably the reverse, which form
so large a part of what we speak of as conscience. So deep in grain
have many of these common judgments come to be that their influence
has passed out of consciousness; and they are obeyed automatically or
instinctively without any reflexion as to their moral aspect arising in
the agent’s mind. It is, for example, so necessary for the existence
of society that the citizen should abstain from slaughtering at large,
such self-restraint is so evidently reasonable, its non-observance
so contrary to common sense, that when we find a murder done for
mere desire of bloodshed and under the impulse of no other passion
whatsoever, we do not think of the murderer as immoral, but rather
as insane, judging the man who would destroy the life of society as
coroners’ juries by their habitual verdict upon suicides pronounce of
the man who destroys his own.
Most of the habits of activity and avoidance, necessary for the mere
physical existence of the individual as moral actions and abstentions
are necessary for the existence of society, have long ago become
automatic, and are sunk, so far as common opinion is concerned,
permanently out of the purview of moral criticism. All the involuntary
functions of the human body which conduce to its nutrition and
maintenance in health have been gradually acquired in the course of
ages, as the conditions necessary for the expression of the mere animal
will to live the largest and freest life permitted by the physical
environment. And as the bodily form and functions of the typical
individual of each species have accrued and become established as the
indispensable mechanic of the mere determination to exist, so the form
and institution of society, and the relations and mutual behavior of
its individuals, have been adjusted and established as the equally
indispensable conditions for the expression of the determination to
exist more fully, for the enlargement of freedom and opportunity for
the gratification of those passions and aspirations, the display of
those energies and activities which characterize the more complex forms
of life as it passes from the inorganic and vegetative to the conscious
and self-conscious stages of its evolution.
The primitive forms of human society we must infer to have grown up
and survived simply because they increased the efficiency of man
as a feeding and a fighting animal, just as did those of the wolf,
the beaver, and the ant. Society has now grown to be for man the
indispensable guarantee not only of nutrition and protection, but of
the opportunity to imagine and attain a thousand varieties of more
refined satisfaction. So far as man has attained freedom to do and
be as he desires, he has attained it only through the evolution of
society. When a society perishes, as societies organically weak among
stronger competitors have done and will do, the individual perishes
with it, or is forced backwards with impaired freedom until a fresh
social integration renews and extends his powers of self-development.
Societies, as has been pointed out by Sidney Webb on page 51, must
safeguard their existence to-day for the very same reasons for which
society has formed itself. It has grown up for the convenience of
individuals, for their defence and relief under the pressure of
all that was not themselves--of Nature, as we call it--beasts, and
competing men, to give a little breathing space, a little elbow
room, amid the storm and stress of primæval existence; and from
that beginning it has been unfolded and elaborated, each step of
progress effected for the convenience of active individuals, until the
individual of to-day is born as a leaf upon a mighty tree, or a coral
insect in a sponge, himself to live his individual life, and in living
it to modify the social organism in which he has his being.
Reviewing the development in society of the conditions for the
satisfaction of the individual will to live, and to live in the best
way conceivable, we see in the progress of moral ideas the progress of
discovery of the most reasonable manner of ordering the life of the
individual and the form of social institutions under the contemporary
environment. It has already been pointed out that some kinds of
anti-social action are so unreasonable, so obviously prejudicial
to the attainment of the common end of conscious individuals, that
we brand them unhesitatingly as insane. Instances suggested were
extreme personal uncleanliness or dissipation, and extreme cruelty
or blood-thirstiness. The reason why other anti-social or indirectly
suicidal kinds of action are not yet classed as madness, though there
is a steady tendency towards so treating them, is plainly that some
activities of the individual, though hurtful to other citizens just
as the activity of a pack of wolves or a predatory tribe is hurtful
to adjacent societies, are commonly aimed at gratifying impulses and
passions which are not yet grown so rare as blood-thirst, are not yet
recognized as irrational or valueless, or even are acknowledged to be
in their proper scope harmless, desirable, or necessary.
It is an established social convention (in England) that it is immoral
to steal or to defraud. Only in very extreme cases do we account these
pursuits as evidences of mania; for though injustice and dishonesty are
incompatible with the health of society, and thus actually unreasonable
and indirectly suicidal, the desires which prompt men to them are only
at worst exaggerations of the desire for wealth or subsistence, which
everyone recognizes as a necessary condition of the mere continuance
of life. Nay, where the alternative is death for lack of subsistence,
many consider that neither are immoral. At the other extreme, when the
instinct prompts aggression in defiance of the conscious reason and
without assignable purpose of gain, when Jean Valjean robs the little
Savoyard, or a noble earl pockets the sugar-tongs, we speak of mental
aberration or of kleptomania.
The case of self-defence is similar. Quarrelsomeness and violence
are destructive of social existence, or at best impede its higher
elaboration. But readiness of resentment and quickness of fist were
for ages and ages necessities for individual survival; and for ages
and ages more their kindred social qualities or spirit and valor were
necessary for social survival, and accordingly ranked as virtues. The
instruction to turn the other cheek to the smiter is even now, perhaps,
an exaggeration of the precept commendable to Socialists when charged
by the London police: to suffer one’s self to be killed without reason
is clearly and unmistakably immoral. As the western world advances
out of warfare into industry, more and more of what was once military
virtue becomes immorality in the individual; until an habitual ferocity
which might once have qualified its subject for chieftainship may
nowadays consign him to penal servitude or Bedlam.
The foregoing illustrations have been treated, for the present purpose,
with reference only to the effect of the behavior of the individual
upon society. It is indeed certain that anti-social action does not,
as a rule, effect permanent satisfaction for the individual (isolated
instances, of the type of Shelley’s Count Cenci, notwithstanding); but,
independently of this, the actions and propensities of the individual
have always, it appears, been judged by his fellows moral or immoral
chiefly according to their supposed effects upon society. The object of
every living creature being to do as he pleases, if what he pleases to
do incommodes other people they will take measures to restrain him from
doing it. This they strive to effect by means of laws and conventional
codes of morality, the main difference between the two being that the
code of law is enforced by the infliction of direct personal punishment
by the officers of the State. This acceptance of codes of laws and
conventions of morality leads to a secondary series of judgments as
to right and wrong; for it comes to be accounted immoral to break the
law whether the law itself be good or not, and reprehensible to depart
from convention whether convention be any longer reasonable or not.
This secondary morality is as it were the bud-sheath of the individual,
which support he cannot dispense with until he has come to his full
powers, but which he must dispense with if he is to fully realise his
own freedom. Customary morality prevents him during the process of his
education from pursuing his own satisfaction across the corns of his
fellow creatures. In the process of education he learns that for the
unit in society the word _self_ includes more than the individual:
the infant very soon finds out that what disagrees with his mother
disagrees with him; the child, that the failure of his father’s income
means misery and hunger to the family. To say nothing of the facts
of sympathy, every man born into an advanced society is early made
aware that the satisfaction of his mere material needs depends upon
the activities of that society around him quite as much as upon his
own. All through the growth of nations and societies the complexity
of this interdependence of individuals has increased, the areas of
social consciousness have been extended and unified, from the solitary
cave-dweller to the family or horde, from the tribe to the nation, and
from the nation, by commerce, to the world, till the fortunes of each
people have power over the hopes and fears of workers in every other,
and the arts, the learning, and the literature of a hundred painful
civilizations are available for us to-day, all the kingdoms of the
earth and their glory displayed in a moment of time.
But not by bread alone does mankind live. Very early in the course of
human evolution must the type of individual to whom all society was
repugnant have been eliminated and suppressed by natural selection.
The social instinct, the disposition to find comfort in comradeship
independently of its material advantages, is of such evident
antiquity in Man that we are justified in speaking of it as one of
his fundamental and elementary characteristics. It is easy enough to
suggest theories of the origin of this adhesiveness, this affection,
this sympathy, in the conditions of racial survival: the important fact
for us is its remarkable susceptibility of cultivation and extension.
The individual in society does that which is pleasant to his friends,
and abstains from doing that which is unpleasant, not because he likes
to be thought a good fellow, or expects benefits in return, but simply
because it gives him immediate pleasure so to act. He is sensitive to
that which hurts them, not because he fears that his own defences are
weakened by their injury, but because they have actually become part of
himself by the extension of his consciousness over them. This social
instinct, this disposition to benevolent sympathy, appears almost
as inextinguishable as the personal desire of life: in innumerable
instances it has proved far stronger.
The recognition by each individual of his dependence on society or
sensitiveness to his own interest, and his affection towards society
or sensitiveness to its interest: these two faces of the same fact
represent an intricate tissue of social consciousness extremely
sensitive to all kinds of anti-social, or immoral, action. The moral
education of the individual appears formally as the process of
learning, by sheer extension of knowledge and experience, and nothing
else, how he may harmonise and follow out his own desires in these two
aspects and their combinations. He has to learn how to provide for the
needs of his bodily life in a manner that will not interfere with the
freedom of others to do the same. Laws and conventions of morality
guide him at first in this respect; but the man cannot be said to be
free until he acts morally because, foreseeing that on the satisfaction
of these primary needs new desires will emerge whose satisfaction
will give him a more exquisite contentment, he perceives that it is
reasonable so to act. The existence and stability of society are the
indispensable guarantee for the general satisfaction of the primary
desires of individuals, therefore it is unreasonable to weaken society
by immoral action; but much more are the existence and health of
society indispensable conditions for the common birth and satisfaction
of the secondary desires, the desires which have created all that is
most valuable in civilisation and which find their satisfaction in
art, in culture, in human intercourse, in love. The moral education
of the individual is the lesson, not that desire is evil, and that he
can only attain his freedom by ceasing to desire, for this is death,
or desertion, and the army of the living presses on to fuller life;
but that the wider, fuller satisfaction is built upon the simpler, and
common morality a condition of its possibility; that there are certain
manners and methods in which, if he goes about to save his life, he
most infallibly will lose it; and that love, the social instinct, and
science, which is ordered knowledge, are his only reliable tutors in
practical morality.
But man in society not only lives his individual life: he also
modifies the form of social institutions in the direction indicated by
reason--in such a manner, that is, as it seems to his understanding
will render them more efficient for securing freedom for that life
of his. And just as certain forms of individual activity, in their
passage into and through the field of positive criticism, appear first
as indifferent, because they seem to concern the individual only, then
as moral or immoral, because recognized as affecting society, later
as simply rational or insane, morality having here formally attained
its identification with reason and immorality with folly, and at
last become habitual, instinctive, and unconscious; so institutions,
originating in modes apparently accidental, come to be recognized
as useful and valuable additions to the machinery of existence, are
buttressed with all the authority and sanction of religion, and finally
pass into unquestioned acceptance by the common-sense of men. In time
some fundamental change in the conditions of the life of individuals
is introduced by causes similarly unforeseen: the form of the old
institution ceases to subserve the common end: it begins to cramp the
freedom of the majority, who no longer require its support. Meanwhile
it has established a minority, ostensibly controlling it for the
common weal, in a position to administer it in the sole interest of
their class. These, as their existence appears dependent on their
so administering it, cannot be untaught the habit except by such
modification of the institution as will render it again impossible for
any class to have a special interest in its contemporary form.
This process is so familiar in history that it would be a waste of
time here to illustrate it by tracing it in the growth of monarchies,
aristocracies, priesthoods, chattel slavery, feudal bondage,
representative government, or others of its innumerable manifestations.
The institution of private property in certain things is in many
respects so reasonable and convenient for the majority of mankind,
and was so conspicuously advantageous for those stronger individuals
under whose leadership the beginnings of tribal civilisations were
developed, that very early in their history it received the sanction
of moral convention, religion, and law. It was obviously necessary
for the establishment of industrial society, that each man should own
the product of his labor and the tools necessary for him to labor
effectually. But the Industrial Revolution described in the third paper
of this series has entirely changed the conditions under which men
produce wealth, and the character of the tools with which they work,
while the sanctions of law and conventional morality still cling to
all that has been imported under the old definition of property. If
the idea so constantly appealed to in justification of property law
is to be realised; if the fruits of each man’s labor[68] are to be
guaranteed to him and he is to own the instruments with which he works;
if the laws of property are not to establish a parasitic class taking
tribute from the labor of others in the forms of Rent and Interest,
then we must modify our administration of property. We must admit that
as the agricultural laborer cannot individually own the farm he works
on and its stock, as the factory hand cannot individually own the mill,
land and industrial capital are things in which private property is
impossible, except on condition of a small minority owning all such
property and the great majority none at all.
Socialists contend that this system of private property in land and
capital is actively destructive of the conditions in which alone the
common morality necessary for happy social life is possible. Without
any demand upon the faith of those persons who deny the capacity of
average human nature for the temperance and kindliness indispensable
for the success of a true co-operative commonwealth, they assert that
this modern development of the property system (a development of the
last few generations only, and unprecedented in the history of the
world), is more and more forcing the individual into anti-social
disposition and action, and thereby destroying the promise of free and
full existence, which only the health and progressive development of
the social organism can give him. It has become plainly reasonable that
when this is the effect of our property system, we should modify our
institutions in the directions which will give us freedom, just as we
modified the institutions which subjected us to a feudal aristocracy,
and abolished for ever the laws which enabled one man to hold another
as his chattel slave.
There is on record a Greek proverb, that so soon as a man has ensured
a livelihood, then he should begin to practise virtue. We all protest
that he will do well to practise virtue under any circumstances;
but we admit on reflection that our judgment as to what is virtuous
action, depends upon the circumstances under which action is to be
taken. Whether we approve the killing of one man by another, depends
entirely on the circumstances of the case; and there is scarcely one
of the acts which our laws regard as criminal, which could not, under
imaginable circumstances, be justified. Our laws, and our conventional
opinions, as to what conduct is moral or immoral, are adapted to the
ordinary circumstances of the average man in society, society being in
them presumed to be homogeneous, not to contain in itself essential
distinctions between classes, or great contrasts between the conditions
of individuals.
But that element in our private property system which is at present
the main object of the Socialist attack, the individual ownership of
the instruments of production, land and capital, in an age when the
use of those instruments has become co-operative, results, and must
inevitably result, as the foregoing dissertations have sought to prove,
in the division of society into two classes, whose very livelihood is
ensured to them by methods essentially different. The livelihood of
the typical proletarian is earned by the exercise of his faculties for
useful activity: the livelihood of the typical capitalist, or owner of
property, is obtained, without any contribution of his or her activity,
in the form of a pension called rent, interest, or dividend, guaranteed
by law out of the wealth produced from day to day by the activities of
the proletariat.
Observe the effect of this distinction in moral phenomena. Most of our
common opinions as to social morality, are adapted to a society in
which every citizen is contributing active service. The most ancient
and universal judgments of mankind as to the virtues of industry, of
honesty, of loyalty and forbearance between man and man, of temperance,
fortitude and just dealing, point to the elementary conditions
necessary for the survival and strengthening of societies of equal and
free individuals dependent for their subsistence upon the exercise
of each one’s abilities, and upon his fitness for co-operation with
his fellows. But where a class or society exists, not dependent upon
its own industry, but feeding like a parasite upon another society
or class; when the individuals of such a parasitic society in no way
depend for their livelihood or their freedom upon their fitness for
co-operation one with another upon themselves, or upon any personal
relation with the class that feeds them; then the observation of the
moral conventions of industrial and co-operative societies is in many
respects quite unnecessary for the continuance of the life of the
parasitic society, or for the pleasant existence of the individuals
composing it. All that is necessary is that the established laws and
conventions should continue to be observed by the industrial class
(“it is required _in stewards_ that a man be found faithful”); and
as the existence of the propertied class in modern societies, does
depend ultimately upon the observance by the bulk of the people of
this conventional morality, the propertied class professes publicly
to venerate and observe conventions, which, in its private practice,
it has long admitted to be obsolete. This complication is a perennial
source of cant. To this we owe the spectacle of Sir William Harcourt
advocating total abstinence, of Mr. Arthur Balfour commending
Christianity; to this the continual inculcation of industry and thrift
by idle and extravagant people, with many another edifying variation on
the theme of Satan’s reproval of sin. Temperance, Christian morality,
industry, and economy are of considerable social utility; but for
the members of a propertied class they are not necessitated by the
conditions of its existence, and consequently in such classes are
neither observed nor commonly made the subject of moral criticism.
Consider the case of industry alone--of the moral habit of earning
one’s subsistence by useful activity. Assuming sustenance to be
guaranteed, there is no obvious and pressing social necessity for
such exertion. No doubt the paradise of the maid-of-all-work--where
she means to do _nothing_ for ever and ever--is the paradise of an
undeveloped intelligence. A society relieved of the function of
providing its own material sustenance need not relapse into general
torpor, though the result is very commonly that an individual so
circumstanced relapses into uselessness. It will be vain to preach to
such an individual that he will find his fullest satisfaction in honest
toil: he will simply laugh in your face, and go out partridge shooting,
hunting, or yachting, or to Monte Carlo or the Rocky Mountains, finding
in such an exercise of his capacities the keenest imaginable enjoyment
for months in succession. He may feel no inclination at all to work
for the benefit of the people whose work is supporting him: all that
he, like the rest of us, requires is to find some means of passing his
time in an agreeable or exciting manner. Accordingly, in that section
of our nation which speaks of itself as “society,” being indeed a
society separated by economic parasitism from the common mass, we find
that the characteristic activity is the provision of agreeable and
exciting methods of passing time. This being the end of fashionable
society, its code of morality is naturally quite different from the
code suitable for industrial societies. Truthfulness is preached in
these as a cardinal virtue. Lying is of course common enough in all
classes, and is generally immoral; but in the fashionable world it
is not only a perfectly legitimate means of avoiding an undesired
visitor, or almost any other unpleasant experience: it is a positive
necessity of conventional politeness and good manners. It is really
harmless here, almost a virtue. To return to the virtue of industry:
though the conventional morality of the people, necessary for the life
of the nation, permeates with its vibrations this parasitic society
which it enfolds; and though the unfailing contentment which a really
intelligent man finds in social activity keeps a good many of the
propertied class usefully occupied, the actual public opinion of that
class is absolutely in accordance with the conditions of their life.
The clerk in a Government office is congratulated by middle-class
acquaintances on his luck in obtaining a berth where he need do no
more work than he chooses; and it is habitually assumed that he will
choose, like the Trafalgar Square fountains, to play from ten to four,
with an interval for lunch. That may or may not be an adequate account
of his activities: the significant thing is that such an assumption
should not be considered insulting. But how indignantly will the very
same acquaintances denounce the idleness and untrustworthiness of a
British working man suspected, in the service of a private master, of
interpreting his time work as most servants of the public are good
humoredly assumed, without hint of disapproval, to interpret theirs!
This obsolescence of elementary social morality is most noticeable in
women dependent upon incomes from property. They are doubly removed
from the primary conditions of life; they are less likely than their
men folk to be engaged in any work of perceptible social utility
outside of their own homes; and their intellectual education being
generally far more imperfect, it is only natural that their ideas of
morality should be still more intimately adapted to the conditions
of their class, and less to the general conditions of human society.
The angels of heaven, we have always understood, are exempt from the
apparatus of digestion, and are clothed as freely as the lilies of the
field. In any society where all common needs are so supplied it would
be immoral, surely, because a waste of time, to work as for a living.
Now the universal ideal of capitalism is that man, being created a
little lower than the angels, should raise himself to their level in
this respect by the acquisition of property, a process pleasantly
described as attaining a competence or independence, that is to say
the right to be dependent and incompetent. The result of this has
been a prejudice, which only within quite recent years has begun to
be seriously shaken, that it is humiliating, even disgraceful, for a
lady to have to earn her own living at all, for a gentleman to practise
a handicraft for money, for a nobleman to go into trade: a prejudice
for which, in a class society, there was much justification, but
which is obviously a fragment of class morality directly antagonistic
to the common social morality which recognises all useful industry
as praiseworthy. It is now yielding to economic pressure and to the
stimulus of the desire to get rich. Ladies are being driven, and in
spite of Mr. Walter Besant’s protestations will continue to be driven,
into most of the female handicrafts, though some are still outside the
pale of respectability. Ranching in America, though not yet drovering
and butchering in England, is suitable occupation for the aristocracy.
The “directing” of companies and the patronizing of nitrogenous
Volunteer Colonels are legitimate modes of exploiting of a title. The
prejudice against useful employments is balanced for decency’s sake by
a hypocritical laudation of useless ones. The fiction so dear to the
Primrose Dame, that the rich are the employers of the poor, the idlers
the supporters of the industrious, takes nowadays forms more insidious
than the rugged proposition that private vices are public benefits. The
amusements, the purely recreational activities, of country gentlemen
are glorified in the _National Review_[69] as “hard work.” It is
pretended that the leisured class is the indispensable patron and
promoter of culture and the fine arts. The claim that such functions
are virtues is a direct concession to the feeling that some effort must
be made to exhibit the practices of parasitic society as compatible
with its preaching of the common social morality.
The same necessity causes an exaggerated tribute of praise to be
paid to such really useful work as is done under no compulsion but
that of the social instinct. This kind of activity is habitually
pointed to, by the friends of those who are engaged in it, as
evidence of extraordinary virtue. A few hours of attention every week
to the condition of the poor, a few gratuitously devoted to local
administration, a habit of industry in any branch of literature or
science: these are imputed as an excess of righteousness by persons
who denounce the wage laborer as an idler and a shirk. Such activity
is work of supererogation, approved but not required or expected. The
motto of “noblesse oblige” has not been adopted by the plutocracy.
Similar approbation and admiration are extended to those who, while
already earning their living by a reasonable day’s work, employ their
spare time, or a part of it, in gratuitous activities of the kinds
referred to. It may be safely said that by far the greater portion of
this kind of work is done by people who are simultaneously earning an
income in middle class professions or by the less exhausting forms of
wage labor. Most of them have probably had experience of the ridiculous
inappropriateness of the commendation usually paid to their gratuitous
energy by well-to-do friends. The activity is moral, no doubt; but
its exercise gives no sensation of virtue or praiseworthiness; it is
followed because it is seen to be reasonable, because it is the path
indicated by common-sense towards the satisfaction of the individual
passion for the extension of freedom and love.
The phenomena of class morality are ancient and familiar enough.
They have varied throughout history with the changing character of
the basis of class distinctions. The great permanent distinction of
sex, and the social relations between man and woman which have arisen
thereout in the period of civilisation from which the world is now
emerging, have resulted not only in the establishment of distinct codes
of chastity for the sexes, but also in innumerable prejudices against
the participation of one sex or the other in activities having nothing
whatever to do with physiological distinction. They have even succeeded
in producing, through inequality of freedom and education, well marked
differences in mental habit, which show themselves continually when
men and women are confronted with the same questions of truthfulness,
honor, or logic. It is hardly necessary to observe that most of these
differences are distinctly traceable to the institution of private
property, and to its concentration in the hands of the male as the
stronger individual in a competitive society. The class moralities
of societies whose orders have been based immediately on status or
caste have formed the subject of an extensive literature. The tracing
of all such distinctions to their root in economic circumstances is
scarcely less interesting than the investigation of the same foundation
for sex morality. But even the interpreters of the Church Catechism
have abandoned the appeal to status as the basis of duty; the idea
of hereditary aristocracy is dead; and class distinctions and their
appurtenant ethics are now founded directly and obviously on property.
We have glanced at some effects of our present property system which
work continually for the destruction of the traditions of social
morality in the capitalist class. The fundamental idea of that system,
that man can live without working, as the angels of heaven, is
(fortunately) self-contradictory in this respect, that in human society
no class can so live except by the double labor of another class or
classes. The would-be angelic society on earth must either own chattel
slaves, or be a military caste taking tribute, or a parasitical and
exploiting class extracting rent and interest by the operation of
the industrial system analysed in the preceding papers. Such a class
and such a system are, as we are all becoming aware, more virulently
revolutionary in their operation, and more certain to bring about their
own destruction than either chattel slavery or feudalism. Of these
three phases of human injustice that of wage slavery will surely be
the shortest. But meanwhile the propertied class assumes to represent
civilisation; its approved morality is preached and taught in church
and schools; it debases our public opinion; and it directly poisons all
that host of workers who are at present hangers-on of the rich, whether
as menial servants or as ministering to their especial amusements and
extravagance. There is no such snob as a fashionable dressmaker; and
there is no class of the proletariat so dehumanised as the class of
domestic servants.
Now if these results are effected in the class whose livelihood is
assured, and whose education and culture have given it a hold on the
higher inducements to morality--if we here find morality strangled at
the root and starving, what shall we find when we turn to the masses
whose livelihood is not assured them? Our Greek, perhaps, would say
that it was impossible for them to practise virtue, just as Plato in
his “Republic” suggested that only the philosophic class could be
really moral, since slaves and the proletariat could not receive the
intellectual education necessary to train the reason. The great bulk
of the wage earning class in modern civilised countries is so far
assured of its livelihood that it remains thoroughly permeated with
common social morality. It is, from habit and preference, generally
industrious and kindly, thus exhibiting the two most important
qualifications for social life. It remains to a great extent honest,
though competition and capitalism are directly antagonistic to
honesty. The decalogue of commercial morality has its own peculiar
interpretation of stealing, murder, false witness and coveting; and
yet the most unscrupulous wrecker in the City will be outraged in his
finest feelings by the class morality of the plumber, who, called in
to bring the gas to reason, takes the opportunity to disorganise the
water-supply and introduce a duster into the drain. The employer is
aghast at the increase of idleness and bad workmanship under a system
in which the good workman knows that to work his best will not only not
be worth his while but will lead to the exaction of heavier tasks from
his fellows.
But it is not in the mass of the proletariat that the action of our
property system in destroying elementary morality is most conspicuous.
It is in those whom it excludes even from the proletariat proper that
this extreme result is clearest. The characteristic operation of the
modern industrial economy is continually and repeatedly to thrust
out individuals or bodies of the workers from their settlement in
the social organism--to eject, as it were, the coral insect from the
cell in which he is developing. The capitalist farming system expels
the agricultural laborer from the village; the machine expels the
craftsman from the ranks of skilled labor; the perpetual competition
and consolidation of capital in every trade alternately destroys
employment in that trade and disorganises others. Overproduction in one
year leaves thousands of workers wageless in the next. The ranks of
unskilled labor, the army of the unemployed, are day by day recruited
in these fashions. An inveterate social habit, an almost indestructible
patience, a tenacious identification of his own desire with the
desire of those whom he loves, in most cases preserve the worker from
accepting the sentence of exclusion from society. If he is able-bodied,
intelligent and fortunate, he will struggle with hard times till he
finds fresh occupation among strange surroundings; but woe to him if
he be weakly, or old, or unpractical. In such a case he will almost
infallibly become a pauper or an outcast, one of that residuum of
unskilled, unemployed, unprofitable and hopeless human beings which
in all great cities festers about the base of the social pyramid. And
his children will become the street Arabs and the corner-boys and the
child-whores and the sneak-thieves who, when they come of age, accept
their position as outside of social life and resume the existence of
the wild beasts that fathered man--the purely predatory and unsocial
activity of harrying their neighbors for their own support. Before
society was, morality was not: those who have no part nor lot in the
ends for which society exists will adapt their morality to suit their
outcast state: there will indeed be honor among thieves, just as there
will be cant and insincerity among the parasitic rich; but the youth
who has been nurtured between the reformatory and the slum has little
chance of finding a foothold, if he would, in the restless whirl of
modern industry, and still less of retaining permanently such foothold
as he may manage to find.
When the conditions of social life are such that the individual may
be excluded through no unfitness of his own for co-operation, or may
be born without a chance of acquiring fitness for it, we are brought
face to face with the conditions of primitive ages. And if you force
him back upon the elemental instincts, one of two things will happen.
Either, if the individual is weak through physical deterioration or
incapacity to combine with his fellow outcasts, he will be crushed
and killed by society and putrefy about its holy places; or, if he
has indomitable life and vigor, he will revert to the argument of
elemental forces: he will turn and explode society. Here, then, we
should fear explosion, for we are not as submissive in extremities as
the proletariats of arrested Indian civilisations. But with us the
class whose freedom is incessantly threatened by the operation of
private capitalism is the class which by its political position holds
in its hands the key to the control of industrial form: that is to say,
its members can modify, as soon as they elect to, the laws of property
and inheritance in this State of Britain. They can, as soon as they
see clearly what is needed supersede institutions now immoral because
useless and mischievous by institutions which shall re-establish the
elementary conditions of social existence and the possibility of the
corresponding morality--namely, the opportunity for each individual to
earn his living and the compulsion upon him to do so.
Returning from the consideration of the “residuum” and the “criminal
classes,” we find that even the workers of the employed proletariat are
by no means wholly moral. In spite of the massive healthiness of their
behavior in ordinary relations, they are generally coarse in their
habits; they lack intelligence in their amusements and refinement in
their tastes. The worst result of this is the popularity of boozing
and gambling and allied forms of excitement, with their outcomes in
violence and meanness. But when once society has ensured for man the
opportunity for satisfying his primary needs--once it has ensured him
a healthy body and a wholesome life, his advance in the refinements of
social morality, in the conception and satisfaction of his secondary
and more distinctly human desires, is solely and entirely a matter of
education. This will be attested by every man and woman who has at all
passed through the primary to the secondary passions. But education in
the sense alluded to is impossible for the lad who leaves school at
fourteen and works himself weary six days in the week ever afterwards.
The oldest Socialistic institution of considerable importance and
extent is the now decrepit Catholic Church. The Catholic Church has
always insisted on the duty of helping the poor, not on the ground
of the social danger of a “residuum,” but by the nobler appeal to
the instinct of human benevolence. The Catholic Church developed,
relatively to the enlightenment of its age, the widest and freest
system of education the world has ever seen before this century.
Catholic Christianity, by its revolutionary conception that God
was incarnated in Man, exploding the hideous superstition that the
imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was only to do evil
continually, and substituting the faith in the perfectibility of each
individual soul; by its brilliant and powerful generalisations that God
must be Love, because there is nothing better, and that man is freed
from the law by the inward guidance of grace, has done more for social
morality than any other religion of the world.
Protestant Individualism in England shattered the Catholic Church;
founded the modern land system upon its confiscated estates; destroyed
the mediæval machinery of charity and education; and in religion
rehabilitated the devil, and the doctrines of original sin and the
damnable danger of reason and good works.
Out of the wreckage of the Catholic Church, and amid the dissolution
of the Protestant religion, there successively emerged, at an interval
of some three hundred years, the two great socialistic institutions of
the Poor Law and the People’s Schools. As the pretence of a foundation
of Christian obligation withered from out of the Poor Law, till it has
come to be outspokenly recognised as nothing but a social safety-valve,
the individualist and commercial administration of this rudimentary
socialistic machinery deprived it of its efficiency even in this
elementary function. He to whom the workhouse means the break up of his
home, and his own condemnation to a drudgery insulting because useless
and wasteful, would as lief take his exclusion from society in another
and a less degrading way, either by death, or by reluctant enrolment in
the “residuum”; and so it has come to pass that outside of their use
as hospitals for the aged and infirm, the poor-houses are principally
employed as the club-houses and hotels of the great fraternity of
habitual tramps and cadgers; and not till he has sunk to this level
does the struggling proletarian seek “work” there.
Socialists would realize the idea of the Poor Law, regarding that
society as deadly sick in which the individual cannot find subsistence
by industry, in the only way in which it can be realised: namely, by
the organisation of production and the resumption of its necessary
instruments. It is not so great a matter in their eyes that the
perpetual toll of rent and interest deprives the workers of the wealth
which their activities produce; nor is it the actual pressure of this
heavy tribute that would force on the Social Revolution, if the
system only left men the assurance of the comforts of tame beasts. It
is the constant disquiet and uncertainty, the increasing frequency of
industrial crises, that are the revolutionary preachers of our age; and
it is the disappearance at the base and at the summit of society of the
conditions of social morality, that rouses those whose mere material
interests remain unaffected.
But though it is not envy or resentment at this tribute that mostly
moves us to our warfare, this tribute we must certainly resume if the
ideal of the school is to effect its social purpose. For the ideal of
the school implies, in the first place, leisure to learn: that is to
say, the release of children from all non-educational labor until mind
and physique have had a fair start and training, and the abolition of
compulsion on the adult to work any more than the socially necessary
stint. The actual expenditure on public education must also be
considerably increased, at any rate until parents are more generally
in a position to instruct their own children. But as soon as the mind
has been trained to appreciate the inexhaustible interest and beauty of
the world, and to distinguish good literature from bad, the remainder
of education, granted leisure, is a comparatively inexpensive matter.
Literature is become dirt-cheap; and all the other educational arts can
be communally enjoyed. The schools of the adult are the journal and the
library, social intercourse, fresh air, clean and beautiful cities,
the joy of the fields, the museum, the art-gallery, the lecture-hall,
the drama, and the opera; and only when these schools are free and
accessible to all will the reproach of proletarian coarseness be done
away.
Yet the most important influence in the repairing of social morality
may perhaps be looked for not so much from the direct action of
these elements of the higher education, as from those very socialist
forms of property and industry, which we believe to be the primary
condition for allowing such higher education to affect the majority at
all. Nothing so well trains the individual to identify his life with
the life of society as the identification of the conditions of his
material sustenance with those of his fellows, in short, as industrial
co-operation. Not for many centuries has there been such compulsion as
now for the individual to acknowledge a social ethic. For now, for the
first time since the dissolution of the early tribal communisms, and
over areas a hundred times wider than theirs, the individual worker
earns his living, fulfils his most elementary desire, not by direct
personal production, but by an intricate co-operation in which the
effect and value of his personal effort are almost indistinguishable.
The apology for individualist appropriation is exploded by the logic
of the facts of communist production: no man can pretend to claim the
fruits of his own labor; for his whole ability and opportunity for
working are plainly a vast inheritance and contribution of which he is
but a transient and accidental beneficiary and steward; and his power
of turning them to his own account depends entirely upon the desires
and needs of other people for his services. The factory system, the
machine industry, the world commerce, have abolished individualist
production; and the completion of the co-operative form towards which
the transition stage of individualist capitalism is hurrying us, will
render a conformity with social ethics, a universal condition of
tolerable existence for the individual.
This expectation is already justified by the phenomena of contemporary
opinion. The moral ideas appropriate to Socialism are permeating the
whole of modern society. They are clearly recognisable not only in
the proletariat, but also in the increasing philanthropic activity of
members of the propertied class, who, while denouncing Socialism as a
dangerous exaggeration of what is necessary for social health, work
honestly enough for alleviatory reforms which converge irresistibly
towards it. The form, perhaps, does not outrun the spirit, any more
than the spirit anticipates the form; and it may have been sufficient
in this paper to have shown some grounds for the conviction that
Socialist morality, like that of all preceding systems, is only that
morality which the conditions of human existence have made necessary;
that it is only the expression of the eternal passion of life seeking
its satisfaction through the striving of each individual for the
freest and fullest activity; that Socialism is but a stage in the
unending progression out of the weakness and the ignorance in which
society and the individual alike are born, towards the strength and
the enlightenment in which they can see and choose their own way
forward--from the chaos where morality is not to the consciousness
which sees that morality is reason; and to have made some attempt to
justify the claim that the cardinal virtue of Socialism is nothing else
than Common Sense.
FOOTNOTES:
[66] “The Quintessence of Socialism.” Swan, Sonnenschein and Co.
[67] _E. G._, see “Communism and Socialism,” by Theodore D. Woolsey
Sampson, Low and Co., London.
[68] To the intelligent Socialist this phrase has, of course, no
meaning. But against the non-Socialist who employs it, it may be
legitimately used, _ad captandum_.
[69] See _National Review_ for February, 1888, “Are Rich Landowners
Idle?” by Lady Janetta Manners (now Duchess of Rutland).
THE ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY.
PROPERTY UNDER SOCIALISM.
BY GRAHAM WALLAS.
In the early days of Socialism no one who was not ready with a complete
description of Society as it ought to be, dared come forward to
explain any point in the theory. Each leader had his own method of
organising property, education, domestic life, and the production of
wealth. Each was quite sure that mankind had only to fashion themselves
after his model in order, like the prince and princess in the fairy
story, to live happily ever after. Every year would then be like the
year before; and no more history need be written. Even now a thinker
here and there like Gronlund or Bebel sketches in the old spirit an
ideal commonwealth; though he does so with an apology for attempting
to forecast the unknowable. But Socialists generally have become, if
not wiser than their spiritual fathers, at least less willing to use
their imagination. The growing recognition, due in part to Darwin,
of causation in the development of individuals and societies; the
struggles and disappointments of half a century of agitation; the
steady introduction of Socialistic institutions by men who reject
Socialist ideas, all incline us to give up any expectation of a final
and perfect reform. We are more apt to regard the slow and often
unconscious progress of the Time spirit as the only adequate cause of
social progress, and to attempt rather to discover and proclaim what
the future _must_ be, than to form an organisation of men determined to
make the future what it should be.
But the new conception of Socialism has its dangers as well as the old.
Fifty years ago Socialists were tempted to exaggerate the influence
of the ideal, to expect everything from a sudden impossible change of
all mens’ hearts. Nowadays we are tempted to under-value the ideal--to
forget that even the Time spirit itself is only the sum of individual
strivings and aspirations, and that again and again in history changes
which might have been delayed for centuries or might never have come at
all, have been brought about by the persistent preaching of some new
and higher life, the offspring not of circumstance but of hope. And of
all the subjects upon which men require to be brought to a right mind
and a clear understanding, there is, Socialists think, none more vital
to-day than Property.
The word Property has been used in nearly as many senses as the word
Law. The best definition I have met with is John Austin’s “any right
which gives to the entitled party such a power or liberty of using
or disposing of the subject ... as is merely limited generally by
the rights of all other persons.”[70] This applies only to private
property. It will be convenient in discussing the various claims of the
State, the municipality, and the individual, to use the word in a wider
sense to denote not only the “power or liberty” of the individual, but
also the “rights of all other persons.” In this sense I shall speak
of the property of the State or municipality. I shall also draw a
distinction, economic perhaps rather than legal, between property in
things, or the exclusive right of access to defined material objects,
property in debts and future services, and property in ideas (copyright
and patent right).
The material things in which valuable property rights can exist, may
be roughly divided into means of production and means of consumption.
Among those lowest tribes of savages who feed on fruit and insects,
and build themselves at night a rough shelter with boughs of trees,
there is little distinction between the acts of production and
consumption. But in a populous and civilised country very few even of
the simplest wants of men are satisfied directly by nature. Nearly
every commodity which man consumes is produced and renewed by the
deliberate application of human industry to material objects. The
general stock of materials on which such industry works is “Land.” Any
materials which have been separated from the general stock or have
been already considerably modified by industry, are called capital
if they are either to be used to aid production or are still to be
worked on before they are consumed. When they are ready to be consumed
they are “wealth for consumption.” Such an analysis, though generally
employed by political economists, is of necessity very rough. No one
can tell whether an object is ready for immediate consumption or not,
unless he knows the way in which it is to be consumed. A pine forest
in its natural condition is ready for the consumption of a duke with
a taste for the picturesque; for he will let the trees rot before
his eyes. Cotton-wool, a finished product in the hands of a doctor,
is raw material in the hands of a spinner. But still the statement
that Socialists work for the owning of the means of production by the
community and the means of consumption by individuals, represents
fairly enough their practical aim. Not that they desire to prevent
the community from using its property whenever it will for direct
consumption, as, for instance, when a piece of common land is used
for a public park, or the profits of municipal waterworks are applied
to keep up a municipal library. Nor do they contemplate any need for
preventing individuals from working at will on their possessions in
such a way as to make them more valuable. Even Gronlund, with all
his hatred of private industry, could not, if he would, prevent any
citizen from driving a profitable trade by manufacturing bread into
buttered toast at the common fire. But men are as yet more fit for
association in production, with a just distribution of its rewards,
than for association in the consumption of the wealth produced. It is
true indeed that the economies of associated consumption promise to be
quite as great as those of associated production; and it was of these
that the earlier Socialists mainly thought. They believed always that
if a few hundred persons could be induced to throw their possessions
and earnings into a common stock to be employed according to a common
scheme, a heaven on earth would be created. Since then, an exhaustive
series of experiments has proved that in spite of its obvious economy
any system of associated consumption as complete as Fourier’s
“Phalanstère” or Owen’s “New Hampshire” is, except under very unusual
conditions, distasteful to most men as they now are. Our picture
galleries, parks, workmen’s clubs, or the fact that rich people are
beginning to live in flats looked after by a common staff of servants,
do indeed shew that associated consumption is every year better
understood and enjoyed; but it remains true that pleasures chosen by
the will of the majority are often not recognised as pleasures at all.
As long as this is so, private property and even private industry must
exist along with public property and public production. For instance,
each family now insists on having a separate home, and on cooking
every day a separate series of meals in a separate kitchen. Waste
and discomfort are the inevitable result; but families at present
prefer waste and discomfort to that abundance which can only be bought
by organisation and publicity. Again, English families constitute
at present isolated communistic groups, more or less despotically
governed. Our growing sense of the individual responsibility and
individual rights of wives and children seems already to be lessening
both the isolation of these groups and their internal coherency; but
this tendency must go very much further before society can absorb the
family life, or the industries of the home be managed socially. Thus,
associated production of all the means of family life may be developed
to a very high degree before we cease to feel that an Englishman’s
home should be his castle, with free entrance and free egress alike
forbidden. It is true that the ground on which houses are built
could immediately become the property of the community; and when one
remembers how most people in England are now lodged, it is obvious that
they would gladly inhabit comfortable houses built and owned by the
State. But they certainly would at present insist on having their own
crockery and chairs, books and pictures, and on receiving a certain
proportion of the value they produce in the form of a yearly or weekly
income to be spent or saved as they pleased. Now whatever things of
this kind we allow a man to possess, we must allow him to exchange,
since exchange never takes place unless both parties believe themselves
to benefit by it. Further, bequest must be allowed, since any but a
moderate probate duty or personalty would, unless supported by a strong
and searching public opinion, certainly be evaded. Moreover, if we
desire the personal independence of women and children, then their
property, as far as we allow property at all, must for a long time to
come be most carefully guarded.
There would remain therefore to be owned by the community the land
in the widest sense of the word, and the materials of those forms of
production, distribution, and consumption, which can conveniently be
carried on by associations larger than the family group. Here the main
problem is to fix in each case the area of ownership. In the case of
the principal means of communication and of some forms of industry, it
has been proved that the larger the area controlled, the greater is the
efficiency of management; so that the postal and railway systems, and
probably the materials of some of the larger industries, would be owned
by the English nation until that distant date when they might pass to
the United States or the British Empire, or the Federal Republic of
Europe. Land is perhaps generally better held by smaller social units.
The rent of a town or an agricultural district depends only partly on
those natural advantages which can be easily estimated once for all
by an imperial commissioner. The difference in the rateable value of
Warwick and of Birmingham is due, not so much to the sites of the two
towns, as to the difference in the industry and character of their
inhabitants. If the Birmingham men prefer, on the average, intense
exertion resulting in great material wealth, to the simpler and quieter
life lived at Warwick, it is obviously as unjust to allow the Warwick
men to share equally in the Birmingham ground rents, as it would be
to insist on one standard of comfort being maintained in Paris and in
Brittany.
At the same time, those forms of natural wealth which are the
necessities of the whole nation and the monopolies of certain
districts, mines for instance, or harbors, or sources of water-supply,
must be “nationalised.” The salt and coal rings of to-day would be
equally possible and equally inconvenient under a system which made the
mining populations absolute joint owners of the mines. Even where the
land was absolutely owned by local bodies, those bodies would still
have to contribute to the national exchequer some proportion of their
income. The actual size of the units would in each case be fixed by
convenience; and it is very likely that the development of the County
Government Act and of the parochial and municipal systems will soon
provide us with units of government which could easily be turned into
units of ownership.
The savings of communities--if I may use the word community to express
any Social Democratic unit from the parish to the nation--would
probably take much the same form that the accumulation of capital
takes nowadays: that is to say, they would consist partly of mills,
machinery, railways, schools, and the other specialised materials
of future industry, and partly of a stock of commodities such as
food, clothing, and money, by which workers might be supported
while performing work not immediately remunerative. The savings of
individuals would consist partly of consumable commodities or of the
means of such industry as had not been socialised, and partly of
deferred pay for services rendered to the community, such pay taking
the form of a pension due at a certain age, or of a sum of commodities
or money payable on demand.
Voluntary associations of all kinds, whether joint-stock companies,
religious corporations, or communistic groups would, in the eyes of
the Social Democratic State, consist simply of so many individuals
possessing those rights of property which are allowed to individuals.
They might perform many very useful functions in the future as in the
past; but the history of the city companies, of the New River company,
the Rochdale Pioneers, or the Church of England shows the danger of
granting perpetual property rights to any association not co-extensive
with the community, although such association may exist for professedly
philanthropic objects. Even in the case of universities, where the
system of independent property-owning corporations has been found
to work best, the rights of the State should be delegated and not
surrendered.
On this point the economic position of modern Social Democrats differs
widely from the transfigured joint stockism of the present co-operative
movement or from the object of the earlier Socialists, for whose
purposes complete community was always more important than complete
inclusiveness. Even Socialist writers of to-day do not always see
that the grouping of the citizens for the purpose of property holding
must be either on the joint-stock basis or on the territorial basis.
Gronlund, in spite of contradictory matter in other parts of his
“Co-operative Commonwealth,” still declares that “each group of workers
will have the power of distributing among themselves the whole exchange
value of their work,” which either means that they will, as long as
they are working, be the absolute joint owners of the materials which
they use, or means nothing at all. Now the proposal that any voluntary
association of citizens should hold absolute and perpetual property
rights in the means of production, seems to be not a step towards
Social Democracy, but a negation of the whole Social Democratic
idea. This of course brings us to the following difficulty. If our
communities even when originally inclusive of the whole population
are closed: that is, are confined to original members and their
descendants, new comers will form a class like the plebians in Rome,
or the “metoeci” in Athens, without a share in the common property
though possessed of full personal freedom; and such a class must be a
continual social danger. On the other hand, if all newcomers receive
at once full economic rights, then any country in which Socialism
or anything approaching it is established, will be at once over-run
by proletarian immigrants, from those countries in which the means
of production are still strictly monopolised. If this were allowed,
then, through the operation of the law of diminishing return and the
law of population based on it, the whole body of the inhabitants
even of a Socialist State, might conceivably be finally brought down
to the bare means of subsistence. It does not seem necessary to
conclude that Socialism must be established over the whole globe if
it is to be established anywhere. What is necessary is that we face
the fact, every day becoming plainer, that any determined attempt to
raise the condition of the proletariat in any single European country
must be accompanied by a law of aliens considerate enough to avoid
cruelty to refugees, or obstruction to those whose presence would
raise our intellectual or industrial average, but stringent enough to
exclude the unhappy “diluvies gentium,” the human rubbish which the
military empires of the continent are so ready to shoot upon any open
space. Such a law would be in itself an evil. It might be unfairly
administered; it might increase national selfishness and would probably
endanger international good will; it would require the drawing of a
great many very difficult lines of distinction; but no sufficient
argument has been yet advanced to disprove the necessity of it.
On the question of private property in debts, the attitude of the law
in Europe has changed fundamentally in historical times. Under the
old Roman law, the creditor became the absolute owner of his debtor.
Nowadays, not only may a man by becoming bankrupt and surrendering all
his visible property, repudiate his debts and yet retain his personal
liberty; but in Factory Acts, Employers’ Liability Acts, Irish Land
Acts, etc., certain contracts are illegal under all circumstances.
With the growth of Socialism, this tendency would be quickened. The
law would look with extreme jealously upon any agreement by which one
party would be reduced even for a time to a condition of slavery,
or the other enabled to live even for a time without performing any
useful social function. And since it has been clearly recognised that
a certain access to the means of industry is a first condition of
personal freedom, the law would refuse to recognise any agreement to
debar a man from such access, or deprive him of the results of it.
No one would need to get into debt in order to provide himself with
the opportunity of work, nor would anyone be allowed to give up the
opportunity of work in order to obtain a loan. This, by making it more
difficult for creditors to recover debts, would also make it more
difficult for would-be debtors to obtain credit. The present homestead
law would, in fact, be extended to include everything which the State
thought necessary for a complete life. But as long as private industry
and exchange go on to such an extent as to make a private commercial
system convenient, so long will promises to pay circulate, and, if
necessary, be legally enforced under the conditions above marked out.
To whatever extent private property is permitted, to that same extent
the private taking of Rent and Interest must be also permitted. If you
allow a selfish man to own a picture by Raphael, he will lock it up
in his own room unless you let him charge something for the privilege
of looking at it. Such a charge is at once Interest. If we wish all
Raphael’s pictures to be freely accessible to everyone, we must prevent
men not merely from exhibiting them for payment, but from owning them.
This argument applies to other things besides Raphael’s pictures.
If we allow a man to own a printing press, or a plough, or a set of
bookbinders’ tools, or a lease of a house or farm, we must allow him so
to employ his possession that he may, without injuring his neighbor,
get from it the greatest possible advantage. Otherwise, seeing that the
community is not responsible for its intelligent use, any interference
on the part of the community may well result in no intelligent use
being made of it at all; in which event all privately owned materials
of industry not actually being used by their owners would be as
entirely wasted as if they were the subjects of a chancery suit. It
is easy to see that the Duke of Bedford is robbing the community of
the rent of Covent Garden. It is not so easy to see that the owners
of the vacant land adjoining Shaftesbury Avenue have been robbing the
community for some years past of the rent which ought to have been
made out of the sites which they have left desolate. I know that it
has been sometimes said by Socialists: “Let us allow the manufacturer
to keep his mill and the Duke of Argyle to keep his land, as long as
they do not use them for exploitation by letting them out to others on
condition of receiving a part of the wealth created by those others.”
Then, we are told, the manufacturer or Duke will soon discover that he
must work hard for a living. Such sentiments are seldom ill received
by men in the humor to see dukes and capitalists earning, as painfully
as may be, their daily bread. Unluckily, there are no unappropriated
acres and factory sites in England sufficiently advantageous to be used
as efficient substitutes for those upon which private property has
fastened; and the community would be wise if it paid the Duke of Argyle
and Mr. Chamberlain anything short of the full economic rent of their
properties rather than go further and fare worse. Therefore, if we
refused either to allow these gentlemen to let their property to those
who would use it, or hesitated to take it and use it for ourselves,
we should be actually wasting labor. The progressive socialisation of
land and capital must proceed by direct transference of them to the
community through taxation of rent and interest and public organisation
of labor with the capital so obtained; not solely by a series of
restrictions upon their use in private exploitation. Such concurrent
private exploitation, however unrestricted, could not in any case bring
back the old evils of capitalism; for any change in the habits of the
people or in the methods of industry which made associated production
of any commodity on a large scale convenient and profitable, would
result at once in the taking over of that industry by the State exactly
as the same conditions now in America result at once in the formation
of a ring.
It is because full ownership is necessary to the most intelligent and
effective use of any materials, that no mere system of taxation of
Rent and Interest, even when so drastic as Mr. Henry George’s scheme
of universal State absentee landlordism, is likely to exist except as
a transition stage towards Social Democracy. Indeed the anarchist idea
which allows the State to receive Rent and Interest, but forbids it to
employ labor, is obviously impracticable. Unless we are willing to pay
every citizen in hard cash a share of the State Rent of the future,
it, like the taxes of to-day, must be wholly invested in payments for
work done. It would always be a very serious difficulty for a Socialist
legislature to decide how far communities should be allowed to incur
debts or pay interest. Socialism once established, the chief danger
to its stability would be just at this point. We all know the inept
attack on Socialism which comes from a debating-society orator who
considers the subject for the first time, or from the cultured person
who has been brought up on the _Saturday Review_. He tells us that if
property were equally divided to-morrow, there would be for the next
ten years forty men out of every hundred working extremely hard, and
the other sixty lazy. After that time, the sixty would have to work
hard and keep the forty, who would then be as lazy as the sixty were
before. It is very easy to explain that we do not want to divide all
property equally; but it is not so easy to guard against any result
of that tendency in human nature on which the argument is grounded.
Men differ so widely in their comparative appreciation of present and
future pleasures, that wherever life can be supported by four hours’
work a day, there will always be some men anxious to work eight hours
in order to secure future benefits for themselves or their children,
and others anxious to avoid their four hours’ work for the present
by pledging themselves or their children to any degree of future
privation. As long as this is so, communities as well as individuals
will be tempted to avail themselves of the freely offered services of
the exceptionally energetic and farsighted, and to incur a common debt
under the excuse that they are spreading the payment of such services
over all those benefited by them. The municipalities, Boards of Works,
School Boards, etc., of England have already created enormous local
debts; and unless men grow wiser in the next few months the new County
Councils will probably add to the burden. As we sit and think, it may
seem easy to prevent any such trouble in the future by a law forbidding
communities to incur debts under any circumstances. But in the case
of a central and supreme government such a law would, of course,
be an absurdity. No nation can escape a national debt or any other
calamity if the majority in that nation desire to submit to it. It is
reassuring to see how the feeling that national governments should
pay their way from year to year grows stronger and stronger. National
debts no longer even in France go up with the old light-hearted leaps
and bounds. But local debts still increase. In Preston the local debt
is said to amount to seven times the annual rating valuation. And
although at present (November, 1888), since the “surf at the edge of
civilisation” is only thundering to the extent of three small colonial
wars, our own national debt is slowly going down; still if war were
declared to-morrow with any European State no ministry would dare to
raise all the war expenses by immediate taxation either on incomes
or on property. It may be objected that no such danger would arise
under Socialism; for there would be no fund from which a loan could be
offered that would not be equally easily reached by a direct levy. But
if we are speaking of society in the near future there would certainly
be plenty of members of non-Socialist States, or English holders of
property in them, ready to lend money on good security to a timid or
desperate or dishonest Socialist government. Again, in times of extreme
stress a government might believe itself to require even personal
possessions; and it might be difficult under such circumstances not to
offer to restore them with or without interest. In any case there would
be no more economic difference between the new fund-holders and the old
landlords than between Lord Salisbury as owner of the Strand district
and Lord Salisbury now that he has sold his slums and bought consols.
Perhaps the most serious danger of the creation of a common debt would
arise from the earnings of exceptional ability. Modern Socialists have
learnt, after a long series of co-operative experiments and failures,
that the profits of private adventure will withdraw men of exceptional
business talent from communal service unless work of varying scarcity
and intensity is paid for at varying rates. How great this variation
need be in order to ensure full efficiency can only be decided by
experience, and as the education and moralisation of society improves,
and industry becomes so thoroughly socialised that the alternative of
private enterprise will be less practicable, something like equality
may at last be found possible. But, meanwhile, comparatively large
incomes will be earned by men leading busy and useful lives, but often
keenly anxious to secure leisure and comfort for their old age and
aggrandisement for their family.[71] I have already suggested that some
of the earnings of a man employed by the community might be left for
a time in the common treasury to accumulate without interest. Now, it
would suit both these men and the lazier of their contemporaries that
the reward of their services should be fixed at a very high rate, and
be left to the next generation for payment; while the next generation
might prefer a small permanent charge to any attempt to pay off the
capital sum. It is often hinted that one way to obviate this would be
for each generation to cultivate a healthy indifference to the debts
incurred on its behalf by its forefathers. But the citizens of each new
generation attain citizenship not in large bodies at long intervals,
but in small numbers every week. One has only to warn sanguine lenders
that veiled repudiations may always be effected in such emergencies
by a judicious application of the Income Tax, and to hope that the
progress of education under Socialism would tend to produce and
preserve on such matters a certain general minimum of common sense. If
this minimum is sufficient to control the central government the debts
of local bodies can be easily and sternly restricted.
Property in services means of course property in future services. The
wealth which past services may have produced can be exchanged or owned;
but the services themselves cannot. Now all systems of law which we
know have allowed private persons to contract with each other for the
future performance of certain services, and have punished, or allowed
to be punished, the breach of such contracts. Here as in the case
of debts, our growing respect for personal liberty has made the law
look jealously on all onerous agreements made either by the citizen
himself or for him by others. In fact, as Professor Sidgwick points
out: “In England hardly any engagement to render personal service gives
the promisee a legal claim to more than pecuniary damages--to put it
otherwise, almost all such contracts, if unfulfilled, turn into mere
debts of money so far as their legal force goes.”[72] The marriage
contract forms the principal exception to this rule; but even in this
case there seems to be a tendency in most European countries to relax
the rigidity of the law.
On the other hand the direct claims of the State to the services of its
citizens shew at present no signs of diminishing. Compulsory military
service and compulsory attendance at school already take up a not
inconsiderable share of the life of every male inhabitant of France
and Germany. So far in England the compulsion of grown men to serve
in any capacity has been condemned for a century past, because it is
considered wasteful and oppressive as compared with the free contract
system of the open market. Most English Socialists seem inclined to
believe that all work for the State should be voluntarily engaged and
paid for out of the produce of common industry.
In considering how far the State has a claim upon the services of its
members, we come upon the much larger question--How far are we working
for Socialism; and how far for Communism? Under pure Socialism, to use
the word in its narrowest sense, the State would offer no advantage at
all to any citizen except at a price sufficient to pay all the expenses
of producing it. In this sense the Post Office, for example, is now a
purely Socialistic institution. Under such conditions the State would
have no claim at all on the services of its members; and compulsion to
work would be produced by the fact that if a man chose not to work he
would be in danger of starvation. Under pure Communism, on the other
hand, as defined by Louis Blanc’s dictum: “From every man according
to his powers; to every man according to his wants,” the State would
satisfy without stint and without price all the reasonable wants
of any citizen. Our present drinking fountains are examples of the
numerous cases of pure communism which surround us. But since nothing
can be made without labor, the commodities provided by the State must
be produced by the services, voluntary or forced, of the citizens.
Under pure communism, if any compulsion to work were needed, it would
have to be direct. Some communistic institutions we must have; and
as a matter of fact there is an increasing number of them already in
England. Indeed, if the whole or any part of that Rent Fund which is
due to the difference between the best and worst materials of industry
in use be taken for the State, by taxation or otherwise, it, or rather
the advantages produced by its expenditure, can hardly be distributed
otherwise than communistically. For, as men are now, saturated with
immoral principles by our commercial system, the State would have to be
exceedingly careful in deciding what wants could be freely satisfied
without making direct compulsion to labor necessary. It would cost
by no means an impossible sum to supply a tolerable shelter with a
bed, and a sufficient daily portion of porridge, or bread and cheese,
or even of gin and water, to each citizen; but no sane man would
propose to do so in the existing state of public morals. For more than
a century the proletarians of Europe have been challenged by their
masters to do as little work as they can. They have been taught by
the practical economists of the Trades Unions, and have learnt for
themselves by bitter experience, that every time any of them in a
moment of ambition or goodwill does one stroke of work not in his bond,
he is increasing the future unpaid labor not only of himself but of his
fellows. At the same time every circumstance of monotony, ugliness, and
anxiety has made the work as wearisome and disgusting as possible. All,
almost without exception, now look upon the working day as a period of
slavery, and find such happiness as they can get only in a few hours
or minutes that intervene between work and sleep. For a few, that
happiness consists in added toil of thought and speech in the cause
of themselves and their comrades. The rest care only for such rough
pleasures as are possible to men both poor and over-worked. There would
be plenty of excuse if under these circumstances they dreamt, as they
are accused of dreaming, of some universal division of the good things
of the earth--of some means of being utterly at leisure, if only for a
week or two.
But there are products of labor which the workmen in their time of
triumph might freely offer each other without causing the weakest
brother to forego any form of useful social work. Among such products
are those ideas which we have brought under the dominion of private
property by means of copyright and patent right. Luckily for us the
dominion is neither complete nor permanent. If the Whig landlords who
are responsible for most of the details of our glorious constitution
had been also authors and inventors for profit, we should probably
have had the strictest rights of perpetual property or even of entail
in ideas; and there would now have been a Duke of Shakspere to whom
we should all have had to pay two or three pounds for the privilege
of reading his ancestor’s works, provided that we return the copy
uninjured at the end of a fortnight. But even for the years during
which copyright and patents now last, the system which allows an author
or inventor a monopoly in his ideas is a stupid and ineffective way
either of paying for his work or of satisfying the public wants. In
each case the author or inventor obtains a maximum nett return by
leaving unsatisfied the wants, certainly of many, probably of most of
those who desire to read his book or use his invention. We all know
that the public got a very good bargain when it paid the owners of
Waterloo Bridge more than they could possibly have made by any scheme
of tolls. In the same way it is certain that any government which aimed
at the greatest happiness of the greatest number could afford to pay a
capable artist or author possibly even more than he gets from the rich
men who are his present patrons, and certainly more than he could get
by himself selling or exhibiting his productions in a society where
few possessed wealth for which they had not worked. Although the State
could thus afford to pay an extravagantly large reward for certain
forms of intellectual labor, it does not therefore follow that it would
be obliged to do so in the absence of any other important bidder.
There would always remain the sick, the infirm, and the school
children, whose wants could be satisfied from the general stock without
asking them to bear any part of the general burden. In particular, it
would be well to teach the children by actual experience the economy
and happiness which arise in the case of those who are fitly trained
from association applied to the direct satisfaction of wants, as well
as from association in the manufacture of material wealth. If we
wish to wean the children from the selfish isolation of the English
family, from the worse than savage habits produced by four generations
of capitalism, from that longing for excitement, and incapacity for
reasonable enjoyment, which are the natural results of workdays spent
in English factories, and English Sundays spent in English streets,
then we must give freely and generously to our schools. If this
generation were wise it would spend on education not only more than any
other generation has ever spent before, but more than any generation
would ever need to spend again. It would fill the school buildings
with the means not only of comfort, but even of the higher luxury;
it would serve the associated meals on tables spread with flowers,
in halls surrounded with beautiful pictures, or even, as John Milton
proposed, filled with the sounds of music; it would seriously propose
to itself the ideal of Ibsen, that every child should be brought up as
a nobleman. Unfortunately, this generation is not wise.
In considering the degree in which common owning of property would be
possible among a people just at that stage of industrial and moral
development at which we now find ourselves, it is expedient to dwell,
as I have dwelt, rather upon the necessary difficulties and limitations
of Socialism, than upon its hopes of future development. But we must
always remember that the problems which Socialism attempts to solve,
deal with conditions which themselves are constantly changing. Just as
anything like what we call Socialism would be impossible in a nation
of individualist savages like the Australian blacks, and could not,
perhaps, be introduced except by external authority among a people like
the peasants of Brittany, for whom the prospect of absolute property
in any portion of land, however small, is at once their strongest
pleasure and their only sufficient incentive to industry; so among a
people further advanced, socially and industrially, than ourselves, a
social condition would be possible which we do not now dare to work
for or even try to realise. The tentative and limited Social-Democracy
which I have sketched is the necessary and certain step to that better
life which we hope for. The interests which each man has in common with
his fellows tend more and more to outweigh those which are peculiar
to himself. We see the process even now beginning. Already, as soon
as a public library is started, the workman finds how poor a means
for the production of happiness are the few books on his own shelf,
compared with the share he has in the public collection, though that
share may have cost even less to produce. In the same way the score or
two of pounds which a workman may possess are becoming daily of less
and less advantage in production; so that the man who a few years ago
would have worked by himself as a small capitalist, goes now to work
for wages in some great business, and treats his little savings as a
fund to provide for a few months of sickness or years of old age. He
will soon see how poor a means for the production of food is his own
fire when compared with the public kitchen; and he will perhaps at
last not only get his clothes from the public store, but the delight
of his eyes from the public galleries and theatres, the delight of his
ears from the public opera, and it may be, when our present anarchy
of opinion be overpast, the refreshment of his mind from the publicly
chosen teacher. Then at last such a life will be possible for all as
not even the richest and most powerful can live to-day. The system of
property holding which we call Socialism is not in itself such a life
any more than a good system of drainage is health, or the invention
of printing is knowledge. Nor indeed is Socialism the only condition
necessary to produce complete human happiness. Under the justest
possible social system we might still have to face all those vices and
diseases which are not the direct result of poverty and over-work; we
might still suffer all the mental anguish and bewilderment which are
caused, some say by religious belief, others by religious doubt; we
might still witness outbursts of national hatred and the degradation
and extinction of weaker peoples; we might still make earth a hell for
every species except our own. But in the households of the five men out
of six in England who live by weekly wage, Socialism would indeed be
a new birth of happiness. The long hours of work done as in a convict
prison, without interest and without hope; the dreary squalor of their
homes; above all that grievous uncertainty, that constant apprehension
of undeserved misfortune which is the peculiar result of capitalist
production: all this would be gone; and education, refinement, leisure,
the very thought of which now maddens them, would be part of their
daily life. Socialism hangs above them as the crown hung in Bunyan’s
story above the man raking the muck heap--ready for them if they will
but lift their eyes. And even to the few who seem to escape and even
profit by the misery of our century, Socialism offers a new and nobler
life, when full sympathy with those about them, springing from full
knowledge of their condition, shall be a source of happiness, and not,
as now, of constant sorrow--when it shall no longer seem either folly
or hypocrisy for a man to work openly for his highest ideal. To them
belongs the privilege that for each one of them the revolution may
begin as soon as he is ready to pay the price. They can live as simply
as the equal rights of their fellows require: they can justify their
lives by work in the noblest of all causes. For their reward, if they
desire any, they, like the rest, must wait.
FOOTNOTES:
[70] Lectures on Jurisprudence. Lecture XLVIII.
[71] Happily, the ordinary anxieties as to the fate of children left
without property, especially weaklings or women unlikely to attract
husbands, may be left out of account in speculations concerning
socialised communities.
[72] “Principles of Political Economy,” p. 435.
INDUSTRY UNDER SOCIALISM.
BY ANNIE BESANT.
There are two ways in which a scheme for a future organisation of
industry may be constructed. Of these, by far the easier and less
useful is the sketching of Utopia, an intellectual gymnastic in which
a power of coherent and vivid imagination is the one desideratum. The
Utopist needs no knowledge of facts; indeed such a knowledge is a
hindrance: for him the laws of social evolution do not exist. He is a
law unto himself; and his men and women are not the wayward, spasmodic,
irregular organisms of daily life, but automata, obeying the strings
he pulls. In a word, he creates, he does not construct: he makes alike
his materials and the laws within which they work, adapting them all
to an ideal end. In describing a new Jerusalem, the only limits to its
perfection are the limits of the writer’s imagination.
The second way is less attractive, less easy, but more useful. Starting
from the present state of society, it seeks to discover the tendencies
underlying it; to trace those tendencies to their natural outworking
in institutions; and so to forecast, not the far-off future, but the
next social stage. It fixes its gaze on the vast changes wrought by
evolution, not the petty variations made by catastrophes; on the
Revolutions which transform society, not the transient riots which
merely upset thrones and behead kings. This second way I elect to
follow; and this paper on industry under Socialism therefore starts
from William Clarke’s exposition of the industrial evolution which
has been in progress during the last hundred and fifty years. In thus
building forward--in thus forecasting the transitions through which
society will probably pass, I shall scarcely touch on the ideal Social
State that will one day exist; and my sketch must lay itself open to
all the criticisms which may be levelled against a society not ideally
perfect. It is therefore necessary to bear in mind that I am only
trying to work out changes practicable among men and women as we know
them; always seeking to lay down, not what is ideally best, but what is
possible; always choosing among the possible changes that which is on
the line towards the ideal, and will render further approach easier. In
fact this paper is an attempt to answer the “How?” so often heard when
Socialism is discussed. Large numbers of people accept, wholly or in
part, the Socialist theory: they are intellectually convinced of its
soundness or emotionally attracted by its beauty; but they hesitate to
join in its propaganda, because they “don’t see where you are going to
begin,” or “don’t see where you are going to stop.” Both difficulties
are disposed of by the fact that we are not “going to begin.” There
will never be a point at which a society crosses from Individualism to
Socialism. The change is ever going forward; and our society is well on
the way to Socialism. All we can do is to consciously co-operate with
the forces at work, and thus render the transition more rapid than it
would otherwise be.
The third Fabian essay shews us the success of capitalism bringing
about a position which is at once intolerable to majority, and easy of
capture by them. At this point the destruction of the small industries
has broken down most of the gradations which used to exist between the
large employer and the hired laborer, and has left in their place a
gulf across which a few capitalists and a huge and hungry proletariat
face each other. The denial of human sympathy by the employer in his
business relations with his “hands” has taught the “hands” to regard
the employer as outside the pale of their sympathy. The “respect of the
public conscience for the rights of property,” which was at bottom the
private interest of each in his own little property, has diminished
since the many lost their individual possessions, and saw property
accumulate in the hands of the few: it is now little more than a
tradition inherited from a former social state. The “public conscience”
will soon condone, nay, it will first approve, and then demand,
the expropriation of capital which is used antisocially instead of
socially, and which belongs to that impersonal abstraction, a company,
instead of to our next door neighbor. To the average person it is one
thing for the State to seize the little shop of James Smith who married
our sister, or the thriving business of our Sam who works early and
late for his living; and quite another when James and Sam, ruined by
a big Company made up of shareholders of whom nobody knows anything
but that they pay low wages and take high dividends, have been obliged
to become hired servants of the Company, instead of owning their own
shops and machinery. Whose interest will it be to protest against the
State taking over the capital, and transforming James and Sam from
wage-slaves at the mercy of a foreman, into shareholders and public
functionaries, with a voice in the management of the business in which
they are employed?
Let us suppose, then, that the evolution of the capitalist system has
proceeded but a little further along the present lines, concentrating
the control of industry, and increasingly substituting labor-saving
machinery for human beings. It is being accompanied, and must continue
to be accompanied, by a growth of the numbers of the unemployed. These
numbers may ebb and flow, as some of the waves of a rising tide run
forward some feet and then a few touch a lower level; but as the tide
rises despite the fluctuations of the ripples, so the numbers of the
unemployed will increase despite transient mountings and fallings. With
these, probably, will begin the tentative organisation of industry by
the State; but this organisation will soon be followed by the taking
over by the community of some of the great Trusts.
The division of the country into clearly defined areas, each with
its elected authority, is essential to any effective scheme of
organisation. It is one of the symptoms of the coming change, that,
in perfect unconsciousness of the nature of his act, Mr. Ritchie has
established the Commune. He has divided England into districts ruled
by County Councils, and has thus created the machinery without which
Socialism was impracticable. True, he has only made an outline which
needs to be filled in; but Socialists can fill in, whereas they had
no power to outline. It remains to give every adult a vote in the
election of Councillors; to shorten their term of office to a year; to
pay the Councillors, so that the public may have a right to the whole
of their working time; to give the Councils power to take and hold
land--a reform already asked for by the Liberal and Radical Union, a
body not consciously Socialist; and to remove all legal restrictions,
so as to leave them as free to act corporately as an individual is to
act individually. These measures accomplished, the rapidity with which
our institutions are socialised, depends on the growth of Socialism
among the people. It is essential to the stability of the changed
forms of industry that they shall be made by the people, not imposed
upon them; hence the value of Mr. Ritchie’s gift of Local Government,
enabling each locality to move swiftly or slowly, to experiment on a
comparatively small scale, even to blunder without widespread disaster.
The _mot d’ordre_ for Socialists now is “Convert the electors; and
capture the County Councils.” These Councils, administering local
affairs, with the national Executive, administering national affairs,
are all destined to be turned into effective industrial organisers; and
the unit of administration must depend on the nature of the industry.
The post, the telegraph, the railways, the canals, and the great
industries capable of being organised into Trusts, will, so far as we
can see now, be best administered each from a single centre for the
whole kingdom. Tramways, gasworks, water-works, and many of the smaller
productive industries, will be best managed locally. In marking the
lines of division, convenience and experience must be our guides. The
demarcations are of expediency, not of principle.
The first great problem that will press on the County Council for
solution will be that of the unemployed. Wisely or unwisely, it will
have to deal with them: wisely, if it organises them for productive
industry; unwisely, if it opens “relief works,” and tries, like an
enlarged Bumble, to shirk the difficulty by enforcing barren and
oppressive toil upon outlawed wretches at the expense of the rest
of the community. Many of the unemployed are unskilled laborers: a
minority are skilled. They must first be registered as skilled and
unskilled, and the former enrolled under their several trades. Then
can begin the rural organisation of labor on county farms, held by the
County Councils. The Council will have its agricultural committee,
charged with the administrative details; and this committee will choose
well-trained, practical agriculturists, as directors of the farm
business. To the County Farm will be drafted from the unemployed in the
towns, the agricultural laborers who have wandered townwards in search
of work, and many of the unskilled laborers. On these farms every
advantage of machinery, and every discovery in agricultural science,
should be utilised to the utmost. The crops should be carefully chosen
with reference to soil and aspect--cereals, fruit, vegetables--and the
culture adapted to the crop, the one aim being to obtain the largest
amount of produce with the least expenditure of human labor. Whether
land is most profitably cultivated in large or small parcels depends on
the crop; and in the great area of the County Farm, _la grande et la
petite culture_ might each have its place. Economy would also gain by
the large number of laborers under the direction of the head farmer,
since they could be concentrated when required at any given spot, as
in harvest time, and dispersed to work at the more continuous kinds of
tillage when the seasonal task was over.
To these farms must also be sent some skilled laborers from among the
unemployed, shoemakers, tailors, smiths, carpenters, etc.; so that the
County Farm may be self-supporting as far as it can be without waste
of productive power. All the small industries necessary in daily life
should be carried on in it, and an industrial commune thus built up.
The democracy might be trusted to ordain that an eight hours’ day, and
a comfortable home, should be part of the life-conditions on the County
Farm. Probably each large farm would soon have its central store,
with its adjacent railway station, in addition to the ordinary farm
buildings; its public hall in the centre of the farm village to be used
for lectures, concerts, and entertainments of all sorts; its public
schools, elementary and technical; and soon, possibly from the outset,
its public meal-room, saving time and trouble to housewives, and, while
economising fuel and food, giving a far greater choice and variety of
dishes. Large dwellings, with suites of rooms, might perhaps replace
old-fashioned cottages; for it is worth noting, as showing the tendency
already existing among ourselves to turn from isolated self-dependence
to the advantages of associated living, that many modern flats are
being built without servants’ rooms, the house-cleaning, etc., being
done by persons engaged for the whole block, and the important meals
being taken at restaurants, so as to avoid the trouble and expense of
private cooking. It will surely be well in initiating new organisations
of industry to start on the most advanced lines, and take advantage of
every modern tendency towards less isolated modes of living. Socialists
must work hard to make municipal dealings with the unemployed avenues
to the higher life, not grudging utilisation of pauper labor. And as
they know their aim, and the other political parties live but from
hand to mouth, they ought to be able to exercise a steady and uniform
pressure, which, just because it is steady and uniform, will impress
its direction on the general movement.
The note of urban industrial organisation, as of all other, must be
that each person shall be employed to do what he can do best, not
what he does worst. It may be desirable for a man to have two trades;
but watch-making and stone-breaking are not convenient alternative
occupations. Where the skilled unemployed belong to trades carried on
everywhere, such as baking, shoemaking, tailoring, etc., they should be
employed at their own trades in municipal workshops, and their products
garnered in municipal stores. These workshops will be under the
direction of foremen, thoroughly skilled workmen, able to superintend
and direct as though in private employment. The working-day must be of
eight hours, and the wages, for the present, the Trades Union minimum.
Then, instead of tailors and shoemakers tramping the streets ragged
and barefoot, the tailors will be making clothes and the shoemakers
boots and shoes; and the shoemaker with the wages he earns will buy
the tailor’s products, and the tailor the shoemaker’s. Then, instead
of supporting the unemployed by rates levied on the employed they will
be set to work to supply their own necessities, and be producers of
the wealth they consume instead of consuming, in enforced idleness
or barren penal exercises in the stoneyard, the wealth produced by
others. Masons, bricklayers, plumbers, carpenters, etc., might be set
to work in building decent and pleasant dwellings--in the style of
the blocks of flats, not of the barracks called model dwellings--for
the housing of the municipal industrial army. I lay stress on the
pleasantness of the dwellings. These places are to be dwellings for
citizens, not prisons for paupers; and there is no possible reason why
they should not be made attractive. Under Socialism the workers are to
be the nation, and all that is best is for their service; for, be it
remembered, our faces are set towards Socialism, and our organisation
of labor is to be on Socialist lines.
It is very likely that among the unemployed some will be found whose
trade can only be carried on by large numbers, and is not one of the
industries of the town into which their unlucky fate has drifted them.
These should be sent into municipal service in the towns where their
trade is the staple industry, there to be employed in the municipal
factory.
Concurrently with this rural and urban organisation of non-centralised
industries will proceed the taking over of the great centralised
industries, centralised for us by capitalists, who thus unconsciously
pave the way for their own supersession. Everything which has been
organised into a Trust, and has been worked for a time in the Trust
fashion, is ripe for appropriation by the community. All minerals
would be most properly worked in this centralised way; and it will
probably be found most convenient to work all the big productive
industries--such as the textile--in similar fashion. It is idle to
say that it cannot be done by the State when it is being done by a
ring of capitalists: a Local Board, an Iron Board, a Tin Board, can
be as easily held responsible to the nation as to a casual crowd of
shareholders. There need be no dislocation of production in making the
transference: the active organisers and directors of a Trust do not
necessarily, or even usually, own the capital invested in it. If the
State finds it convenient to hire these organisers and directors, there
is nothing to prevent its doing so for as long or as short a period
as it chooses. The temporary arrangements made with them during the
transition period must be governed by expediency.
Let us pause for a moment to estimate the position so far. The
unemployed have been transformed into communal workers--in the country
on great farms, improvements of the Bonanza farms in America--in the
towns in various trades. Public stores for agricultural and industrial
products are open in all convenient places, and filled with the goods
thus communally produced. The great industries, worked as Trusts,
are controlled by the State instead of by capitalist rings. The
private capitalist, however, will still be in business, producing
and distributing on his own account in competition with the communal
organisations, which at present will have occupied only part of the
industrial field. But apart from a pressure which will be recognised
when we come to deal with the remuneration of labor, these private
enterprises will be carried on under circumstances of ever-increasing
difficulty. In face of the orderly communal arrays, playing into
each other’s hands, with the credit of the country behind them, the
ventures of the private capitalist will be at as great a disadvantage
as the cottage industries of the last century in face of the factory
industries of our own period. The Trusts have taught us how to drive
competing capitals out of the market by associated capitals. The
Central Boards or County Councils will be able to utilise this power
of association further than any private capitalists. Thus the economic
forces which replaced the workshop by the factory, will replace the
private shop by the municipal store and the private factory by the
municipal one. And the advantages of greater concentration of capital
and of the association of labor will not be the only ones enjoyed by
the communal workers. All waste will be checked, every labor-saving
appliance utilised to the utmost, where the object is the production
of general wealth and not the production of profit to be appropriated
by a class; for in the one case it is the interest of the producers to
produce--inasmuch as their enjoyment depends on the productivity of
their labor--whereas in the other it is their interest to sterilise
their labor as far as they dare in order to render more of it necessary
and so keep up its price. As the organisation of the public industry
extends, and supplants more and more the individualist producer, the
probable demand will be more easily estimated, and the supply regulated
to meet it. The Municipalities and Central Boards will take the place
of the competing small capitalists and the rings of large ones; and
production will become ordered and rational instead of anarchical and
reckless as it is to-day. After awhile the private producers will
disappear, not because there will be any law against individualist
production, but because it will not pay. No one will care to face the
worries, the harassments, the anxieties, of individual struggling for
livelihood, when ease, freedom, and security can be enjoyed in the
communal services.
The best form of management during the transition period, and possibly
for a long time to come, will be through the Communal Councils,
which will appoint committees to superintend the various branches
of industry. These committees will engage the necessary manager and
foreman for each shop, factory, etc., and will hold the power of
dismissal as of appointment. I do not believe that the direct election
of the manager and foreman by the employees would be found to work
well in practice, or to be consistent with the discipline necessary
in carrying on any large business undertaking. It seems to me better
that the Commune should elect its Council--thus keeping under its own
control the general authority--but should empower the Council to select
the officials, so that the power of selection and dismissal within the
various sub-divisions should lie with the nominees of the whole Commune
instead of with the particular group immediately concerned.
There is no practical difficulty in the way of the management of
the ordinary productive industries, large or small. The Trusts and
Co-operation have, between them, solved, or put us in the way of
solving, all problems connected with these. But there are difficulties
in connexion with the industries concerned in the production of such
commodities as books and newspapers. During the transitional stage
these difficulties will not arise; but when all industries are carried
on by the Commune, or the Nation, how will books and newspapers be
produced? I only throw out the following suggestions. Printing, like
baking, tailoring, shoemaking, is a communal rather than a national
industry. Suppose we had printing offices controlled by the Communal
Council. The printing committee might be left free to accept any
publication it thought valuable, as a private firm to-day may take the
risk of publication, the arrangement with the author being purchase
outright, or royalty on copies sold, in each case so much to be put to
his credit at the Communal Bank. But there are many authors whose goods
are desired by no one: it would be absurd to force the community to
publish all minor poetry. Why not accept the principle that in every
case where the printing committee declines to print at the communal
risk, the author may have his work printed by transferring from his
credit at the Communal Bank to the account of the printing committee
sufficient to cover the cost of printing? The committee should have
no power to refuse to print, where the cost was covered. Thus liberty
of expression would be guarded as a constitutional right, while the
community would not be charged with the cost of printing every stupid
effusion that its fond composer might deem worthy of publicity.
Newspapers might be issued on similar terms; and it would always be
open to individuals, or to groups of individuals, to publish anything
they pleased on covering the cost of publication. With the comparative
affluence which would be enjoyed by each member of the community,
anyone who really cared to reach the public ear would be able to do so
by diminishing his expenditure in other directions.
Another difficulty which will meet us although not immediately, is the
competition for employment in certain pleasanter branches of industry.
At present an unemployed person would catch eagerly at the chance of
any well-paid work he was able to perform. If he were able both to set
type and to stitch coats, he would not dream of grumbling if he were
by chance offered the job he liked the less of the two: he would be
only too glad to get either. But it is quite possible that as the vast
amelioration of life-conditions proceeds, Jeshurun will wax fat and
kick if, when he prefers to make microscopic lenses, he is desired to
make mirrors. Under these circumstances, Jeshurun will, I fear, have
to accommodate himself to the demand. If the number of people engaged
in making lenses suffices to meet the demand for lenses, Jeshurun must
consent to turn his talents for the time to mirror-making. After all,
his state will not be very pitiable, though Socialism will have failed,
it is true, to make 2 + 2 = 5.
This, however, hardly solves the general question as to the
apportioning of laborers to the various forms of labor. But a solution
has been found by the ingenious author of “Looking Backward, from A.D.
2000.” Leaving young men and women free to choose their employments, he
would equalise the rates of volunteering by equalising the attractions
of the trades. In many cases natural bent, left free to develop itself
during a lengthened educational term, will determine the choice of
avocation. Human beings are fortunately very varied in their capacities
and tastes; that which attracts one repels another. But there are
unpleasant and indispensable forms of labor which, one would imagine,
can attract none--mining, sewer-cleaning, &c. These might be rendered
attractive by making the hours of labor in them much shorter than the
normal working day of pleasanter occupations. Many a strong, vigorous
man would greatly prefer a short spell of disagreeable work to a long
one at a desk. As it is well to leave the greatest possible freedom to
the individual, this equalising of advantages in all trades would be
far better than any attempt to perform the impossible task of choosing
an employment for each. A person would be sure to hate any work into
which he was directly forced, even though it were the very one he would
have chosen had he been left to himself.
Further, much of the most disagreeable and laborious work might be
done by machinery, as it would be now if it were not cheaper to exploit
a helot class. When it became illegal to send small boys up chimneys,
chimneys did not cease to be swept: a machine was invented for sweeping
them. Coal-cutting might now be done by machinery, instead of by a man
lying on his back, picking away over his head at the imminent risk of
his own life; but the machine is much dearer than men, so the miners
continue to have their chests crushed in by the falling coal. Under
Socialism men’s lives and limbs will be more valuable than machinery;
and science will be tasked to substitute the one for the other.
In truth the extension of machinery is very likely to solve many of
the problems connected with differential advantages in employment;
and it seems certain that, in the very near future, the skilled
worker will not be the man who is able to perform a particular set of
operations, but the man who has been trained in the use of machinery.
The difference of trade will be in the machine rather than in the man:
whether the produce is nails or screws, boots or coats, cloth or silk,
paper-folding or type-setting, will depend on the internal arrangements
of the mechanism and not on the method of applying the force. What we
shall probably do will be to instruct all our youth in the principles
of mechanics and in the handling of machines; the machines will be
constructed so as to turn the force into the various channels required
to produce the various articles; and the skilled workman will be the
skilled _mechanic_, not the skilled printer or bootmaker. At the
present time a few hours’ or a few days’ study will make the trained
mechanician master of any machine you can place before him. The line
of progress is to substitute machines for men in every department of
production: let the brain plan, guide, control; but let iron and steel,
steam and electricity, that do not tire and cannot be brutalised, do
the whole of the heavy toil that exhausts human frames to-day. There
is not the slightest reason to suppose that we are at the end of an
inventive era. Rather are we only just beginning to grope after the
uses of electricity: and machinery has before it possibilities almost
undreamed of now, the men produced by our system being too rough-handed
for the manipulation of delicate and complicated contrivances. I
suggest this only as a probable simplification of balancing the supply
and demand in various forms of labor in the future: our immediate
method of regulation must be the equalising of advantages in them.
One may guess that in each nation all the Boards and communal
authorities will ultimately be represented in some central Executive,
or Industrial Ministry; that the Minister of Agriculture, of Mineral
Industries, of Textile Industries, and so on, will have relations with
similar officers in other lands; and that thus, internationally as well
as nationally, co-operation will replace competition. But that end is
not yet.
We now approach a yet more thorny subject than the organisation of the
workers. What should be the remuneration of labor--what the share of
the product taken respectively by the individual, the municipality, and
the State?
The answer depends on the answer to a previous question. Is the
organisation of the unemployed to be undertaken in order to transform
them into self-supporting, self-respecting citizens; or is it to be
carried on as a form of exploitation, utilising pauper labor for the
production of profit for non-paupers? The whole matter turns on this
point; and unless we know our own minds, and fight for the right method
and against the wrong from the very beginning, the organisation of the
unemployed will be a buttress for the present system instead of a step
towards a better. Already there is talk of establishing labor colonies
in connexion with workhouses; and there is no time to be lost if we are
to take advantage of the good in the proposal and exclude the bad. The
County Councils also will lead to an increase of municipal employment;
and the method of that employment is vital.
The ordinary vestryman, driven by the force of circumstances into
organising the unemployed, will try to extract a profit to the
ratepayers from pauper farms by paying the lowest rates of wages. He
would find this way of proceeding very congenial, and would soon,
if permitted, simply municipalise slave-driving. In this way the
municipal and rural organisation of labor, even when its necessity and
its advantages are realised, can do nothing but change the form of
exploitation of labor if the workers in public employ are to be paid a
wage fixed by the competition of the market, and the profits of their
labor used only for the relief of the rates. Under such circumstances
we should have the whole of the rates paid by the communal workers,
while the private employers would go free. This would not be a
transition to Socialism, but only a new way of creating a class of
municipal serfs, which would make our towns burlesques of the ancient
Greek slaveholding “democracies.” We shall find surer ground by
recalling and applying the principle of Socialism that the laborers
shall enjoy the full product of their toil. It seems to me that this
might be worked out somewhat in the following way:
Out of the value of the communal produce must come rent of land
payable to the local authority, rent of plant needed for working
the industries, wages advanced and fixed in the usual way, taxes,
reserve fund, accumulation fund, and the other charges necessary for
the carrying on of the communal business. All these deducted, the
remaining value should be divided among the communal workers as a
“bonus.” It would be obviously inconvenient, if not impossible, for
the district authority to sub-divide this value and allot so much to
each of its separate undertakings--so much left over from gas works
for the men employed there, so much from the tramways for the men
employed on them, and so on. It would be far simpler and easier for the
municipal employees to be regarded as a single body, in the service of
a single employer, the local authority; and that the surplus from the
whole of the businesses carried on by the Communal Council should be
divided without distinction among the whole of the communal employees.
Controversy will probably arise as to the division: shall all the
shares be equal; or shall the workers receive in proportion to the
supposed dignity or indignity of their work? Inequality, however, would
be odious; and I have already suggested (p. 145) a means of adjusting
different kinds of labor to a system of equal division of net product.
This meets the difficulty of the varying degrees of irksomeness
without invidiously setting up any kind of socially useful labor as
more honorable than any other--a distinction essentially unsocial
and pernicious. But since in public affairs ethics are apt to go to
the wall, and appeals to social justice too often fall on deaf ears,
it is lucky that in this case ethics and convenience coincide. The
impossibility of estimating the separate value of each man’s labor with
any really valid result, the friction which would arise, the jealousies
which would be provoked, the inevitable discontent, favoritism and
jobbery that would prevail: all these things will drive the Communal
Council into the right path, equal remuneration of all workers. That
path once entered on, the principle of simplification will spread; and
presently it will probably be found convenient that all the Communal
Councils shall send in their reports to a Central Board, stating the
number of their employees, the amount of the values produced, the
deductions for rent and other charges, and their available surplus.
All these surpluses added together would then be divided by the total
number of communal employees, and the sum thus reached would be the
share of each worker. The national trusts would at first be worked
separately on lines analogous to those sketched for the Communes;
but later these would be lumped in with the rest, and still further
equalise the reward of labor. As private enterprises dwindle, more
and more of the workers will pass into communal employ, until at last
the Socialist ideal is touched of a nation in which all adults are
workers, and all share the national product. But be it noted that all
this grows out of the first organisation of industry by Municipalities
and County Councils, and will evolve just as fast or just as slowly
as the community and its sections choose. The values dealt with, and
the numbers employed at first, would not imply as much complexity of
detail as is involved in many of the great businesses now carried on by
individuals and by companies. The same brains will be available for the
work as are now hired by individuals; and it is rather the novelty of
the idea than the difficulty of its realisation which will stand in the
way of its acceptance.
It is probable, however, that for some time to come, the captains
of industry will be more highly paid than the rank and file of the
industrial army, not because it is just that they should receive higher
remuneration, but because they, having still the alternative of private
enterprise, will be able to demand their ordinary terms, at which
it will pay the community better to engage them than to do without
them--which would be indeed impossible. But their remuneration will
fall as education spreads: their present value is a scarcity value,
largely dependent on their monopoly of the higher education; and as the
wider training is thrown open to all, an ever-increasing number will
become qualified to act as organisers and directors.
The form in which the worker’s share is paid to him is not a matter of
primary importance. It would probably be convenient to have Communal
Banks, issuing cheques like those of the Cheque Bank; and these banks
could open credits to the workers to the amount of their remuneration.
The way in which each worker expended his wealth would of course be his
own business.
The above method of dealing with the surplus remaining from communal
labor after rent and other charges had been paid to the Municipality,
would prove the most potent factor in the supersession of private
enterprises. The amounts produced by the communal organisations would
exceed those produced under individualist control; but even if this
were not so, yet the shares of the communal workers, as they would
include the produce now consumed by idlers, would be higher than any
wage which could be paid by the private employer. Hence competition to
enter the communal service, and a constant pressure on the Communal
Councils to enlarge their undertakings.
It should be added that children and workers incapacitated by age or
sickness should receive an equal share with the communal employees. As
all have been children, are at times sick, and hope to live to old age,
all in turn would share the advantage; and it is only just that those
who have labored honestly in health and through maturity should enjoy
the reward of labor in sickness and through old age.
The shares of individuals and of Municipalities being thus apportioned,
there remains only a word to say as to the Central National
Council--the “State” _par excellence_. This would derive the revenues
necessary for the discharge of its functions, from contributions
levied on the Communal Councils. It is evident that in the adjustment
of these contributions could be effected the “nationalisation” of any
special natural resources, such as mines, harbors, &c., enjoyed by
exceptionally well situated Communes. The levy would be, in fact, of
the nature of an income tax.
Such a plan of Distribution--especially that part of it which equalises
the shares in the product--is likely to provoke the question: “What
will be the stimulus to labor under the proposed system? Will not
the idle evade their fair share of labor, and live in clover on the
industry of their neighbors?”
The general stimulus to labor will be, in the first place, then
as now, the starvation which would follow the cessation of labor.
Until we discover the country in which jam-rolls grow on bushes, and
roasted sucking-pigs run about crying “Come eat me!” we are under an
imperious necessity to produce. We shall work because, on the whole,
we prefer work to starvation. In the transition to Socialism, when the
organisation of labor by the Communal Councils begins, the performance
of work will be the condition of employment; and as non-employment will
mean starvation--for when work is offered, no relief of any kind need
be given to the healthy adult who refuses to perform it--the strongest
possible stimulus will force men to work. In fact, “work or starve”
will be the alternative set before each communal employee; and as men
now prefer long-continued and ill-paid work to starvation, they will
certainly, unless human nature be entirely changed, prefer short and
well-paid work to starvation. The individual shirker will be dealt with
much as he is to-day: he will be warned, and, if he prove incorrigibly
idle, discharged from the communal employ. The vast majority of men
now seek to retain their employment by a reasonable discharge of their
duty: why should they not do the same when the employment is on easier
conditions? At first, discharge would mean being flung back into the
whirlpool of competition, a fate not lightly to be challenged. Later,
as the private enterprises succumbed to the competition of the Commune,
it would mean almost hopelessness of obtaining a livelihood. When
social reorganisation is complete, it would mean absolute starvation.
And as the starvation would be deliberately incurred and voluntarily
undergone, it would meet with no sympathy and no relief.
The next stimulus would be the appetite of the worker for the result
of the communal toil, and the determination of his fellow-workers to
make him take his fair share of the work of producing it. It is found
at the present time that a very small share of the profits arising
from associated labor acts as a tremendous stimulus to each individual
producer. Firms which allot a part of their profits for division among
their employees, find the plan profitable to themselves. The men work
eagerly to increase the common product, knowing that each will have a
larger bonus as the common product is larger: they become vigilant as
to waste in production; they take care of the machinery; they save gas,
etc. In a word, they lessen the cost as much as they can, because each
saving means gain to them. We see from the experiments of Leclaire and
Godin that inventiveness also is stimulated by a share in the common
produce. The workers in these businesses are ever trying to discover
better methods to improve their machinery, in a word to progress,
since each step forward brings improvement of their lot. Inventions
come from a desire to save trouble, as well as from the impulse of
inventive genius, the joy in accomplishing an intellectual triumph,
and the delight of serving the race. Small inventions are continually
being made by clever workmen to facilitate their operations, even
when they are not themselves personally gainers by them; and there
is no reason to fear that this spontaneous exercise of inventiveness
will cease when the added productivity of labor lightens the task or
increases the harvest of the laborer. Is it to be argued that men will
be industrious, careful, and inventive when they get only a fraction
of the result of their associated labor, but will plunge into sloth,
recklessness and stagnation when they get the whole? that a little gain
stimulates, but any gain short of complete satisfaction would paralyse?
If there is one vice more certain than another to be unpopular in a
Socialistic community, it is laziness. The man who shirked would find
his mates making his position intolerable, even before he suffered the
doom of expulsion.
But while these compelling motives will be potent in their action
on man as he now is, there are others, already acting on some men,
which will one day act on all men. Human beings are not the simple
and onesided organisms they appear to the superficial glance of the
Individualist--moved only by a single motive, the desire for pecuniary
gain--by one longing, the longing for wealth. Under our present social
system, the struggle for riches assumes an abnormal and artificial
development: riches mean nearly all that makes life worth having,
security against starvation, gratification of taste, enjoyment of
pleasant and cultured society, superiority to many temptations,
self-respect, consideration, comfort, knowledge, freedom, as far as
these things are attainable under existing conditions. In a society
where poverty means social discredit, where misfortune is treated as a
crime, where the prison of the workhouse is a guerdon of failure, and
the bitter carking harassment of daily wants unmet by daily supply is
ever hanging over the head of each worker, what wonder that money seems
the one thing needful, and that every other thought is lost in the
frensied rush to escape all that is summed up in the one word Poverty?
But this abnormal development of the gold-hunger would disappear upon
the certainty for each of the means of subsistence. Let each individual
feel absolutely secure of subsistence, let every anxiety as to the
material wants of his future be swept away; and the longing for wealth
will lose its leverage. The daily bread being certain, the tyranny of
pecuniary gain will be broken; and life will begin to be used in living
and not in struggling for the chance to live. Then will come to the
front all those multifarious motives which are at work in the complex
human organism even now, and which will assume their proper importance
when the basis of physical life is assured. The desire to excel, the
joy in creative work, the longing to improve, the eagerness to win
social approval, the instinct of benevolence; all these will start
into full life, and will serve at once as the stimulus to labor and
the reward of excellence. It is instructive to notice that these very
forces may already be seen at work in every case in which subsistence
is secured, and they alone supply the stimulus to action. The soldier’s
subsistence is certain, and does not depend on his exertions. At once
he becomes susceptible to appeals to his patriotism, to his _esprit
de corps_, to the honor of his flag; he will dare anything for glory,
and value a bit of bronze, which is the “reward of valor,” far more
than a hundred times its weight in gold. Yet many of the private
soldiers come from the worst of the population; and military glory
and success in murder are but poor objects to aim at. If so much can
be done under circumstances so unpromising, what may we not hope from
nobler aspirations? Or take the eagerness, self-denial, and strenuous
effort, thrown by young men into their mere games! The desire to be
captain of the Oxford eleven, stroke of the Cambridge boat, victor
in the foot-race or the leaping, in a word, the desire to excel, is
strong enough to impel to exertions which often ruin physical health.
Everywhere we see the multiform desires of humanity assert themselves
when once livelihood is secure. It is on the devotion of these to the
service of Society, as the development of the social instincts teaches
men to identify their interests with those of the community, that
Socialism must ultimately rely for progress; but in saying this we are
only saying that Socialism relies for progress on human nature as a
whole, instead of on that mere fragment of it known as the desire for
gain. If human nature should break down, then Socialism will break
down; but at least we have a hundred strings to our Socialist bow,
while the Individualist has only one.
But Humanity will not break down. The faith which is built on it is
faith founded on a rock. Under healthier and happier conditions,
Humanity will rise to heights undreamed of now; and the most exquisite
Utopias, as sung by the poet and idealist, shall, to our children, seem
but dim and broken lights compared with their perfect day. All that we
need are courage, prudence, and faith. Faith, above all, which dares to
believe that justice and love are not impossible; and that more than
the best that man can dream of shall one day be realised by men.
THE TRANSITION TO SOCIAL DEMOCRACY.
TRANSITION.[73]
BY G. BERNARD SHAW.
When the British Association honored me by an invitation to take part
in its proceedings, I proposed to do so by reading a paper entitled
“_Finishing_ the Transition to Social Democracy.” The word “finishing”
has been, on consideration, dropped. In modern use it has gathered
a certain sudden and sinister sense which I desire carefully to
dissociate from the process to be described. I suggested it in the
first instance only to convey in the shortest way that we are in the
middle of the transition instead of shrinking from the beginning of
it; and that I propose to deal with the part of it that lies before us
rather than that which we have already accomplished. Therefore, though
I shall begin at the beginning, I shall make no apology for traversing
centuries by leaps and bounds at the risk of sacrificing the dignity of
history to the necessity for coming to the point as soon as possible.
Briefly, then, let us commence by glancing at the Middle Ages. There
you find, theoretically, a much more orderly England than the England
of to-day. Agriculture is organised on an intelligible and consistent
system in the feudal manor or commune; handicraft is ordered by the
guilds of the towns. Every man has his class, and every class its
duties. Payments and privileges are fixed by law and custom, sanctioned
by the moral sense of the community, and revised by the light of that
moral sense whenever the operation of supply and demand disturbs
their adjustment. Liberty and Equality are unheard of; but so is Free
Competition. The law does not suffer a laborer’s wife to wear a silver
girdle; neither does it force her to work sixteen hours a day for
the value of a modern shilling. Nobody entertains the idea that the
individual has any right to trade as he pleases without reference to
the rest. When the townsfolk, for instance, form a market, they quite
understand that they have not taken that trouble in order to enable
speculators to make money. If they catch a man buying goods solely in
order to sell them a few hours later at a higher price, they treat that
man as a rascal; and he never, as far as I have been able to ascertain,
ventures to plead that it is socially beneficent, and indeed a pious
duty, to buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest. If he did,
they would probably burn him alive, not altogether inexcusably. As to
Protection, it comes naturally to them.
This Social Order, relics of which are still to be found in all
directions, did not collapse because it was unjust or absurd. It
was burst by the growth of the social organism. Its machinery was
too primitive, and its administration too naïve, too personal,
too meddlesome to cope with anything more complex than a group of
industrially independent communes, centralised very loosely, if at
all, for purely political purposes. Industrial relation with other
countries were beyond its comprehension. Its grasp of the obligations
of interparochial morality was none of the surest: of international
morality it had no notion. A Frenchman or a Scotchman was a natural
enemy: a Muscovite was a foreign devil: the relationship of a negro
to the human race was far more distant than that of a gorilla is
now admitted to be. Thus, when the discovery of the New World began
that economic revolution which changed every manufacturing town into
a mere booth in the world’s fair, and quite altered the immediate
objects and views of producers, English adventurers took to the sea
in a frame of mind peculiarly favorable to commercial success. They
were unaffectedly pious, and had the force of character which is only
possible to men who are founded on convictions. At the same time, they
regarded piracy as a brave and patriotic pursuit, and the slave trade
as a perfectly honest branch of commerce, adventurous enough to be
consistent with the honor of a gentleman, and lucrative enough to make
it well worth the risk. When they stole the cargo of a foreign ship, or
made a heavy profit on a batch of slaves, they regarded their success
as a direct proof of divine protection. The owners of accumulated
wealth hastened to “venture” their capital with these men. Persons of
all the richer degrees, from Queen Elizabeth downward, took shares
in the voyages of the merchant adventurers. The returns justified
their boldness; and the foundation of the industrial greatness and
the industrial shame of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was
laid; modern Capitalism thus arising in enterprises for which men are
now, by civilised nations, hung or shot as human vermin. And it is
curious to see still, in the commercial adventurers of our own time,
the same incongruous combination of piety and rectitude with the most
unscrupulous and revolting villainy. We all know the merchant princes
whose enterprise, whose steady perseverance, whose high personal honor,
blameless family relations, large charities, and liberal endowment
of public institutions mark them out as very pillars of society; and
who are nevertheless grinding their wealth out of the labor of women
and children with such murderous rapacity that they have to hand over
the poorest of their victims to sweaters whose sole special function
is the evasion of the Factory Acts. They have, in fact, no more sense
of social solidarity with the wage-workers than Drake had with the
Spaniards or negroes.
With the rise of foreign trade and Capitalism, industry so far outgrew
the control, not merely of the individual, but of the village, the
guild, the municipality, and even the central government, that it
seemed as if all attempt at regulation must be abandoned. Every law
made for the better ordering of business either did not work at all, or
worked only as a monopoly enforced by exasperating official meddling,
directly injuring the general interest, and reacting disastrously on
the particular interest it was intended to protect. The laws, too,
had ceased to be even honestly intended, owing to the seizure of
political power by the capitalist classes, which had been prodigiously
enriched by the operation of economic laws which were not then
understood.[74] Matters reached a position in which legislation and
regulation were so mischievous and corrupt, that anarchy became the
ideal of all progressive thinkers and practical men. The intellectual
revolt formally inaugurated by the Reformation was reinforced in the
eighteenth century by the great industrial revolution which began with
the utilisation of steam and the invention of the spinning jenny.[75]
Then came chaos. The feudal system became an absurdity when its basis
of communism with inequality of condition had changed into private
property with free contract and competition rents. The guild system had
no machinery for dealing with division of labor, the factory system, or
international trade: it recognized in competitive individualism only
something to be repressed as diabolical. But competitive individualism
simply took possession of the guilds, and turned them into refectories
for aldermen, and notable additions to the grievances and laughing
stocks of posterity.
The desperate effort of the human intellect to unravel this tangle of
industrial anarchy brought modern political economy into existence.
It took shape in France, where the confusion was thrice confounded;
and proved itself a more practical department of philosophy than the
metaphysics of the schoolmen, the Utopian socialism of More, or the
sociology of Hobbes. It could trace its ancestry to Aristotle; but
just then the human intellect was rather tired of Aristotle, whose
economics, besides, were those of slave holding republics. Political
economy soon declared for industrial anarchy; for private property; for
individual recklessness of everything except individual accumulation
of riches; and for the abolition of all the functions of the State
except those of putting down violent conduct and invasions of private
property. It might have echoed Jack Cade’s exclamation, “But then are
we in order, when we are most out of order.”
Although this was what political economy decreed, it must not be
inferred that the greater economists were any more advocates of mere
license than Prince Kropotkin, or Mr. Herbert Spencer, or Mr. Benjamin
Tucker of Boston, or any other modern Anarchist. They did not admit
that the alternative to State regulation was anarchy; they held that
Nature had provided an all-powerful automatic regulator in Competition;
and that by its operation self-interest would evolve order out of chaos
if only it were allowed its own way. They loved to believe that a right
and just social order was not an artificial and painfully maintained
legal edifice, but a spontaneous outcome of the free play of the forces
of Nature. They were reactionaries against feudal domineering and
medieval meddling and ecclesiastical intolerance; and they were able
to shew how all three had ended in disgraceful failure, corruption
and self-stultification. Indignant at the spectacle of the peasant
struggling against the denial of those rights of private property
which his feudal lord had successfully usurped, they strenuously
affirmed the right of private property for all. And whilst they were
dazzled by the prodigious impulse given to production by the industrial
revolution under competitive private enterprise, they were at the
same time, for want of statistics, so optimistically ignorant of the
condition of the masses, that we find David Hume, in 1766, writing to
Turgot that “no man is so industrious but he may add some hours more in
the week to his labor; and scarce anyone is so poor but he can retrench
something of his expense.” No student ever gathers from a study of the
individualist economists that the English proletariat was seething
in horror and degradation whilst the riches of the proprietors were
increasing by leaps and bounds.
The historical ignorance of the economists did not, however, disable
them for the abstract work of scientific political economy. All their
most cherished institutions and doctrines succumbed one by one to
their analysis of the laws of production and exchange. With one law
alone--the law of rent--they destroyed the whole series of assumptions
upon which private property is based. The apriorist notion that among
free competitors wealth must go to the industrious, and poverty be
the just and natural punishment of the lazy and improvident, proved
as illusory as the apparent flatness of the earth. Here was a vast
mass of wealth called economic rent, increasing with the population,
and consisting of the difference between the product of the national
industry as it actually was and as it would have been if every acre of
land in the country had been no more fertile or favorably situated than
the very worst acre from which a bare living could be extracted: all
quite incapable of being assigned to this or that individual or class
as the return to his or its separate exertions: all purely social or
common wealth, for the private appropriation of which no permanently
valid and intellectually honest excuse could be made. Ricardo was quite
as explicit and far more thorough on the subject than Mr. Henry George.
He pointed out--I quote his own words--that “the whole surplus produce
of the soil, after deducting from it only such moderate profits as
are sufficient to encourage accumulation, must finally rest with the
landlord.”[76]
It was only by adopting a preposterous theory of value that Ricardo
was able to maintain that the laborer, selling himself for wages to
the proprietor, would always command his cost of production, _i.e._,
his daily subsistence. Even that slender consolation vanished later
on before the renewed investigation of value made by Jevons,[77]
who demonstrated that the value of a commodity is a function of the
quantity available, and may fall to zero when the supply outruns the
demand so far as to make the final increment of the supply useless.[78]
A fact which the unemployed had discovered, without the aid of the
differential calculus, before Jevons was born. Private property, in
fact, left no room for new comers. Malthus pointed this out, and
urged that there should be no newcomers, that the population should
remain stationary. But the population took exactly as much notice of
this modest demand for stagnation, as the incoming tide took of King
Canute’s ankles. Indeed the demand was the less reasonable since the
power of production per head was increasing faster than the population
(as it still is), the increase of poverty being produced simply by the
increase and private appropriation of rent. After Ricardo had completed
the individualist synthesis of production and exchange, a dialectical
war broke out. Proudhon had only to skim through a Ricardian treatise
to understand just enough of it to be able to shew that political
economy was a _reductio ad absurdum_ of private property instead of a
justification of it. Ferdinand Lassalle, with Ricardo in one hand and
Hegel in the other, turned all the heavy guns of the philosophers and
economists on private property with such effect, that no one dared to
challenge his characteristic boasts of the irresistible equipment of
Social Democracy in point of culture. Karl Marx, without even giving up
the Ricardian value theory, seized on the blue books which contained
the true history of the leaps and bounds of England’s prosperity,
and convicted private property of wholesale spoliation, murder and
compulsory prostitution; of plague, pestilence, and famine; battle,
murder, and sudden death. This was hardly what had been expected from
an institution so highly spoken of. Many critics said that the attack
was not fair: no one ventured to pretend that the charges were not
true. The facts were not only admitted; they had been legislated
upon. Social Democracy was working itself out practically as well as
academically. Before I recite the steps of the transition, I will, as
a matter of form, explain what Social Democracy is, though doubtless
nearly all my hearers are already conversant with it.
What the achievement of Socialism involves economically, is the
transfer of rent from the class which now appropriates it to the whole
people. Rent being that part of the produce which is individually
unearned, this is the only equitable method of disposing of it. There
is no means of getting rid of economic rent. So long as the fertility
of land varies from acre to acre, and the number of persons passing by
a shop window per hour varies from street to street, with the result
that two farmers or two shopkeepers of exactly equal intelligence and
industry will reap unequal returns from their year’s work, so long
will it be equitable to take from the richer farmer or shopkeeper the
excess over his fellow’s gain which he owes to the bounty of Nature
or the advantage of situation, and divide that excess of rent equally
between the two. If the pair of farms or shops be left in the hands of
a private landlord, he will take the excess, and, instead of dividing
it between his two tenants, live on it himself idly at their expense.
The economic object of Socialism is not, of course, to equalise farmers
and shopkeepers in couples, but to carry out the principle over the
whole community by collecting all rents and throwing them into the
national treasury. As the private proprietor has no reason for clinging
to his property except the legal power to take the rent and spend it
on himself--this legal power being in fact what really constitutes
him a proprietor--its abrogation would mean his expropriation. The
socialisation of rent would mean the socialisation of the sources of
production by the expropriation of the present private proprietors, and
the transfer of their property to the entire nation. This transfer,
then, is the subject matter of the transition to Socialism, which began
some forty-five years ago, as far as any phase of social evolution can
be said to begin at all.
It will be at once seen that the valid objections to Socialism consist
wholly of practical difficulties. On the ground of abstract justice,
Socialism is not only unobjectionable, but sacredly imperative. I
am afraid that in the ordinary middle-class opinion Socialism is
flagrantly dishonest, but could be established off-hand to-morrow with
the help of a guillotine, if there were no police, and the people were
wicked enough. In truth, it is as honest as it is inevitable; but all
the mobs and guillotines in the world can no more establish it than
police coercion can avert it. The first practical difficulty is raised
by the idea of the entire people collectively owning land, capital, or
anything else. Here is the rent arising out of the people’s industry:
here are the pockets of the private proprietors. The problem is to
drop that rent, not into those private pockets, but into the people’s
pocket. Yes; but where is the people’s pocket? Who is the people?
what is the people? Tom we know, and Dick: also Harry; but solely and
separately as individuals: as a trinity they have no existence. Who is
their trustee, their guardian, their man of business, their manager,
their secretary, even their stakeholder? The Socialist is stopped
dead at the threshold of practical action by this difficulty until he
bethinks himself of the State as the representative and trustee of the
people. Now if you will just form a hasty picture of the governments
which called themselves States in Ricardo’s day, consisting of rich
proprietors legislating either by divine right or by the exclusive
suffrage of the poorer proprietors, and filling the executives with the
creatures of their patronage and favoritism; if you look beneath their
oratorical parliamentary discussions, conducted with all the splendor
and decorum of an expensive sham fight; if you consider their class
interests, their shameless corruption, and the waste and mismanagement
which disgraced all their bungling attempts at practical business
of any kind, you will understand why Ricardo, clearly as he saw the
economic consequences of private appropriation of rent, never dreamt of
State appropriation as a possible alternative. The Socialist of that
time did not greatly care: he was only a benevolent Utopian who planned
model communities, and occasionally carried them out, with negatively
instructive and positively disastrous results. When his successors
learned economies from Ricardo, they saw the difficulty quite as
plainly as Ricardo’s vulgarisers, the Whig doctrinaires who accepted
the incompetence and corruption of States as permanent inherent State
qualities, like the acidity of lemons. Not that the Socialists were not
doctrinaires too; but outside economics they were pupils of Hegel,
whilst the Whigs were pupils of Bentham and Austin. Bentham’s was not
the school in which men learned to solve problems to which history
alone could give the key, or to form conceptions which belonged to
the evolutional order. Hegel, on the other hand, expressly taught the
conception of the perfect State; and his pupils saw that nothing in
the nature of things made it impossible, or even specially difficult,
to make the existing State, if not absolutely perfect, at least
practically trustworthy. They contemplated the insolent and inefficient
government official of their day without rushing to the conclusion that
the State uniform had a magic property of extinguishing all business
capacity, integrity, and common civility in the wearer. When State
officials obtained their posts by favoritism and patronage, efficiency
on their part was an accident, and politeness a condescension. When
they retained their posts without any effective responsibility to the
public, they naturally defrauded the public by making their posts
sinecures, and insulted the public when, by personal inquiry, it made
itself troublesome. But every successfully conducted private business
establishment in the kingdom was an example of the ease with which
public ones could be reformed as soon as there was the effective will
to find out the way. Make the passing of a sufficient examination
an indispensable preliminary to entering the executive; make the
executive responsible to the government and the government responsible
to the people; and State departments will be provided with all the
guarantees for integrity and efficiency that private money-hunting
pretends to. Thus the old bugbear of State imbecility did not terrify
the Socialist: it only made him a Democrat. But to call himself so
simply, would have had the effect of classing him with the ordinary
destructive politician who is a Democrat without ulterior views for
the sake of formal Democracy--one whose notion of Radicalism is the
pulling up of aristocratic institutions by the roots--who is, briefly,
a sort of Universal Abolitionist. Consequently, we have the distinctive
term Social Democrat, indicating the man or woman who desires through
Democracy to gather the whole people into the State, so that the State
may be trusted with the rent of the country, and finally with the land,
the capital, and the organisation of the national industry--with all
the sources of production, in short, which are now abandoned to the
cupidity of irresponsible private individuals.
The benefits of such a change as this are so obvious to all except
the existing private proprietors and their parasites, that it is very
necessary to insist on the impossibility of effecting it suddenly. The
young Socialist is apt to be catastrophic in his views--to plan the
revolutionary programme as an affair of twenty-four lively hours, with
Individualism in full swing on Monday morning, a tidal wave of the
insurgent proletariat on Monday afternoon, and Socialism in complete
working order on Tuesday. A man who believes that such a happy despatch
is possible, will naturally think it absurd and even inhuman to stick
at bloodshed in bringing it about. He can prove that the continuance
of the present system for a year costs more suffering than could be
crammed into any Monday afternoon, however sanguinary. This is the
phase of conviction in which are delivered those Socialist speeches
which make what the newspapers call “good copy,” and which are the only
ones they as yet report. Such speeches are encouraged by the hasty
opposition they evoke from thoughtless persons, who begin by tacitly
admitting that a sudden change is feasible, and go on to protest that
it would be wicked. The experienced Social Democrat converts his too
ardent follower by first admitting that if the change could be made
catastrophically it would be well worth making, and then proceeding
to point out that as it would involve a readjustment of productive
industry to meet the demand created by an entirely new distribution
of purchasing power, it would also involve, in the application of
labor and industrial machinery, alterations which no afternoon’s work
could effect. You cannot convince any man that it is impossible to
tear down a government in a day; but everybody is convinced already
that you cannot convert first and third class carriages into second
class; rookeries and palaces into comfortable dwellings; and jewellers
and dressmakers into bakers and builders, by merely singing the
“Marseillaise.” No judicious person, however deeply persuaded that the
work of the court dressmaker has no true social utility, would greatly
care to quarter her idly on the genuinely productive workers pending
the preparation of a place for her in their ranks. For though she is
to all intents and purposes quartered on them at present, yet she at
least escapes the demoralisation of idleness. Until her new place is
ready, it is better that her patrons should find dressmaking for her
hands to do, than that Satan should find mischief. Demolishing a
Bastille with seven prisoners in it is one thing: demolishing one with
fourteen million prisoners is quite another. I need not enlarge on the
point: the necessity for cautious and gradual change must be obvious
to everyone here, and could be made obvious to everyone elsewhere if
only the catastrophists were courageously and sensibly dealt with in
discussion.
What then does a gradual transition to Social Democracy mean
specifically? It means the gradual extension of the franchise; and the
transfer of rent and interest to the State, not in one lump sum, but
by instalments. Looked at in this way, it will at once be seen that
we are already far on the road, and are being urged further by many
politicians who do not dream that they are touched with Socialism--nay,
who would earnestly repudiate the touch as a taint. Let us see how far
we have gone. In 1832 the political power passed into the hands of
the middle class; and in 1838 Lord John Russell announced finality.
Meanwhile, in 1834, the middle class had swept away the last economic
refuge of the workers, the old Poor Law, and delivered them naked to
the furies of competition.[79] Ten years turmoil and active emigration
followed; and then the thin end of the wedge went in. The Income
Tax was established; and the Factory Acts were made effective. The
Income Tax (1842), which is on individualist principles an intolerable
spoliative anomaly, is simply a forcible transfer of rent, interest,
and even rent of ability, from private holders to the State without
compensation. It excused itself to the Whigs on the ground that those
who had most property for the State to protect should pay _ad valorem_
for its protection. The Factory Acts swept the anarchic theory of the
irresponsibility of private enterprise out of practical politics;
made employers accountable to the State for the well-being of their
employees; and transferred a further instalment of profits directly
to the worker by raising wages. Then came the gold discoveries in
California (1847) and Australia (1851), and the period of leaps and
bounds, supported by the economic rent of England’s mineral fertility,
which kindled Mr. Gladstone’s retrogressive instincts to a vain hope of
abolishing the Income Tax. These events relieved the pressure set up
by the New Poor Law. The workers rapidly organized themselves in Trades
Unions, which were denounced then for their tendency to sap the manly
independence which had formerly characterized the British workman,[80]
and which are to-day held up to him as the self-helpful perfection of
that manly independence. Howbeit, self-help flourished, especially at
Manchester and Sheffield; State help was voted grandmotherly; wages
went up; and the Unions, like the fly on the wheel, thought that they
had raised them. They were mistaken; but the value of Trade Unionism
in awakening the social conscience of the skilled workers was immense,
though to this there was a heavy set-off in its tendency to destroy
their artistic conscience by making them aware that it was their duty
to one another to discourage rapid and efficient workmanship by every
means in their power. An extension of the franchise, which was really
an instalment of Democracy, and not, like the 1832 Reform Bill, only an
advance towards it, was gained in 1867; and immediately afterwards came
another instalment of Socialism in the shape of a further transfer of
rent and interest from private holders to the State for the purpose of
educating the people. In the meantime, the extraordinary success of the
post-office, which, according to the teaching of the Manchester school,
should have been a nest of incompetence and jobbery, had not only shewn
the perfect efficiency of State enterprise when the officials are made
responsible to the class interested in its success, but had also proved
the enormous convenience and cheapness of socialistic or collectivist
charges over those of private enterprise. For example, the Postmaster
General charges a penny for sending a letter weighing an ounce from
Kensington to Bayswater. Private enterprise would send half a pound the
same distance for a farthing, and make a handsome profit on it. But the
Postmaster General also sends an ounce letter from Land’s End to John
o’ Groat’s House for a penny. Private enterprise would probably demand
at least a shilling, if not five, for such a service; and there are
many places in which private enterprise could not on any terms maintain
a post-office. Therefore a citizen with ten letters to post saves
considerably by the uniform socialistic charge, and quite recognises
the necessity for rigidly protecting the Postmaster’s monopoly.
After 1875,[81] leaping and bounding prosperity, after a final spurt
during which the Income Tax fell to twopence, got out of breath, and
has not yet recovered it. Russia and America, among other competitors,
began to raise the margin of cultivation at a surprising rate.
Education began to intensify the sense of suffering, and to throw light
upon its causes in dark places. The capital needed to keep English
industry abreast of the growing population began to be attracted
by the leaping and bounding of foreign loans and investments,[82]
and to bring to England, in payment of interest, imports that were
not paid for by exports--a phenomenon inexpressibly disconcerting
to the Cobden Club. The old pressure of the eighteen-thirties came
back again; and presently, as if Chartism and Fergus O’Connor had
risen from the dead, the Democratic Federation and Mr. H. M. Hyndman
appeared in the field, highly significant as signs of the times, and
looming hideously magnified in the guilty eye of property, if not
of great account as direct factors in the course of events. Numbers
of young men, pupils of Mill, Spencer, Comte, and Darwin, roused by
Mr. Henry George’s “Progress and Poverty,” left aside evolution and
freethought; took to insurrectionary economics; studied Karl Marx; and
were so convinced that Socialism had only to be put clearly before
the working-classes to concentrate the power of their immense numbers
in one irresistible organization, that the Revolution was fixed for
1889--the anniversary of the French Revolution--at latest. I remember
being asked satirically and publicly at that time how long I thought
it would take to get Socialism into working order if I had my way. I
replied, with a spirited modesty, that a fortnight would be ample for
the purpose. When I add that I was frequently complimented on being one
of the more reasonable Socialists, you will be able to appreciate the
fervor of our conviction, and the extravagant levity of our practical
ideas. The opposition we got was uninstructive: it was mainly founded
on the assumption that our projects were theoretically unsound but
immediately possible, whereas our weak point lay in the case being
exactly the reverse. However, the ensuing years sifted and sobered
us. “The Socialists,” as they were called, have fallen into line as a
Social Democratic party, no more insurrectionary in its policy than any
other party. But I shall not present the remainder of the transition
to Social Democracy as the work of fully conscious Social Democrats.
I prefer to ignore them altogether--to suppose, if you will, that the
Government will shortly follow the advice of the _Saturday Review_,
and, for the sake of peace and quietness, hang them.
First, then, as to the consummation of Democracy. Since 1885 every man
who pays four shillings a week rent can only be hindered from voting
by anomalous conditions of registration which are likely to be swept
away very shortly. This is all but manhood suffrage; and it will soon
complete itself as adult suffrage. However, I may leave adult suffrage
out of the question, because the outlawry of women, monstrous as it
is, is not a question of class privilege, but of sex privilege. To
complete the foundation of the democratic State, then, we need manhood
suffrage, abolition of all poverty disqualifications, abolition of
the House of Lords, public payment of candidature expenses, public
payment of representatives, and annual elections. These changes are now
inevitable, however unacceptable they may appear to those of us who
are Conservatives. They have been for half a century the commonplaces
of Radicalism. We have next to consider that the State is not merely
an abstraction: it is a machine to do certain work; and if that work
be increased and altered in its character, the machinery must be
multiplied and altered too. Now, the extension of the franchise does
increase and alter the work very considerably; but it has no direct
effect on the machinery. At present the State machine has practically
broken down under the strain of spreading democracy, the work being
mainly local, and the machinery mainly central. Without efficient local
machinery the replacing of private enterprise by State enterprise is
out of the question; and we shall presently see that such replacement
is one of the inevitable consequences of Democracy. A democratic State
cannot become a _Social_-Democratic State unless it has in every
centre of population a local governing body as thoroughly democratic
in its constitution as the central Parliament. This matter is also
well in train. In 1888 a Government avowedly reactionary passed a
Local Government Bill which effected a distinct advance towards the
democratic municipality.[83] It was furthermore a Bill with no single
aspect of finality anywhere about it. Local Self-Government remains
prominent within the sphere of practical politics. When it is achieved,
the democratic State will have the machinery for Socialism.
And now, how is the raw material of Socialism--otherwise the
Proletarian man--to be brought to the Democratic State machinery? Here
again the path is easily found. Politicians who have no suspicion
that they are Socialists, are advocating further instalments of
Socialism with a recklessness of indirect results which scandalizes the
conscious Social Democrat. The phenomenon of economic rent has assumed
prodigious proportions in our great cities. The injustice of its
private appropriation is glaring, flagrant, almost ridiculous. In the
long suburban roads about London, where rows of exactly similar houses
stretch for miles countrywards, the rent changes at every few thousand
yards by exactly the amount saved or incurred annually in travelling
to and from the householder’s place of business. The seeker after
lodgings, hesitating between Bloomsbury and Tottenham, finds every
advantage of situation skimmed off by the landlord with scientific
precision. As lease after lease falls in, houses, shops, goodwills of
businesses which are the fruits of the labor of lifetimes, fall into
the maw of the ground landlord. Confiscation of capital, spoliation
of households, annihilation of incentive, everything that the most
ignorant and credulous fundholder ever charged against the Socialist,
rages openly in London, which begins to ask itself whether it exists
and toils only for the typical duke and his celebrated jockey and his
famous racehorse. Lord Hobhouse and his unimpeachably respectable
committee for the taxation of ground values are already in the field
claiming the value of the site of London for London collectively; and
their agitation receives additional momentum from every lease that
falls in. Their case is unassailable; and the evil they attack is one
that presses on the ratepaying and leaseholding classes as well as upon
humbler sufferers. This economic pressure is reinforced formidably by
political opinion in the workmen’s associations. Here the moderate
members are content to demand a progressive Income Tax, which is
virtually Lord Hobhouse’s proposal; and the extremists are all for Land
Nationalisation, which is again Lord Hobhouse’s principle. The cry for
such taxation cannot permanently be resisted. And it is very worthy
of remark that there is a new note in the cry. Formerly taxes were
proposed with a specific object--as to pay for a war, for education,
or the like. Now the proposal is to tax the landlords in order to get
some of _our_ money back from them--take it from them first and find
a use for it afterwards. Ever since Mr. Henry George’s book reached
the English Radicals, there has been a growing disposition to impose
a tax of twenty shillings in the pound on obviously unearned incomes;
that is, to dump four hundred and fifty millions[84] a year down on
the Exchequer counter; and then retire with three cheers for the
restoration of the land to the people.
The results of such a proceeding, if it actually came off, would
considerably take its advocates aback. The streets would presently
be filled with starving workers of all grades, domestic servants,
coach-builders, decorators, jewellers, lace-makers, fashionable
professional men, and numberless others whose livelihood is at present
gained by ministering to the wants of these and of the proprietary
class. “This,” they would cry, “is what your theories have brought
us to! Back with the good old times, when we received our wages,
which were at least better than nothing.” Evidently the Chancellor
of the Exchequer would have three courses open to him. (1) He would
give the money back again to the landlords and capitalists with an
apology. (2) He could attempt to start State industries with it for the
employment of the people. (3) Or he could simply distribute it among
the unemployed. The last is not to be thought of: anything is better
than _panem et circenses_. The second (starting State industries)
would be far too vast an undertaking to get on foot soon enough to
meet the urgent difficulty. The first (the return with an apology)
would be a _reductio ad absurdum_ of the whole affair--a confession
that the private proprietor, for all his idleness and his voracity,
is indeed performing an indispensable economic function--the function
of capitalising, however wastefully and viciously, the wealth
which surpasses his necessarily limited power of immediate personal
consumption. And here we have checkmate to mere Henry Georgism, or
State appropriation of rent without Socialism. It is easy to shew that
the State is entitled to the whole income of the Duke of Westminster,
and to argue therefrom that he should straightway be taxed twenty
shillings in the pound. But in practical earnest the State has no right
to take five farthings of capital from the Duke or anybody else until
it is ready to invest them in productive enterprise. The consequences
of withdrawing capital from private hands merely to lock it up
unproductively in the treasury would be so swift and ruinous, that no
statesman, however fortified with the destructive resources of abstract
economics, could persist in it. It will be found in the future as in
the past that governments will raise money only because they want it
for specific purposes, and not on _a priori_ demonstrations that they
have a right to it. But it must be added that when they _do_ want it
for a specific purpose, then, also in the future as in the past, they
will raise it without the slightest regard to _a priori_ demonstrations
that they have no right to it.
Here then we have got to a dead lock. In spite of democrats and land
nationalisers, rent cannot be touched unless some pressure from
quite another quarter forces productive enterprise on the State.
Such pressure is already forthcoming. The quick starvation of the
unemployed, the slow starvation of the employed who have no relatively
scarce special skill, the unbearable anxiety or dangerous recklessness
of those who are employed to-day and unemployed to-morrow, the rise in
urban rents, the screwing down of wages by pauper immigration and home
multiplication, the hand-in-hand advance of education and discontent,
are all working up to explosion point. It is useless to prove by
statistics that most of the people are better off than before, true as
that probably is, thanks to instalments of Social Democracy. Yet even
that is questionable; for it is idle to claim authority for statistics
of things that have never been recorded. Chaos has no statistics: it
has only statisticians; and the ablest of them prefaces his remarks
on the increased consumption of rice by the admission that “no one
can contemplate the present condition of the masses without desiring
something like a revolution for the better.”[85] The masses themselves
are being converted so rapidly to that view of the situation, that we
have Pan-Anglican Synods, bewildered by a revival of Christianity,
pleading that though Socialism is eminently Christian, yet “the Church
must act safely as well as sublimely.”[86] During the agitation made
by the unemployed last winter (1887-8), the Chief Commissioner of
Police in London started at his own shadow, and mistook Mr. John Burns
for the French Revolution, to the great delight of that genial and
courageous champion of his class.[87] The existence of the pressure
is further shewn by the number and variety of safety valves proposed
to relieve it--monetization of silver, import duties, “leaseholds
enfranchisement,” extension of joint-stock capitalism masquerading as
co-operation,[88] and other irrelevancies. My own sudden promotion from
the street corner to this platform is in its way a sign of the times.
But whilst we are pointing the moral and adorning the tale according
to our various opinions, an actual struggle is beginning between the
unemployed who demand work and the local authorities appointed to
deal with the poor. In the winter, the unemployed collect round red
flags, and listen to speeches for want of anything else to do. They
welcome Socialism, insurrectionism, currency craze--anything that
passes the time and seems to express the fact that they are hungry.
The local authorities, equally innocent of studied economic views,
deny that there is any misery; send leaders of deputations to the
Local Government Board, who promptly send them back to the guardians;
try bullying; try stoneyards; try bludgeoning; and finally sit down
helplessly and wish it were summer again or the unemployed at the
bottom of the sea. Meanwhile the charity fund, which is much less
elastic than the wages fund, overflows at the Mansion House only to
run dry at the permanent institutions. So unstable a state of things
cannot last. The bludgeoning, and the shocking clamor for bloodshed
from the anti-popular newspapers, will create a revulsion among the
humane section of the middle class. The section which is blinded
by class prejudice to all sense of social responsibility, dreads
personal violence from the working class with a superstitious terror
that defies enlightenment or control.[89] Municipal employment must
be offered at last. This cannot be done in one place alone: the rush
from other parts of the country would swamp an isolated experiment.
Wherever the pressure is, the relief must be given on the spot.
And since public decency, as well as consideration for its higher
officials, will prevent the County Council from instituting a working
day of sixteen hours at a wage of a penny an hour or less, it will
soon have on its hands not only the unemployed, but also the white
slaves of the sweater, who will escape from their dens and appeal to
the municipality for work the moment they become aware that municipal
employment is better than private sweating. Nay, the sweater himself,
a mere slave driver paid “by the piece,” will in many instances be
as anxious as his victims to escape from his hideous trade. But the
municipal organisation of the industry of these people will require
capital. Where is the municipality to get it? Raising the rates is
out of the question: the ordinary tradesmen and householders are
already rated and rented to the limit of endurance: further burdens
would almost bring them into the street with a red flag. Dreadful
dilemma! in which the County Council, between the devil and the deep
sea, will hear Lord Hobhouse singing a song of deliverance, telling
a golden tale of ground values to be municipalised by taxation. The
land nationalisers will swell the chorus: the Radical progressive
income taxers singing together, and the ratepaying tenants shouting
for joy. The capital difficulty thus solved--for we need not seriously
anticipate that the landlords will actually fight, as our President[90]
once threatened--the question of acquiring land will arise. The
nationalisers will declare for its annexation by the municipality
without compensation; but that will be rejected as spoliation, worthy
only of revolutionary Socialists. The no-compensation cry is indeed
a piece of unpractical catastrophic insurrectionism; for whilst
compensation would be unnecessary and absurd if every proprietor
were expropriated simultaneously, and the proprietary system at once
replaced by full blown Socialism, yet when it is necessary to proceed
by degrees, the denial of compensation would have the effect of
singling out individual proprietors for expropriation whilst the others
remained unmolested, and depriving them of their private means long
before there was suitable municipal employment ready for them. The
land, as it is required, will therefore be honestly purchased; and the
purchase money, or the interest thereon, will be procured, like the
capital, by taxing rent. Of course this will be at bottom an act of
expropriation just as much as the collection of Income Tax to-day is an
act of expropriation. As such, it will be denounced by the landlords
as merely a committing of the newest sin the oldest kind of way. In
effect, they will be compelled at each purchase to buy out one of their
body and present his land to the municipality, thereby distributing the
loss fairly over their whole class, instead of placing it on one man
who is no more responsible than the rest. But they will be compelled to
do this in a manner that will satisfy the moral sense of the ordinary
citizen as effectively as that of the skilled economist.
We now foresee our municipality equipped with land and capital for
industrial purposes. At first they will naturally extend the industries
they already carry on, road making, gas works, tramways, building, and
the like. It is probable that they will for the most part regard their
action as a mere device to meet a passing emergency. The Manchester
School will urge its Protectionist theories as to the exemption of
private enterprise from the competition of public enterprise, in one
supreme effort to practise for the last time on popular ignorance of
the science which it has consistently striven to debase and stultify.
For a while the proprietary party will succeed in hampering and
restricting municipal enterprise;[91] in attaching the stigma of
pauperism to its service; in keeping the lot of its laborers as nearly
as possible down to private competition level in point of hard work
and low wages. But its power will be broken by the disappearance of
that general necessity for keeping down the rates which now hardens
local authority to humane appeals. The luxury of being generous at
someone else’s expense will be irresistible. The ground landlord will
be the municipal milch cow; and the ordinary ratepayers will feel the
advantage of sleeping in peace, relieved at once from the fear of
increased burdens and of having their windows broken and their premises
looted by hungry mobs, nuclei of all the socialism and scoundrelism of
the city. They will have just as much remorse in making the landlord
pay as the landlord has had in making them pay--just as much and
no more. And as the municipality becomes more democratic, it will
find landlordism losing power, not only relatively to democracy, but
absolutely.
The ordinary ratepayer, however, will not remain unaffected for long.
At the very outset of the new extension of municipal industries, the
question of wage will arise. A minimum wage must be fixed; and though
at first, to avoid an overwhelming rush of applicants for employment,
it must be made too small to tempt any decently employed laborer to
forsake his place and run to the municipality, still, it will not be
the frankly infernal competition wage. It will be, like mediæval wages,
fixed with at least some reference to public opinion as to a becoming
standard of comfort. Over and above this, the municipality will
have to pay to its organisers, managers, and incidentally necessary
skilled workers the full market price of their ability, minus only
what the superior prestige and permanence of public employment may
induce them to accept. But whilst these high salaries will make no
more disturbance in the labor market than the establishment of a new
joint-stock company would, the minimum wage for laborers will affect
that market perceptibly. The worst sort of sweaters will find that if
they are to keep their “hands,” they must treat them at least as well
as the municipality. The consequent advance in wage will swallow up the
sweater’s narrow margin of profit. Hence the sweater must raise the
price per piece against the shops and wholesale houses for which he
sweats. This again will diminish the profits of the wholesale dealers
and shopkeepers, who will not be able to recover this loss by raising
the price of their wares against the public, since, had any such step
been possible, they would have taken it before. But fortunately for
them, the market value of their ability as men of business is fixed
by the same laws that govern the prices of commodities. Just as the
sweater is worth his profit, so they are worth their profit; and just
as the sweater will be able to exact from them his old remuneration in
spite of the advance in wages, so they will be able to exact their old
remuneration in spite of the advance in sweaters’ terms. But from whom,
it will be asked, if not from the public by raising the price of the
wares? Evidently from the landlord upon whose land they are organising
production. In other words, they will demand and obtain a reduction of
rent. Thus the organiser of industry, the employer pure and simple, the
_entrepreneur_, as he is often called in economic treatises nowadays,
will not suffer. In the division of the product his share will remain
constant; whilst the industrious wage-worker’s share will be increased,
and the idle proprietor’s share diminished. This will not adjust itself
without friction and clamor; but such friction is constantly going on
under the present system in the opposite direction, _i.e._, by the
raising of the proprietor’s share at the expense of the worker’s.
The contraction of landlords’ incomes will necessarily diminish
the revenue from taxation on such incomes. Let us suppose that the
municipality, to maintain its revenue, puts on an additional penny
in the pound. The effect will be to burn the landlord’s candle at
both ends--obviously not a process that can be continued to infinity.
But long before taxation fails as a source of municipal capital, the
municipalities will have begun to save capital out of the product of
their own industries. In the market the competition of those industries
with the private concerns will be irresistible. Unsaddled with a single
idle person, and having, therefore, nothing to provide for after paying
their employees except extension of capital, they will be able to offer
wages that no business burdened with the unproductive consumption of
an idle landlord or shareholder could afford, unless it yielded a
heavy rent in consequence of some marked advantage of site. But even
rents, when they are town rents, are at the mercy of a municipality
in the long run. The masters of the streets and the traffic can nurse
one site and neglect another. The rent of a shop depends on the number
of persons passing its windows per hour. A skilfully timed series of
experiments in paving, a new bridge, a tramway service, a barracks,
or a small-pox hospital are only a few of the circumstances of which
city rents are the creatures. The power of the municipality to control
these circumstances is as obvious as the impotence of competing private
individuals. Again, competing private individuals are compelled to sell
their produce at a price equivalent to the full cost of production at
the margin of cultivation.[92] The municipality could compete against
them by reducing prices to the average cost of production over the
whole area of municipal cultivation. The more favorably situated
private concerns could only meet this by ceasing to pay rent; the less
favorably situated would succumb without remedy. It would be either
stalemate or checkmate. Private property would either become barren, or
it would yield to the actual cultivator of average ability no better an
income than could be obtained more securely in municipal employment.
To the mere proprietor it would yield nothing. Eventually the land and
industry of the whole town would pass by the spontaneous action of
economic forces into the hands of the municipality; and, so far, the
problem of socialising industry would be solved.
Private property, by cheapening the laborer to the utmost in order
to get the greater surplus out of him, lowers the margin of human
cultivation, and so raises the “rent of ability.” The most important
form of that rent is the profit of industrial management. The gains
of a great portrait painter or fashionable physician are much less
significant, since these depend entirely on the existence of a very
rich class of patrons subject to acute vanity and hypochondriasis. But
the industrial organiser is independent of patrons: instead of merely
attracting a larger share of the product of industry to himself, he
increases the product by his management. The market price of such
ability depends upon the relation of the supply to the demand: the
more there is of it the cheaper it is: the less, the dearer. Any cause
that increases the supply lowers the price. Now it is evident that
since a manager must be a man of education and address, it is useless
to look ordinarily to the laboring class for a supply of managerial
skill. Not one laborer in a million succeeds in raising himself on
the shoulders of his fellows by extraordinary gifts, or extraordinary
luck, or both. The managers must be drawn from the classes which
enjoy education and social culture; and their price, rapidly as it
is falling with the spread of education and the consequent growth of
the “intellectual proletariat,” is still high. It is true that a very
able and highly-trained manager can now be obtained for about £800 a
year, provided his post does not compel him to spend two-thirds of
his income on what is called “keeping up his position,” instead of on
his own gratification.[93] Still, when it is considered that laborers
receive less than £50 a year, and that the demand for laborers is
necessarily vast in proportion to the demand for able managers, nay,
that there is an inverse ratio between them, since the manager’s talent
is valuable in proportion to quantity of labor he can organise, it will
be admitted that £800 a year represents an immense rent of ability.
But if the education and culture which are a practically indispensable
part of the equipment of competitors for such posts were enjoyed by
millions instead of thousands, that rent would fall considerably. Now
the tendency of private property is to keep the masses mere beasts of
burden. The tendency of Social Democracy is to educate them, to make
men of them. Social Democracy would not long be saddled with the rents
of ability which have during the last century made our born captains of
industry our masters and tyrants instead of our servants and leaders.
It is even conceivable that rent of managerial ability might in course
of time become negative,[94] astonishing as that may seem to the many
persons who are by this time so hopelessly confused amid existing
anomalies, that the proposition that “whosoever of you will be the
chiefest, shall be servant of all,” strikes them rather as a Utopian
paradox than as the most obvious and inevitable of social arrangements.
The fall in the rent of ability will, however, benefit not only the
municipality, but also its remaining private competitors. Nevertheless,
as the prestige of the municipality grows, and as men see more and
more clearly what the future is to it, able organisers will take lower
salaries for municipal than for private employment; whilst those who
can beat even the municipality at organising, or who, as professional
men, can deal personally with the public without the intervention of
industrial organisation, will pay the rent of their places of business
either directly to the municipality, or to the private landlord whose
income the municipality will absorb by taxation. Finally, when rents
of ability had reached their irreducible natural level, they could be
dealt with by a progressive Income Tax in the very improbable case of
their proving a serious social inconvenience.
It is not necessary to go further into the economic detail of the
process of the extinction of private property. Much of that process
as sketched here may be anticipated by sections of the proprietary
class successively capitulating, as the net closes about their special
interests, on such terms as they may be able to stand out for before
their power is entirely broken.[95]
We may also safely neglect for the moment the question of the
development of the House of Commons into the central government which
will be the organ for federating the municipalities, and nationalising
inter-municipal rents by an adjustment of the municipal contributions
to imperial taxation: in short, for discharging national as distinct
from local business. One can see that the Local Government Board of
the future will be a tremendous affair; that foreign States will be
deeply affected by the reaction of English progress; that international
trade, always the really dominant factor in foreign policy, will have
to be reconsidered from a new point of view when profit comes to
be calculated in terms of net social welfare instead of individual
pecuniary gain; that our present system of imperial aggression, in
which, under pretext of exploration and colonisation, the flag follows
the filibuster and trade follows the flag, with the missionary bringing
up the rear, must collapse when the control of our military forces
passes from the capitalist class to the people; that the disappearance
of a variety of classes with a variety of what are now ridiculously
called “public opinions” will be accompanied by the welding of society
into one class with a public opinion of inconceivable weight; that this
public opinion will make it for the first time possible effectively
to control the population; that the economic independence of women,
and the supplanting of the head of the household by the individual as
the recognized unit of the State, will materially alter the status of
children and the utility of the institution of the family; and that the
inevitable reconstitution of the State Church on a democratic basis
may, for example, open up the possibility of the election of an avowed
Freethinker like Mr. John Morley or Mr. Bradlaugh to the deanery of
Westminster. All these things are mentioned only for the sake of a
glimpse of the fertile fields of thought and action which await us when
the settlement of our bread and butter question leaves us free to use
and develop our higher faculties.
This, then, is the humdrum programme of the practical Social Democrat
to-day. There is not one new item in it. All are applications of
principles already admitted, and extensions of practices already in
full activity. All have on them that stamp of the vestry which is so
congenial to the British mind. None of them compel the use of the words
Socialism or Revolution: at no point do they involve guillotining,
declaring the Rights of Man, swearing on the altar of the country,
or anything else that is supposed to be essentially un-English. And
they are all sure to come--landmarks on our course already visible to
farsighted politicians even of the party which dreads them.
Let me, in conclusion, disavow all admiration for this inevitable, but
sordid, slow, reluctant, cowardly path to justice. I venture to claim
your respect for those enthusiasts who still refuse to believe that
millions of their fellow creatures must be left to sweat and suffer
in hopeless toil and degradation, whilst parliaments and vestries
grudgingly muddle and grope towards paltry instalments of betterment.
The right is so clear, the wrong so intolerable, the gospel so
convincing, that it seems to them that it _must_ be possible to enlist
the whole body of workers--soldiers, policemen, and all--under the
banner of brotherhood and equality; and at one great stroke to set
Justice on her rightful throne. Unfortunately, such an army of light
is no more to be gathered from the human product of nineteenth century
civilisation than grapes are to be gathered from thistles. But if we
feel glad of that impossibility; if we feel relieved that the change
is to be slow enough to avert personal risk to ourselves; if we feel
anything less than acute disappointment and bitter humiliation at
the discovery that there is yet between us and the promised land a
wilderness in which many must perish miserably of want and despair:
then I submit to you that our institutions have corrupted us to the
most dastardly degree of selfishness. The Socialists need not be
ashamed of beginning as they did by proposing militant organisation
of the working classes and general insurrection. The proposal proved
impracticable; and it has now been abandoned--not without some
outspoken regrets--by English Socialists. But it still remains as the
only finally possible alternative to the Social Democratic programme
which I have sketched to-day.
FOOTNOTES:
[73] An address delivered on the 7th September, 1888, to the Economic
Section of the British Association at Bath.
[74] Explained in the first essay in this volume.
[75] See page 57-61.
[76] “Principles of Political Economy,” chap. xxiv, p. 202.
[77] “Theory of Political Economy.” By W. Stanley Jevons (London:
Macmillan & Co.). See also “The Alphabet of Economic Science.” Part by
Philip H. Wicksteed. (Same publishers.)
[78] See pp. 7-9 _ante_.
[79] The general impression that the old Poor Law had become an
indefensible nuisance is a correct one. All attempts to mitigate
Individualism by philanthropy instead of replacing it by Socialism are
foredoomed to confusion.
[80] See Final Report of Royal Commission on Trade Unions, 1869. Vol.
i, p. xvii, sec. 46.
[81] See Mr. Robert Giffen’s address on “The Recent Rate of Material
Progress in England.” Proceedings of the British Association at
Manchester in 1887, page 806.
[82] See Mr. Robert Giffen on Import and Export Statistics, “Essays on
Finance,” Second Series, p. 194. (London: G. Bell & Sons. 1886.)
[83] This same Government, beginning to realise what it has
unintentionally done for Social Democracy, is already (1889) doing what
it can to render the new County Councils socialistically impotent by
urgently reminding them of the restrictions which hamper their action.
[84] The authority for this figure will be found in Fabian Tract, No.
5, “Facts for Socialists.”
[85] Mr. R. Giffen, “Essays in Finance,” Second Series, p. 393.
[86] Proceedings of the Pan-Anglican Synod: Lambeth, 1888. Report of
Committee on Socialism.
[87] Finally, the Commissioner was superseded; and Mr. Burns was
elected a member of the first London County Council by a large majority.
[88] It is due to the leaders of the Co-operative movement to say here
that they are no parties to the substitution of dividend-hunting by
petty capitalists for the pursuit of the ideal of Robert Owen, the
Socialist founder of Co-operation; and that they are fully aware that
Co-operation must be a political as well as a commercial movement if it
is to achieve a final solution of the labor question.
[89] Ample material for a study of West End mob panic may be found in
the London newspapers of February, 1886, and November, 1887.
[90] Lord Bramwell, President of the Economic Section of the British
Association in 1888.
[91] See note, p. 171.
[92] The meaning of these terms will be familiar to readers of the
first essay.
[93] See note, p. 16.
[94] That is, the manager would receive less for his work than the
artisan. Cases in which the profits of the employer are smaller than
the wages of the employee are by no means uncommon in certain grades of
industry where small traders have occasion to employ skilled workmen.
[95] Such capitulations occur already when the Chancellor of the
Exchequer takes advantage of the fall in the current rate of interest
(explained on page 20) to reduce Consols. This he does by simply
threatening to pay off the stockholders with money freshly borrowed at
the current rate. They, knowing that they could not reinvest the money
on any better terms than the reduced ones offered by the Chancellor,
have to submit. There is no reason why the municipalities should not
secure the same advantages for their constituents. For example, the
inhabitants of London now pay the shareholders of the gas companies a
million and a half annually, or 11 per cent on the £13,650,000 which
the gas works cost. The London County Council could raise that sum for
about £400,000 a year. By threatening to do this and start municipal
gas works, it could obviously compel the shareholders to hand over
their works for £400,000 a year, and sacrifice the extra 8 per cent
now enjoyed by them. The saving to the citizens of London would be
£1,000,000 a year, sufficient to defray the net cost of the London
School Board. Metropolitan readers will find a number of cognate
instances in Fabian Tract No. 8, “Facts for Londoners.”
THE OUTLOOK.
BY HUBERT BLAND.
Mr. Webb’s historical review brought us from the “break up of the
old synthesis” (his own phrase), a social system founded on a basis
of religion, a common belief in a divine order, to the point where
perplexed politicians, recognising the futility of the principle of
Individualism to keep the industrial machine in working order, with
“freedom of contract” upon their lips spent their nights in passing
Factory Acts, and devoted their fiscal ingenuity to cutting slice after
slice off incomes derived from rent and interest. His paper was an
inductive demonstration of the failure of anarchy to meet the needs of
real concrete men and women--a proof from history that the world moves
from system, through disorder, back again to system.
Mr. Clarke showed us, also by the historic method, that given a
few more years of economic progress on present lines, and we shall
reach, _via_ the Ring and the Trust, that period of “well defined
confrontation of the rich and poor” upon which German thought has
settled as the brief stage of sociological evolution immediately
preceding organic change.
The truth of this postulate of Teutonic philosophers and economists no
one who has given to it a moment’s serious thought is likely to call in
question. Nor does anyone who has followed the argument developed in
these lectures believe that the transition from mitigated individualism
to full collectivity can be made until the capitalist system has worked
itself out to its last logical expression. Till then, no political or
social upheaval, however violent, nay, even though the “physical force
revolutionists” should chase the Guards helter-skelter down Parliament
Street and the Executive Committee of the Fabian Society hold its
meetings in the Council Chamber of Windsor Castle, will be anything
more than one of those “transient riots,” spoken of by Mrs. Besant,
which “merely upset thrones and behead monarchs.”[96] All sociologists
I think, all Socialists I am sure, are agreed that until the economic
moment has arrived, although the hungry or the ignorant may kick up a
dust in Whitechapel and make a bloody puddle in Trafalgar Square, the
Social Revolution is impossible. But I, for my part, do not believe in
the even temporary rout of the Household Brigade, nor indeed in any
popular outbreak not easily suppressible by the Metropolitan police;
and I shall waste no time in discussing that solution of the social
problem of which more was heard in the salad days of the English
Socialist movement--in its pre-Fabian era--than now, _viz._, physical
force employed by a vigorous few. The physical force man, like the
privileged Tory, has failed to take note of the flux of things, and
to recognise the change brought about by the ballot. Under a lodger
franchise the barricade is the last resort of a small and desperate
minority, a frank confession of despair, a reduction to absurdity
of the whole Socialist case. Revolutionary heroics, natural and
unblameable enough in exuberant puerility, are imbecile babblement in
muscular adolescence, and in manhood would be criminal folly.
Let us assume then that the present economic progress will continue
on its present lines. That machinery will go on replacing hand labor;
that the joint-stock company will absorb the private firm, to be,
in its turn, swallowed up in the Ring and the Trust. That thus the
smaller producers and distributors will gradually, but at a constantly
increasing pace, be squeezed out and reduced to the condition of
employees of great industrial and trade corporations, managed by highly
skilled captains of industry, in the interests of idle shareholders.
In a parliamentarian State like ours, the economic cleavage, which
divides the proprietors from the propertyless, ever growing wider and
more clearly defined, must have its analogue in the world of politics.
The revolution of the last century, which ended in the installation
of the Grand Industry, was the last of the great unconscious world
changes. It was helped by legislation of course; but the help was
only of the negative and destructive sort. “Break our fetters and
let us alone,” was the cry of the revolutionists to Parliament. The
lawmakers, not knowing quite what they were doing, responded, and then
blythely contracted debts, and voted money for commercial wars. Such a
sight will never be seen again. The repeated extension of the suffrage
has done more than make the industrial masses articulate, it has given
them consciousness; and for the future the echo of the voices of those
who suffer from economic changes will be heard clamoring for relief
within the walls of St. Stephen’s and the urban guildhalls.
Thus the coming struggle between “haves” and “have nots” will be a
conflict of parties, each perfectly conscious of what it is fighting
about and fully alive to the life and death importance of the issues at
stake.
I say “will be”; for one has only to read a few speeches of political
leaders or attend a discussion at a workman’s club to be convinced that
at present it is only the keener and more alert minds on either side
which are more than semi-conscious of the true nature of the campaign
of which the first shots may even now be heard at every bye-election.
But as nothing makes one so entirely aware of one’s own existence as
a sharp spasm of pain; so it is to the suffering--the hunger, the
despair of to-morrow’s dinner, the anxiety about the next new pair
of trousers--wrought by the increasing economic pressure upon the
enfranchised and educated proletariat that we must look to awaken that
free self-consciousness which will give the economic changes political
expression and enable the worker to make practical use of the political
weapons which are his.
The outlook then from the point of view of this paper is a political
one--one in which we should expect to see the world political gradually
becoming a reflex of the world economic. That political should be
slow in coming into line with economic facts is only in accordance
with all that the past history of our country has to teach us. For
years and decades the squirearchy retained an influence in the House
of Commons out of all proportion to its potency as an economic force;
and even at this moment the “landed interest” bears a much larger
part in law-making than that to which its real importance entitles
it. Therefore we must be neither surprised nor dispirited if, in a
cold-blooded envisagement of the condition of English parties, the
truth is borne in upon us that the pace of political progress has
no proper relation to the rate at which we are travelling towards
Socialism in the spheres of thought and industry.
This fact is probably--nay almost certainly--very much more patent
to the Socialist and the political student than to the man in the
street, or even to him of the first class railway carriage. The noisy
jubilation of the Radical press over the victory of a Home Ruler
at a bye-election, at a brief and vague reference to the “homes of
the people” in a two hours’ speech from a Liberal leader, or at the
insertion of a “social” plank in a new annual programme, is well and
cleverly calculated to beguile the ardent Democrat, and strike cold
terror to the heart of the timorous Tory. But a perfectly impartial
analysis of the present state of parties will convince the most
sanguine that the breath of the great economic changes dealt with in
Mr. Clarke’s paper has as yet scarcely ruffled the surface of the House
of Commons.
When the syllabus of this course of lectures was drawn up, those who
were responsible for it suggested as the first subheading of this
paper, the well worn phrase, “The disappearance of the Whig.” It is a
happy expression, and one from the contemplation of which much comfort
may be derived by an optimistic and unanalytical temperament. Printed
are at this disadvantage compared with spoken words, they fail to
convey the nicer _nuances_ of meaning bestowed by tone and emphasis;
and thus the word “disappearance” meets the eye, carrying with it no
slightest suggestion of irony. Yet the phrase is pointless, if not
“meant surcarstic”; for so far is the Whig from “disappearing,” that
he is the greatest political fact of the day. To persons deafened
by the daily democratic shouting of the Radical newspapers this
assertion may require some confirmation and support. Let us look at
the facts then. The first thing which strikes us in connexion with
the present Parliament is that it no longer consists of two distinct
parties, _i.e._, of two bodies of men differentiated from each other
by the holding of _fundamentally_ different principles. Home Rule
left out,[97] there remains no reason whatever, except the quite
minor question of Disestablishment, why even the simulacrum of party
organisation should be maintained, or why the structural arrangements
of the House of Commons should not be so altered as to resemble those
of a town hall, in which all the seats face the chair.
But fifty years ago the floor of the House was a frontier of genuine
significance; and the titles “Whig” and “Tory” were word-symbols of
real inward and spiritual facts. The Tory party was mostly made up of
men who were conscientiously opposed to popular representation, and
prepared to stand or fall by their opposition. They held, as a living
political creed, that the government of men was the eternal heritage of
the rich, and especially of those whose riches spelt rent. The Whigs,
on the other hand, believed, or said they believed, in the aphorism
“_Vox populi, vox Dei_”; and they, on the whole, consistently advocated
measures designed to give that voice a distincter and louder utterance.
Here, then, was one of those fundamental differences in the absence of
which party nomenclature is a sham. But there was another. In the first
half of this century the Tories, hidebound in historic traditions and
deaf to the knell of the old _régime_ tolling in the thud, thud, of the
piston rods of the new steam engines, clung pathetically to the old
idea of the functions of the State and to territorial rights. The Whigs
went for _laisser faire_ and the consequent supremacy of the business
man. I am making a perfectly provable proposition when I say that all
the political disputes[98] which arose between the Revolution of 1688
and the enfranchisement of the £10 householder by Disraeli had their
common cause in one of these two root differences. But the battle has
long ago been lost and won. The Whigs have triumphed all along the
line. The Tories have not only been beaten, they have been absorbed. A
process has gone on like that described by Macaulay as following on the
Norman invasion, when men gradually ceased to call themselves Saxon and
Norman and proudly boasted of being English. The difference in the case
before us is that while the Tories have accepted the whole of the Whig
principles they still abjure the Whig name.
No so-called Conservative to-day will venture on opposing an extension
of the franchise on the plain ground of principle. At most he will but
temporise and plead for delay. No blush of conscious inconsistency
suffused Mr. Ritchie’s swarthy features when introducing his “frankly
democratic” Local Government Bill. And rightly not; for he was doing no
violence to party principles.
In the matter of the functions of the State, the absorption of the Tory
is not quite so obvious, because there never has been, and, as long
as society lasts, never can be, a _parti serieux_ of logical _laisser
faire_. Even in the thick of the Industrial Revolution, the difference
between the two great parties was mainly one of tendency--of attitude
of mind. The Tory had a certain affection for the State--a natural
self-love: the Whig distrusted it. This distrust is now the sentiment
of the whole of our public men. They see, some of them perhaps more
clearly than others, that there is much the State must do; but they all
wish that much to be as little as possible. Even when, driven by an
irresistible force which they feel but do not understand (which none
but the Socialist does or can understand), they bring forward measures
for increasing the power of the whole over the part, their arguments
are always suffused in a sickly halo of apology: their gestures are
always those of timorous deprecation and fretful diffidence. They are
always nervously anxious to explain that the proposal violates no
principle of political economy, and with them political economy means,
not Professor Sidgwick, but Adam Smith.
The reason why this unanimity of all prominent politicians on great
fundamental principles is not manifest to the mind of the average man
is that, although there is nothing left to get hot or even moderately
warm about, the political temperature is as high as ever. It is not in
the dust of the arena, but only in the repose of the auditorium that
one is able to realise that men will fight as fiercely and clapper-claw
each other as spitefully over a dry bone as over a living principle.
One has to stand aside awhile to see that politicians are like the
theological controversialists of whom Professor Seeley somewhere says
that they never get so angry with each other as when their differences
are almost imperceptible, except perhaps when they are quite so.
Both the efficient and the final cause of this unanimity is a
sort of unconscious or semi-conscious recognition of the fact that
the word “State” has taken to itself new and diverse connotations,
that the State idea has changed its content. Whatever State control
may have meant fifty years ago it never meant hostility to private
property as such. Now, for us, and for as far ahead as we can see,
it means that and little else. So long as the State interfered with
the private property and powers of one set of proprietors with a view
only to increasing those of another, the existence of parties for
and against such interference was a necessity of the case. A duty on
foreign corn meant the keeping up of incomes drawn from rent:[99]
its abolition meant a rise of manufacturers’ profits. “Free Trade”
swelled the purses of the new _bourgeoisie_: the Factory Acts depleted
them, and gave a sweet revenge to the rent-docked squire. But of this
manipulation of the legislative machine for proprietors’ purposes we
are at, or at least in sight of, the end. The State has grown bigger
by an immense aggregation of units, who were once to all intents
and purposes separate from it; and now its action generally points
not to a readjustment of private property and privileges as between
class and class, but to their complete disappearance. So then the
instinct which is welding together the propertied politicians is truly
self-preservative.
But, it may be asked by the bewildered Radical, by the tremulous
Conservative, by the optimistic Socialist, if the political leaders
are really opposed to State augmentation, how comes it that every new
measure of reform introduced into the House of Commons is more or less
colored with Socialism, and that no popular speaker will venture to
address a public meeting without making some reference of a socialistic
sort to the social problem? Why, for instance, does that extremely
well oiled and accurately poised political weathercock, Sir William
Harcourt, pointing to the dawn, crow out that “we are all Socialists
now”?
To these questions (and I have not invented them) I answer: in the
first place because the opposition of the political leaders _is_
instinctive, and only, as yet, semi-conscious, even in the most
hypocritical; in the second place, that a good deal of the legislative
Socialism appears more in words than in deeds; in the third place that
the famous flourish of Sir William Harcourt was a rhetorical falsehood;
and fourthly, because, fortunately for the progress of mankind,
self-preservative instincts are not peculiar to the propertied classes.
For it is largely instinctive and wholly self preservative, this change
in the position of the working people towards the State, this change by
which, from fearing it as an actual enemy, they have come to look to
it as a potential savior. I know that this assertion will be violently
denied by many of my Socialist brethren. The fly on the wheel, not
unnaturally, feels wounded at being told that he is, after all, not the
motive power; and the igniferous orators of the Socialist party are
welcome, so far as I am concerned, to all the comfort they can get from
imagining that they, and not any great, blind, evolutionary forces are
the dynamic of the social revolution. Besides, the metaphor of the fly
really does not run on all fours (I forget, for the moment, how many
legs a fly has); for the Socialist does at least know in what direction
the car is going, even though he is not the driving force. Yet it seems
to me the part being, and to be, played by the Socialist, is notable
enough in all conscience; for it is he who is turning instinct into
self-conscious reason; voicing a dumb demand; and giving intelligent
direction to a thought wave of terrific potency.
There is a true cleavage being slowly driven through the body politic;
but the wedge is still beneath the surface. The signs of its workings
are to be found in the reactionary measures of pseudo reform advocated
by many prominent politicians; in the really Socialist proposals of
some of the obscurer men; in the growing distaste of the political club
man for a purely political pabulum; and in the receptive attitude of a
certain portion of the cultivated middle class towards the outpourings
of the Fabian Society.
This conscious recognition of the meaning of modern tendencies, this
defining of the new line of cleavage, while it is the well-spring of
most of the Socialist hopes, is no less the source of some lively fear.
At present it is only the acuter and more far seeing of the minds
amongst the propertied classes who are at all alive to the real nature
of the attack. One has but to listen to the chatter of the average
Liberal candidate, to note how hopelessly blind the man is to the fact
that the existence of private property in the means of production,
forms any factor at all in the social problem; and what is true of the
rank and file is true only in a less degree of the chiefs themselves.
Ignorance of economics and inability to shake their minds free of
eighteenth century political philosophy,[100] at present hinders the
leaders of the “party of progress” from taking up a definite position
either for or against the advance of the new ideas. The number of
English statesmen, who, like Prince Bismarck, see in Socialism a
swelling tide whose oceanic rush must be broken by timely legislative
breakwaters, is still only to be expressed by a minus quantity. But
this political myopia is not destined to endure. Every additional
vote cast for avowed Socialist candidates at municipal and other
elections, will help to bring home to the minds of the Liberals, that
the section of the new democracy which regards the ballot merely as a
war-engine with which to attack capitalism, is a growing one. At last
our Liberal will be face to face with a logical but irritating choice.
Either to throw over private capital or to frankly acknowledge that
it is a distinction without a difference which separates him from the
Conservatives, against whom he has for years been fulminating.
At first sight it looks as though this political moment in the history
of the Liberal party would be one eminently auspicious for the
Socialist cause. But although I have a lively faith in the victory of
logic in the long run, I have an equally vivid knowledge that to assure
the triumph the run must be a very long one; and above all I have a
profound respect for the staying powers of politicians, and their
ability to play a waiting game. It is one thing to offer a statesman
the choice of one of two logical courses: it is another to prevent his
seeing a third, and an illogical one, and going for it. Such prevention
in the present case will be so difficult as to be well nigh impossible;
for the Liberal hand still holds a strong suit--the cards political.
It is quite certain that the social programme of our party will
become a great fact long before all the purely political proposals
of the Liberals have received the Royal assent; and the game of the
politician will be to hinder the adoption of the former by noisily
hustling forward the latter. Unfortunately for us it will be an
easy enough game to play. The scent of the non-Socialist politician
for political red herrings is keen, and his appetite for political
Dead Sea fruit prodigious. The number of “blessed words,” the mere
sound of which carries content to his soul, would fill a whole page.
In an age of self-seeking his pathetic self-abnegation would be
refreshing were it not so desperately silly. The young artizan on
five-and-twenty shillings a week, who with his wife and children
occupies two rooms in “a model,” and who is about as likely to become
a Lama as a leaseholder, will shout himself hoarse over Leaseholds’
Enfranchisement, and sweat great drops of indignation at the plunder
of rich West End tradesmen by rich West End landlords. The “out of
work,” whose last shirt is in pawn, will risk his skull’s integrity in
Trafalgar Square in defence of Mr. O’Brien’s claim to dress in gaol
like a gentleman.
Of course all this is very touching: indeed, to be quite serious, it
indicates a nobility of character and breadth of human sympathy in
which lies our hope of social salvation. But its infinite potentiality
must not blind us to the fact that in its actuality the dodgy Liberal
will see his chance of the indefinite postponement of the socialising
of politics. Manhood suffrage, female suffrage, the woes of deceased
wives’ sisters, the social ambition of dissenting ministers, the legal
obstacles to the “free” acquirement of landed property, home rule
for “dear old Scotland” and “neglected little Wales,” extraordinary
tithes, reform of the House of Lords: all these and any number of other
obstacles may be successfully thrown in the way of the forward march
of the Socialist army. And the worst of it all is that in a great part
of his obstructive tactics the Liberal will have us on the hip; for
to out-and-out democratisation we are fully pledged, and must needs
back up any attack on hereditary or class privilege, come it from what
quarter it may.
But, to get back to our metaphor of the card table (a metaphor much
more applicable to the games of political men), the political suit does
not exhaust the Liberal hand. There still remains a card to play--a
veritable trump. Sham Socialism is the name of it, and Mr. John Morley
the man to plank it down.
I have said above that the trend of things to Socialism is best
shewn by the changed attitude of men towards State interference
and control; and this is true. Still it must not be forgotten that
although Socialism involves State control, State control does not imply
Socialism--at least in any modern meaning of the term. It is not so
much to the thing the State does, as to the end for which it does it
that we must look before we can decide whether it is a Socialist State
or not. Socialism is the common holding of the means of production
and exchange, and _the holding of them for the equal benefit of all_.
In view of the tone now being adopted by some of us[101] I cannot too
strongly insist upon the importance of this distinction; for the losing
sight of it by friends, and its intentional obscuration by enemies,
constitute a big and immediate danger. To bring forward sixpenny
telegrams as an instance of State Socialism may be a very good method
of scoring a point off an individualist opponent in a debate before
a middle-class audience; but from the standpoint of the proletariat
a piece of State management which spares the pockets only of the
commercial and leisured classes is no more Socialism than were the
_droits de Seigneur_ of the middle ages. Yet this is the sort of sham
Socialism which it is as certain as death will be doled out by the
popular party in the hope that mere State action will be mistaken for
really Socialist legislation. And the object of these givers of Greek
gifts will most infallibly be attained if those Socialists who know
what they want hesitate (from fear of losing popularity, or from any
more amiable weakness) to clamor their loudest against any and every
proposal whose adoption would prolong the life of private capital a
single hour.
But leaving sham Socialism altogether out of account, there are other
planks in the Liberal “and Radical” programme which would make stubborn
barriers in the paths of the destroyers of private capital. Should, for
instance, Church disestablishment come upon us while the _personnel_ of
the House of Commons is at all like what it is at present, few things
are more certain than that a good deal of what is now essentially
collective property will pass into private hands; that the number of
individuals interested in upholding ownership will be increased; and
that the only feelings gratified will be the acquisitiveness of these
persons and the envy of Little Bethel.
Again, the general state of mind of the Radical on the land question
is hardly such as to make a Socialist hilarious. It is true your
“progressive” will cheer Henry George, and is sympathetically inclined
to nationalisation (itself a “blessed word”); but he is not at all sure
that nationalisation, free land, and peasant proprietorship, are not
three names for one and the same proposal. And, so far as the effective
members of the Liberal party are concerned, there is no question at
all that the second and third of these “solutions” find much more
favor than the first. In fact, in this matter of the land, the method
of dealing with which is of the very propædeutics of Socialism, the
Radical who goes for “free sale” or for peasant ownership, is a less
potent revolutionary force than the Tory himself; for this latter only
seeks to maintain in land the state of things which the Ring and Trust
maker is working to bring about in capital[102]--and on the part which
_he_ is playing in economic evolution we are all agreed.
From such dangers as these the progress of Democracy is, by itself,
powerless to save us; for although always and everywhere Democracy
holds Socialism in its womb, the birth may be indefinitely delayed by
stupidity on one side and acuteness on the other.
I have gone at some length into an analysis of the possible artificial
hindrances to Socialism, because, owing to the amiability and
politeness shown us by the Radical left wing during the last twelve
months; to the successes which Radical votes have given to some of our
candidates at School Board and other elections; and to the friendly
patronage bestowed upon us by certain “advanced” journals, some of our
brightest, and otherwise most clear-sighted, spirits have begun to base
high hopes upon what they call “the permeation” of the Liberal party.
These of our brothers have a way of telling us that the transition to
Socialism will be so gradual as to be imperceptible, and that there
will never come a day when we shall be able to say “now we have a
Socialist State.” They are fond of likening the simpler among us who
disagree with them as to the extreme protraction of the process, to
children who having been told that when it rains a cloud falls, looks
disappointedly out of the window on a wet day, unconscious that the
cloud is falling before their eyes in the shape of drops of water. To
these cautious souls I reply that although there is much truth in their
contention that the process will be gradual, we shall be able to say
that we have a Socialist State on the day on which no man or group of
men holds, over the means of production, property rights by which the
labor of the producers can be subjected to exploitation; and that while
their picturesque metaphor is a happy as well as a poetic conceit, it
depends upon the political acumen of the present and next generation of
Socialist men whether the “cloud” shall fall in refreshing Socialist
showers or in a dreary drizzle of Radicalism, bringing with it more
smuts than water, fouling everything and cleansing nowhere.
This permeation of the Radical Left, undoubted fact though it is of
present day politics, is worth a little further attention; for there
are two possible and tenable views as to its final outcome. One is
that it will end in the slow absorption of the Socialist in the
Liberal party, and that by the action of this sponge-like organism,
the whole of the Rent and Interest will pass into collective control,
without there ever having been a party definitely and openly pledged
to that end. According to this theory there will come a time, and that
shortly, when the avowed Socialists and the much socialised Radicals
will be strong enough to hold the balance in many constituencies, and
sufficiently powerful in all to drive the advanced candidate many
pegs further than his own inclination would take him. Then, either
by abstention or by actual support of the reactionary champion at
elections, they will be able to threaten the Liberals with certain
defeat. The Liberals, being traditionally squeezable folk (like all
absorbent bodies), will thus be forced to make concessions and to
offer compromises; and will either adopt a certain minimum number of
the Socialis_tic_ proposals, or allow to Socialists a share in the
representation itself. Such concessions and compromises will grow in
number and importance with each successive appeal to the electorate,
until at last the game is won.
Now it seems to me that these hopefuls allow their desires to distort
their reason. The personal equation plays too large a part in the
prophecy. They are generally either not yet wholly socialised Radicals
or Socialists who have quite recently broken away from mere political
Radicalism, and are still largely under the influence of party ties
and traditions. They find it almost impossible to believe that the
party with which they acted so long, so conscientiously, and with
so much satisfaction to themselves, is, after all, not the party to
which belongs the future. They are in many cases on terms of intimate
private friendship with some of the lesser lights of Radicalism, and
occasionally bask in the patronizing radiance shed by the larger
luminaries. A certain portion of the “advanced” press is open to
them for the expression of their views political. Of course none of
these considerations are at all to their discredit, or reflect in
the very least upon their motives or sincerity; but they do color
their judgment and cause them to reckon without their host. They are
a little apt to forget that a good deal of the democratic programme
has yet (as I have said above) to be carried. Manhood suffrage, the
abolition of the Lords, disestablishment, the payment of members:
all these may be, and are, quite logically desired by men who cling
as pertinaciously to private capital as the doughtiest knight of the
Primrose League. Such men regard the vital articles of the Socialist
creed as lying altogether outside the concrete world--“the sphere of
practical politics.” Meanwhile the Socialist votes and voices are well
within that sphere; and it is every day becoming more evident that
without them the above-mentioned aspirations have a meagre chance of
realisation. Now, from the eminently business-like Liberal stand-point,
there is no reason whatever why concessions should not be made to the
Socialist at the polling booth so long as none are asked for in the
House of Commons. And even when they are demanded, what easier than to
make some burning political question play the part which Home Rule is
playing now? Thus an endless vista of office opens before the glowing
eyes of the practical politician, those short-sighted eyes which see so
little beyond the nose, and which, at that distance only, enable their
owner to hit the white.
The Radical is right as usual in counting on the Socialist alliance
up to a certain point. For us the complete democratisation of
institutions is a political necessity. But long before that complete
democratisation has been brought about, we shall have lost our patience
and the Radicals their temper.
For as Mr. Hyndman tells the world with damnable (but most veracious)
iteration, we are “a growing party.” We recruit by driblets; but we
do recruit; and those who come to us come, like all the new American
newspapers, “to stay.” Our _faith_, our reason, our knowledge, tell
us that the great evolutionary forces are with us; and every addition
to our ranks causes us, in geometrical proportion, to be less and
less tolerant of political prevarication. Directly we feel ourselves
strong enough to have the slightest chance of winning off our own bat,
we shall be compelled both by principle and inclination to send an
eleven to the wickets. They will have to face the opposition, united or
disunited, of both the orthodox parties, as did the defeated Socialist
candidates at the School Board election in November, 1888. And whether
our success be great or small, or even non-existent, we shall be
denounced by the Radical wire-pullers and the now so complaisant and
courteous Radical press. The alliance will be at an end.
There is yet another way in which we may win the ill-will of our
temporary allies and, at present, very good friends. I have spoken
above of certain reactionary items of a possible Radical programme,
which, although they have a grotesque resemblance to Socialism, are
worlds away from being the thing itself. These proposals we not only
cannot support, but must and shall actively and fiercely oppose. At the
first signs of such opposition to whoever may be the Liberal shepherd
of the moment, the whole flock of party sheep will be in full cry upon
our track. The ferocity of the _mouton enragé_ is proverbial; and we
shall be treated to the same rancour, spleen, and bile which is now so
plenteously meted out to the Liberal Unionists.
The immediate result of this inevitable split will be the formation
of a definitely Socialist party, _i.e._, a party pledged to the
communalisation of all the means of production and exchange, and
prepared to subordinate every other consideration to that one end. Then
the House of Commons will begin dimly to reflect the real condition of
the nation outside; and in it we shall see as in a glass, darkly, or
smudgedly, something of that “well defined confrontation of rich and
poor,” of which all who attend Socialist lectures hear so much, and to
which _ex hypothesi_, the world, day by day, draws nearer. Then, also,
will begin that process which, I submit, is more likely than either the
absorption of the Socialist or the prolonged permeation of the Radical:
namely, the absorption of the Radical himself into the definitely
pro-private capital party on the one side, and the definitely
anti-private capital party on the other.
A really homogeneous Socialist party once formed, the world political
reflects the world economic, and there is no longer any room for the
Radical, as we know the wonder. Each fresh Socialist victory, each
outpost driven in, each entrenchment carried, will be followed by a
warren-like scuttle of alarmed and well-to-do Radicals across the floor
of the House of Commons, which will once more become a true frontier;
and, finally, the political battle array will consist of a small
opposition, fronting a great and powerful majority, made up of all
those whose real or fancied interests would suffer from expropriation.
Thus far the outlook has been clear and focusable enough; and it has
needed no extra-human illumination to see the details. All that has
been wanted has been normal vision and a mind fairly free of the
idols of the cave. But here the prospect becomes dim and uncertain;
and little purpose would be served by trying to pierce the mist which
enshrouds the distant future.
Much, very much, will depend upon the courage, the magnanimity,
the steadfastness, the tact, the foresight, and above all upon the
incorruptibility of those whose high mission it will be to frame the
policy and direct the strategy of the Socialist party in those early
days of its parliamentary life. It will have sore need of a leader as
able as, and more conscientious than, any of the great parliamentary
figures of the past. The eye expectant searches in vain for such a man
now among the younger broods of the new democracy. He is probably at
this moment in his cradle or equitably sharing out toys or lollipops
to his comrades of the nursery. And this is well; for he must be a man
quit of all recollections of these days of _Sturm und Drang_, of petty
jealousies, constant errors, and failing faith. He must bring to his
task a record free from failure and without suspicion of stain.
But whatever may be the difficulties in store for us who name the name
of Socialism, of one thing at least they who have followed this course
of lectures may make quite sure. That, however long and wearisome the
struggle, each day brings us nearer victory. Those who resist Socialism
fight against principalities and powers in economic places. Every new
industrial development will add point to our arguments and soldiers
to our ranks. The continuous perfecting of the organisation of labour
will hourly quicken in the worker the consciousness that his is a
collective, not an individual life. The proletariat is even now the
only real class: its units are the only human beings who have nothing
to hope for save from the levelling up of the aggregate of which they
form a part. The intensifying of the struggle for existence, while
it sets _bourgeois_ at the throat of _bourgeois_, is forcing union
and solidarity upon the workers. And the _bourgeois_ ranks themselves
are dwindling. The keenness of competition, making it every year more
obviously impossible for those who are born without capital ever to
achieve it, will deprive the capitalist class of the support it now
receives from educated and cultivated but impecunious young men whose
material interest must finally triumph over their class sympathies; and
from that section of workmen whose sole aspiration is to struggle out
of the crowd. The rising generation of wage workers, instead of as now
being befogged and bedevilled by the dust and smoke of mere faction
fight, will be able at a glance to distinguish the uniforms of friend
and foe. Despair will take sides with Hope in doing battle for the
Socialist cause.
These lectures have made it plain enough to those who have hearing
ears and understanding brains that mere material self-interest alone
will furnish a motive strong enough to shatter monopoly; and after
monopoly comes Socialism or--chaos. But the interest of the smaller
self is not the only force which aids us in the present, or will guide
us in the future. The angels are on our side. The constant presence
of a vast mass of human misery is generating in the educated classes
a deep discontent, a spiritual unrest, which drives the lower types
to pessimism, the higher to enquiry. Pessimism paralyses the arms and
unnerves the hearts of those who would be against us. Enquiry proves
that Socialism is founded upon a triple rock, historical, ethical, and
economic. It gives, to those who make it, a great hope--a hope which,
once it finds entrance into the heart of man, stays to soften life
and sweeten death. By the light of the Socialist Ideal he sees the
evil--yet sees it pass. Then and now he begins to live in the cleaner,
braver, holier life of the future; and he marches forward, steeled and
stimulated, with resolute step, with steadfast eye, with equal pulse.
It is just when the storm winds blow and the clouds lour and the
horizon is at its blackest that the ideal of the Socialist shines with
divinest radiance, bidding him trust the inspiration of the poet rather
than heed the mutterings of the perplexed politician, bidding him
believe that
“For a’ that, for a’ that,
Its coming yet for a’ that,
That man to man the world o’er
Shall brothers be for a’ that.”
FOOTNOTES:
[96] It is to the half-conscious recognition of this generalisation
that the disappearance of militant Republicanism among the English
working classes is owing.
[97] The difference of principle here is more apparent than real. The
Gladstonians repudiate any desire for separation, and affirm their
intention of maintaining the absolute veto of the imperial Parliament;
while the Unionists avow their ultimate intention of giving to Ireland
the same powers of self-government now enjoyed, or to be enjoyed by
England and Scotland.
[98] The battles for Catholic Emancipation and the removal of the
religious disabilities were fought on sectarian rather than on
political grounds.
[99] This is perhaps not, historically, quite true; but the landlords
believed that their own prosperity depended upon the exclusion of
foreign corn, and that is sufficient for the purpose of my argument.
[100] _Cf._ The speeches of Mr. John Morley on the eight hours’
proposal and the taxation of ground rents. Also the recent writings of
Mr. Bradlaugh, _passim_.
[101] One of the most indefatigable and prolific members of the
Socialist party, in a widely circulated tract, has actually adduced the
existence of _hawkers’ licenses_ as an instance of the “Progress of
Socialism”!
[102] It is worth noting that those organs of the press which are
devoted more particularly to the landed interest have been the first to
hint at the probable desirability of dealing with great _industrial_
monopolies by means of legislation.
INDEX.
Absentee Proprietors, 22
Abstinence, Reward of, 17
Abstract method in Economics, 21
Administrative Errors, 37
“Administrative Nihilism”, 38
Adulteration Acts, 41
Aged, Treatment of the, 150
Agriculture and Machinery, 62
Aladdin’s uncle outdone, 9
Aliens, Necessity under Socialism for a law of, 125
Althorp, Lord, 69
America (See UNITED STATES).
American Independence, Declaration of, 60
Anarchists, Modern, 160
Anarchy preferred to corrupt State regulation by progressive thinkers,
160
Andrews, E. Benjamin, on Trusts, 85
Angels, Constitution and status of, 108
Angels, condition of their imitation on earth, 110
Argyle, Duke of, 127
Aristotle, 160
Arkwright’s inventions, 33, 59
Aristocratic employments, 109
Ashley, Lord (See LORD SHAFTESBURY).
Associated Capitals, Competitive force of, 142
Associations, Legal position under Socialism of voluntary, 126
Austin, John, 39, 120, 165
Autobiography of John Stuart Mill, 50, 52
Aveling, Rev. F. W., 52
Balfour, Right Hon. A. J., 106
Barbarous Countries, Exploitation of, 74
Bastille, Fall of the, 34, 60
Bebel, August, 119
Bedford, Duke of, 127
Bellamy, E. (author of “Looking Backward”), 145
Benefit Association, Sheep and Lamb Butcher’s Mutual, 88
Benevolence and Omnipotence, The dilemma between, 23
Bentham, Jeremy, 29, 39, 40, 53, 165
Bequest, 122
Berkeley, Bishop, 39
Besant, Annie, 136
” Walter: His belated chivalry, 108
Bimetalism suggested as a solution of the social problem, 174
Birmingham, 46
” compared with Warwick, 123
Bismarck, Socialism and Prince, 192
Blanc, Louis, His Definition of Communism, 131
Bland, Hubert, 50, 184
Bloodshed: How to argue with its advocates, 166-7
Bonanza farms, 62, 142
Bourgeoisie, The Factory Acts and the, 190
Free Trade and the, 190
Bradford, 46
Bradlaugh, Charles, 182
Bramwell, Lord, 28, 175
Bright, John, 69, 79
Brittany, Standard of comfort in, 123
Peasants of, 134
British Association, 157
” Mind, The Vestry stamp upon the, 182
Bryce, James, 78
Brook Farm, 28
Browning, Robert, 23
Burns, John, 174
Bunyan, John, 135
Cade, Jack, 160
Cairnes, J. E., on the idle rich, 78
Canada, Conquest of, 60, 71
Canals, Socialization of, 141
Cant: Its Source, 4, 106
Capital: Is not machinery, 16
Is the result of saving, 17
Is spare subsistence, 17
Cannot be safely taken by the State except for immediate employment
as capital, 173
Source of municipal capital, 175
Provision for municipal accumulation, 178
“Capital” (Karl Marx’s work), 23, 36
“Capital and Land” (Fabian Tract), 43
Capitals, Competitive force of associated, 142
Capitalism, 16
Unscrupulousness of, 69
Its idea self-destructive, 110
Morals of, 69, 106, 109
Characteristic effects of, 111
Its origin in piracy and slave-trading, 158
Capitalist: Separation of his function from that of the
_entrepreneur_, 76
Regulation of the, 43
Type of the, 105
Capitalist combinations and State action, 91
Capitulations by proprietary classes, 181
Career open to the talented, 7
Carlyle, Thomas, 30, 41
Cartwright, Rev. Edmund, Inventions of, 59
Caste (see CLASS).
Castlereagh, Viscount, 34
Catastrophic Socialism, 136, 166, 183, 185
Catechism, Misquotation of the Church, 110
Catholic Church, Socialism of the, 113
Catholic Emancipation, 34, 188
Centralization of State industries, 142, 181
Chalmers, Rev. Thomas, 39
Charity, 19, 169, 174
“Charter, The People’s”, 48
Chartism, 48, 169
Cheque Bank: Suggestion as to Communal currency, 150
Children: In Communes, 150
Effect of Socialism on the status of, 182
“Christian Socialism”, 79, 80
Church Catechism, The, 110
Church, The Catholic, 113
Church of England: A mere appanage of the landed gentry, 31
Church of England: Effect of property holding on the, 124
Democratization of the, 182
“Church Reformer, The”, 39
Churches, 2
Church-going, Hypocrisies of, 5
Church, Declaration of the Pan-Anglican Synod concerning Socialism
and the, 174
Civilizations and Societies, 20
Civil Servants: Their reputation for unconscientiousness, 107, 165
“Claims of Labor, The”, 36
Clanricarde, Lord, 53
Clarke, William, 28, 56, 136, 183
Class Feeling and Morality, 17, 103, 105, 106, 108-110
Classes, Separation of, 17
Cleavage, Economic, 185
Clive, Robert, 60, 71
Coal mining, Application of machinery to, 151
Coal monopoly in the Unite States, 78
Cobden Club disconcerted by the appearance of Imports not paid for by
Exports, 169
Cobden, Richard, 74, 79
Colonization, Modern, 21, 182
Coleridge, S. T., 40
Combination, 14
Benefits of, 91
Commercial policy of England under Capitalism, 71
Commodities: Exchange of, 9
Process by which their value is reduced to the cost of production of
the most costly unit of the supply, 12, 178
Common Sense, 94, 116
Commune: Its establishment in England already accomplished, 143
Communes, 2
Communism defined, 131
Communities, Savings of, 123
Debts of, 128
Compensation for expropriated proprietors, 175
Competition: Theory of, 161
Decline of, 81
Effect on wages, 171
Comte, Auguste, 27, 30, 169
Comte de Paris, 28
“Condition of the Working Classes” (F. Engels’ work), 36
Conduct and Principle, Incompatibility set up by Private Property
between, 4
Conscience, Social, 137
Conservatives, Present attitude of, 188
Consols:
Nature of the operation called “reducing”, 181
Consumption, Associated, 121, 133
Contracts restricted in England, 130
Contradictions apparently besetting the investigation of value, 10
Conventions as to Morality, 100, 101
Cooking, Public and private, 140
Co-operative Movement, 41, 81, 124, 144
Socialist origin of the, 79, 174
Aims of the leaders, 174
Co-operative Experiments, 129
Co-ordination, Social, 54
Copyright, 120, 132, 133
Copper, The “corner” in, 84
Corners, 14
Cost of Production: What it means, 13
Reduction of value to, 13
On inferior soils, 4
Cotton Manufacture, Progress of the, 66
Cotton-seed Oil Trust, 88
County Councils, The new, 35, 123, 128, 138, 171, 181
County Council, The London, 181
County Family, Origin of the, 4
County Farms, Organization of, 139
County Government Act (See COUNTY COUNCILS).
Covert Garden Market and the Duke of Bedford, 127
Crime: Its relativity, 105
Criminal Class: Its formation, 18, 112
Cromptom, Samuel, Inventions of, 33
Cultivation of the Earth, 1
Its beginning, 2
Its “margin”, 3, 5
Effect of exploration on the progress of, 20
Cultivation of the Earth:
Discrepancies between its actual progress and that deduced from
abstract economics, 20
Culture:
Effect on profits of industrial management of the spread of, 179
Currency, Suggestion as to communal, 150
Cynicism of our time, 5
” Routed by Socialism, 24
Dante, 8
Darwin, Charles, 41, 85, 169
“Darwinism and Politics”, 51
Darwinian theory appealed to by monopolists, 85
By Socialists, 51
Day, The working, 141
Debt, The National, 129
Debts, Law as to, 125
Of Communities, 128
Decentralization, Necessity for, 170
Definitions of economic rent, 4
Demand, Effective, 19
Supply and, 8
Democracy: Import of, 29, 30, 35, 54, 55, 195
Instability of, 55
Postulated by Socialism, 166
Further steps necessary to consummate, 170
Democrat, Distinction between the Ordinary and the Social, 166
Democratic Federation (See S. D. F.)
De Quincey, Thomas, 40
Desire as a social motor, 96, 102
Detailed suggestions for social organization of unemployed labor, 140
De Tocqueville. A. C. H. C., 29
Devil worship, 24
Diocesan Councils, Central Conference of, 54
Dirty Work, 145
Discipline in socialized industries, 143
Discovery of new countries, 21
Disestablishment of the Church, 188
Dishonesty a product of Capitalism, 111
Disingenuousness of Class Economics, 14, 19, 21
Dismal Science now the Hopeful, 25
Dismissal, Power of, 143
Dissolution of the Old Synthesis, 31
Division of labor, 3
Drainage Acts, 41
Drinking Fountains, Communism exemplified in, 131
Drone and Worker, 4
Earnings distinguished from the revenue of Private Property, 20
Ecclesiastical intolerance, Reaction against mediæval, 161
Economics (See POLITICAL ECONOMY).
Economists (See POLITICAL ECONOMISTS).
Education: Reform of, 49
Moral, 102
A necessity for morality, 111
Socialist ideal of, 115, 134
Effect on profits of industrial management, 179
Tendency of Social Democracy to encourage, 180
Eight Hours, Working day of, 141
Electors, Number of, 35
Elizabethan merchant adventurers, 159
Emigration, 167
Employer: Differentiated from Capitalist, 76
And laborer, 137
Not harmed by Socialism, 177
Engels, F., 36
England: Her social policy to-day, 19
In 1750, 30
Her foreign policy dictated by Capitalism, 73, 74
Her mineral fertility, 167
“English Factory Legislation.” (See also FACTORY LEGISLATION), 36
_Entrepreneur_ (See EMPLOYER).
Episcopal Conference, 54
Equality of remuneration, 148, 149
Errors (See MISTAKES exposed by Socialism).
Ethics: Metaphysic of, 94
Positive science of, 95
Evolution, Effect of Hypothesis of, 24, 51
Exchange of Commodities, 12
Mechanism of, 10
Exchange Value (See VALUE), 9
Exploitation, 18
Factories before the Factory Act, 36, 67
Factory Legislation, 36, 41, 70, 125, 167, 190
Factory System, Introduction of the, 33, 59
“Facts for Londoners”, 181
“Fair Trade”, 92
Family: Effect of Socialism on the, 182
Origin of the County, 4
Isolation of the, 122, 133
Farms: Organization of County, 139
Bonanza, 142
Fawcett, Henry, 4
Federation of Municipalities, 181
Feudalism: Survival of, 31
Reaction against its domineering, 160
Feudal dues, 38
Fielden, John, 70
Filibuster, The Colonizing, 182
Final Utility, Theory of, 11, 12
Flag, Trade following the, 182
Flats, Living in, 121
Fly-Shuttle, Invention of the, 59
Foreign Investments, Interest on, 169
Foreign Markets, The fight for, 74, 181
Foreign Policy: Effect of Capitalism upon, 71
Effect of Socialism upon, 181
Foreign Trade following the Flag, 182
Forestalling, 14
Fourier, F. C. M., 121
Fox, Charles James, 34
Foxwell, Professor H. S., 37
Free Ferry, The London, 47
“Free Land” and the Radical party, 50, 195
Free Trade Movement, 73
Foreign investments left out of account by the, 169
The bourgeoisie and the, 190
Freethinker, Possible Election to the Deanery of Westminster of an
avowed, 182
French Revolution, 34, 60, 174
Friction caused by introduction of Municipal Socialism, 178
Furse, Canon, 54
Gambling, 2
Gasworks, Socialization of, 45, 139, 181
George III, 72
George, Henry, 95, 127, 161, 169, 172
Georgism, Checkmate to, 173
Giffen, Robert, 169, 173
Gladstone, Right Hon. W. E., 47
Retrogressive instincts of, 161
Glasgow, 47
Growth of, 33
Godin and Leclaire, Experiments of, 151
Godwin, William, 39
Gold: As money, 10
Effect of Discoveries in California and Australia, 167
Goschen, Right Hon. G. J., 181
Gould, Jay, 69
Government: In 1750, 32
Industries carried on by, 42
“Government Organization of Labor”, 46
Gradual Socialization, 31
Compensation a condition of, 175
Greek Republics, 125, 148, 160
Greenock, 46
Gronlund, Laurence, 119, 121, 125
Grote, George, 39
Ground values, Municipilization of, 175
Growth of Towns, 32
Guild of St. Matthew, 39
Guillotining, 182
Habits: Moral, 97
Automatic, 98
Harbors, Nationalization of, 149
Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Sir W. V., 106
On the teetotal stump, 106
“We are all Socialists now”, 190
Hargreaves, James, The Inventions of, 33, 59
Harrison, Frederic, 54
Hastings, Warren, 71
Haves and Have-nots, 186
Head Rents, Relative Insignificance of, 8
Hegel, G. W. F., 162, 165
High Church Party, 39
Historical: Method in Economics, 20
Development of Private Property, 20
Basis of Socialism, 26
“Historical Basis of Socialism” (Hyndman’s work), 27
“History”: “Of Agriculture and Prices”, 32
“Of the 18th Century”, 34
“Of Private Bill Legislation”, 38
“Of the Reform Bill”, 31
Hobbes, Thomas, 160
Hobhouse, Lord, 171, 175
Hobhouse, Sir John Cam, 68
Homestead Law, 126
Hospital, The, 18
House of Commons, 181
House of Lords, Abolition of, 170
Household Suffrage, 34
Huddersfield, 46
Human Life, Disregard of Capital for, 146
Hume, David, 38, 161
Huxley, Professor, 53
Hyndman, H. M., 27, 169
Hypocrisy, 5, 158
Ibsen, Henrik, 134
Icaria, 28
Idleness, Association of prosperity with, 5
Idlers: their fate under Socialism, 151
Illth, 18
Illusions, Economic, 161
Immigration, Pauper, 125, 173
Improvement in Production, 6
Effect of unforeseen, 8
Incentive to Labor: Under Socialism, 151
Under Leasehold system, 171
Income Tax, 130, 150, 167
An instrument of expropriation, 176
“Rent of ability” recoverable by, 181
Independent Weaver, Transformation of the, 59
India, Conquest of, under Clive and Warren Hastings, 60, 71
Indifference, Law of, 11
Individualism: Outbreak of, 37
Abandonment of, 54
The change to Socialism from, 137
Confusedly opposed to Socialism, 96
Its moralization, 97, 102
Anti-Social manifestation, 104
Protestant form of, 114
Abolished in production, 116
Industrial Organization, Centralization of, 147, 181
Industrial Remuneration Conference, 54
Industrial Revolution, 33-35, 41, 56, 136, 159
Attitude of parties during, 189
Industrialism, Evil effects of, 67
Industry: Under Socialism, 136
Nationalization of, 43
As virtue or vice, 106, 108
Disgraceful for women, 108
_La grande industrie_, 185
Inequality, 1
Mischief of, 20
Sense of it lost in contemplation of equality before God, 23
Inferior soils, Resort to, 3
Ingram, J. K., 80
Injustices produced by private appropriation of land, 5
Insanity, Definition of, 97, 100
Inspection of Industry, 43
Institutions, History of, 103
Insurance: National, 23
Municipal, 47
Insurrectionism, 165, 176
Intellectual Revolt, The, 185
Interest, 16
Fall in the current rate often mistaken for a tendency in Interest
to disappear, 17
Mr. Goschen’s operation for securing to the community the advantage
of the fall in the current rate, 17
A tribute, 105, 114
Interest, Class, 103
International Morality in the Middle Ages, 157
International Trade the dominant factor in foreign policy, 72, 181
Invention, Consequences of, 146
Inventor, The first, 6
Iron Industry, 60
Jevons, W. Stanley, 162
Joint Stock Companies: Development of, 43, 78
Not objects of public sympathy, 138
Joseph the Second, 30
Kaye of Bury, 33
Kingsley, Charles, 39, 41, 79
Kitchens: Separate, 122
Public, 134
Kropotkin, Peter, 61, 160
Labor: Mouth honor to, 5
In the market as a commodity, 9
Displaced by machinery, 63
Fruits of, 104
Municipal organization of, 140, 174
Labor colonies, 147
Beginning of State organization of, 175
Laborer and Employer, 137
(See also PROLETARIAN.)
_Laisser-faire_, 36, 38, 39, 51, 70, 160
Lancashire, Old, 57
Expansion of, 65
Weavers’ grievances, 72
Land, Rent of, 3-5
Point at which it becomes a close monopoly, 7
Powers of the County Councils to hold, 139
Nationalization of, 47, 172
Landlord, What he costs, 14
Landed Interest, Its policy, 187
Lassalle, Ferdinand, 57, 162
Law of Indifference, 11, 12
“ “ Rent (See also RENT), 4, 53, 161
“Leaseholds Enfranchisement”, 51, 174
Leaseholds: Origin of, 8
Confiscation at expiry of, 171
Lecky, W. J., 34, 71, 73
Leclaire and Godin, Experiments of, 151
Leed, 33, 38, 47
Legislation: Breakdown of mediæval, 160
(See also FACTORY LEGISLATION.)
Leveling-down action of Private Property, 14
Levi, Leone, 54
Liberal and Radical Union in favor of County Councils holding land,
47, 138
Libraries, Public, 134
Liberal Party, Its policy on Socialism, 190-192
Liberty and Equality, 53, 157
Liberty and Property Defence League, 47
Lincoln, Abraham: The moral of his assassination, 74
Liverpool, Growth of, 33
Lloyd, Henry D., on “Lords of Industry”, 83
Local: Improvement Acts, 41
Self-Government, 171
Government Boards dealings with the unemployed, 174
Government Board of the future, 181
Lodging Houses, Municipal, 47
London: Facts concerning, 181
The County Council, 181
Extraordinary proportions reached by Economic Rent in, 171
Liberal and Radical Union, 47, 138
London and Southwestern Railway shareholders, 78
“Looking Backward”, 145
Louis XVI, 56
Lying, As vice or virtue, 107
Machinery: Shoemaking by, 61
Agriculture by, 62
Displacement of hand labor by, 63
Progress of, 138, 146
Substitution for hand labor in disagreeable employments, 145
Chimney Sweeping by, 146
Maine, Sir Henry, 29, 54
Malthus, Rev. T. R., 32, 39, 162
Man as producer and exchanger, 12
“Man _versus_ the State”, 47
Management, Profits of industrial, 179
Managers, Qualifications and present value of industrial, 179-80
Manchester, 33, 38, 46
Manchester School, 74, 168
Its advocacy of Protection, 176
Manners, Lady Janette on “Are Rich Landowners Idle?”, 109
Manorial Rights, 32, 38
Mills, 38
Manors, 2, 32, 38
Marginal Utility (See FINAL UTILITY).
Margin of Cultivation, 2, 5
Obligation of private competitors to charge the full cost of
production at, 178-9
Markets: Effect on rent of proximity to, 3
The fight for foreign, 74, 181
Marriage, Contract of, 131
Marshall, Alfred, and Mary Paley--Definition of rent, 4
Marx, Karl, 36, 162, 169
Matthew, Guild of St., 39
Maurice, F. Denison, 39, 41, 79
Meliorism, 24
Men, Traffic in, 9
Mercantile System, 38
Method of Criticism on Moral Basis, 95
Metœci in Athens, 125
Middle Ages: Social Organization in the, 157
Middle Class: Its callousness, 73
Its moral ideas, 108-110
Its misunderstandings of Socialism, 164
Its dread of mob violence, 175
Militant organization of the working class for forcible revolution,
182, 184
Militarism and immigration, 125
Military Service, 131
Empires of the Continent, 125
Mill, James, 29, 33
Mill, John Stuart, 4, 31, 39, 41, 50, 52, 168
Milk Exchange of New York, 88
Milton, John, Proposal as to schools, 134
Mines: Their horrors before the legislation initiated by Lord Ashley,
61
Nationalization of, 150
Mines Regulation Acts, 41
Minor poetry, Socialist provision for the publication of, 144
Mirabeau, 60
Missionaries, 181
Mistakes exposed by Socialism:
That Society is no more than the sum of its units, 3, 50
That Private Property encourages industry, 6
That Private Property establishes healthy incentive, 6
That Private Property distributes wealth according to exertion, 6
That Rent does not enter into price, 14
That Exchange Value is a measure of true wealth, 19
That “the poor ye shall have always with you”, 24
That riots, regicide and bloodshed make Revolutions, 56, 166
Mob Violence, Middle-class dread of, 175
Molesworth, W. N., 31
Money, Function of, 10
Monopolies, 14
And Democracy, 89
Necessity for protecting the Postmaster’s, 168
Moral Basis of Socialism, 93
Habits and their origin, 98
Education of the Individual, 102
And of Society, 115
Moralists, Foolish, 6
Morality, 94
Relativity of, 96
Recognizable only in Society, 97
Conventional, 98, 100, 106, 108
Natural, 101, 109
Practical, 103
Class, 5, 23, 108, 109, 110, 159
Elementary conditions of, 113
Developed conditions of, 115, 116
Socialistic, 117
Medieval, 137, 158
Elizabethan, 159
“Morals and Health Act” (1802), 41, 160
More, Sir Thomas, 160
Morley, Right Hon. John, 47, 182, 192, 193
Motors, Influence of new, 33
Municipal: Corporations Act, 34
Action, 46
Socialism, 46, 175
Debt, 47
Development, 49
Prestige of Municipal Employment, 177
Municipalities, Growth of, 33, 35, 45, 46, 47
(See also COUNTY COUNCILS.)
Nabob, The appearance in English social life of the, 33
Napoleon: “The career is open to the talented”, 7
“A nation of shopkeepers”, 71
Nasmyth, James, invents the steam-hammer, 60
National Insurance, 23
National Liberal Federation, 48
“National Review, The”, 109
Nationalization of Rent, 22, 47
It results if unaccompanied by Socialistic organization of labor,
172
Inter-municipal rent, 181
Rent of ability, 179-80
(See also PROGRESS AND POVERTY.)
Nature: Caprices of, 3, 7
“Red in tooth and claw”, 23
Unmorality of, 24
The cause of Society, 98
Newspapers under Socialism, 144
New Hampshire, 121
New Motors, Influence of, 33
New River Company, 124
New York Legislature--Committee on Trusts, 86
Newcommen, Thomas, 33
Nexus, The social, 30, 32, 50
Oastler, Richard, 68
O’Connor, Fergus, 169
Oldest Families--Tradition of their superiority, 5
Oldham, 46
Olivier, Sydney, 93
Omnipotence and Benevolence, The Dilemma of, 23
Optimism: rebuked by Science, 24
The individual economists and their, 161
Organism, The Social, 50
Outlook, The political, 184
Over-population, 17
Owen, Robert, 40, 79, 121, 174
Painters, Gains of fashionable, 179
Paley, Rev. William, 39, 40
Palmerston, Chinese policy of Lord, 74
_Panem et Circenses_, 172
Parasitism, Economic, 107
Parliaments, Annual, 170
Parks, Public, 187-8
Parties, State and fundamental differences of, 120, 132
Patent rights, 155
Patronage in the public service, 165
Effect of appointments by, 165
Pauper Labor, How to deal with, 140
Payment of representatives, 170
Peasant Proprietorship, 50
Period of Anarchy, 35
Perpetual pension, Privately appropriated Rent is of the nature of
a, 4
Pessimism, 23, 200
Peterloo, 34
Philanthropy, Futility of, 167
“Philosophic Radicalism,” 40, 167
Physical force, 136, 166, 184
Advocated by Lord Bramwell, 175
Physicians, Gains of fashionable, 179
Piracy and the Slave Trade in the 16th century, 158
Pitt, William: His motives, 72
Piener, E. von, 69
Plebeians in ancient Rome, 125
Plato, 111
Police: Conduct of Socialists charged upon by the, 100
Recent action of the ex-Chief Commissioner of, 174
Political: Tendencies, 48, 186
Reform, 51, 192
“Political Science Quarterly,” 28, 79
Economy (See POLITICAL ECONOMY).
Political Economy, 2
Basis of Socialism in, 1
Definition of Rent in treatises, 4
Theory apparently contradicted by history, 20
Untrustworthiness of abstract, 20
Its guns turned against Private Property, 24
Old school and new, 24
John Stuart Mill, 31, 50, 52
Ricardo, 162
Jevons, 162
Rise of modern, 39, 160
Perceived to be a _reductio ad absurdum_ of Private Property, 162
Present political parties and, 190
Poor Law: A Socialistic institution degraded, 114
Reform, 49
The old and the new, 167
Post Office: A Socialistic institution, 131
Socialization of the postal system, 139
Economy of collectivist charges exemplified by, 168
Population: Increase and its effects, 5, 15, 161, 174
Its control by public opinion, 182
(See also OVERPOPULATION.)
Press: Its liberty after the socialization of printing, 144
Clamor for bloodshed from the newspapers of the proprietary
class, 175
Preston, 46
Its public debt, 127
Prices cannot be raised to compensate diminished profits, 177
Printing, Socialization of, 144
Private Property: Beginning of, 2
Its levelling-down action, 14
Injustice of, 20
Not now practicable in its integrity, 21
Its abrogation conceived as an attempt to empower everyone to rob
everyone else, 22
Its revenue distinguished from earnings, 22
Composition of incomes derived from, 22
Institution of, 103
Conditions of its possibility, 104
Effect on sex relations, 110
Idea of, 111
Rights of, 138
Cheapens the laborer, 179
Tends to make the majority mere beasts of burden, 180
Process of extinction of, 181
The State and, 190
(See also PROPERTY.)
Private Enterprise compared with Public, 168
Produce: Unjust division resulting from private appropriation of
land, 5
Production: Improvements in, 6
Effect of unforeseen improvements in, 12
Conditions of production and exchange, 12
Associated, 121, 133
Profit, 6, 13
Sweater’s, 177
Most important form of “Rent of Ability,” 179
Effect of calculating it in net social welfare instead of individual
pecuniary gain, 181
“Profit Sharing”, 151
Programme of Social Democracy, 182
Progress: Conditions of, 94
Rate of in politics, industry and thought, 186
“Progress and Poverty,” 23-5, 162, 169, 172
“Progress of Socialism,” 41
Proletarian: The first, 6
Predicament of landless, 8
End of his absorption by the land as tenant, 9
Sold into bondage, 10
Operation of the law of value on his position as a vendor of
labor, 15
How the Democratic State will deal with him, 173
(See also PROLETARIAT.)
Proletariat: Origin of the, 6
Exploitation of, 17
Physical degradation of, 67
Type of, 105
Morals of, 110-13
So-called “intellectual,” 180
(See also PROLETARIAN.)
Property: Under Socialism, 119
Definition and economic analysis of, 120
(See also PRIVATE PROPERTY.)
Prosperity, Association of idleness with, 4
Prostitutes, their making, 112
Protection: Decay of, 73
In the Middle Ages, 158
Advocated by the Manchester School, 176
Proudhon, P. J., 162
Public Health Acts, 41
Public Opinion, 182
Purchasing Power--Pernicious effect of its unequal distribution, 19
Quit Rents, 8
Radicalism: Philosophic, 40
The modern Radical Programme, 48
Ordinary destructive variety, 164
Permeation of by Socialism, 196
Absorption of, 199
The land question and, 104
Railways: Requisites for making them under Capitalism, 16
Development of, 75
Socialization of, 139
Raphael’s pictures, 126
Ratepayer, How Socialism will first affect the, 177
Rates, Growth of, 46
Reactionary Legislation, Danger of, 92
Reform Bills, 34, 168
Regicide: Its victims, 84
Its futility, 136
Registration, Anomalous condition of voters’, 170
Regulation of Industry: Medieval, 37, 157-8
Modern (See FACTORY LEGISLATION).
Rent: Recognized and paid by worker to drone, 3
Definitions of economic rent by standard economists, 3, 4
Point at which rent ceases to be strictly “economic rent,” 8
Enters into price of all commodities except those produced at margin
of cultivation, 13
Relation to cost of production, 13
Nationalization of, 21, 46, 182
Is common wealth, not individually earned, 22
Moral Aspect of, 104, 110, 113
Case of Birmingham and Warwick, 123
Law of, 161
Illustration of economic rent, 163
Urban, 171
Effect of municipal Socialism on, 177
How County Councils can manipulate, 178
Nationalizing inter-municipal, 181
Effect of Free Trade on agricultural, 190
Rent of ability, 7, 177
Industrial profit the most important form of, 179
Raised by Private Property, 179
May become negative, 180
Republicanism: Disappearance of militant Republicanism in England, 185
Residuum: Genesis of the, 113
Its appreciation of public hospitality, 114
Respectability, Falsehood of current, 24
Reward of Abstinence, 16
” of effort in the cause of Socialism, 135
Revolt, The Intellectual, 40
Revolution: Middle class notions of, 56
Socialistic attempt to organize militant, 182
(See also INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION and PHYSICAL FORCE.)
Ricardo, David, 4, 39, 162
Riches are not Wealth, 18
Rights of Man, Declaring the, 182
Rings, Growth of capitalist, 82, 127, 184
Ritchie, Right Hon. C. T., 138
Ritchie, D. G., 50
Rochdale Pioneers, 124
Roebuck, J. A., 39
Rogers, Professor Thorold E., 32
Rousseau, J. J., 39
Rural economy in 1750, 32
Russell, Lord John, announces finality, 167
Ruskin, John, 41
Russia’s industrial competition in the world market, 169
Rutland, Duchess of, on the hard work of country gentlemen, 109
Ryot, Suppression of Indian, 113
S. D. F. (Social Democratic Federation), 169
Sadler, Michael Thomas, 69
Salisbury, Rt. Hon., the Marquess of, 129
Satan: His moral activity, 106
Rehabilitation of, 114
“Saul”: Optimism as expressed in Robert Browning’s poem, 23
Saving: Capital the result of, 16
Savings of communities and of individuals, 123
Schools as they should be, 133
Scott, Sir Walter, Political types in “Rob Roy”, 71
Secretan, Eugène, 84
Seeley, J. R., 189
Self, Extension of, 101
Self-defence, Origin of the Noble Art, 100
“Self-help”, 19, 168
Seligman, E. R. A., 79
Servants, Domestic, 111, 172
Servantgalism an Effect of Capitalism, 111
Services, Property in, 130
Settlement, Law of, 31
Seven Years’ War, The, 60
Sewer Cleaning under Socialism, 145
Shaftesbury, Lord, 69
Shaftesbury Avenue, Land near, 127
Shakspere, Suggested Duke of, 132
Shaw, G. Bernard, 1, 157
Shelley, P. B., 100
Shoemaking by hand, 58
By machinery, 61
Shopkeeping, Joint-Stock, 80
Sidgwick, Henry, 4, 52, 130
Sidmouth, Lord, 34
Six Acts, The, 34
“Six Centuries of Work and Wages,” 32
Slave Trade, The, 158
Slavery, The White, 36
Slaves Released when not worth keeping, 15
Smiles, Samuel, 7
Smith, Adam, 32, 38
Societies: Failure of previous attempts to establish true, 20
Societies and Civilizations, 21
(See also SOCIETY.)
Society: Hypothesis that it is no more than the sum of its
Units, 3, 50
The Matrix of Morality, 96
Evolution of Primitive, 96, 98, 101, 103, 112
Industrial, 104
Parasitic, 106-7
Fashionable, 107
(See also SOCIETIES.)
Soils, Resort to Inferior, 3
Somers, Robert, 80
Social: Utility Divorced from Exchange Value, 18
Character of Social Changes, 30
Evolution, 30, 44, 53
“Social Statics,” 36, 54
Health, 51
Organization, 51, 136
Instinct, 101, 109
Social Democratic Federation, 169
Social Democracy and Social Democrat. (See SOCIALISM and SOCIALIST.)
Socialism, 2, 22, 131, 163, 166, 182, 190, 194-95
Economic basis of, 1
Bearing of Economic Analysis of Individualism on, 22
Substitutes Meliorism for Pessimism, 24, 200
Historic Aspect, 26
“Socialism in England,” 27
Change in, 27, 119
Early or Utopian, 27, 30, 119, 136, 160, 164
Industrial Aspect, 56
The Capitalist and, 90
Moral Aspect, 93
Its Genesis, 96
New Conception of, 119
Property under, 119
Definition of pure, 131
Industry under, 136
Change from Individualism to, 137, 157
Local machinery of, 139, 169
Dirty Work under, 145
Transition to, 157
Practical difficulties of, 163
Honesty of, 164
Must be introduced gradually, 166
Solution of the Compensation difficulty, 175
Effect on Rent, 177
Friction caused by introduction of, 178
Outlook toward, 184
Prince Bismarck’s view of, 192
The Liberal Party and, 192
True and False, 193-4
Two views of the future of, 195
Practical politicians and, 196
(See also the Index Generally.)
Socialist Politics, 47
Programme, 48
Formation of party, 198
Socialists and the police, 100
Early (See UTOPIAN SOCIALISM).
The _mot d’ordre_ for, 139
Social Democrats fall into line as a political party, 170
The Radical Press and, 195
Parliament and, 197
Future leader for, 199
Spencer, Herbert, 36, 41, 47, 58, 95, 160, 169
St. Matthew, Guild of, 39
Standard Oil Trust, 85
“Star, The,” 48
State: Social Democratic, 2
Functions under Socialism, 149
Corruption of the, 164
Whig conception of the, 165
Conception of the perfect, 165
Decentralization in the Social Democratic, 170
Private Property and the, 190
Attitude of parties towards the, 190
Idea and content of the, 191
The working-class and the, 191
Statistics and Statisticians, 173
Steam applied to cotton spinning, 59
Stuart, Professor James, 48
Subletting of Tenant Right, 5
Subsistence Wages, _Rationale_ of, 16
Sunday: Hypocrisies of church going, 5
The English, 133
Sunderland, 46
Supply and Demand: Action of, 8, 179
Value decreases with Supply, 10
Final effect on wage-labor, 16, 17
Sweating, How to defeat, 175
Sweeping Chimneys: Replacement of boy labor by machinery in, 146
Syndicate of Copper Cornerers, 84
Synthesis: The old, 31, 157
The new, 50
Talent, Career open to, 7
Taxation: Reform, 48
Of ground values, 171
Novel character of recent demands for, 172
Telegraphs, Socialization of, 139
Ten Hours’ Bill, The, 69
Tenant Rights: Perpetual, 4, 5, 6
Replaced by finite leases, 8
Tennyson, Alfred, 68
Test and Corporation Acts repealed, 34
Theatres, Communal, 135
Tocqueville, A. C. H. C. de, 29
Tory of fifty years ago, 188-9
Absorption of the party, 189
Tonquin, French policy in, 75
“Total Utility,” 11
Toynbee, Arnold, 33
Trade: Secrets of, 14
Discredit and rehabilitation of as a pursuit for the nobility and
gentry, 108
Trade Unions, 48, 132, 168
Wages in, 141
Royal Commission (1869), 169
Trafalgar Square: The police in, 100, 174
The Fountains in, 107
Traffic in Men, 9
Tramways, Socialization of, 46, 139
Transition to Social Democracy, 157
Truck Acts, 41
Trusts, 14, 138, 143, 185
Tucker, Benjamin R., 160
Turgot, A. R. J., 161
Two-man power more than double One-man power, 3
Unemployed: Their existence a proof that the labor they could replace
has no exchange value, 139
Social pressure created by the, 172
United States: Results of Individualism plus political liberty in
the, 21
Declaration of Independence, 60
Growth of Monopoly in the, 78
Extent to which monopoly has gone in the, 82
Unskilled Labor, Fate of, 112
Unsocialism, 2
Utilitarian questioning and scientific answering, 23
Utilitarians, The, 38
Utility: Its relation to Value, 10
“Total Utility,” “Marginal,” or “Final Utility,” 11, 12
Divorce from Exchange Value, 19
Utopian Socialism, 27, 30, 119, 136, 160, 164
Valjean, Jean, 100
Value in Exchange, 9
Not explained by the money mechanism, 10
Man’s control over it consists in his power of regulating supply, 14
Divorced from social utility, 19
Theory of, 162
Voluntary Associations: Their legal position under Socialism, 124
Von Plener, E., 36
Vestrydom congenial to British mind, 182
Villiers, C. P., 39
Virtues conditioned by social evolution, 99, 100-6
Wages, 15
Subsistence level, 16
Adjustment, 148
Rise after 1840, 167
Apparently raised by Trade Unions, 168
Competition wages, 176
Socialistic wages, 147, 177-8
Walford’s Insurance Cyclopædia, 46
Walker, F. A., 4
Wallas, Graham, 119
Walpole, Sir Robert, 72
Warren, Sir Charles, 174
Wars for foreign markets, 75, 181, 182
Warwick compared with Birmingham, 123
Watt, James, 33
Watts, Isaac, on the cotton manufacture, 66
Waterloo Bridge, Socialization of, 133
Waterworks, Socialization of, 46, 139
Wealth: Divorced from Exchange Value, 19
Wealth: Distinguished from “Illth,” 19
“Wealth of Nations,” 32
Weaver, Extirpation of the hand-loom, 60, 72
Webb, Sidney, 26, 27, 99, 184
Westminster, Duke of, 173
Whig Philosophy, 164
Economics, 164
Disappearance of the, 188
The Whig of fifty years ago, 188-9
White Slavery, 36, 40
“White Terror, The,” 34
Whitman, Walt, 92
Wicksteed, P. H., 162
William the Silent, Assassination of, 76
Women: Effect of Property System on, 108-10
Outlawry of, 176
Economic independence of, 182
Worker and Drone, 3
Working class: Militant organization of, 183
The State and the, 190
Political superstitions of the, 192
Zeitgeist, Effect of the, 44
Transcriber’s Notes
Errors and omissions in punctuation were corrected.
The page reference in the Table of Contents to the start of William
Clarke’s article on the Fabian Society and its work has been corrected.
Page xiii: “or _Debats_” changed to “or _Débats_”
Page xxxiii: “ignorant and presumptous” changed to “ignorant and
presumptuous”
Page 14: “being disengenuous” changed to “being disingenuous”
Page 30: “wider concensus” changed to “wider consensus”
Page 33: “of these man” changed to “of these men”
Page 38: “French contempories” changed to “French contemporaries”
Page 40: “nett result” changed to “net result”
Page 52: “not neccessarily” changed to “not necessarily”
Page 71: “conquest or Canada” changed to “conquest of Canada”
Page 79: “conceited, hyprocritical” changed to “conceited, hypocritical”
Page 162: “dialectrical war” changed to “dialectical war”
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Fabian Essays in Socialism" ***
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