British Socialism
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Title: British Socialism
Author: J. Ellis Barker
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BRITISH SOCIALISM
An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals
by
J. ELLIS BARKER
Author of
'Modern Germany: Her Political and Economic Problems, etc.'
'The Rise and Decline of the Netherlands'
London
Smith, Elder, & Co.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons
1908
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. INTRODUCTION--WHAT IS SOCIALISM? 1
II. SOME SOCIALIST VIEWS OF PRESENT SOCIETY AND OF THE
SOCIETY OF THE FUTURE 10
III. THE GRIEVANCES OF THE SOCIALISTS 30
IV. THE FUNDAMENTAL DOCTRINES OF SOCIALISM 50
V. THE AIMS AND POLICY OF THE SOCIALISTS 92
VI. THE ATTITUDE OF SOCIALISTS TOWARDS THE WORKING
MASSES 115
VII. THE ATTITUDE OF SOCIALISTS TOWARDS TRADE UNIONISTS
AND CO-OPERATORS 131
VIII. SOCIALIST VIEWS AND PROPOSALS REGARDING LAND AND
THE LANDLORDS 145
IX. SOCIALIST VIEWS AND PROPOSALS REGARDING CAPITAL
AND THE CAPITALISTS 152
X. SOCIALIST VIEWS AND PROPOSALS REGARDING TAXATION
AND THE NATIONAL BUDGET 160
XI. SOCIALISM AND THE EMPIRE 170
XII. SOCIALIST VIEWS ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND
FOREIGN POLICY 183
XIII. SOCIALISM AND THE ARMY 192
XIV. SOCIALISM AND THE MONARCHY 207
XV. SOCIALIST VIEWS ON PARLIAMENT AND THE NATIONAL
ADMINISTRATION 209
XVI. THE ATTITUDE OF THE SOCIALISTS TOWARDS THE TWO
PARLIAMENTARY PARTIES 225
XVII. SOCIALISM AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT 240
XVIII. SOCIALISM AND AGRICULTURE 261
XIX. SOCIALIST VIEWS ON BRITISH RAILWAYS AND SHIPPING 269
XX. SOME SOCIALIST VIEWS ON MONEY, BANKS, AND BANKING 278
XXI. SOME SOCIALIST VIEWS ON FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION 285
XXII. SOCIALISM AND EDUCATION 302
XXIII. THE ATTITUDE OF SOCIALISTS TOWARDS PROVIDENCE, THRIFT,
AND TEMPERANCE 311
XXIV. SOCIALIST VIEWS ON LAW AND JUSTICE 325
XXV. SOCIALISM AND WOMAN, THE FAMILY AND THE HOME 330
XXVI. THE SOCIALIST ATTITUDE TOWARDS CHRISTIANITY AND
RELIGION 354
XXVII. THE RELIGION OF SOCIALISM 364
XXVIII. CHRISTIAN SOCIALISM 375
XXIX. SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM 381
XXX. SOCIALISM AND ANARCHISM 394
XXXI. SOCIALISM AND REVOLUTION 404
XXXII. STATE SOCIALISM 411
XXXIII. THE SOCIALIST ORGANISATIONS: THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS
AND THEIR POLICY 415
XXXIV. THE GROWTH AND DANGER OF BRITISH SOCIALISM 431
XXXV. HOW THE PROGRESS OF SOCIALISM MAY BE CHECKED 440
XXXVI. IS SOCIALISM POSSIBLE?--A GLANCE INTO THE SOCIALIST
STATE OF THE FUTURE 444
XXXVII. CONCLUSION 470
APPENDIX--OFFICIAL PROGRAMMES OF THE SOCIALISTIC ORGANISATIONS 481
BIBLIOGRAPHY 493
ANALYTICAL INDEX 509
BRITISH SOCIALISM
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION--WHAT IS SOCIALISM?
What is Socialism?
It is exceedingly difficult to answer that question in a few words,
for Socialism is exceedingly elusive and bewildering in its doctrines,
its aims, and its proposals.
Its opponents have described it as "a doctrine of sordid materialism
and of atheism," they have denounced it as "the gospel of everlasting
bellyful,"[1] and as "the coming slavery."[2] They have stated that
Socialism means to abolish religion, that it "would try to put
laziness, thriftlessness, and inefficiency on a par with industry,
thrift, and efficiency, that it would strive to break up not merely
private property, but, what is far more important, the home, the chief
prop upon which our whole civilisation stands."[3]
The Socialists, on the other hand, claim that "Socialism presents the
only living ideal of human existence"[4]; that "Socialism is science
applied with knowledge and understanding to all branches of human
activity"[5]; that "Socialism is freedom,"[6] and that it is
exceedingly just, for "the justice of Socialism will see all things,
and therefore understand all things."[7] One of the Socialist leaders
has told us "Socialism is much more than either a political creed or
an economic dogma. It presents to the modern world a new conception of
society and a new basis upon which to build up the life of the
individual and of the State."[8] Another informs us "Socialism to
Socialists is not a Utopia which they have invented, but a principle
of social organisation which they assert to have been discovered by
the patient investigators into sociology whose labours have
distinguished the present century."[9] A third has stated that
"Socialism is really neither more nor less than the science of
sociology."[10] A fourth asserts that "it is a scientific scheme of
national government entirely wise, just, and practical."[11] A fifth
states "Socialism to me has always meant not a principle, but certain
definite economic measures which I wish to see taken."[12]
Other Socialists have taught that "Socialism is an ethical system
founded on justice and truth; it is a heartfelt, soul-inspiring
religion, resting upon the love of God."[13] "Socialism is a theory of
social organisation, which reconciles the individual to society. It
has discovered how the individual in society can attain to a state of
complete development."[14] "Socialism is the right of the community,
acting in its corporate capacity, to intervene in the lives and
labours of men and women."[15] "Socialism is nothing but the
extension of democratic self-government from the political to the
industrial world."[16] "Socialism is an endeavour to substitute for
the anarchical struggle or fight for existence an organised
co-operation for existence."[17] "Socialism may be described as an
endeavour to readjust the machinery of industry in such a way that it
can at once depend upon and issue in a higher kind of character and
social type than is encouraged by the conditions of ordinary
competitive enterprise."[18] "Socialism is the development of policies
concerning the welfare of society."[19] "It is not arbitrary
destruction and reconstruction, but a natural process of
development."[20] "The idea of Socialism will conquer the world, for
this idea is nothing but the real, well understood interest of
mankind."[21] "Its principles will carry the whole human race to a
higher state of perfection."[22] "It is the great modern protest
against unreality, against the delusive shams which now masquerade as
verities."[23] "Socialism is of the character of a historical
discovery."[24] "Socialism, the inspiring principle of all Labour
Parties, whether they know it or not, is the next world movement--the
movement of the constructive intellect."[25]
Socialism is rich in promises, and its claims to our consideration and
support are manifold. Are these claims justified or not? Are the
Socialists or the Anti-Socialists right in their conception of
Socialism?
The Socialists maintain that all opposition to Socialism is based
either on self-interest or ignorance, and principally upon the
latter. Therefore one of the Socialist leaders wrote: "Those who wish
to understand Socialism will be wise to study Socialist books and
papers. One does not expect a true and fair account of any theory or
cause from its enemies. The man who takes his ideas of Trade-Unionism
from the Free Labour League, his ideas of Liberalism from the Tory
papers, his ideas of South African affairs--or any other affairs--from
the Yellow Press, will be misled into all manner of absurdities and
errors. The statements of party politicians and party newspapers on
most controversial subjects are prejudiced and inaccurate; but there
is no subject upon which the professional misleaders of the people are
so untrustworthy and so disingenuous as they are upon the subject of
Socialism."[26] A leading Socialist organ complained: "Our opponents
decline to deal with the fundamental principles of Socialism--its
unanswerable indictment of the capitalist system, with all its
concomitants of wage-slavery and slumdom; prostitution and child
murder--and prefer instead to indulge in calumniation and
misrepresentation of Socialism. We need not complain about that. It is
a tribute to the soundness of the Socialist position, to the
irrefutability of its principles, the impregnability of the rock of
economic truth upon which it is based, that our enemies dare not
oppose the principles of Socialism, dare not attempt to meet the
charge Socialism levels against the existing order."[27]
There is much truth in these complaints. The general public and most
writers and speakers know very little about Socialism, because this
most interesting subject has been very inadequately treated in the
existing books.
The existing books on Socialism describe, analyse, and criticise the
Socialist doctrines only in the abstract as a rule. However,
Socialism is not only an elaborate economic doctrine, it is at the
same time a complete system of practical politics. Hence it does not
suffice to study the doctrines of Socialism by themselves. In order to
understand Socialism we must also investigate its practical proposals.
Following the methods of our political economists, most writers on
Socialism have, unfortunately, treated Socialism rather as a
scientific abstraction than as a business proposition. Consequently
the most important practical details of Socialism, such as: What are
the views of the Socialist with regard to the Monarchy, the Army, the
Banks, the National Currency, the Law, Education? what are their
practical aims as regards Parliamentary Representation, Foreign
Policy, Agriculture, Taxation, Old-age Pensions, Fiscal Policy? what
are their relations with the Parliamentary Parties, the Trade-Unions,
the Co-operators, etc? what is their attitude towards International
Communism and Anarchism? is English Socialism an Evolutionary or a
Revolutionary Movement?--these and many other questions are touched
but lightly or are not touched at all.
It is somewhat difficult to deal fully with the practical proposals of
the Socialists, because the Socialists are very averse from
formulating their aims and disclosing their plans. An English
Socialist wrote: "To dogmatise about the form which the Socialist
State shall take is to play the fool."[28] Another one stated: "It is
quite impossible, at this time, nor would it be desirable, if
possible, to lay down any hard and fast line as to the development of
the details of Socialist organisation. Broad principles are all that
can with any degree of confidence be spoken about. The details will
arrange themselves, as the time arrives when it becomes necessary to
settle them."[29] Gronlund, perhaps the most prominent American
Socialist, stated: "Socialists do not profess to be architects. They
have not planned the future in minute detail."[30] Herr Bebel, the
leader of the German Social-Democratic Party, said on February 3,
1893, in the Reichstag, replying to the Roman Catholics, "We do not
ask from you the details of the future life of which you speak so
incessantly. Why, then, do you ask us about the future society?"[31]
Although we are told that "Socialism claims the consideration of
mankind, because it comes forward and offers a complete scheme to
improve the conditions of human life,"[32] Socialists carefully
abstain as a rule from giving us the details of that scheme.
The Socialists of all countries have very excellent reasons for
keeping to themselves the details of their plans for the future.
Nevertheless, a careful search through their numerous writings will
enable us to obtain a fairly clear and comprehensive view of their
political and economic plans and intentions.
Great Britain does not as yet possess a great Socialist party but only
a number of Socialist groups and factions which are totally at
variance as regards their aims, policy, and tactics. "They differ as
to the best means of getting what they want, and as to the best ways
of managing the work, and as to the proper way of sharing the
earnings. Some Socialists still believe that Socialism will have to be
got by force. I think there are not many. Some are in favour of buying
the land, the railways, the machinery, and other things; and some are
in favour of taking them, by force, or by new laws. Then some say that
there should be no wages paid at all, but that everyone should do an
equal share of work, and take whatever he needed from the nation's
goods. Others say that all men should do an equal share of work, and
have an equal share of the goods, or of the earnings. Others say it
would be better to pay wages, as now, but to let the wages be fixed by
the Government, or by corporations, or other officials, and that all
wages should be equal. Others, again, say that wages should be paid,
that the wages should be fixed as above stated, and that different
kinds of work should be paid for at different rates. In one kind of
Socialism the civil engineer, the actor, the general, the artist, the
tram guard, the dustman, the milliner, and the collier would all be
paid the same wages. In another kind of Socialism there would be no
wages, but all would be called upon to work, and all who worked would
'take according to their needs.' In another kind of Socialism the
civil engineer would be paid more than the navvy, the opera singer
more than the milliner, the general more than the sergeant, and the
editor more than the scavenger."[33]
Notwithstanding these numerous and important differences, of which
more will be learned in the course of this book, British Socialists
are absolutely united in certain important respects. "The policies of
Socialism are a changeable quantity, though the principle is as fixed
as the Northern Star."[34] "Socialism is as flexible in its form as it
is definite in its principles."[35]
A superficial study of Socialism reveals to us not a single and
generally accepted plan, but a confused and confusing mass of mutually
contradictory plans and doctrines. Therefore he who wishes to know
what Socialism is, must study the many-headed movement in its entirety
and give an impartial hearing to all its advocates. We can understand
Socialism only if we are acquainted with practically its entire
literature.
Unfortunately the literature of Socialism is very vast. A complete
collection of modern Socialist literature would embrace at least
thirty thousand items. Therefore a full analysis of international
Socialism based upon the study of the original sources is a forbidding
undertaking. I have consequently limited myself to the investigation
of the British Socialist movement, although I have cast a cursory
glance upon foreign Socialism whenever it seemed necessary to do so.
I have consulted altogether about a thousand books and pamphlets, and
have given representative extracts from four hundred or five hundred
of those which seemed most proper to elucidate the subject of this
book. Having given space to the views of all the Socialist groups,
this book is a summary of the whole literature of British Socialism
and a key to it. It is based exclusively on first-hand evidence, and
every statement contained in it can instantly be verified by reference
to the original sources indicated in the footnotes. In the
Bibliography at the end of this volume the full title, publisher's
address, and date of publication of all sources drawn upon are given,
so that readers will have no difficulty in procuring any Socialist
books they may want for further study.
Most of the books quoted are unknown to booksellers, and are not in
public libraries. Even the British Museum Library possesses only part
of the publications used in this book, which is the first to exploit
fully the whole Socialist party literature. Whilst most books on
Socialism take note only of Socialist text-books addressed to
students, the present volume considers chiefly the propaganda
literature which is educating the Socialist rank and file and shaping
its political views. For all practical political purposes the
propaganda literature is undoubtedly by far the more important of the
two to the statesman and the citizen.
The present volume is the only book of its kind, and I hope that the
Socialist movement in Germany, France, and the United States will be
treated with similar completeness by writers of these countries. The
perusal of the present volume will enable us to form an opinion of the
merits or demerits of the Socialistic theories and practical plans,
and make it possible for us to separate the grain from the chaff, the
wisdom from the folly, in the teachings of the Socialists. Thus we
shall be able to see which of their complaints and proposals are
justified and practical, and which are unjustified and unpractical.
Popular dissatisfaction, Socialistic and non-Socialistic, points to
the existence of ills in the body politic, and the Socialistic
agitation is exceedingly valuable inasmuch as it draws general
attention to these ills. Some complaints of the Socialists will be
found to be imaginary, others are very real.
It would be a sterile undertaking merely to analyse and criticise
Socialism and the Socialistic proposals. Therefore, after having
described the policy, ideals, and aims of the Socialists, I mean to
analyse the disease of which Socialism is a consequence and a symptom,
and to propose practical measures for curing it.
In the course of this book I shall show that Socialism seems likely to
become a very great danger in this country--a far greater danger than
is generally realised. Therefore its opponents will be wise not to
sneer at Socialism, but to study it and to try to understand it. That
task will be found worth our while, and only after it shall we be able
to further Socialism if it is beneficial, to combat it if it is
pernicious, and to correct it if it is only the misguided expression
of genuine suffering and want. Indifference to a great and dangerous
political movement such as Socialism may have the gravest
consequences. Idlers do not make history. They suffer it.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Millar, _Socialism_, p. 21.
[2] Herbert Spencer, _The Man versus the State_, p. 18 ff.
[3] Roosevelt, Presidential Message, December 1907.
[4] Walter Crane in Squire, _Socialism and Art_, Foreword.
[5] Bebel, _Woman_, p. 256.
[6] Kessack, _Capitalist Wilderness_, p. 2.
[7] Ford, _Woman and Socialism_, p. 3.
[8] Keir Hardie, _From Serfdom to Socialism_, p. 1.
[9] Webb, _The Difficulties of Individualism_, p. 3.
[10] Hyndman, _Socialism and Slavery_, Preface.
[11] Blatchford, _Merrie England_, p. 100.
[12] Shaw, _The Impossibilities of Anarchism_, p. 3.
[13] "Veritas," _Did Jesus Christ teach Socialism?_ p. 1.
[14] Macdonald, _Socialism_, p. 3.
[15] _Labour Record_, February 1907.
[16] Webb, _The Difficulties of Individualism_, p. 15.
[17] _Will Socialism benefit the British People?_ p. 4.
[18] Ball, _The Moral Aspects of Socialism_, p. 3.
[19] Williams, _The Difficulties of Socialism_, p. 3.
[20] Bebel, _Woman_, p. 257.
[21] Sorge, _Socialism and the Worker_, p. 13.
[22] _Ibid._ p. 16.
[23] Bax, _Religion of Socialism_, p. ix.
[24] Lafargue, in Bliss, _Encyclopedia of Social Reform_, p. 1264.
[25] Macdonald, _Labour and the Empire_, p. 108.
[26] Blatchford, _What is this Socialism?_ p. 2.
[27] _Justice_, October 19, 1907.
[28] Keir Hardie, _From Serfdom to Socialism_, p. 96.
[29] Ethel Snowden, _The Woman Socialist_, p. 44.
[30] Gronlund, _Co-operative Commonwealth_, p. 126.
[31] Guyot, _Pretensions of Socialism_, p. 11.
[32] Hird, _From Brute to Brother_, p. 1.
[33] Robert Blatchford, _Real Socialism_, p. 15.
[34] Williams, _Difficulties of Socialism_, p. 4.
[35] Bliss, _Encyclopedia of Social Reform_, p. 1265.
CHAPTER II
SOME SOCIALIST VIEWS OF PRESENT SOCIETY AND OF THE SOCIETY OF THE
FUTURE
"We are not indebted to reason," wrote the greatest American
Socialist, "for the landmarks of human progress, for the introduction
of Christianity, the institution of the monastic orders, the Crusades,
the Reformation, the American Revolution, or the abolition of slavery.
Man is only irresistible when he acts from passion. The masses of men
are never moved except by passions, feelings, interests."[36]
"Socialism has the advantage of appealing to the interests as well as
to the enthusiasm of all except the few who think the world good
enough as it is.... It is, of course, to the discontented wage-workers
that the Socialist can appeal with the greatest chance of
success."[37] These indiscreet words, which might have been written by
the most implacable of Anti-Socialists, sum up and explain the
Socialistic agitation and tactics. They are a proclamation and an
avowal, and the worst enemy of Socialism would have found it difficult
to pen a more damaging statement. Socialists rely not on reason or
justice, but on unreason and passion, for the victory of their cause;
and that fact is very much to be regretted, for it is bound to create
prejudice and suspicion, and to greatly weaken their case.
The British Socialists, seeking to rouse the passions of men,
habitually rely on exaggeration and misrepresentation. They do not
tire of painting the present state of society in the darkest colours
and of describing with an unbounded but hardly justifiable optimism
and enthusiasm the advantages which will accrue to society when
Socialism has come to rule. It will be seen that in describing society
of the present and society of the future, Socialists let their
imagination run riot in the most astounding fashion.
To the Socialist modern civilisation is worse than a failure. "Our
civilisation seems all so savage and bestial and filthy and
inartistic; all so cowardly and devilish and despicable. We fight by
cheatery and underselling, and adulteration and bribery, and unmanly
smirking for our bone of a livelihood; all scrambling and biting round
the platter when there is abundance for all, if we were orderly and
courteous and gentlemanly; all crushing the weaker; all struggling to
the platter-side for the privilege of wearing tall hats and of giving
good advice to the poor dogs outside. We, the well-fed, shout lordily
to the hungry and cheer them with legends to the effect that though
the poor are juggled out of earth, they may be masters in Heaven. Our
civilisation is barbarous."[38]
Where'er we go, to east or west
North or south, 'tis all the same;
Civilisation at it's best
Is savagery's newer name.
For we see on every hand
'Midst the whirr and noise of trade
The toilers, crushed and trampled, and
Into beasts of burden made.[39]
"The one reality of the nineteenth century is the scramble for wealth;
politics, literature, science, religion, art, are, apart from
money-getting, mere lifeless wraiths."[40] Government in general, and
British Government in particular, is vicious, tyrannous, and
neglectful, and deserves the utmost contempt. "National Government is
devised for other objects than the adjustment of essential, economic,
and hygienic arrangements for the redemption of human life; to use it
for such a purpose is gross tyranny and a deadly blow at the very
foundations of morality and religion! Governments exist for quite
other purposes than this--to pay a million pounds yearly to one family
and its immediate parasites, to supply power of life and death over
the people to the exploiting class and fat places to their satellites
and creatures, to squander hundreds of millions on gunpowder and
armaments, to use the whole socialised power of the nation to overawe,
exploit, rob, and ruin the so-called lower races--all these are the
proper objects of government according to our orthodox wiseacres, but
to use the same obvious instrument adequately to protect human life at
home, and that life, to quote Mr. Burns, 'the weakest, the smallest,
and the dearest to us all,' is to undermine the foundations of British
manliness and to poison the fountain of British liberty and greatness.
Such is the curious _melange_ of selfishness, hypocrisy, prejudice,
ignorance, and incoherence which passes muster for argument amongst
our anti-Socialist opponents."[41]
British social legislation has been a failure. Never was the lot of
the workers worse than it is now. "Your legislation for the past
hundred years is a perpetual and fruitless effort to regulate the
disorders of your economic system. Your poor, your drunken, your
incompetent, your sick, your aged, ride you like a nightmare. You have
dissolved all human and personal ties. The salient characteristic of
your civilisation is its irresponsibility. The making of dividends is
the universal preoccupation; the well-being of the labourer is no
one's concern. You depend on variations of supply and demand which
you can neither determine nor anticipate. The failure of a harvest,
the modification of a tariff in some remote country dislocates the
industry of millions, thousands of miles away. You are at the mercy of
a prospector's luck, an inventor's genius, a woman's caprice--nay, you
are at the mercy of your own instruments. Your capital is alive and
cries for food."[42]
Virtue has disappeared, religion is a fraud, clergy and priesthood are
mercenary, cowardly, and interested time-servers. "The priests and the
parsons are salary-slaves as much as the workers are wage-slaves. The
majority of them dare not preach the Gospel of Humanity, Justice, and
Socialism from their pulpits owing to their fear of their paymasters.
Religion is divorced from business, politics, the administration of
public authorities, the treatment of the aged worker, and written
across the actions of the professing Christians is 'Self-interest;
every man for himself and the Workhouse take the hindmost.'"[43]
Life is hell, and only Socialism can regenerate the world.
Things are all wrong, and we must put them right
So say all Socialists, and truly too.
Man does not get the chance here to subdue
The brute in self; and hence the fearful blight
Which makes one sicken at the dreadful sight
Of all society in one hell stew.[44]
Apparently all British workers spend their lives in terrible misery
and constant privation. Hunger and despair are their constant
companions, and they will see in Socialism their only salvation even
if Socialism should destroy individual liberty, for to them individual
liberty is a word without meaning. One of the most prominent British
Socialists, Mr. Philip Snowden, M.P., in a pamphlet addressed to
working men, writes: "Let those who fear that Socialism will destroy
individual liberty and hinder intellectual development go with their
talk to the machine-workers of our great northern towns, who are
chained for eleven hours a day to a monotonous toil, with the eye of
the overseer and the fear of dismissal spurring them on to an exertion
which leaves them at the end of their day's work physical wrecks, with
no ambition but to restore their wasted energies at the nearest
public-house. Let them go with their talk of the blessings of
civilisation to the pottery and chemical workers, whose systems are
poisoned, whose sight is destroyed, where, through the bodies of the
parents being saturated with poison, half the children are born dead,
and of the rest not one in four lives to be five--tell them to hold
fast to their share of the blessings of our glorious civilisation. Or
go to the sweaters' victims, living, eating, working, dying in one
room, for which a vampire landlord will take in rent one-half of all
the family can earn by working day and night--talk to them of
individual liberty and warn them of the tyranny of the coming
Socialism. Or go on a bitterly cold winter morning to the dock gates
of one of our great ports and see thousands of men waiting in the hope
of a day's job, and watch how a few here and there of the strongest
are selected, and the rest left to another day of hunger and despair;
or, wait still, and see how a few remain behind in the hope that their
mate may meet with an accident and 'they can snatch at the work he
had.' Why, to talk of individual freedom and equality of opportunity
under a system of cannibalistic competition like this is like the
mocking laughter of a raving maniac gloating over the torture of the
victim it holds in its murderous grip."[45] In another popular
pamphlet the worker is told: "After all, John, does it not strike you
that there is some foul iniquity in a system which allows one part of
the community to do another portion of it to death and to rob and
enslave those it is pleased to let live? Do you not see that those
your capitalists find it convenient and profitable to employ may live;
and that those they do not choose to employ must die? Do you not see
that these are hurried and driven hither and thither in haggard,
destitute misery; are thrust into festering heaps in your foul slums;
into your gaols, and penitentiaries, and workhouses; that they wander
in hopeless misery, hungering within sight of food, penniless amid
plenty, enforcedly idle, and work to which they can have no access
lying upon every hand of them, as though the world were under an
enchantment and God were dead!"[46]
The British working man, as he is generally known, is a manly and very
independent personage. As a rule his master is more afraid of him than
he is of his master. Yet, according to the picture drawn of him by the
Socialists, he is a timorous, cowardly, whining, pitiful creature who
has to cringe to his tyrannic employers:
See the toiler, how he slaves
For a trifle of his toil.
How disease and death he braves,
Yet the masters take the spoil;
And how often, cap in hand,
Trembling, pleading piteously,
He is forced to take his stand
In the mart of slavery.
Oh! ye tyrants of the earth,
Who make others' ruin your trade,
'Midst licentious love and mirth
Fashion, pomp, and church parade.
Do you never think, oh, tell
Of the hideous crime and shame
That has made this earth a hell
Of commercial fraud and shame?[47]
During the week the British workers work at most five and a half days
out of seven, and as a rule they work during from eight to ten hours a
day. Generally speaking, the pace at which British workmen work is not
forced. Except in a few special industries overwork among the working
men is practically unknown. Besides, the pace at which work is
performed is as a rule determined not by the employer, but by the
employees. Nevertheless we read, "It is monstrous that, while some
half million of men are vainly seeking employment, millions of their
fellows should have no respite from arduous ill-requited toil and
should be hastening to a premature death through overwork."[48] In
prose and verse the British workers are constantly told that they are
slaves[49] who are driven into starvation and suicide:
Let them brag until in the face they are black
That over oceans they hold their sway,
Of the flag of Old England, the Union Jack,
About which I have something to say.
'Tis said that it floats o'er the free; but it waves
Over thousands of hard-worked, ill-paid British slaves,
Who are driven to pauper and suicide graves--
The starving poor of Old England.
_Chorus._
'Tis the poor, the poor the taxes have to pay,
The poor who are starving every day,
Who faint and die on the King's highway--
The starving poor of Old England.
There's the slaves of the needle and the slaves of the mine,
The postmen, and the sons of the plough,
And the hard-worked servants on the railway line,
Who get little by the sweat of their brow.
'Tis said that the labourer is worthy of his hire;
But of whom does he get it? we'd like to enquire.
Not of any mill-owner, or farmer, or squire,
Who grind down the poor of Old England.[50]
Now let us cast a glance at the Socialist picture of the society of
the future under Socialistic rule.
The first thing which Socialism would do would be to organise work,
for "practical Socialism is a kind of national scheme of co-operation,
managed by the State."[51] There would be no more employers, for
"under Socialism all the work of the nation would be managed by the
nation for the nation,"[52] and all would have plenty to eat, because
"Socialism would leave no man to starve."[53] "All the work of the
nation would be organised--that is to say, it would be ordered or
arranged so that no one need be out of work, and so that no useless
work need be done, and so that no work need be done twice where once
would serve."[54]
It is expected that the national organisation and administration of
all the industries would prove more efficient than private enterprise.
We are assured that "under Socialism the efficiency of production
developed by Capitalism will not only be preserved but improved.
Mechanical invention will be encouraged and utilised to the
utmost."[55] Compulsory labour, State regulation of work, and
increased production would lead to increased consumption and increased
comfort. "Who would deny that, if it is everybody's duty to work, if
the production of unnecessary--nay, even of injurious--articles is
abolished, if production is organised in conformity with the real
wants and pleasures of mankind--who would deny, I ask, that the
standard of life of the whole human race might be raised infinitely
above its present grade?"[56]
Although Socialism would make work compulsory to all, and place every
man, woman, and child under the direction of the great Socialist
organisation with its army of officials, and although it would destroy
individual liberty as at present understood, by placing the daily life
of every citizen under Government regulations and restrictions, it
would bring with it a greater liberty. Unfortunately the Socialists
fail to say what that liberty consists in, and we must take their
assurances in lieu of details. "Those who fear that Socialism will
destroy individual liberty fail to distinguish between liberty and
licence. Individualism is licence--it is the freedom of the individual
to do as he likes without regard to the effect of his action on
others, or even without regard to his own best welfare. Socialism is
liberty; for it will restrict the freedom of the individual to inflict
injury upon others or to do what is morally injurious to himself."[57]
Socialism will release the British slaves out of their slavery, and
restore them to everlasting freedom. "Such Socialism as we champion
means for all future generations not slavery, but full and
never-ending freedom."[58] "Socialism declares it to be the duty of
man to remove all artificial barriers to the improvement of
circumstances, in order that humanity, as a whole, may have freedom
and all possible assistance to attain to its full stature, physically,
mentally, and spiritually."[59]
With the introduction of the Socialist _regime_ the earth would, as by
a magician's wand, be transformed into a paradise. Over-population,
bad harvests, the maladjustment of international demand and supply,
and individual folly, laziness, wastefulness, improvidence, and
passion would apparently no longer have the same unfortunate
consequences which they have now. "The struggle for individual
existence disappears...."[60] "The words 'poor' and 'charity' will be
expunged from the dictionary as relics of a barbarous past."[61]
"There would be no starvation, there would be no pauperism, there
would be no sweaters; there would be no barefooted children in the
streets; there would be no fraudulent trustees, no bankrupts; there
would be no slums, no annual massacre of innocents by preventable
disease; there would be hardly such a thing known as ignorance, there
would be scarcely any drunkenness, and crime would shrink to
microscopic dimensions."[62]
"Practical Socialism would educate the people. It would provide cheap
and pure food. It would extend and elevate the means of study and
amusement. It would foster literature and science and art. It would
encourage and reward genius and industry. It would abolish sweating
and jerry-work. It would demolish the slums and erect good and
handsome dwellings. It would compel all men to do some kind of useful
work. It would recreate and nourish the craftsman's pride in his
craft. It would protect women and children. It would raise the
standard of health and morality; and it would take the sting out of
pauperism by paying pensions to honest workers no longer able to
work."[63]
"There is something in Socialism to kill ignorance and to destroy
vice. There is something in it to shut up the gaols, to do away with
prostitution, to reduce crime and drunkenness, and wipe out for ever
the sweater and the slums, the beggars and the idle rich, the useless
fine ladies and lords, and to make it possible for sober and willing
workers to live healthy, and happy, and honourable lives."[64]
The Socialist Government would apparently be all-powerful and
all-wise. At any rate, it would improve the character of the people.
"Socialism would teach and train all children wisely; it would foster
genius and devotion to the common good; it would kill scamping, and
loafing, and jerrymandering; it would give us better health, better
homes, better work, better food, better lives, and better men and
women."[65]
When Socialism is introduced and private capital abolished, the golden
age of the world will begin:
When all mankind are workers,
And no drones in the hive;
Oh, what a happy, glorious time
They'll have who are alive.
This world will be a garden,
An Eden full of bliss;
Oh, brother--sister--won't you strive
For such a state as this?
There will be no starving children, no;
Nor tramps, nor beggars then;
No workhouses, nor prisons, and
No slums, nor sweater's den.
The land-grabber and the vampire,
And the fleecer of our toil,
Will all have ceased to crush us
In their vile rush for the spoil.[66]
So far we have looked chiefly at the economic consequences which the
introduction of Socialism is going to bring about. However, according
to the Socialists, it is not true that "Socialism is merely sordid and
material, and has no regard for the more ideal side of human
interests. The Socialist recognises, far more than others, the higher
ideals of human life as being its true end."[67] Therefore "Socialism
seeks to improve the physical, mental, and spiritual environment of
every man, woman, and child, so that all mankind may be purer,
healthier, happier, stronger, nobler, and that each generation may be
nearer perfection than the one immediately preceding."[68] In other
words, "the creation of a higher type of mankind than the modern man
will be the result of Socialism. Men will have no need to think, day
in, day out, where to get the bread for to-morrow."[69] "Material
conditions form the fundamental basis of human existence. When these
become common property, free to all and abundant for all, they will
cease to have that importance they now possess. The sordid struggle
for mere material things will disappear; free play will be given to
man's higher faculties, and the struggle, competition, or emulation
between man and man will be for the realisation of his highest
conceivable aspirations."[70]
According to many Socialists, money and wages would disappear. Food,
clothing, lodging, &c., would be given gratis to the citizens. "Under
ideal Socialism there would be no money at all and no wages. The
industry of the country would be organised and managed by the State,
much as the Post Office now is; goods of all kinds would be produced
and distributed for use, and not for sale, in such quantities as were
needed; hours of labour would be fixed, and every citizen would take
what he or she desired from the common stock. Food, clothing,
lodging, fuel, transit, amusements, and all other things would be
absolutely free, and the only difference between a prime minister and
a collier would be the difference of rank and occupation."[71]
Not only food, clothing, and shelter would be supplied gratis by a
bountiful State to the people. In order to banish _ennui_ from among
the workers, entertainments and amusements also would be provided,
free of charge. Gratis travel on the railways would make life a
permanent holiday, and the last cause of dissatisfaction would be
removed by transferring the surroundings of the gratuitously
maintained and amused people into a garden of Eden. "I would have the
towns rebuilt with wide streets, with detached houses, with gardens
and fountains and avenues of trees. I would make the railways, the
carriage of letters, and the transit of goods as free as the roads and
bridges. I would make the houses loftier and larger, and clear them of
all useless furniture. I would institute public dining-halls, public
baths, public washhouses on the best plans, and so set free the hands
of those slaves--our English women. I would have public parks, public
theatres, music-halls, gymnasiums, football and cricket fields, public
halls and public gardens for recreation and music and refreshment. I
would have all our children fed and clothed and educated at the cost
of the State. I would have them all taught to play and to sing. I
would have them all trained to athletics and to arms. I would have
public halls of science. I would have the people become their own
artists, actors, musicians, soldiers, and police. Then, by degrees, I
would make all these things free."[72] In the words of the Socialist
poet--
We'll grow up true men and women
And enjoy life from our birth.[73]
Men, being no longer compelled to work hard for a living, will lose
the desire for wealth and all that wealth supplies and will devote
themselves more and more to the culture of their mind. "Under
Socialism the possession of riches will cease to be a ruling passion,
for honest labour will be a guarantee against want, and riches will no
longer be the passport to social position. Under such conditions the
possession of riches will be a superfluous burden which no sane man
will wish to bear."[74] "When land and capital are the common property
of all the people, class distinctions, as we know them at present,
will no longer exist. The Mind will then be the standard by which a
man's place among his fellows will be determined."[75] Hence
"Socialism means the elevation of the struggle for existence from the
material to the intellectual plane. Socialism will raise the struggle
for existence into a sphere where competition shall be emulation,
where the treasures are boundless and eternal, and where the abundant
wealth of one does not cause the poverty of another."[76]
The poet has described in a vision this phase of the golden age of
Socialism as follows:
A strain of distant music
Floats on the gentle breeze,
Its captivating sweetness
Bends e'en the proudest knees;
Now soft as angel whispers,
Then, loud as trumpet's blast
It sounds the knell of sorrows
And pains for ever past.
Now sweeter and more varied,
The music doth appear;
Ten thousand harps Aeolian
Seem to be drawing near.
Ten thousand angels' voices
Are mingled with the strain,
Chanting the song of Freedom--
Justice has come to reign;
Telling of bounteous harvests,
Of waving golden corn,
Waiting the reaper's sickle,
And asking to be shorn;
Lands rich with milk and honey
Promised in days of yore;
Asking all those that hunger
To eat and faint no more.
The song grows loud and mighty
As thunder in the storm,
The tyrant quakes and trembles,
And hides his guilty form;
And stronger and still stronger
The joyous chorus grows--
Rejoice! all ye that labour,
Ye triumph o'er your foes.[77]
"Socialism, being at the same time the sublimest science, art, and
religion, will naturally elevate man. The British people will become a
nation of scientists and philosophers who, throwing natural enjoyments
aside, will lead a life of pure intellectual happiness. Mortal men
will become demi-gods. Socialism will justify God's way to man."[78]
"Socialism comes as the Angel of Light bearing to mankind this message
of truth. Socialism, equipped with all the learning of the ages, takes
up the ripest teaching of the poet, the philosopher, the economist,
the scientist, the historian, and joins the conclusion of each
together into one harmonious whole. Now we know that suffering,
misery, and poverty are a violation of God's will. Now we know that
the fulness of time has come for us to cast the last relic of our
fallen nature from us and to follow the beckoning angel who is waiting
to lead us back through the gates of Paradise into an Eden of
intellectual joys."[79]
These things shall be! a loftier race
Than e'er the world hath known shall rise
With flame of freedom in their souls,
And light of science in their eyes.
They shall be gentle, brave, and strong,
To spill no drop of blood, but dare
All that may plant man's lordship firm
On earth, and fire, and sea, and air.
Nation with nation, land with land,
Unarmed shall live as comrades free;
In every heart and brain shall throb
The pulse of one fraternity.
New arts shall bloom of loftier mould,
And mightier music thrill the skies,
And every life shall be a song
When all the earth is paradise.
These things--they are no dreams--shall be
For happier men when we are gone.
These golden days for them shall dawn,
Transcending aught we gaze upon.[80]
All men will be brothers. The difference among nations and races will
disappear by the rule of love and justice. "Justice is to be the
foundation on which we must build: not the kind of justice we have
hitherto considered as sufficient for us, and which many countries
pride themselves is their watchword and standard, but a justice that
demands freedom for all."[81]
Equal rights it gives, my brothers,
To the eagle and the dove;
Right to air, and light, and knowledge,
Right to rise your toil above--
Hearken! hearken! O, my brothers,
For this new great Right is Love.[82]
Wars will be abolished.
There's a good time coming, boys,
A good time coming;
The pen shall supersede the sword,
And right, not might, shall be the lord
In the good time coming.
Worth, not birth, shall rule mankind,
And be acknowledged stronger;
The proper impulse has been giv'n--
Wait a little longer.[83]
Being a religion of peace and love, and preaching the brotherhood of
man, Socialism will conquer the world. "Socialism with its promise of
freedom, its larger hope for humanity, its triumph of peace over war,
its binding of the races of the earth into one all-embracing
brotherhood, must prevail."[84] "We mean the establishment of a
political power which shall have for its conscious and definite aim
the common ownership and control of the _whole_ of the world's
industry, exchange, &c."[85]
According to many Socialists, Socialism is not an original religion,
but it is the most sublime form of Christianity. "Socialism is in
accordance with the revealed will of God."[86] "Karl Marx was an
utter pagan, but there is not an essential proposition in 'Das
Kapital' that Jesus of Nazareth did not inculcate. Is it a question of
rent? You are as much entitled to immunity from it as the birds of the
air, or the grass of the fields. Is it a question of usury or
interest? Lend, hoping for nothing again. Is it a question of profit
or inequitable exchange? Do unto others as ye would that they should
do unto you."[87] "Did Jesus Christ teach Socialism? Unless we are
prepared to deny the truth of the Gospel, there can be but one
answer--Yes. And Socialism naturally evolves from Christianity."[88]
Socialism will mean the establishment of the rule of Christ upon
earth. "The political democracy, dominated by the social ideal, will
be the coming of Christ to rule the nations in righteousness."[89] The
Socialist leaders see visions. "I do sometimes dream dreams, and I see
a vision of what the world will be when this spirit of love and
sacrifice which has actuated some noble spirits in all ages and which
shone with the glory of full perfection in the life and example of
Jesus of Nazareth--I sometimes see, as through a glass darkly, a
vision of what the world will be when this spirit of love and
sacrifice shall animate all men. I see our modern towns swept away,
and in their place beautiful cities whose buildings reflect the pride
of the community in their common life, and whose healthy homes show
the value society attaches to the individual life. I see everywhere a
change come over the face of the landscape; every meadow smiles with
plenty, every valley blossoms as the rose, every hill is green with
the glory of Lebanon. I see a revived art and a revived literature. I
see a people healthy, happy, cultured, contented, whose wealth is
life, full and free, 'whose ways are ways of pleasantness, whose
flowery paths are paths of peace.' And my vision extends, though more
dimly, beyond the confines of my own dear land, and I see this spirit
of brotherhood among the nations has broken down international
barriers, and international hatred is no more. The sword is beaten
into a ploughshare, the spear into a pruning-hook, and the peoples of
all lands are one, each freely sharing of its special bounties to add
to the comforts of all."[90]
The new Christian religion, like the old one, demands its saints and
its martyrs, if not the reincarnation of Christ. "The only way to
regain the earthly paradise is by the old, hard road to
Calvary--through persecution, through poverty, through temptation, by
the agony and bloody sweat, by the crown of thorns, by the agonising
death, and then the resurrection to the New Humanity--purified by
suffering, triumphant through Sacrifice."[91]
The new Christ also has his forerunner and herald. "Mr. Keir Hardie,
M.P., the leader of the Labour Party, resembles John the Baptist,"[92]
and the Socialist leaders will do even greater things than did Christ.
We are told: "When Christ told His disciples that it was possible for
them to do greater things than they had seen Him do they must have
been fairly staggered. Just think for a moment of the nature of the
works He had done, most of them in their very presence. Those who are
striving to obtain a better social order and provide a fairer
distribution of the good gifts of God among the sons of men, these men
I say, in so far as their efforts are successful, are doing greater
things than Christ did when He performed the miracle of feeding the
hungry."[93]
"Man is only irresistible when he acts from passion. The masses of men
are never moved except by passions feelings, interests. It is of
course to the discontented wage-earners that the Socialist can appeal
with the greatest chance of success."[94] All Socialists agree in
depicting to the workers life in present society as hell incarnate and
in giving a picture of life in the Socialist State of the future which
resembles the descriptions found in the "Arabian Nights" tales. They
only disagree in this: that some promise him heaven, whilst those
possessed of less enthusiasm promise him only an earthly paradise.
FOOTNOTES:
[36] Gronlund, _The Co-operative Commonwealth_, p. 187.
[37] _Ibid._ p. 184.
[38] _Forward_, October 12, 1907.
[39] Neil, _Songs of the Social Revolution_, p. 22.
[40] Bax, _Outlooks from the New Standpoint_, p. 140.
[41] Fisher, _The Babies' Tribute_, p. 6.
[42] Glyde, _The Misfortune of being a Working Man_, p. 1.
[43] _Ibid._ p. 7.
[44] Neil, _Songs of the Social Revolution_, p. 1.
[45] Snowden, _The Individual under Socialism_, pp. 4-5.
[46] Washington, _A Corner in Flesh and Blood_, p. 15.
[47] _Social-Democratic Federation Song Book_, p. 29.
[48] Quelch, _The Social-Democratic Federation_, p. 7.
[49] Sidney Webb, _The Difficulties of Individualism_, p. 18.
[50] _Social-Democratic Federation Song Book_, p. 32.
[51] Blatchford, _Merrie England_, p. 100.
[52] Blatchford, _What is this Socialism?_ p. 7.
[53] Blatchford, _Britain for the British_, p. 96.
[54] Blatchford, _What is this Socialism?_ pp. 5, 6.
[55] Macdonald, _Socialism_, p. 74.
[56] Sorge, _Socialism and the Worker_, p. 13.
[57] Snowden, _The Individual under Socialism_, pp. 12, 13.
[58] Hyndman, _Socialism and Slavery_, p. 13.
[59] "Veritas," _Did Jesus Christ teach Socialism?_ p. 1.
[60] Engels, _Socialism: Utopian and Scientific_, p. 81.
[61] Davidson, _The Old Order and the New_, p. 170.
[62] Blatchford, _The Pope's Socialism_, p. 16.
[63] Blatchford, _Merrie England_, p. 102.
[64] Blatchford, _Britain for the British_, p. 89.
[65] _Ibid._ p. 89.
[66] Neil, _Songs of the Social Revolution_, p. 8.
[67] Bax and Quelch, _A New Catechism of Socialism_, p. 43.
[68] "Veritas," _Did Jesus Christ teach Socialism?_ p. 1.
[69] Kautsky, _The Social Revolution_, p. 43.
[70] Bax and Quelch, _A New Catechism of Socialism_, p. 44.
[71] Blatchford, _Merrie England_, p. 103.
[72] _Ibid._ pp. 43, 44.
[73] Neil, _Songs of the Social Revolution_, p. 8.
[74] Snowden, _The Individual under Socialism_, p. 9.
[75] Keir Hardie, _From Serfdom to Socialism_, p. 24.
[76] Snowden, _The Individual under Socialism_, p. 8.
[77] _Clarion Song Book_, p. 18.
[78] Snowden, _The Individual under Socialism_, p. 8.
[79] Snowden, _The Individual under Socialism_, p. 9.
[80] _Clarion Song Book_, p. 14.
[81] Ford, _Women and Socialism_, p. 2.
[82] _Clarion Song Book_, p. 31.
[83] _Ibid._ p. 25.
[84] Keir Hardie, _From Serfdom to Socialism_, p. 104.
[85] Bax and Quelch, _A New Catechism of Socialism_, p. 9.
[86] "Veritas," _Did Jesus Christ teach Socialism?_ p. 15.
[87] Davidson, _The Gospel of the Poor_, p. 153.
[88] "Veritas," _Did Jesus Christ teach Socialism?_ p. 16.
[89] Snowden, _The Christ that is to be_, p. 13.
[90] Snowden, _The Christ that is to be_, pp. 13, 14.
[91] _Ibid._ p. 14.
[92] "Veritas," _Did Jesus Christ teach Socialism?_ p. 4.
[93] Ward, _Prevention is Better than Cure_, pp. 2, 5, and 6.
[94] Gronlund, _The Co-operative Commonwealth_, p. 184.
CHAPTER III
THE GRIEVANCES OF THE SOCIALISTS
"Socialism is not only a theory of another and better system of
society: it is an indictment of the existing order."[95] The Socialist
conception of society as at present constituted, given in the
preceding chapter, will have prepared the reader to some extent for
the Socialist grievances. These grievances are three in number, and
may be summed up as follows:
(1) The workers are for all practical purposes slaves who are kept in
chains and forced to work by the capitalist class.
(2) The rich men cause the poverty of the poor by defrauding them of
the largest part of their wages.
(3) The workers receive only from one third to one fourth of the wage
which is their rightful due.
Let us look into these grievances.
According to the Socialist leaders, the workers--
Helots in hunger nursed
Slaves of their reign accursed[96]--
keep the rich in affluence. Nevertheless they themselves are kept in
poverty, degradation, and slavery by the capitalists whom they nourish
by their labour. "The landlord owns the raw material and can live in
idleness. The capitalist owns the machinery and can live in idleness.
The worker has nothing, except his ability to work, and he cannot
work without the consent of the landlord and the capitalist.
Therefore, he is virtually a slave. He cannot control his own
life."[97]
As a matter of fact the position of the worker is worse than was that
of the slave. "It did not always pay to starve a slave, because if he
died you might have to buy another one. Therefore the lot of the slave
under a good master was in many respects better than that of the
proletariat in our great cities."[98] "Poverty rather than property is
the reward of labour to-day."[99] "Poverty is our reward for creating
plenty, and the class that lives in luxury by exploiting our labour
contemptuously informs us that the law of supply and demand condemns
us to suffer the most hideous privation whenever our excessive
industry has created a glut of all the things that satisfy human
needs."[100]
The workers are unfree, being enslaved by the capitalists. It is true
that they possess freedom of contract, but freedom of contract, like
individual liberty, is an illusion, because the workers, being
penniless, are compelled to accept whatever work is obtainable, and to
be satisfied with whatever wages are offered. "The right to sell in
the markets is now well established, but the chief difficulty with the
majority of workers lies in the fact that they have nothing but their
labour to sell, and a market is not easy to find even for that."[101]
Although co-operation has made millions of workers in Germany, France,
Belgium, and other countries prosperous and independent, independence
is, according to the Socialists, for some unspecified reason,
unobtainable for the workers of Great Britain, and co-operation is a
failure. "The chance of the great bulk of the labourers ever coming to
work upon their own land and capital in associations for co-operative
production, has become even less hopeful than it ever was."[102]
"Everywhere the workman is coming to understand that it is practically
hopeless for him, either individually or co-operatively, to own the
constantly growing mass of capital by the use of which he lives."[103]
The advent of the great industry has not benefited but harmed him.
"The supersession of the small by the great industry has given the
main fruits of invention and the new power over Nature to a
comparatively small proprietary class, upon whom the mass of the
people are dependent for leave to earn their living."[104] "The worker
is now a mere item in a vast industrial army over the organisation and
direction of which he has no control. He is free, but free only to
choose to which master he will sell his labour--free only to decide
from which proprietor he will beg that access to the new instruments
of production without which he cannot exist."[105]
As the capitalist class owns the factories, workshops, &c., the worker
has become to that class a slave in the full and generally accepted
meaning of the word. "The effect of private property in land and
capital is in all essential respects the same as was the effect of
private property in human beings. In each case slavery is the result.
The form may have changed, but the substance remains."[106] "The
labourer to-day is a slave, and labour has become a mark of
bondage."[107] Except for a slight difference in outward form, the
British wage-slaves are no better off than were the black slaves on
the sugar plantations in the past. "Much as the 'free-born Briton' may
dislike to hear the painful truth recited, it is a fact, not to be
controverted, that four-fifths of our total population are bound as
completely and as miserably as ever was a black African slave to a
Western planter. There is no real freedom which is not economic
freedom. He is a slave who depends for his bread upon the will or the
whim of a man like himself, or of a number of such masters."[108] In
other words, capitalism and slave-owning are for all practical
purposes synonymous words, as may be seen from the Socialist
Catechism: "Q. What constitutes the chief difference between
capitalism and slave-owning? A. The fact that the capitalist goes
through the form of bargaining with the labourer as to the amount of
the portion of the produce that shall be returned to him.--Q. What is
this farce called? A. Freedom of contract.--Q. In what sense is it
free? A. In this sense--that the labourer is free to take what is
offered or nothing.--Q. Has he anything to fall back upon? A. He has
absolutely nothing in countries where the tyranny of capitalism is
untempered by any form of Socialism."[109]
To those working men who might object that it is a gross exaggeration
to say that the British worker is a slave, and that he is penniless,
the Socialist agitator answers: "What? You are a free man and not a
slave? There are no slaves in this country? What is a slave? One who
works at the bidding of another, and only by permission of another,
and for the profit of that other. Does not that fit your case exactly?
Do you work when you like and idle when you like? Not you! You work
when the capitalist requires your labour, when your services will be
useful in making a profit for him. When that is not the case you can
starve in the gutter, although there may be all the necessaries of
life in profusion around you. These things do not belong to you,
although you and your class have made them; they are so much wealth
which your masters have acquired from your unpaid labour, things which
you have produced, but for which you have never been paid, out of
which you have been swindled by the natural operation of the system of
wage-slavery of which you are the unconscious victim. From this
condition of things there is no escape while the whole of the people
do not own the means of production. Nothing but the abolition of the
class ownership of the means of life, and the substitution of
ownership of the whole people, will abolish this form of
slavery."[110]
The foregoing grievance is absurd. If regular work for a regular wage,
agreed upon by contract, is slavery, then all salaried men from the
Prime Minister and the Lord Chancellor downward are also
"wage-slaves."
The Socialist agitator, after having told the working men that they
are no better off than negro slaves, then asks his hearers, as a rule:
"Why is it that the producers in this country are the poorest of the
population? Why is it that those who do not produce are the
richest?"[111] The manner in which this question is put suggests the
reply. Indeed, all Socialists agree in holding the rich responsible
for the poverty of the poor, as the following utterances will show:
"Socialism contends that the poverty of the poor is caused by robbery
on the part of the rich. The mansion explains the hovel. Belgravia has
its counterpart in Shoreditch. The factory, the foundry, the
ship-building yard account for the shooting lodge, the yacht, and the
tours in foreign lands. The long day's toil of one class renders
possible the life-long play of the other."[112] "If you have no
unemployed at the top of the social ladder you will have none at the
bottom."[113]
"The riches of the rich class are the cause of the poverty of the
masses."[114] "You make the automobile, he rides in it. If it were not
for you, he would walk; and if it were not for him, you would
ride."[115] "Colossal poverty is the foundation of colossal wealth; he
who would eliminate the poverty of the masses assails the wealth of
the few."[116]
The foregoing arguments, or rather assertions, may sound very
convincing and may be exceedingly useful for propaganda purposes, but
they are disproved by facts. If the existence of the rich were the
cause of the poverty of the masses, the workers in countries which
possess few rich capitalists, such as Ireland, Spain, Italy, Servia,
and Bulgaria, should be exceedingly well off; the workers in the
countries where the richest millionaires live, such as the United
States, should be the poorest. In reality, the American workmen are
the most prosperous, whilst the workers in Ireland and other
millionaire-less countries are the poorest. Rich men are not the
consumers, but merely the trustees and managers, of the national
wealth which is invested chiefly in reproductive undertakings--mills,
railways, mines, &c.--which supply comforts and conveniences to all.
The capitalists, the employers, British Socialists say, have become
rich by defrauding the worker of his wages. The worker must starve so
that a few rich people may live in luxury, and things will become
better for the worker only when there are no more rich men. "The gains
of the capitalist are simply the losses of labour! The partly or
wholly unearned incomes of the rich consist of the unpaid, withheld
wages of the industrious poor."[117] "Only by living off another man's
labour and denying another man the fruits of his toil can riches be
acquired. Riches are directly responsible for poverty, and the art of
being rich is the art of keeping one's neighbour poor. When there are
no rich there will be no poor. To the wealth of the few, acquired at
the expense of the many, and not to drink or want of thrift, are all
the evils of our social life to be ascribed."[118] "Production is
carried on to-day purely in the interest and for the profit of the
class which owns the instruments of production."[119]
There are ninety-and-nine who live and die
In want and hunger and cold,
That one may revel in luxury,
And be wrapped in its silken fold;
The ninety-and-nine in their hovels bare,
The one in a palace with riches rare.[120]
Ye poor of wealthy England,
Who starve and sweat and freeze
By labour sore to fill the store
Of those who live at ease;
'Tis time to know your real friends,
To face your real foe,
And to fight for your right
Till ye lay your masters low;
Small hope for you of better days
Till ye lay your masters low.[121]
The working men are, according to the Socialist agitators, "excluded"
from property by the capitalist class which owns all the land,
factories, machinery, &c. The capitalist class has thus reserved for
itself a monopoly of all the instruments of production. Consequently,
"the only means by which the excluded class can live is by working for
the capitalist class--by getting some one or other of the capitalist
class to allow them access to the tools and materials in his
possession, and pay them wages in return for their labour."[122]
However, the capitalists do not grant to the workers access to the
instruments of production free of charge. They exact a toll from them,
and employ them only if, by so doing, they can secure a profit for
themselves. In the fact that an employer will engage workmen only if
he can make a profit by their labour, the Socialists see a cruel
injustice. "Your capitalist class draw upon this excluded horde of
landless, toolless, foodless lack-alls, and do actually find work for
as many as they can employ at a profit to themselves. This excluded
class have no rights--not even the elementary right to exist. What God
meant by creating them when He knew, or might have known, that
everything belonged to the capitalists, nobody can understand."[123]
"The whole of our industrial system is founded on a principle existing
nowhere else in Nature, the principle of production and distribution
for profit. If no employer can make a profit out of the worker's
labour he is cast into the unemployed army."[124] "Seven out of every
eight persons in your community, 37,500,000 of the men, and women, and
children who form your nation, can lay no claim to any right to
exist--exist only on sufferance. If one or other of the irresponsible
persons who own the country can be induced to allow them to earn their
bread, well and good; if not, they must die. At the present moment
there are 700,000 persons shut out in this manner from any chance of
obtaining food to eat. You call it being 'out of work,' and can see
the spectral army, 700,000 strong, hungry and in want. They are not
kept idle and hungry because there is no 'work.' The earth is there
with all its boundless store that their 'work' would turn into wealth
if they could but get at it. They are kept idle because those who own
the country cannot find them employment at a profit to themselves,
because the blind, fatuous insanity of your 'system of trade' makes no
provision even for keeping its slaves in work."[125]
According to the Socialists, the employer of labour has no right to
work at a profit, and the capitalist has no right to demand rent or
interest. "The great central truth of Socialistic economy, ever to be
kept in mind, is Adam Smith's definition of wages: 'The produce of
labour is the natural recompense or wages of labour.' From this
'natural recompense' rent and profit are, in Socialist eyes,
unnatural, illegitimate abstractions, to be recovered and added to
wages as speedily as possible."[126] "Profit is the result of unpaid
labour; it is the produce of the working man, for which the latter
receives no equivalent. If he received his proper and just share, if
the capitalist could not deprive him of this, then the capitalist
could make no profit."[127]
Not only are "rent" and "profit" illegitimate abstractions, but they
are downright theft. Every landowner, every banker, every
manufacturer, every shopkeeper is a thief. All business for profit is
swindling. "Land-rent and capital-rent are thefts from the produce of
labour."[128] "The manufacturer aims primarily at producing, by means
of the labour he has stolen from others, not goods, but profits."[129]
"What is successful business but cheating? What is the whole basis of
capitalist industry but the use of the means of production, not for
the legitimate end of producing wealth for use, but for the purpose of
making profit for the few by despoiling, sweating, pillaging, and
murdering the many?"[130]
Even the more moderate Socialists complain that work is carried on by
the employers only "at a profit to themselves," and they wish to
abolish this state of affairs, which, they argue, is demoralising to
the working men, and is the cause of low wages and unemployment. "The
workman is called into the workshop when capital can profitably employ
him, and turned adrift again the moment capital finds it can no longer
turn his services to profitable account. He is not consulted as to
when he shall be employed or when cast adrift. His necessities and
those of his dependents are no concern of anyone save himself. He has
no right to employment, no one is under obligation to find him work,
nor is he free to work for himself, since he has neither the use of
land nor the command of the necessary capital."[131] "So long as
industry is carried on for profit instead of for use, for gain instead
of for need, so long must the evils of low wages and no wages go
on."[132]
The grievance that the manufacturers manufacture "not for use but for
profit" is ridiculous. The manufacturers manufacture things which the
public will buy and use. There is consequently no distinction between
manufacturing for use and manufacturing for profit, except this, that
no manufacturer will give his time and trouble, and run considerable
risks, without adequate compensation. The complaint must therefore be
limited to the fact that the employer of labour makes a profit. The
question now arises: "What does the manufacturer do with his
earnings?" In the vast majority of cases he will use by far the larger
part of his profits for renewing machinery and enlarging his works,
and thus increase the national capital and the national power of
production, spending privately only a director's salary which he would
also receive as a director-employee of the Socialist commonwealth.
"The employer who works without a profit breaks himself,"[133] and in
breaking himself he breaks up the factory. Universal production
regardless of profit would lead to universal bankruptcy, whilst the
curtailing of profits may lead to a proportionate curtailment in the
expansion of industry and in the production of articles for use, and
to general poverty. It has the same effect whether the workers destroy
the capitalist's capital or whether they break the machinery and
devastate the corn-fields.
The complaints of the Socialists as to the way in which the workers
are exploited by the capitalist class are founded not only on
arguments such as those given in the foregoing but on figures as well,
and these are exceedingly curious and interesting. Under titles such
as "How the Worker is Robbed,"[134] statements are made every day, and
by all Socialists, which are to prove that the national income is
inequitably divided between capitalists and workers. These statements
are calculated to make every workman's blood boil, and they seem to
confirm the contention of the Socialists that the capitalists
inhumanely plunder the working masses. However, these figures are so
palpably false and so grossly misleading that attention cannot
sufficiently strongly be drawn to the deception which is constantly
being practised upon the workers. I hope, therefore, that my readers
will patiently and carefully consider the following.
The figures relating to the yearly income of the "capitalist class"
and the "working class" which are given in innumerable Socialistic
writings, and which are brought forward at almost every Socialist
meeting and lecture, are usually taken from a pamphlet entitled
"Facts for Socialists from the Political Economists and
Statisticians," published by the Fabian Society. The copy lying before
me bears the notice, "Tenth Edition (Revised), 111th thousand, 1906."
That pamphlet furnishes the statistical basis of fact to the Socialist
agitation. Its effect may be measured by its enormous circulation. It
contains a vast number of quotations from Blue-books, political
economists, and statisticians; and a certain show of learning, of
thoroughness, and of conscientiousness gives it at first sight the
appearance of being a reliable and honest production. However,
appearances are proverbially deceptive.
According to "Facts for Socialists," the whole national income amounts
to _1,800,000,000l._ per year (page 3), and is derived from the
following sources:
"I.--RENT
"The total profits from the ownership of lands, houses, tithes, &c.,
the rents of mines, quarries, ironworks, gasworks, waterworks, canals,
fishings, shootings, markets, tolls, &c., must amount to at least
_290,000,000l._[135]
"II.--INTEREST ON CAPITAL
"The profits of public companies, foreign investments, railways, &c.,
assessed to income tax in the United Kingdom, the interest payable
from British public funds and from Indian, Colonial, and Foreign
Governments' funds, and the interest on capital employed in private
undertakings of manufacture or trade cannot be less than
_360,000,000l._ Adding hereto the rent (_290,000,000l._), we have a
total of _650,000,000l._ for rent and interest together. This
represents the proportion of the nation's income claimed from the
workers, _not in return for any service rendered to the community, but
merely as the payment for permission to use the land and the already
accumulated capital of the country_.[136]
"III.--PROFITS AND SALARIES
"The numbers and total income of this large class cannot be exactly
ascertained. It includes workers of all grades, from the exceptionally
skilled artisan to the Prime Minister, and from the city clerk to the
President of the Royal Academy. It is convenient for statistical
purposes to include in it all those who do not belong to the 'manual
labour class.' If we take the 'rent of ability' to have increased in
the same proportion as the assessments to income tax, this prosperous
body may be estimated to receive for its work as profits and salaries
about _460,000,000l._ annually.[137]"
Adding up the income from "Rent," "Interest and Capital," and "Profits
and Salaries," the pamphlet continues:
"THE CLASSES
"The total drawn by the legal disposers of what are sometimes called
the 'three rents' of land, capital, and ability amounts at present to
about _1,110,000,000l._ yearly, or just under two-thirds of the total
produce.
"AND THE MASSES
"Allowing for the increase since these estimates were made, we may
safely say that the manual labour class receives for all its millions
of workers only some _690,000,000l._"[138]
In a short table the distribution of the national income is then given
as follows:
Rent L290,000,000
Interest 360,000,000
Profits and Salaries 460,000,000
-------------
Total (that is, the income of the
legal proprietors of the three
natural monopolies of land, capital,
and ability) 1,110,000,000
Income of manual labour class 690,000,000
-------------
Total produce L1,800,000,000[139]
At first sight it seems outrageous that "the income of the legal
proprietors of the three natural monopolies of land, capital, and
ability" should come to _1,110,000,000l._ per annum, and the income of
the manual labour class only to _690,000,000l._ per annum, about
one-third of the whole, especially as we learn on page 4 of the
pamphlet that the "idle rich" are only a small fraction of the
community. This statement would prove the assertion that the idle rich
are causing the poverty of the poor to be correct if it were honest
and fair, but it is neither the one nor the other.
In the first place the foregoing statement divides the nation into two
classes "the masses" and "the classes": manual labourers and "the
legal proprietors of the three natural monopolies." As the pamphlet is
addressed to the uncritical body of general readers, and especially to
working men, these will naturally divide, owing to the artful wording
of the phrase, the national income between manual labourers and
capitalist monopolists. According to this pamphlet everyone who is not
a labourer is a capitalist monopolist. Therefore the capitalist
monopolist class includes all lawyers and doctors, all parsons and
clerks, all officers and salaried officials. Every business man, every
farmer, every fisherman, every greengrocer, every baker, every
butcher, every sailor, every cobbler, every chimney-sweep, every
clerk, being not a wage-earning labourer, is "one of the legal
proprietors of the three natural monopolies," or in plainer language,
a monopolist. At least, the income of this very large class has
barefacedly been credited to the capitalist class, whilst its members
have been utilised (on page 4 of the pamphlet) to swell the ranks of
the workers. This is dishonesty number one.
The income of the exceptionally skilled artisans, who also form a very
large class, is credited on page 7 to the "classes" under the heading
"profits and salaries." They also are included among the
"monopolists," although their number has likewise been utilised (on
page 4) to swell the number of the workers. This is dishonesty number
two.
Let us now look at the result of the dishonest Fabian juggling with
figures by comparing the statement regarding the national income
contained in the Fabian pamphlet with a recent statement of Mr.
Chiozza Money, M.P., who is a Socialist, and who divides the national
income as follows:
Income of working class (33,000,000 people)
about L650,000,000
Income of middle class (all except manual
labourers and the rich--small business
men, managers, clerks, public servants,
&c., with incomes up to L700--9,750,000
people) about 475,000,000
Income of rich (with incomes L700 and
above) (1,250,000 people) about 600,000,000
--------------
Total about L1,725,000,000[140]
From the foregoing statement it appears that the rich draw not
two-thirds, but only one-third, of the national income, and this fact
should be carefully borne in mind in view of the contents of the
following pages.
The pamphlet states on page 6 that _650,000,000l._ per annum are paid
in the shape of rent and interest, "not in return for any service
rendered to the community, but merely as the payment for permission to
use the land and the already accumulated capital of the country." The
national capital is invested chiefly in perishable objects such as
houses, factories, railways, steamships, mines, &c., which depreciate
unless kept in proper repair. There is wear and tear in capital as in
everything else. Capital is lost and destroyed every day. Lastly, the
national capital is growing, and must continue growing, in accordance
with the growing capital requirements of the time and the growing
number of its inhabitants, or the country will decay. New houses, new
factories, new railways, new steamships must be built and new mines be
opened to increase the comfort of all. From _200,000,000l._ to
_300,000,000l._ are thus reinvested every year in Great Britain, and
only by this constant process of reinvestment is it possible to
maintain and increase the productive power of the country for the
benefit of all. The _200,000,000l._ to _300,000,000l._ which are
yearly reinvested in reproductive undertakings are found by the
capitalists, the trustees, directors and managers, not the consumers,
of the national industry and of the national wealth. This sum comes
out of their earnings, which thus benefit not only the capitalists but
the whole nation. Much irrelevant statistical matter is given in the
pamphlet, but this large item is left out. That is dishonesty number
three.
On page 6 the profits of public companies are treated as "Interest on
capital," and interest on capital is disparagingly called "unearned
income" on page 7. Most British industries are carried on by limited
companies, and limited companies are as a rule formed in this way,
that the partners in the former private enterprise become directors.
As directors they receive a purely nominal salary. They work as much
as they did whilst the business was a private concern, and their
income depends on their usually very large holding of shares. The
large director-shareholders, and their number is very great, earn
their dividends by hard work. Nevertheless their whole income is
included in the item "interest on capital," and called "unearned
income." This is dishonesty number four.
On page 7 the property of the "manual labour class," or the poor, in
land and capital is given as follows:--
In 1901 the deposits in P.O. Savings Bank were L140,392,916
The deposits in Trustee Savings Banks were 51,966,386
Consols purchased for small holders were 14,450,877
In 1900 the capital of Building Societies was 46,775,143
The funds of Trade-Unions, Co-operative,
Friendly, and Provident Societies were 72,219,991
The funds of Industrial Life Assurance
Societies were 22,998,793
------------
Total L348,804,106[141]
In reality the property of the "manual labour class" in land and
capital amounts not to _348,804,106l._, but to at least
_1,000,000,000l._[142] This is dishonesty number five.
The imports of Great Britain are larger than the exports by about
_150,000,000l._ The larger part of the money paid for these imports
goes in wages paid to foreigners, and is paid away by the British
capitalist class out of their earnings. British wage-earners surely
cannot expect to be paid wages in respect of articles made abroad.
However, no allowance for this large item has been made in comparing
the appropriation of the national income between capital and labour.
This is dishonesty number six.
Between one hundred and two hundred million pounds of the national
income is derived from foreign investments. The income derived from
foreign investments should in fairness either be left out of the
account or the income of foreign labour, received in respect of these
investments, be added to the British labour income. In comparing the
income of capital and labour, the pamphlet takes note of the earnings
of British capital on all five continents and on the sea, and compares
with it only the income of British labour--although foreign, not
British labour, produces the foreign income of British capital.
Giving as authority an ancient Board of Trade Return, and wishing to
magnify the difference in the earnings of the idle rich and the
industrious poor, the average yearly income of "those of the manual
labour class who are best off" is given at _48l._ per adult. This
means _18s._ per week. In view of the fact that most British workers
earn between _1l._ and _2l._ per week, that in many Trade-Unions the
_average_ wage is about _35s._ per week, the figures given are
palpably wrong unless the female workers are included. Whether this is
the case or no is not stated, but even if the wages of both sexes
should be joined together they appear to be very considerably
understated. This is dishonesty number seven.
There are many more unfair, misleading, and dishonest statements in
this pamphlet which it would lead too far to enumerate.
Most of the important pamphlets issued by the Fabian Society are
signed by their authors. The fact that the most effective, "Facts for
Socialists," is unsigned seems to indicate that the author--apparently
a well-known leader of the Fabians--had some sense of shame, and it is
to be hoped that the Fabian Society will immediately, and publicly,
repudiate this dishonest pamphlet.
The statements contained in the pamphlet "Facts for Socialists," may
be misleading and utterly dishonest, but they are very useful for
propaganda purposes. Nothing is more likely to inflame the masses than
to be told that the "idle rich" take more than two-thirds of the
national income. The practical effect of this pamphlet may be seen in
utterances such as the following: "It has been estimated that in our
country of the wealth produced, one-third is enjoyed by those who earn
it and two-thirds by those who have not laboured for it. To put it in
other words, of every three pounds earned by labour, one pound goes to
him who earned it and two pounds to others who have done nothing
towards its production."[143] "For two-thirds of his time the worker
is a slave, labouring not for himself but for others."[144] "On the
average at the present time the workers produce nearly four times as
much as they consume."[145] "Nearly two-thirds of the wealth produced
is retained by an eighth of the population."[146] "The great mass of
the people, the weekly wage-earners, four out of five of the whole
population, toil perpetually for less than a third of the aggregate
product of labour, at an annual wage averaging at most _40l._ per
adult, and are hurried into unnecessarily early graves by the severity
of their lives."[147] "Out of the wealth which his labour creates, the
worker receives but one-third. He is paid one-third the value of his
labour, and when he seeks to lay it out he is robbed of one-half its
purchasing power, and all this is done by a Christian people."[148]
"Q. How does the capitalist act? A. He extorts from those labourers
who are excluded from the land a share of all that they produce, under
threat of withholding from them the implements of production and thus
refusing to let them work at all.--Q. On what terms does the
capitalist allow the labourers to work? A. The capitalist agrees to
return to them as wages about a quarter of what they have produced by
their work, keeping the remaining three-quarters for himself and his
class.--Q. What is this system called? A. The capitalist system."[149]
"By analysing the returns of the income-tax, various economists show
that the value received by the working class and the superintendents
of labour amount to a third or less of the wealth produced. The
income-tax returns, however, are not a very reliable test of the
degree of exploitation, though, of course, they afford us valuable and
incontestable evidence that the worker does not receive more than a
third of what he produces. One to four, or one to five, in my opinion,
expresses more accurately the rate of exploitation."[150]
I am not prepared to give an estimate how the national income is
distributed between hand workers, brain workers, and men who live on
their income without doing any useful work, because such an estimate
could be arrived at only by guesswork. However, it is quite clear that
it is untrue that the wage-earners receive only one-third, one-fourth,
or one-fifth of the wages which they ought to receive, as is
constantly stated.
FOOTNOTES:
[95] _Justice_, October 19, 1907.
[96] _Social-Democratic Federation Song Book_, p. 13.
[97] _The Worker's Burden_, p. 1.
[98] Hyndman, _Social Democracy_, p. 9.
[99] Macdonald, _Socialism_, p. 12.
[100] _Protect the Home_, p. 1.
[101] _John Ball_, p. 10.
[102] _Facts for Socialists_, p. 12.
[103] Sidney Webb, _The Difficulties of Individualism_, p. 15.
[104] _Ibid._ p. 7.
[105] _Ibid._ p. 12.
[106] Keir Hardie, _Can a Man be a Christian on a Pound a Week?_ p.
12.
[107] McClure, _Socialism_, p. 27.
[108] Ethel Snowden, _The Woman Socialist_, p. 11.
[109] Joynes, _The Socialist Catechism_, p. 5.
[110] _To the Man in the Street_, Social-Democratic Federation
Leaflet.
[111] Hyndman in Debate, _Will Socialism Benefit the English People?_
p. 5.
[112] Leatham, _The Class War_, p. 4.
[113] _Socialism, For and Against_, p. 6.
[114] Snowden, _Socialists' Budget_, p. 11.
[115] Debs, _Industrial Unionism_, p. 5.
[116] Kautsky, _Class Struggle_, p. 10.
[117] Hall, _The Old and New Unionism_, p. 4.
[118] Lister, _Riches and Poverty_, pp. 13, 14.
[119] Bax and Quelch, _A New Catechism of Socialism_, p. 7.
[120] _Poems for Socialists_, p. 8.
[121] _Social-Democratic Federation Song Book_, p. 25.
[122] Washington, _A Corner in Flesh and Blood_, p. 14.
[123] _Ibid._
[124] Benson, _Socialism_, p. 5.
[125] Washington, _Nation of Slaves_, p. 11.
[126] Davidson, _The Old Order and the New_, p. 30.
[127] _Some Objections to Socialism_, p. 7.
[128] Davidson, _The Old Order and the New_, p. 45.
[129] Morris, _Useful Work and Useless Toil_, p. 30.
[130] _Some Objections to Socialism_, p. 20.
[131] Keir Hardie, _From Serfdom to Socialism_, p. 52.
[132] Hall, _The Old and New Unionism_, p. 5.
[133] Macdonald, _Socialism_, p. 6.
[134] _The Socialist Annual_, 1907, p. 16 f.
[135] _Facts for Socialists_, p. 5.
[136] _Facts for Socialists_, pp. 6, 7.
[137] _Ibid._ p. 7.
[138] _Ibid._ p. 8.
[139] _Facts for Socialists_, pp. 8, 9.
[140] See _Daily News_, November 28, 1907.
[141] _Facts for Socialists_, p. 7.
[142] See Mr. Quail's paper in the _Contemporary Review_ for August
1907.
[143] Ward, _The Ideal City_, pp. 5, 6.
[144] Keir Hardie, _From Serfdom to Socialism_, p. 15.
[145] Quelch, _Social-Democratic Federation_, p. 5.
[146] _Manifesto of the Socialist Party of Great Britain_, p. 8.
[147] Sidney Webb, _The Difficulties of Individualism_, p. 8.
[148] Keir Hardie, _Can a Man be a Christian on a Pound a Week?_ p. 7.
[149] Joynes, _The Socialist Catechism_, p. 2.
[150] Hazell, _Summary of Marx's "Capital,"_ p. 9.
CHAPTER IV
THE FUNDAMENTAL DOCTRINES OF SOCIALISM
In describing the doctrines of Socialism I do not mean to state in
detail the whole of the Socialistic theories. Such a statement would
fill a volume, it would be excessively tedious to most readers, and it
is for all practical purposes quite unnecessary. A statement of the
leading doctrines on which the activity of the Socialists is
based--the doctrines which are constantly asserted and which are the
fundamental dogmas of the Socialist faith--will enable us to obtain a
clear view of the foundations upon which the theoretic fabric of
Socialism is built, and to judge whether that foundation is scientific
and sound, or unscientific and unsound.
The basic doctrine of Socialism, upon which the great edifice of
Socialistic theory has been reared, may be summed up in the phrase
"LABOUR IS THE ONLY SOURCE OF WEALTH"
Therefore we read in the celebrated pamphlet "Facts for Socialists,"
of which some important extracts were given in the preceding chapter:
"Commodities are produced solely by the 'efforts and sacrifices'
(Cairns), whether of muscle or of brain, of the working portion of the
community, employed upon the gifts of Nature. Adam Smith 'showed that
labour is the only source of wealth.... It is to labour, therefore,
and to labour only, that man owes everything possessed of
exchangeable value (McCulloch's 'Principles of Political Economy,'
Part II., section 1). 'No wealth whatever can be produced without
labour' (Professor Henry Fawcett (Cambridge), 'Manual of Political
Economy,' p. 13),"[151]
This statement is scarcely honest, for it quotes opinions of Adam
Smith and others which are erroneous, as will be seen in the
following, and which have been generally abandoned. This statement may
impose upon the simple by its show of learning, but it is somewhat
vague, for it only suggests, but does not distinctly assert, that
manual labour is the only source of wealth. However, in most--one
might say in nearly all--Socialist books, pamphlets, and declarations
of policy we find the basic doctrine of Socialism asserted in a form
which leaves no doubt that according to the Socialist theories the
manual labour of the labourer is the only source of wealth.
The founder of modern Socialism declared, "Labour is the only source
of wealth,"[152] and his disciples--at least his British
disciples--support that declaration. "All wealth is due to labour;
therefore, to the labourers all wealth is due."[153] "Labour applied
to natural objects is the source of all wealth."[154] The Socialist
Party of Great Britain declares: "Wealth is natural material converted
by labour-power to man's use, and as such is consequently produced by
the working class alone."[155] The Independent Labour party asserts:
"No man or class of men made the first kind of wealth, such as land,
minerals, and water. Therefore no man or class of men should be
allowed to call these things their own, or to prevent others from
using them (except on certain conditions), as the landowners and
mine-owners do now. The only class of human beings who make the
second kind of wealth are the workers. Working men and women produce
and prepare for us all those things which we use or consume, such as
food, clothing, houses, furniture, instruments and implements, trams,
railways, pictures, books, gas, drains, and many other things. They
produce all the wealth obtained by toil from the land."[156]
Those who maintain that labour, or, as some Socialists assert, the
labourer's labour, is the only source of wealth, look merely at the
mechanical factor, but omit the force which directs and controls it.
The Socialistic argument "We can run the mills without the
capitalists, but they cannot run them without us"[157] is misleading.
Labour is certainly an indispensable ingredient in production, but it
is no more indispensable than is direction, invention, and thrift.
Hence it is as absurd to assert "All wealth is due to labour" as to
say "All wealth is due to invention," or "All wealth is due to
thrift." As the brain is more important than the hand, at least in a
highly organised state of production, so invention, organisation,
management, and thrift are more important than manual labour, because
invention, organisation, management, and thrift alone enable manual
labour, working with modern machinery, to be highly productive. In
fact, it may be asserted that wealth is created not so much by labour
as by the saving of labour. A factory-owner who is dissatisfied with
the profits of his factory or with its products does not get better
workers, but gets a better manager or better machinery, keeping his
workers. This fact proves that labour is the least important factor in
modern production. The doctrine "Labour is the only source of wealth"
is untenable and absurd.
Another fundamental doctrine of Socialism is that of
"THE IRON LAW OF WAGES"
According to that law, "wages under competition can never be higher
than that which will just support the labourer and enable him to renew
his kind."[158] In the words of Lassalle, the inventor of the Iron Law
of Wages, "the wages of the labourer are limited to the exact amount
necessary to keep him alive."[159]
The British Socialist writers tell us: "The average price of
wage-labour is the minimum wage--_i.e._ that quantum of the means of
subsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the labourer in bare
existence."[160] "The labourer cannot as a rule command more than his
cost of subsistence in return for his labour. This principle, that the
return to labour is determined by the cost of subsistence of the
labourer, is generally known as 'The Iron Law of Wages.' But has not
this law been discarded even by some Socialists? There have been
attempts in some quarters to demonstrate that this law does not
actually operate with the rigidity at first claimed for it; but in
truth, it stands as firmly to-day as when insisted upon by
Lassalle."[161] "Capitalism always keeps the wages down to the lowest
standard of subsistence which the people will accept,"[162] for "the
basis of wages is the cost of subsistence of the labourer. This is
called the 'Iron Law of Wages.'"[163] "By the Iron Law of Wages the
recompense of the workers always tends to the minimum on which they
are willing to subsist. If they are content with water to drink and
cabbage to eat, they may be sure that the means of buying whisky or
roast beef will very soon be taken from them. Messrs. Rentmonger,
Interestmonger, and Profitmonger will speedily scent additional swag,
and they will have it, too."[164] "The 'Iron Law of Wages' reduces the
wages to as near the level of the means of subsistence as local
circumstances will admit of."[165] If these arguments were correct it
would follow that the workers could cause their wages to rise by
drinking wine instead of whisky, and by smoking Havana cigars instead
of pipe-tobacco.
This theory of wages is called the "Iron Law of Wages" because of its
absolute and pitiless rigidity. For instance, the Iron Law of Wages
will prevent lower prices of food benefiting the workman in any way.
"If the working class is enabled to buy cheap bread, the operation of
the 'Iron Law of Wages' will secure all the advantage for the
capitalists, as it did in the days of the saintly Bright, when the
corn laws were repealed. Capital is always the same in its effect on
the working-class, whether manipulated by an individual capitalist,
joint-stock enterprise, municipality, or government, and with each
step in concentration the working-class gets relatively less and the
master class gets richer, more corrupt, and more bestial, as recent
events in Berlin and elsewhere show."[166] The "Iron Law of Wages" is
irrefutable and irresistible. "Economists have come to talk about the
'Iron Law of Wages' with as much assurance as if it were an
irreversible law of Nature."[167]
The Iron Law of Wages exists chiefly in the imagination of British
Socialists. The general wage of British workmen living in towns ranges
from, say _18s._ to more than _2l._ per week, and its amount does not
depend on the cost of subsistence, but on the working skill and
various other factors. If the Iron Law of Wages were correct, wages
would be almost uniform. The Iron Law of Wages can possibly apply only
to one small class of workers, the lowest and least skilled labourers,
provided that unemployment is so great among them that they abandon
collective bargaining and underbid one another down to the level of
subsistence. When workers are organised, the Iron Law of Wages does
not apply. The level of wages depends, broadly speaking, on supply and
demand. Wages rise when two employers run after one workman; wages
fall when two workmen run after one employer. An employer who engages
a workman does not ask, "How much do you eat?" but "What can you do?"
and he proportions the worker's remuneration not to his appetite, but
to his ability and his value as a producer. The wages paid to married
men and to unmarried men are identical in the same trade. If there was
an "Iron Law of Wages," the wages of married men should be about twice
as large as those of unmarried men.
The Iron Law of Wages is manifestly absurd. It has therefore been
officially abandoned by the German Socialists at the Halle Congress of
1890 "as being scientifically untenable."[168] "German Social
Democracy no longer recognises the Iron Law of Wages."[169] The
British Socialists have not abandoned it, probably not because they
believe it to be scientifically correct--no one can believe that--but
because it is a plausible and effective means of poisoning the minds
of the people.
As regards the factors which determine wages, one of the foremost
Socialist authorities says: "Thoughtful workmen in the staple trades
have become convinced by their own experience, no less than by the
repeated arguments of the economists, that a rising standard of wages
and other conditions of employment must depend ultimately on the
productivity of labour, and therefore upon the most efficient and
economical use of credit, capital, and capacity."[170] In other words,
productivity and profit determine wages, and it is ridiculous that
Socialists argue: "Over 90 per cent. of our women do not drink, back
horses, smoke, attend football or cricket matches, they do not stop
off their work to watch England and Australia play at cricket, and the
result is they are paid less wages than men in our factories for doing
the same work."[171] Does Councillor Glyde really believe that women's
wages would rise as soon as they took to smoking and drinking?
THE LAW OF INCREASING MISERY
According to this law the improvements in machinery, the increase of
capital and increase of production do not benefit the worker. They
only lead to a decline in wages and thus increase the workers' misery.
"In proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour
increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases
whether by prolongation of the working hours, by increase of the work
exacted in a given time, or by increased speed of the machinery,
&c."[172] "The faster productive capital increases, the more does the
division of labour and the employment of machinery extend. The more
the division of labour and the employment of machinery extend, so much
the more does competition increase among the labourers and so much the
more do their average wages dwindle. And thus the forest of arms
outstretched by those who are entreating for work becomes ever denser
and the arms themselves grow ever leaner."[173] "The more the worker
labours the less reward he receives for it; and that for this simple
reason, that he competes against his fellow-workmen and thus compels
them to compete against him and to offer their labour on as wretched
conditions as he does, and that he thus, in the last result, competes
against himself as a member of the working-class."[174] "The worker in
the factory gets, as a worker, absolutely no advantage from the
machinery which causes the product of his labour to be multiplied a
hundredfold."[175] "John Stuart Mill, it will be remembered,
questioned whether mechanical invention had lightened the labours of a
single human being."[176] "With increasing powers of production, the
worker's share, and therefore his purchasing power, grows less."[177]
"Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the
labourers."[178] "The iron law of competition means, and must mean,
continued degradation for the workers, even though their physical
condition in youth may be improved."[179] "The worker in the factory
is now seen to work no shorter hours or gain no higher wages merely
because the product of his labour is multiplied a hundredfold by
machinery which he does not own. 'The remuneration of labour as such,'
wrote Cairnes in 1874, 'skilled or unskilled, can never rise much
above its present level.'"[180]
The celebrated "Doctrine of Increasing Misery" stands in diametrical
opposition to those facts with which nowadays every child is
acquainted. During the time when our Socialists have been preaching
the "Doctrine of Increasing Misery" working hours have been very
greatly diminished and wages have not been reduced, but have risen by
about 100 per cent. During the same time working hours in Germany have
also been reduced and wages have risen up to 400 per cent.[181] The
German Socialists have been honest enough to abandon the Doctrine of
Increasing Misery under the guidance of Bernstein; the French have
dropped it under the guidance of Sorel; the Dutch have seen its
absurdity, guided by Vandervelde, their foremost leader. The British
Socialists, on the other hand, have not abandoned it, though they must
see its absurdity, probably because, though palpably and ridiculously
false, the Doctrine of Increasing Misery is considered to be a useful
and effective part of the Socialist agitator's stock-in-trade.
The next doctrine to be considered is
THE SURPLUS-VALUE DOCTRINE
The Socialists argue that the position of the worker cannot improve
because the capitalist, possessing the monopoly of property, pockets
all that the worker produces except the mere cost of his subsistence,
which, owing to the "Iron Law of Wages," is given to the workman in
the form of wages. "The amount of wealth which the labourer produces
in the time for which he has sold his labour-force is out of all
proportion to what it costs to produce and maintain his labour-force
for that time. This, the difference between what he produces and his
own cost of production, is surplus-value, and is taken and divided up
by the capitalist into rent, interest, profit. This surplus-value,
then, this profit, is so much robbery effected by taking advantage of
the necessity of the proletarian--the naked propertyless
labourer."[182] "All that the worker produces beyond what is
absolutely necessary to keep himself and his offspring in life, this
surplus beyond subsistence--this difference between the recompense of
labour and its products--this unrighteous subtrahend, this swag, is
the booty alike of slavelord, serflord, and drudgelord, or
capitalist."[183] The question now arises: "How does the capitalist
secure this surplus-value of labour without paying for it? If the
workman is free, why cannot he insist on receiving, not the mere
exchange-value of his commodity--'labour-power'--but the full value of
the labour he expends for the capitalist? The capitalist obtains this
surplus-value owing to his monopoly of the means of production. The
labourer cannot, as a rule, command more than his cost of subsistence
in return for his labour--although his wages, like the prices of all
commodities, sometimes rise above this and sometimes fall
below--because, although apparently free, he is really not free. He
must sell his labour-power in order to live; he has no other commodity
to dispose of. Consequently he must accept the terms that the
purchaser will offer, subject only to two conditions--his own cost of
subsistence and the fluctuations of the market."[184] "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 worker being now dependent on that
class for leave to earn a living."[185]
The Surplus-Value Doctrine, like the preceding doctrines, is founded
rather upon imagination than upon fact. In the first place, it is
absurd to speak of a "capitalist class" which, having a "monopoly of
the means of production," exploits "the naked and propertyless
labourer." This picture is a fancy picture. In the second place,
"class" is not synonymous with "caste." The population is not divided
into two rigidly defined and limited castes of capitalists and
wage-earners. There is neither a monopoly of capital nor a monopoly of
labour. Capital is founded by thrift. Most respectable workmen are
capitalists to a greater or lesser extent. Every day workmen become
capitalists. It should not be forgotten that many of the wealthiest
men, such as Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Krupp, the first
Rothschild, Sir Thomas Lipton, Passmore Edwards, and many others, have
risen from the ranks and were working men--and every day capitalists
lose their money and become workmen. Workmen may become capitalists by
thrift. Co-operating workmen in England, France, Germany, and other
countries own vast industrial undertakings, banks, &c. In those
districts where thrift and co-operation are general (France,
Switzerland, Holland) the "naked and propertyless labourers"
disappear, whilst in equally prosperous districts where improvidence
is general, they are many. The prosperity of the working classes in
France, Switzerland, Holland, and other countries disproves the
assertion that the workman is condemned to everlasting poverty because
of the Surplus-Value Doctrine.
Assertions in support of the "Surplus-Value Doctrine" such as
"Carnegie and other millionaires have wrung their wealth literally out
of the bodies of the underfed"[186] are as malicious as they are
untrue. Men like Carnegie and Krupp have not "wrung their wealth out
of the bodies of the underfed," but out of Nature. They have created
vast industries in barren places, and the industries which they have
created nourish now tens of thousands of working men. Men like Krupp
and Carnegie have diminished misery, not increased it. Their capital,
created by their brains with the assistance of labour out of Nature,
has rather enriched labour than that labour has enriched Carnegie and
Krupp. Their wealth is not dead wealth; it produces wages and articles
of use. The "Surplus-Value Doctrine" is a grotesque distortion of, and
an unjustified protest against, the fact that manufacturers and other
organisers and directors of labour will not work for nothing.
We have seen in the foregoing that, according to the fundamental
Socialist doctrines, "labour is the only source of wealth." We have
also seen that, according to the "Iron Law of Wages" and the "Law of
Increasing Misery," the workmen are condemned to great, permanent, and
constantly increasing misery. Further, we have learned that, according
to the "Surplus-Value Doctrine," all the fruit of their labour, minus
the cost of their bare subsistence, is taken from the workers by the
capitalists. Hence it is only natural and logical that the assertion
of the fundamental doctrines, namely--
1. Labour is the only source of wealth,
2. Wages maintains mere animal existence,
3. The misery of the workers is constantly increasing,
4. The position of the worker is hopeless,
has led to this fifth doctrine:
THE LABOURER IS ENTITLED TO THE ENTIRE PRODUCT OF HIS LABOUR
This doctrine is put forth by practically all British Socialists, not
only as a doctrine but also as a demand. For instance "the New School
of Trades-Unionists declare themselves in open and uncompromising
revolt against the established relations between capital and labour;
and they expound a new political economy which says that nothing less
than the full fruits of industry shall be reckoned the fair reward of
the producing class. They want the whole four-fourths of their
earnings, instead of the one-fourth at present doled back in
wages."[187] This demand must have precedence over all other measures
whatsoever, for "until you have settled the material question as to
how the producers of wealth are to get for themselves the full value
of what they produce by their labour, it is impossible to settle
anything else."[188]
According to many Socialists, Socialism would immediately abolish
their grievances and give to the worker the entire produce of his
labour. "At present the frugal workman only gets about one-third of
his earnings. Under Socialism he would get all his earnings."[189]
"Under the new order all will be productive workers, receiving an
equivalent for what they produce--not merely one-half of it as now
under the wage-system--in some form."[190] Under the heading "Basis of
the Fabian Society," the Fabian Society publishes a statement of the
fundamental principles of that Society in which we read: "If these
measures" (confiscation of all private property) "be carried out,
without compensation (though not without such relief to expropriated
individuals as may seem fit to the community), rent and interest will
be added to the reward of labour, the idle class now living on the
labour of others will necessarily disappear, and practical equality of
opportunity will be maintained by the spontaneous action of economic
forces with much less interference with personal liberty than the
present system entails."
The absurdity of the demand for "the entire product of labour," which
is raised by Socialists on behalf of the labourer is clear even to the
most superficial thinker. The majority of Socialists know quite well
that writing off, repairs, renewals, the replacing of machinery, the
enlargement of factories, &c., cannot be done gratis, that the
distribution of the whole produce of labour to the workers can be
effected only by neglecting and destroying the means of production.
The impossibility of giving to the worker the "whole product of his
labour" by abolishing the private capitalist is clearly recognised and
honestly admitted by the German Socialists. Kautsky, for instance,
writes: "If the income of the capitalists were added to that of the
workers, the wages of each would be doubled. Unfortunately, however,
the matter will not be settled so simply. If we expropriate
capitalism, we must at the same time take over its social
functions--among these the important one of capitalist accumulation.
The capitalists do not consume all their income; a portion of it they
put away for the extension of production. A proletarian _regime_ would
also have to do the same in order to extend production. It would not
therefore be able to transfer, even in the event of a radical
confiscation of capital, the whole of the former income to the working
class. Besides, a portion of the surplus value which the capitalists
now pocket, they must hand over to the State in the shape of taxes.
For these reasons our Socialists are guilty of wilful deception if
they tell the workers that under a Socialist _regime_ their wages
would be doubled and trebled."[191] Nevertheless, the doctrine and the
demand that "the labourer is entitled to the entire product of his
labour" is not abandoned by British Socialists, apparently because it
is extremely useful for arousing the passions of the workers against
the capitalists in accordance with Gronlund's advice,[192] and for
bringing new adherents to the Socialist camp.
Only the Fabian Society, the more scientific section of the English
Socialists, has mildly protested against this absurd doctrine and
demand, but that protest has not been heeded. In a little-read
pamphlet of that Society, the following statement may be found: "The
Fabian Society steadfastly discountenances all schemes for securing
to any person or any group of persons the entire product of their
labour. It recognises that wealth is social in its origin and must be
social in its distribution" (which means in plain English, must be
preserved by the thrifty few, official or non-official, for the use of
the unthrifty many), "since the evolution of industry has made it
impossible to distinguish the particular contribution that each person
makes to the common product, or to ascertain the value."[193]
Notwithstanding these emphatic statements, the Fabian Society
preserves with characteristic duplicity[194] the statement in its
programme that "rent and interest, will be added to the reward of
labour."
Most British Socialist writers are not aware, or rather pretend not to
be aware, of the necessity of preserving and increasing the national
capital. In "Land, Labour, and Liberty," we read: "Whilst in 1845 the
total wealth of this country was estimated at _4,000,000,000l._, it is
now estimated at over _12,000,000,000l._ The monopolist classes,
without denying themselves anything, and whilst producing
comparatively nothing, have piled up an additional eight thousand
millions. The superfluous handful of mere possessors remain the
flowers and foliage of society; the three-quarters of the nation of
indispensable producers remain the manure."[195] This writer, like
most Socialists, though acknowledging the enormous growth of the
national capital of Great Britain, pretends that the "monopolist
classes" have not denied themselves anything. If that were true, the
national capital would still amount to only _4,000,000,000l._ as in
1845. Great Britain would have few factories, no new machinery, no
steamships, and but a very few miles of railway. But for the
self-denial, the thrift of the "superfluous handful of mere
possessors," Englishmen would still live in the Hungry Forties and
Great Britain would be able to nourish only about 20,000,000 people as
she did in 1845. National capital and the comforts and conveniences
which it supplies to all are at least as much the result of thrift,
inventiveness, enterprise, and wise direction as of manual labour.
The foregoing shows that, to say the least, the grievances of the
Socialists are greatly--one might almost say grotesquely--exaggerated,
and that they are largely founded on a perversion of facts; a
perversion which can be easily explained by the desire of the
Socialist leaders to arouse the blind passions of the discontented
wage-earners in accordance with Gronlund's advice, quoted on page 10.
The next doctrine which should be considered may be summed up in the
words:
"THE EXISTING MISERY CAN BE ABOLISHED, NOT BY INCREASING PRODUCTION,
BUT BY ALTERING THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE WEALTH PRODUCED"
"The Socialist emphatically denies the assertion that the poor must
always be with us. The productive capacity of society is now so great
that none need want, and all are able to earn their livelihood, and
more, except where they are prevented from doing so by sickness,
infirmity, or by the existence of laws and customs which the individual
cannot himself, acting alone, remove."[196] "There is a demand for the
labour of every man under any well-ordered social system. If there is a
waste of men now, it is the fault of the wage system."[197] "Sufficient
wealth is produced in this country to-day which would, under a
well-ordered state of society, enable every man, woman, and child to
have a sufficiency of all things essential to a healthy human life.
To-day the people produce this wealth, and, after they have produced
it, quite two-thirds of it is taken from them by a very small section
of the people. Consequently we have a very few rich, and many that are
poor."[198] "We may claim to have solved the problem of how to produce
enough, and the question which confronts us is how to bring
distribution into line with the productive capacity of our
people."[199] "The old argument that there is not enough work to do
cannot be seriously listened to by anyone who has walked through a
London or Manchester slum. There is work in the world for all, just as
there is wealth in the world for all, and every man has a right to
work, just as he has a right to wealth."[200] "The chief problem is not
the production of more wealth, but its equitable distribution."[201]
The increase of production and therefore of reproductive capital in
the form of machinery, mines, railways, ships, &c., in which most of
the "Surplus-Value" is invested, is explained to be a matter of
secondary consideration and importance, and it is stated that the
world suffers rather from over-production than from under-production.
"The tendency of the conditions of employment under present
circumstances, under the capitalist system, always is for production
to outstrip consumption."[202] "Our power to produce has always, since
the beginnings of capitalism, shown a tendency to grow more rapidly
than our power to consume."[203] "Then because there is a plethora of
goods and a dearth of purchasers, the workshops are closed and Hunger
lashes the working population with his thousand-thonged whip. The
workers, stupefied by the dogma of work, do not understand that the
cause of their present misery is the overwork that they have inflicted
on themselves during the time of sham prosperity."[204] "For some
insane reason the capitalist has thought of nothing but
production."[205] "If, by a fiat from heaven, the wealth of the world
were doubled to-morrow and the present system of capitalistic monopoly
and commercial competition were allowed to continue, the social misery
would, in a very short time, reappear in a form even still more
accentuated, were that possible. Individualism, commercialism,
capitalism--call it what we may--has demonstrably produced the
evil."[206]
THE EXISTING CAPITALIST SYSTEM IS RESPONSIBLE FOR POVERTY, WANT, AND
UNEMPLOYMENT
Unemployment is largely caused by commercial crises, commercial crises
are caused by over-production, over-production is caused by the fact
that the national industries are divided and the industrial output is
regulated not by the nation in accordance with the national demand but
by irresponsible private individuals whose aim is profit, not the
fulfilment of a national demand. "The causes of commercial depression
lie in the non-consumption of the incomes of our millionaires."[207]
Another Socialist writer asserts: "Our era is cursed with crises
occurring far more frequently than plagues and causing as much misery.
Economists say that these crises are caused by over-production.
Private enterprise compels every producer to produce for himself, to
sell for himself, to keep all his transactions to himself, without
regard to anybody else in the wide world. Merchants have got no
measure at hand by which they can, even approximately, either
estimate the effective demand of their customers or ascertain the
producing capacity of their rivals. Production by all these
manufacturers is, and must necessarily be, absolutely planless. This
planless production must end in the market being overstocked with
commodities of one kind or another; that is, that it must end in
'over-production.' In the trade which has been thus overdone, prices
fall and wages come down; or a great manufacturer fails and a smaller
or greater number of workmen are discharged. Crises are therefore the
direct result of private enterprise."[208] "Why are men--men that is
who are able and willing, nay, eager and anxious, to work--unemployed?
Because, it is said, there is nothing for them to do. Nothing for them
to do? Is all the necessary work of the world, then, already finished,
so that there is nothing more remaining for anyone to do? No; it is
not because all the necessary and useful work is done that men are
unemployed, it is because all the means of production--all the
machines, tools, and implements of labour and all the raw
material--are owned by a class, and may only be used by permission of
that class, and when that class can make a profit out of their
use."[209] "It is indisputable that modern poverty is artificial. It
is neither the result of divine anger nor the niggardliness of Nature.
It is the product of the private ownership of land and capital by
which men are prevented from earning their living unless the
proprietary class can make profit from their labour. The inevitable
result of this system is that in all industries and at all times there
are more men seeking employment than there is employment for.[210]"
"Your system of private ownership, in conferring the possession and
control of the nation's storehouse of wealth and of the instruments by
which all further wealth must be obtained from it, upon your
capitalist class, has reduced the nation at large into nothing more
nor less than an elaborate machine which your capitalists use for
extracting wealth from the earth for their own benefit.... It is not
well that by a foolish and wicked system of government, one small
class of the community should be enabled to organise its production in
such a manner that the full stream of wealth is diverted into their
own possession whilst the mass of the nation by whose labour it is
obtained are defrauded of it, and brought into a state of subtle
slavery worse both in kind and degree than could be possible under any
system of direct and open slavery."[211] "Unemployment is an
inevitable feature of capitalism, and is impossible of removal without
at the same time abolishing the capitalist system that produces it.
That is a fact known to any Socialist with the most elementary
knowledge of the economics of capitalism. Unemployment is caused by
the exactions of the capitalist class. The prime cause of unemployment
is the robbery of the workers by which the capitalist class
appropriate the whole of the wealth produced by the workers, returning
to them just as much on the average as will keep them physically fit
to continue working. The difference between the quantities produced
and consumed by the working class (a difference continually increasing
with every increase in the productivity of labour) represents a
surplus which all the waste and all the luxury of its owners cannot
absorb, with the result that the markets are glutted with an excess of
commodities. Thus the 'over-production,' the crisis, and the
slackening of production involving an increase of unemployment."[212]
Employers of labour profit directly from unemployment, and will
therefore presumably do all they can to bring it about. "Employers and
other well-to-do people have no interest in finding work for the
workless. They benefit from the unemployment of the poor."[213] The
foregoing statement is as malicious as it is absurd. Employers do not
desire unemployment, partly from humanitarian reasons, partly because
it is a loss to them. The father of English Socialism taught: "The
labourer perishes if capital does not employ him. Capital perishes if
it does not exploit labour."[214] In other words, unemployed labour
means unemployed capital; besides, those business men who do not
actually dismiss their workers suffer also through unemployment,
because the unemployed are supported by the rates.
The doctrines that "the existing misery can be abolished, not by
increased production but by altering the distribution of the wealth
produced," and that the "capitalist system is responsible for want,
poverty, and unemployment," are manifestly unsound. A larger
consumption of food, clothing, &c., can be effected only by a larger
production. Gluts and crises, with consequent unemployment, occur, not
through general over-production, which would benefit all, but by
ill-balanced production, as the following example will prove: Imagine
an island off the African coast on which there are two villages, the
inhabitants of which require only two commodities, loin-cloths and
mealies. One village manufactures loin-cloths, the other raises
mealies, and these are exchanged against each other. These villages
fulfil the Socialistic ideal. There are no capitalists and no
middlemen, and production is only "for use," not "for profit."
Balanced over-production will result in this, that every native will
have a superabundance of loin-cloths and food. But supposing that the
agriculturists go in for loin-cloth making, finding that occupation
more congenial, and that they abandon much agriculture; or supposing
that inclement weather, or a plague of grasshoppers, should seriously
curtail the harvest, then there will soon be a glut of loin-cloths and
a crisis. The cry of over-production will arise among the loin-cloth
makers, but that cry will be unjustified and absurd. The more the
people make the more they will have, provided production is properly
balanced. The doctrine that we suffer from over-production and that
the capitalist system is at fault, that altered distribution rather
than increased production will abolish misery, and that Socialism can
prevent want and unemployment by a scientific organisation of
production, is wrong.
Socialists may, of course, argue, "In the Socialist State production
would be organised, and controlled, and properly balanced and
harmonised," an argument which is irrelevant with regard to the
over-production doctrine, and which besides is unsound, although it
may be found in most Socialistic writings. As production is
world-wide, the Socialists' control of production would also have to
be world-wide. It would involve not only the control of all human
energy throughout the world, but also the control of the seasons, of
the weather, of insect plagues, of fashions, of appetite, &c.
The foregoing proves that "men can never become richer till the
produce of their labour increases. The more they produce the richer
they will be, provided there be a demand for the produce of their
labour. If a shoemaker makes four pairs of shoes in a day he will be
twice richer than he would be if he made only two pairs in a day,
provided that an increased demand is co-existing. The question,
therefore, 'How can we become richer?' is reduced to this one, 'How
can we increase the produce of labour and at the same time maintain an
equivalent demand for that produce?'"[215] The doctrines that want and
unemployment are due to over-production and to the capitalist system
are wrong.
We now come to the
DOCTRINE OF THE CLASS WAR
Having, by the fundamental doctrines enumerated in the foregoing,
proved that all misery of the working masses is caused by the
existence of a capitalist class which has enslaved the workers, the
Socialists conclude that there is a natural antagonism between capital
and labour; that social life is dominated by the Class War.
"The Socialists say that the present form of property-holding divides
society into two great classes."[216] "Capitalist society is divided
into two classes: owners of property and owners of no property."[217]
"Society is to-day divided into two classes with opposing interests,
one class owning the means of life, and the other nothing but their
power to work. Never in the history of society was the working-class
so free from all traces of property as to-day."[218] "There are in
reality but two classes, those who live by labour and those who live
upon those who labour, the two classes of exploiter and
exploited."[219] "Society has been divided mainly into two economic
classes, a relatively small class of capitalists who own tools in the
form of great machines they did not make and cannot use, and a great
body of many millions of workers who did make these tools and who do
use them, and whose very lives depend upon them, yet who do not own
them."[220]
It is usually said that society has three classes, but Socialists
maintain that there are in reality only two classes. William Morris
still divided society into three groups, which, however, at closer
inspection will be found to form but two classes. According to Morris,
"Civilised States consist of (1) the class of rich people doing no
work, who consume a great deal while they produce nothing. Therefore,
clearly they have to be kept at the expense of those who do work, just
as paupers have, and are a mere burden on the community. (2) The
middle class, including the trading, manufacturing, and professional
people of our society. It is their ambition and the end of their whole
lives to gain, if not for themselves, yet at least for their children,
the proud position of being obvious burdens on the community. Here
then is another class, this time very numerous and all-powerful, which
produces very little and consumes enormously, and is therefore
supported, as paupers are, by the real producers. (3) The class that
remains to be considered produces all that is produced and supports
both itself and the other classes, though it is placed in a position
of inferiority to them, real inferiority, mind you, involving a
degradation both of mind and body. To sum up, then, civilised States
are composed of three classes--a class which does not even pretend to
work, a class which pretends to work but which produces nothing, and a
class which works."[221] In other words, William Morris divided
society into two classes: propertied non-producers and non-propertied
toilers.
According to practically all living English Socialists, there are but
two classes in society. "Modern society is divided into two
classes--the possessors of property and the non-possessors: the
dominant class and the subject class; the class which rules and the
class which has to obey. He who possesses sufficient wealth to
exercise control over the labour of others, to exploit that labour for
his own profit, belongs to the one class; he who possesses nothing but
the power to labour contained in his own body, and who is therefore
compelled to sell that labour power in order to live, belongs to the
other. It is this struggle and conflict between these two classes
that Socialists call the class war, a recognition of which is
essential to a clear conception of what the Socialist movement
involves."[222] "Society is divided into two opposite classes, one,
the capitalists and their sleeping partners the landlords and
loanmongers, holding in their hands the means of production,
distribution, and exchange, and being therefore able to command the
labour of others; the other, the working class, the wage-earners, the
proletariat, possessing nothing but their labour power, and being
consequently forced by necessity to work for the former."[223] "In
society there is an antagonism of interests, manifesting itself as a
class struggle between those who possess but do not produce, and those
who produce but do not possess."[224] "The people of this unfortunate
country have been aptly divided by Mr. Gladstone into the 'masses' and
the 'classes'--that is to say, into those who live by their own labour
and those who live on the labour of others. Among the latter tribe of
non-producers are included all manner of thieves, pick-pockets,
burglars, sharpers, prostitutes, Peers of Parliament, their families
and menials, all, or nearly all, the 'six hundred and odd scoundrels
of the House of Commons,' the twenty thousand State parsons, who every
Sunday shamelessly travesty the Christian religion in the interest of
the 'classes.'"[225]
The theory of dividing society into two classes, capitalists and
workers, or as others put it, "exploiters and exploited," is
manifestly absurd, and its absurdity has been pointed out by a few
Socialists. "It is not true that there are only two great economic
classes in the community. The Communist Manifesto, even in its day,
admitted as much, but made no place for the fact in its theories.
There is an economic antagonism between landlords and capitalists as
well as between capitalists and workmen."[226] Besides, most
capitalists are workers, and probably the great majority of English
workers are capitalists to a larger or smaller extent.
Now let us study the Socialists' description of the hostile forces
which are engaged in the Class War.
According to the Socialist teaching, the property-owners as a class
are useless idlers who impoverish the workers and who shamelessly
spend their whole income on demoralising luxuries. "The idlers and
non-workers produce no wealth and take the greater share. They live on
the labour of those who work. Nothing is produced by idleness; work
must be done to obtain a thimble, a pin, and even a potato for dinner.
The non-workers get the greater share of the wealth, and the greater
part of this share is wasted. Therefore it is not good to have any
people in the land who do not work. Only those who are old or sick
should be kept by the toil of the rest."[227] Taking their figures
from the pamphlet "Facts for Socialists," of which details have been
given on pp. 41-48, the Independent Labour party states under the
heading of "Wealth Makers and Wealth Takers": "The total incomes of
persons in the United Kingdom amount in round figures to
_1,800,000,000l._ How is this wealth distributed? 250,000 persons
actually receive a total of _585,000,000l._--that is, one-thirtieth of
the population receive one-third of the national income. Nearly the
whole of these large incomes are unearned--_i.e._ they are made up of
rents, interest, dividends, &c. This small class of rent and interest
receivers perform no useful function. We may describe these people as
social parasites, absolutely useless, yet levying toll to the extent
of _6s. 8d._ in every _20s._ value of wealth created."[228] "At
present more than _600,000,000l._ of the national income goes in the
form of unearned rent and interest to support an idle class who spend
it mainly on profitless and demoralising luxuries."[229]
The foregoing extracts make it clear that, in the eyes of Socialists,
practically all citizens, manual labourers excepted, are "drones and
parasites." Directors, managers, doctors, chemists, ships' captains,
teachers, &c., and even workmen of exceptional ability also, rob the
general body of workers of half their wages and subsist only owing to
the monopoly of property-holders who control the distribution of
wealth. Upon these curious premisses are based the conclusions: "The
profits and salaries of the class who share in the advantages of the
monopoly of the instruments of production, or are endowed by Nature
with any exceptional ability of high marketable value, amount
according to the best estimate that can be formed, to about
_460,000,000l._ annually, while out of a national income of some
_1,800,000,000l._ a year the workers in the manual labour
class--four-fifths of the whole population--obtain in wages not more
than _690,000,000l._ It may be safely said that the workers from top
to bottom of society pay a fine of one-half the wealth they produce to
a parasitic class before providing for the maintenance of themselves
and their proper dependents."[230] "It is this robbery and waste on
the part of the minority which keeps the majority poor."[231] "So long
as the instruments of production are in unrestrained private
ownership, so long must the tribute of the workers to the drones
continue, so long will the toiler's reward inevitably be reduced by
their exactions."[232]
"Socialism regards the capitalist proper not as a useful captain of
industry, but as a mere share-holding, dividend-drawing parasite upon
labour, and the Socialist party presses forward to his elimination
from the field of production."[233] "The workers who have produced all
this wealth only get a part--the smallest part at that--of the wealth
they produce. Now we Socialists say that this wealth produced by the
labour of the workers should belong to them, and not to the
capitalists who produce nothing. Seeing that the interest of the
worker is to get as much of this wealth, and on the other hand the
capitalist wants as much of this wealth, as he can get, therefore we
say that the interests of the workers and of the capitalists are not
identical, but opposite."[234] "The interest of the working class can
only be served even in the smallest degree by the curtailment of the
power of the master class; that every material advance is useless
except in so far as it helps to effect other achievements, and that
the realisation of Labour politics, the well-being of the working
class, can only be accomplished by its complete emancipation from
capitalism."[235] In other words, the Socialist writers quoted agree
in this: that the lot of the wage-earners can be improved only by
taking the wealth from the rich. In order to introduce Socialism the
present social order must be overturned. With this object in view they
have addressed declarations of war to the owners of property.
We owe to Marx not only the Class War doctrine, but also a declaration
of war to the propertied class: "The Communists everywhere support
every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political
order of things. In all these movements they bring to the front, as
the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what
its degree of development at the time. Finally they labour everywhere
for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all
countries. The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims.
They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the
forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling
classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have
nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working
men of all countries, unite!"[236]
Marx's disciples have issued similar declarations. For instance, in
the official programme of the Social Democratic Federation we read:
"The Social Democratic Federation is a militant Socialist organisation
whose members, men and women, belong almost entirely to the working
class. Its object is the realisation of Socialism, the emancipation of
the working class from its present subjection to the capitalist class.
To this end the Social Democratic Federation proclaims and preaches
the Class War."[237] "There is no way in which the Class War can be
avoided. You cannot have the reward of your labour and the idler have
it too. There is just so much wealth produced every day. It may be
more, it may be less; but there is always just so much, and the more
the capitalist gets the less you will get, and _vice versa_. We preach
the gospel of hatred, because in the circumstances it seems the only
righteous thing we can preach. The talk about the 'Gospel of Love' is
simply solemn rubbish. It is right to hate stealing, right to hate
lying, it is right to hate meanness and uncleanness, right to hate
hypocrisy, greed, and tyranny. Those who talk of the Gospel of Love
with landlordism and capitalism for its objects want us to make our
peace with iniquity."[238] "The Class War is inevitable under the
present form of property-holding, and for it there can be neither
truce, quarter, nor ending, save by the extinction of the class
system itself. The identity of interests between capitalism and
labour is a shibboleth that can only be given any sane meaning at all
in the cynical sense that the interests of the wolf and the lamb are
also 'identical' when the wolf has got the lamb inside him."[239]
The doctrine of the Class War is a holy faith, the expropriation of
property-owners is a divine task. "Unless we hate the system which
prevents us from being what we otherwise might have been, we will not
be able to strive against it with the patient, never-flagging zeal
which our work, to be well done, requires. And to keep alive and
undimmed this flame of hatred, divine not diabolical, we require to
not only look around us, but especially to look back upon the world as
it has been and to the example of those who have fought the good
fight. To Socrates, to Savonarola, to John Ball, Wat the Tyler, and
Jack Cade, in our land the first forerunners of Socialism; to Bruno
and Vanini, to Cromwell, Milton, Hampden, and Pym, to John Eliot,
Harry Vane; to Defoe, Mure, and Thomas Spence; to Ernest Jones,
Bronterre O'Brien, and Robert Owen; to Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet; to
Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien; to Vera Sassoulitch, Marie Spiridonova,
Sophia Perovsky; to Karl Marx."[240] The company of reformers and
revolutionists seems somewhat mixed.
The doctrine that the interests of employers and employees are
irreconcilably opposed, not identical, is false, Socialist rhetoric to
the contrary notwithstanding. As soon as a calamity threatens
capital--for instance, a rise in raw cotton or a cotton
famine--masters and men are seen to be in the same boat and devise
combined measures for meeting the difficulty. The doctrine of the
Class War is opposed to common experience and to common-sense.
Let us now take note of the doctrine
PRIVATE PROPERTY IS IMMORAL AND PRIVATE WEALTH IS A CRIME
In the Class War right is, according to the Socialists, on the side of
the propertyless. Not only are the owners of property objectionable in
their persons, being "drones and parasites" who squander the earnings
of the poor on riotous living, as we have learned in the foregoing
pages, but private property as an institution is immoral in itself and
ought to be abolished. No man has a right to be rich; no man can
become rich honestly. Hence it follows that all rich men are robbers,
thieves, and swindlers. "The poor owe no duty to the rich, unless it
be the duty which an honest man owes to the thief who has robbed him.
The rich have no right to any of their possessions, for there is but
one right, and that is the right of the labourer to the fruits of his
labour, and the rich do not labour. No man has any right to be rich.
No man ever yet became rich by fair means. No man ever became rich by
his own industry."[241] "No man or class of men made the first kind of
wealth, such as land, minerals, and water. Therefore no man or class
of men should be allowed to call these things their own."[242] As
private property is immoral in itself, it is doubly immoral to lend
out such property and to charge rent or interest for the use of it.
Mr. G.J. Wardle, M.P., said, in a recent speech at Glasgow, that rent
"was social immorality, and the State or society which allowed crimes
of that kind to go on unpunished could never be a moral society. The
same thing applied to interest on money. From the moral standpoint
interest is unearned by the man who gets it, and it does not matter
how that is cloaked over, that is the fact. Nowadays it was counted
the greatest virtue to lend at so much per cent. That was a socially
immoral proceeding, and because it was socially immoral it ate like a
canker into the heart of society. As Socialists they objected to
profit."[243]
There are Socialists who preach the same doctrine of immorality and
criminality of private property in more decided terms. They assert
that it is criminal and immoral to make a profit as a compensation for
the work of directing and taking heavy capital risks in productive
business because such profits are opposed to the principle, "The
labourer is entitled to the whole product of his labour" (see page
61). "A man has a 'right' to that which he has produced by the unaided
exercise of his own faculties; but he has not a right to that which is
not produced by his own unaided faculties; nor to the whole of that
which has been produced by his faculties aided by the faculties of
another man."[244] "Everyone who pockets gains without rendering an
equivalent to society is a criminal. Every millionaire is a criminal.
Every company-chairman with nominal duties, though his salary be but
_400l._, is a criminal. Everyone who lends his neighbour _5l._ and
exacts _5l. 5s. 0d._ in return, is a criminal."[245] "When Proudhon
advanced the somewhat startling proposition, 'Property is theft,' he
merely stated positively what good, orthodox Adam Smith, in his
'Wealth of Nations' set forth more urbanely when he wrote, 'The
produce of labour (it is clear from the context that he meant the
whole produce), is the natural recompense or wages of labour.'"[246]
"'Property' is theft, said Proudhon, and surely private property in
the means of production is not only theft, but the means of more
theft."[247]
Starting from the premiss that profit is immoral, the philosopher of
British Socialism logically concludes: "The cheapest way of obtaining
goods is not to pay for them, and if a buyer can avoid payment for the
goods he obtains, he has quite as much right to do so as the seller
has to receive for them double or treble their cost price and call it
profit."[248]
Private property being, according to the Socialist doctrines, immoral
and criminal, it follows that
"PRIVATE PROPERTY OUGHT TO BE ABOLISHED"
Let us take note of an utterance in support of that doctrine: "If the
life of men and women were a thing apart from that of their
neighbours, there would be no need for a Socialist party nor any call
for social reform. But man is not an entity; he is only part of a
mighty social organism. Every act of his has a bearing upon the like
of his fellow. It is difficult, if not impossible, to determine the
moral title to private property in anything. Private property exists
entirely on sufferance. Private property therefore cannot be justly
allowed when it interferes with the law of our social life or
intercepts the progress of social development."[249]
Let us now consider the doctrine
"COMPETITION SHOULD BE REPLACED BY CO-OPERATION"
Socialists teach: "Under Socialism you would have all the people
working together for the good of all. Under non-Socialism you have all
the persons working separately (and mostly against each other), each
for the good of himself. So we find Socialism means co-operation and
non-Socialism means competition."[250] "Socialism is constructive as
well as revolutionary, and Socialists propose to replace competition
by co-operation."[251]
The question now arises: "On what ground do capitalists defend the
principle of competition? A. On the ground that it brings into play a
man's best qualities.--Q. Does it effect this? A. This is occasionally
its result, but it also brings out his worst qualities by stimulating
him to struggle with his fellows for the relative improvement of his
own position rather than for the absolute advancement of the interests
of all."[252]
"Apart altogether from its injustice, competitive capitalism, regarded
as a system of serving the community, is a business bungle. What the
party of the Fourth Estate objects to in the existing commercial and
industrial system is, not merely the stealages which go on under the
guise of rent, profit, and interest, but the enormous waste arising
from lack of consolidation and co-operation in the processes of
production and distribution."[253] "During the last half-century we
have lost more by our 'business principle' of dividing up our national
work into competing one-man and one-company speculations, and
insisting on every separate speculation paying its own separate way,
than by all the tariffs and blockades that have been set up against
us."[254] "In our age there is, as we have seen, throughout our whole
economic sphere, no social order at all. There is absolute social
anarchy. Against this anarchy Socialism is a protest."[255] "There is
only one remedy for both the waste and the stealages, and that is the
substitution of public enterprise with organisation for private
enterprise with competition."[256] "Socialism means the socialising of
the means and instruments of production, distribution, and exchange.
For the individual capitalist it would substitute, as the director and
controller of production and distribution, the community in its
organised capacity. The commercial and industrial chaos and waste
which are the outcome of monopolistic competition would give place to
the orderliness of associated effort, and under Socialism society
would for the first time in history behave like an organism."[257]
Private capitalism and consequent competition are responsible not only
for waste and muddle, but also for the adulteration of food and other
necessaries of life. "Every man who knows anything of trade knows how
general is the knavish practice of adulteration. Now all adulteration
is directly due to competition. Did not Mr. John Bright once say that
adulteration is only another form of competition?"[258]
There is much truth in the contention of the Socialists that
co-operation is mightier, and often better, than free competition.
However, that is no new discovery, and the introduction of Socialism
is not needed to bring about co-operation. In Germany, Switzerland,
and Denmark national and private co-operation are far more developed
than in Great Britain, and waste, muddle, and stealages are rare in
those countries, although none of these is ruled by a Socialist
Government. Co-operation, national as well as private, is developing
also in Great Britain, and it will continue to develop as its value
becomes more and more understood. It is a curious fact that
Socialists, though they recommend co-operation in the abstract, oppose
it in the concrete for similar reasons. They fear that satisfied and
prosperous co-operators will oppose Socialism.[259]
The assertion that adulteration is due to competition is not founded
upon fact. Adulteration springs from many causes, and would continue
to flourish even under the Socialistic _regime_. If all cowkeepers
were salaried officials of the Socialist State or municipality, they
might nevertheless mix water with the milk to obtain milk for their
own consumption and that of their families, and to diminish the labour
of milking. Adulteration may be abolished by efficient supervision and
well-devised and rigorously enforced sanitary laws.
Let us now glance at the doctrine
"THE SOCIALIST STATE WILL ARISE BY NATURAL DEVELOPMENT, AND IT WILL
HANDLE BUSINESS MORE EFFICIENTLY THAN DO PRIVATE INDIVIDUALS"
"The State now registers, inspects, and controls nearly all the
industrial functions which it has not yet absorbed. 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 meal-times; 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."[260] "Step by step political power and
political organisation have been used for industrial ends, until a
Minister of the Crown is the largest employer of labour in the
country, and at least 200,000 men, not counting the army and navy, are
directly in the service of the community, without the intervention of
the profit of any middleman."[261]
From the fact that the State inspects many things and carries on some
business, it does not by any means follow that the State should
inspect all things and could efficiently carry on all business.
Questions such as "If the State can build battleships and make
swords, why not also trading ships and ploughshares,"[262] are
ridiculous. One might as well ask, "If Messrs. Whiteley or Marshall
Field can supply furniture, houses, dresses, and funerals, being
universal providers, why not also battleships, armies, and colonies?"
It is also not true that the State or municipal corporations have more
business ability than private business men. As an example of
successful business management Socialists are fond of pointing to the
Post Office, and of asserting that no private company could work as
efficiently and as cheaply. These statements are erroneous. The
success of the British Post Office, as of every post office, is due
not to ability but to monopoly, as the following example will prove.
Private individuals in Germany discovered some years ago a flaw in the
legislation regarding the Post Office which enabled them to compete
with the Imperial Post Office, not in postal business between
different towns, but in local delivery. Private post offices sprang up
in many towns and began to deliver letters at the rate of two pfennigs
(one farthing) each. Although the German Post Office is the most
efficient Post Office in Europe, it could not compete with these
private post offices, and, after lengthy competition, steps had to be
taken to extend the postal monopoly to town deliveries. The British
Post Office, like most public offices, is a most conservative
institution. Every progress and every reform had to be forced upon it
by outside agitation. Services such as money delivery at private
residences, cash on delivery parcels, &c., which other countries have
enjoyed during several decades, are stubbornly denied to England.
Private competition would probably have furnished these conveniences
long ago. In London the Messenger Boy Company competes with the Post
Office in the carrying of express letters, and various private
carriers compete with it in delivering parcels, and in both instances
the private trader supplies a better and cheaper service than the
Government Post Office. A comparison of the Post Office telephone in
England and the private telephone in America shows the great
superiority of the latter. The slow and ultra-conservative British
Post Office supplies no proof that the Government would handle
production and distribution better than private enterprise. On the
contrary.
British Socialists claim unanimously that their theories and demands
are founded upon science. "The Socialist doctrine systematises the
industrial changes. It lays down a law of capitalist evolution. It
describes the natural history of society. It is not, therefore, only a
popular creed for the market-place, but a scientific inquiry for the
study. Like every theory in Sociology, it has a political bearing, but
it can be studied as much detached from politics as is Darwinism."[263]
Do the fundamental doctrines of British Socialism bear out the claims
of its champions? The foregoing pages prove that the scientific basis
of Socialism, or rather of British Socialism, consists of a number of
doctrines which cannot stand examination and which are disproved by
daily experience and by common-sense.
The question now suggests itself: "How is it that the British
Socialists base their demands on pseudo-scientific doctrines of
obvious absurdity?"
British Socialism has been imported from Germany. Marx, Engels,
Lassalle, Rodbertus, and various other Germans are the fathers of
modern scientific Socialism. "To German scholars is largely due the
development of Socialism from the Utopian stage to the scientific.
Universality is its distinguishing feature."[264] "Karl Marx and
Frederick Engels in 1847 laid, through the 'Communist Manifesto,' the
scientific foundation of modern Socialism."[265] "And 'Capital,' Karl
Marx's great work, has become the loadstar of modern economic
science."[266] Karl Marx's "Manifesto" appeared in 1847; the first
volume of his "Capital" was published in 1867. Since the appearance of
the former sixty years, and since the publication of the latter forty
years, have passed by. Much has changed in the world, but the Marxian
doctrines have remained unchanged.
The worst about speculative doctrines is that time is apt to disprove
them.
Whilst the German Socialists have thinkers in their ranks who have
adapted the older Communist theories to present conditions, leaving
out those theories which are palpably false, English Socialists have
stood still and are satisfied to repeat those ancient doctrines which
the Germans have abandoned long ago. English Socialists try to impose
upon an uncritical public by parading the worn-out stage properties of
the forties. Marx is to the vast majority of British Socialists still
an oracle and the fountain head of all wisdom. "Marx is the Darwin of
modern sociology."[267] "All over the world his brain is put on pretty
much the same level as Aristotle's."[268] "Modern Socialism is based,
nationally and internationally, theoretically and to a large extent
practically, on the writings of Karl Marx. These writings have been
expounded, and where necessary applied, extended, and amplified, to
meet conditions which have developed since his death nearly a quarter
of a century ago, in every civilised country. It is safe to say that
no one who does not understand and accept in the main the views set
forth by Marx, comprehends the real position of capitalist Society,
nor, what is even more important, can fully master the problems of
the coming time."[269] "The Social-Democratic Federation, which is by
far the oldest and still the most active Socialist organisation in
this country, bases its teaching to-day, as it has always done, upon
the words of Karl Marx."[270]
Most active Socialists in Great Britain think Marx and Lassalle
infallible. It is true that the Fabian Society has pointed out "the
necessity of maintaining as critical an attitude towards Marx and
Lassalle, some of whose views must by this time be discarded as
erroneous or obsolete,"[271] but that protest appears to have been
left unheeded by most British Socialists. In fact, the abandonment of
revolutionary Marxianism has caused the Fabians to be treated with
open hostility by the other Socialist sections. The reasons for that
hostility are obvious. The doctrines of Marx and Lassalle, though they
are, to say the least, erroneous and obsolete, are admirably fitted to
inflame the passions of the masses. Their doctrines may not be true,
but they are useful to professional agitators. Independent Socialists
in all countries have not disguised their opinion of Marx's "Capital,"
which, in the words of an English Socialist, "is not a treatise on
Socialism; it is a jeremiad against the bourgeoisie, supported by such
a mass of evidence and such a relentless Jewish genius for
denunciation as had never been brought to bear before."[272]
British Socialism is neither scientific nor sincere. Its leaders know
that the Iron Law of Wages (see p. 53), the Law of Increasing Misery
(see p. 56), and other doctrines, which are exceedingly useful to the
agitator who wishes to poison the mind of the masses, have been thrown
into the lumber room in Germany and most other countries (see the
writings of Bernstein, Jaures, and others), but they do not abandon
them. Apparently it is their policy rather to create strife and
confusion than to alleviate existing misery. That attitude must have
covered English Socialists with ignominy in the eyes of foreign
Socialists. The very humiliating treatment which the English
Socialists received at the International Socialist Congress in
Stuttgart of 1907 from their Continental comrades suggests that the
curious attitude and the not very estimable tactics of British
Socialists have not found the approval of their Continental
colleagues.
The doctrines of the English Socialists with regard to property are
identical with those of most Anarchists (see Eltzbacher, "Der
Anarchismus"). For instance, Proudhon taught: "We rob (1) by murder on
the highway; (2) alone, or in a band; (3) by breaking into buildings,
or scaling walls; (4) by abstraction; (5) by fraudulent bankruptcy;
(6) by forgery of the handwriting of public officials, or private
individuals; (7) by manufacture of counterfeit money; (8) by cheating;
(9) by swindling; (10) by abuse of trust; (11) by games and lotteries;
(12) by usury; (13) by farm rent, house rent, and leases of all kinds;
(14) by commerce, when the profit of the merchant exceeds his
legitimate salary; (15) by making profit on our product, by accepting
sinecures, and by exacting exorbitant wages."[273] "What is property?
It is robbery."[274] "Property, after having robbed the labourer by
usury, murders him slowly by starvation."[275] Practically the
identical doctrines are propounded by British Socialists. Further
instances of the resemblance between Socialism and Anarchism will be
found in Chapter XXX, "Socialism and Anarchism."
Society is at present based upon individualism. In their anxiety to
prove the failure of modern civilisation British Socialists deny that
the world has progressed under individualism. "Not by individual
selfishness, or national selfishness, has the progress of the human
race been advanced."[276] And they boldly declare that all history,
having been written by men of the dominant class, is a deception. "Are
we then to understand that the whole of history, so far, has been
written from the point of view of the dominant class of every age?
Most assuredly so; and this applies to well-nigh the whole of the
sources of past history."[277]
The foregoing should suffice to make it clear that the Socialist
agitation is not based on irrefutable scientific doctrines, as
Socialists pretend, but on deception. It may be said that no agitation
is free from deception, that the end justifies the means, that
Socialism means for the best. We have been told "Socialism is a
religion of humanity. Socialism is the only hope of the race.
Socialism is the remedy--the only remedy--which Lord Salisbury could
not find."[278] We must look into the practical proposals of British
Socialism in order to be able to judge its character.
FOOTNOTES:
[151] _Facts for Socialists_, p. 3.
[152] Hazell, _Summary of Marx's "Capital,"_ p. 1; Macdonald,
_Socialism_, p. 54.
[153] _Socialism made Plain_, p. 8.
[154] Hobart, _Social-Democracy_, p. 7.
[155] _Manifesto_, Socialist Party of Great Britain, p. 8.
[156] _What Socialism Means_: Independent Labour Party Leaflet, No. 8,
p. 3.
[157] Debs, _Industrial Unionism_, p. 20.
[158] Bliss, _Encyclopedia of Social Reform_, 1368.
[159] _Ibid._ 807.
[160] _Manifesto of the Communist Party_, p. 17.
[161] Bax and Quelch, _A New Catechism of Socialism_, p. 15.
[162] Blatchford, _Merrie England_, p. 163.
[163] Quelch, _Economics of Labour_, p. 13.
[164] Davidson, _The Old Order and the New_, p. 107.
[165] Bax, _Outlooks from the New Standpoint_, p. 99.
[166] _Socialist Standard_, December 1907.
[167] Davidson, _The Old Order and the New_, p. 32.
[168] Stegman und Hugo, _Handbuch_, p. 473.
[169] _Christliche Arbeiterpflichten_, p. 15.
[170] Webb, _Industrial Democracy_, p. 548.
[171] Councillor Glyde, _A Peep behind the Scenes on a Board of
Guardians_, p. 5.
[172] Marx and Engels, _Manifesto of the Communist Party_, p. 12.
[173] Marx, _Wage, Labour, and Capital_, pp. 23, 24.
[174] Marx, _Wage, Labour, and Capital_, p. 22.
[175] _English Progress towards Social-Democracy_, p. 12.
[176] Keir Hardie, _From Serfdom to Socialism_, p. 99.
[177] Marx and Engels, _Manifesto of the Communist Party_, p. 8.
[178] _Ibid._ p. 16.
[179] Hyndman, _Socialism and Slavery_, p. 12.
[180] Sidney Webb, _The Difficulties of Individualism_, p. 9.
[181] Ellis Barker, _Modern Germany_, p. 528.
[182] Quelch, _Economics of Labour_, p. 18.
[183] Davidson, _The Old Order and the New_, p. 3.
[184] Bax and Quelch, _A New Catechism_, p. 15.
[185] Sidney Webb, _The Difficulties of Individualism_, p. 19.
[186] _Clarion_, November 29, 1907.
[187] Hall, _The Old and New Unionism_, p. 5.
[188] _Socialism and the Single Tax_, p. 6.
[189] Blatchford, _Merrie England_, p. 189.
[190] Gronlund, _Co-operative Commonwealth_, p. 86.
[191] Kautsky, _The Social Revolution_, pp. 7, 8.
[192] See _ante_ p. 10.
[193] _Report on Fabian Policy_, p. 8.
[194] See Chapter XXXIII.
[195] Hall, _Land, Labour, and Liberty_, p. 5.
[196] Jowett, _The Socialist and the City_, p. 66.
[197] Gronlund, _Co-operative Commonwealth_, p. 86.
[198] _Rich and Poor_, Introd.
[199] Martyn, _Co-operation_, p. 3.
[200] Lister, _Riches and Poverty_, p. 12.
[201] Fisher, _The Babies' Tribute_, p. 16.
[202] _Socialism and the Single Tax_, p. 7.
[203] Kessack, _The Capitalist Wilderness and the Way Out_, p. 9.
[204] Lafargue, _Right to Leisure_, p. 11.
[205] Tillett, _Trades Unionism and Socialism_, p. 14.
[206] Fisher, _The Babies' Tribute_, p. 16.
[207] Davidson, _The Old Order and the New_, p. 67.
[208] Gronlund, _Co-operative Commonwealth_, pp. 32, 33.
[209] Social-Democratic Federation, _The Unemployed_, leaflet.
[210] Smart, _The Right to Work_, p. 3.
[211] Washington, _A Corner in Flesh and Blood_, p. 12.
[212] _The Socialist Standard_, December 1907.
[213] _Why Labour Men should be on Town Councils_, p. 2.
[214] Marx, _Wage-Labour and Capital_, p. 12.
[215] L'Auton, _The Nationalisation of Society_, p. 4.
[216] Jaures, _Studies in Socialism_, p. 1.
[217] _Handbuch fuer Sozialdemokratische Waehler_, 1903, p. 233.
[218] _Manifesto of the Socialist Party of Great Britain_, p. 7.
[219] _The Socialist Standard_, December 1907.
[220] Debs, _Industrial Unionism_, p. 4.
[221] Morris, _Useful Work_ versus _Useless Toil_, pp. 22, 25.
[222] _The Class War_, p. 1.
[223] _Programme and Rules, Social-Democratic Federation._
[224] _Socialist Standard_, October 1, 1907.
[225] Davidson, _The New Book of Kings_, p. 115.
[226] Macdonald, _Socialism and Society_, pp. 111, 112.
[227] _What Socialism Means_, p. 3.
[228] _Wealth Makers and Wealth Takers_, p. 2.
[229] _After Bread, Education_, p. 12.
[230] _Capital and Land_, p. 13.
[231] Morris, _Useful Work versus Useless Toil_, p. 26.
[232] Sidney Webb, _The Difficulties of Individualism_, p. 8.
[233] Leatham, _Was Jesus a Socialist?_ p. 4.
[234] _The Socialist_, October 1907.
[235] _The Socialist Annual_, 1907, p. 42.
[236] Marx and Engels, _Manifesto_, pp. 30, 31.
[237] Quelch, _The Social-Democratic Federation_, p. 1.
[238] Leatham, _The Class War_, p. 10.
[239] Hall, _The Old and the New Unionism_, p. 4.
[240] Leatham, _The Class War_, p. 11.
[241] Blatchford, _The Pope's Socialism_, p. 2.
[242] _What Socialism Means_, p. 3.
[243] _Forward_, November 23, 1907.
[244] Blatchford, _Merrie England_, p. 58.
[245] Gronlund, _Co-operative Commonwealth_, p. 166.
[246] Davidson, _The Old Order and the New_, p. 4.
[247] McClure, _Socialism_, p. 16.
[248] Bax, _Outlooks from the New Standpoint_, p. 98.
[249] Williams, _The Difficulties of Socialism_, pp. 3, 4.
[250] Blatchford, _Real Socialism_, p. 11.
[251] Hyndman, _Social-Democracy_, p. 24.
[252] Joynes, _The Socialists' Catechism_, p. 13.
[253] Leatham, _The Evolution of the Fourth Estate_, p. 3.
[254] _Fabianism and the Fiscal Question_, p. 19.
[255] Gronlund, _Co-operative Commonwealth_, p. 41.
[256] Leatham, _The Evolution of the Fourth Estate_, p. 3.
[257] Leatham, _Was Jesus a Socialist?_ p. 4.
[258] Blatchford, _Competition_, p. 15.
[259] See Chapters VII & XXIII.
[260] _English Progress towards Social-Democracy_, p. 14.
[261] _Ibid._ p. 13.
[262] Keir Hardie, _From Serfdom to Socialism_, p. 15.
[263] Macdonald, _Socialism_, p. 3.
[264] McClure, _Socialism_, p. 13.
[265] Kautsky, _The Class Struggle_, p. 24.
[266] Kautsky, _The Socialist Republic_, p. 21.
[267] Hyndman, _Historic Basis of Socialism_, p. 435.
[268] _Justice_, October 12, 1907.
[269] _Justice_, October 12, 1907.
[270] _The Social Democrat_, November 1907, p. 676.
[271] _Report on Fabian Policy_, 1896, p. 6.
[272] G.B. Shaw, quoted in Jackson, _Bernard Shaw_, p. 100.
[273] Proudhon, _What is Property?_ pp. 252-256.
[274] _Ibid._ p. 37.
[275] _Ibid._ p. 184.
[276] Snowden, _The Christ that is to be_, p. 6.
[277] Bax and Quelch, _A New Catechism of Socialism_, p. 32.
[278] Blatchford, _What is this Socialism?_ p. 11.
CHAPTER V
THE AIMS AND POLICY OF THE SOCIALISTS
Those people who formerly called themselves Communists now call
themselves Socialists. Marx and Engels wrote in their celebrated
"Manifesto": "The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the
single sentence: Abolition of private property."[279] The policy of
modern British Socialism may be summed up in the identical words.
Indeed, we are told by one of its most eager champions that "The
programme of Socialism consists essentially of one demand--that the
land and other instruments of production shall be the common property
of the people, and shall be used and governed by the people for the
people."[280] "We suggest that the nation should own all the ships,
all the railways, all the factories, all the buildings, all the land,
and all the requisites of national life and defence."[281]
According to the Socialist doctrines which have been given in Chapter
IV, private property is the enemy of the workers. Therefore they quite
logically demand that all private property must be abolished. "The
problem has to be faced. Either we must submit for ever to hand over
at least one-third of our annual product to those who do us the favour
to own our country without the obligation of rendering any service to
the community, and to see this tribute augment with every advance in
our industry and numbers, or else we must take steps, as
considerately as may be possible, to put an end to this state of
things."[282] "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. Socialism involves discontinuance of the
payment of these incomes and addition of the wealth so saved to
incomes derived from labour. The economic problem of Socialism is thus
solved."[283]
A general division of the existing private property among all the
people is not intended, because it is considered to be impracticable.
"Socialism does not consist in violently seizing upon the property of
the rich and sharing it out amongst the poor."[284] "Plans for a
national 'dividing up' are not Socialism. They are nonsense. 'Dividing
up' means individual ownership. Socialism means collective
ownership."[285] "It is obvious that, in the present stage of economic
development, individual ownership is impossible. All the great means
of production are collectively owned now. Individual liberty based
upon individual property is therefore out of the question, and the
emancipation of the working class can only be achieved in social
freedom, based upon social property, through the transformation of
privately owned collective property into publicly owned collective
property."[286]
Starting from these premisses, the Socialists arrive at the demand
that "all the means of production and distribution, all the machinery,
all the buildings, everything that is necessary to provide the
fundamental necessaries of life, must be common property."[287] "We
want all the instruments for the purposes of trade to be the property
of the State. With that will have come at the same time the abolition
of power permitting any individual to exact rent or interest for the
loan of land or of the implements of production. The abolition of all
private property will mean the extinction of the parasite."[288] "The
overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a system of society
based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means
and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, by and in the
interest of the whole community: That is Socialism."[289] "The Fabian
Society aims at the reorganisation 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. 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 conveniently be managed socially."[290]
"Here in plain words is the principle, or root idea, on which all
Socialists agree--that the country and everything in the country shall
belong to the whole people (the nation), and shall be used by the
people and for the people. That principle, the root idea of Socialism,
means two things: (1) That the land, and all the machines, tools, and
buildings used in making needful things, together with all the canals,
rivers, roads, railways, ships, and trains used in moving, sharing
(distributing) needful things, and all the shops, markets, scales,
weights, and money used in selling or dividing needful things, shall
be the property of (belong to) the whole people (the nation). (2) That
the land, tools, machines, trains, rivers, shops, scales, money, and
all the other things belonging to the people, shall be worked,
managed, divided, and used by the whole people, in such way as the
greater number of the whole people shall deem best."[291]
A perusal of the party programmes and other Socialist documents
contained in the Appendix will show that the abolition of all private
property, and its transference to the State, is the aim of all the
Socialist organisations and parties, and no further extracts need be
given in order to prove the unanimity of the Socialists on this point.
The question now arises: How is this transference of all private
property to the State to be effected? Will the present holders of
property be fully compensated, partly compensated, or not compensated
at all? Do the Socialists aim at purchase or at confiscation of
existing private property. Will they respect existing rights, or are
they bent upon open or more or less disguised spoliation?
It is, unfortunately, very difficult to obtain a plain and
straightforward answer upon this important point. Instead of giving
this answer, British Socialists loudly protest that it is not their
aim to destroy or abolish property. As nobody has suspected the
Socialists to be foolish enough to abolish or destroy property--which
means the instruments of production, such as factories, machines,
railways, &c., by the use of which the people live, and thus bring
starvation upon themselves--their eagerness to explain that they do
not intend to abolish or destroy property can only be explained by the
surmise that they hope shallow simpletons will say, "The Socialists
have no intention to take our capital away from us by force and
without compensation, for they have declared that they do not intend
to abolish property." A few of these declarations should here be
given: "So far from abolishing property, Socialism desires to
establish it upon the only basis which makes property secure--that of
service, of creative service."[292] "Socialism does not propose to
abolish land or capital. Only a genius could have thought of this as
an objection to Socialism."[293] "Socialism is far from aiming at the
destruction of private property. Its object is to increase private
property amongst those whose property is so limited that they have a
difficulty in keeping themselves alive."[294] Another Socialist makes
the very irrelevant and unnecessary observation: "It is a firm
principle of Socialism never to interfere with personal property in
order to investigate its origin or to arrange it in a different way.
Never and nowhere! And whoever asserts to the contrary either does not
know the principles of Socialism or willingly and knowingly asserts an
untruth. The Socialists deem an investigation into the origin of an
acknowledged personal property an unnecessary trouble. They consider
the personal property an accomplished fact and respect it: so much so,
that they consider stealing a crime."[295] Mr. Blatchford informs us,
"We do not propose to seize anything. We do propose to get some things
and to make them the property of the whole nation by Act of Parliament
or by purchase."[296]
As regards the question whether compensation or no compensation will be
given, our Socialist leaders give us very vague and unsatisfactory
replies, which rather contain highly respectable but perfectly
irrelevant commonplaces than definite proposals. Most Socialists will
answer the plain question of confiscation or no confiscation with a
quibble or a conundrum, as the following examples will show: "One view
of Socialism is that it is a scheme of confiscation of property from
one class to give it to another class--that Socialists are Dick Turpins
made respectable by using Acts of Parliament instead of pistols. Now
the real fact is that the Socialist has come to put an end to Dick
Turpin methods. Socialism is a rational criticism of our present
methods of production and distribution. It desires to say to the
possessors: Show us by what title you possess; and it proposes to pass
its judgments upon the axiom that whoever renders service to society
should be able to have some appropriate share in the national
wealth."[297] In other words, an inquisitorial tribunal with arbitrary
powers would be empowered to confiscate at will. "Socialism is not a
plan to despoil the rich: it is a plan to stop the rich from despoiling
the poor. Socialism is not a thief; it is a policeman."[298] "Do any
say we attack private property? We deny it. We attack only that private
property for a few thousand loiterers and slave-drivers which renders
all property in the fruits of their own labour impossible for millions.
We challenge that private property which renders poverty at once a
necessity and a crime."[299] "Socialism would not rob anyone. It would
distinguish between the lawful possessor and the rightful possessor,
and it would compel the 'lawful' possessor to restore to the rightful
possessor the property of which he had robbed him."[300] "We do not
propose to rob the rich man of his wealth; we deny that it is his
wealth. Wealth is a social product, and therefore belongs to society.
It is not an act of brigandage to demand that society shall own and use
what society has created."[301]
Some Socialists consider the question of compensation or no
compensation as one of very minor importance. "The question of
compensation need not greatly worry us. Socialists hold that
plutocrats owe all their wealth to society; and therefore that society
has the right at any moment to take it back."[302] The more cautious
and moderate French and German Socialists are apt to promise
compensation in terms such as the following: "We declare expressly
that it is the duty of the State to give to those whose interests will
be damaged by the necessary abolition of laws which are detrimental to
the common interest compensation as far as it is possible and
consistent with the interests of all."[303]
It will be observed that the plain word compensation is circumscribed
by the phrase, "compensation as far as it is possible and consistent
with the interests of all." In other and plainer words, compensation
is to be arbitrarily given, and its proportion to the property
acquired is apparently to be determined not by its value or by
fairness and equity, but by the will of those who may be in power.
English Socialists, on the other hand, are apt to recommend a far more
drastic treatment of property-owners. "We claim that land in country
and land in towns, mines, parks, mountains, moors, should be owned by
the people for the people, to be held, used, built over, and
cultivated upon such terms as the people themselves see fit to ordain.
The handful of marauders who now hold possession have, and can have,
no right save brute force against the tens of millions whom they
wrong."[304] The most moderate school of British Socialism, the Fabian
Society, favours in its statement of policy given under the heading
"Basis of the Fabian Society" the expropriation of all private
capital "without compensation, though not without such relief to
expropriated individuals as may seem fit to the community." In other
words, expropriated property-owners may, or may not, be given
something to protect them from starvation, not as a matter of right,
but of charity.
Most Socialists who favour compensation recommend that it should be
given only in the form of consumable articles such as food, clothes,
&c., or in bonds which are changeable only into consumable articles.
"Rothschild will be paid in bread and meat and luxury and wine and
theatre tickets."[305] "When capitalistic property shall have been
socialised, the holders of compensation deeds will not be able to
purchase either fresh means of production or producers; they will only
be able to buy products."[306]
Some Socialists suggest that the bonds given in exchange for property
acquired by the State might be cancelled later on. The property-owners
could be deprived of their possessions without any difficulty, either
gradually by taxation or at one blow by confiscation at the option of
the men in power. "When the entire capitalistic property takes the
form of State bonds, the property which it is impossible to ascertain
to-day would then be known to everybody. It would only be necessary to
decree that all bonds are to be registered in the name of the owner,
and it would be possible to estimate exactly the capitalist income and
the property of everyone. It would then also be possible to screw up
the taxes to any extent without fear of their being evaded by any
concealments. It would then be also impossible to escape them by
emigration, since it is the public institutions of the country, and in
the first place the State, from which all interest comes, and the
latter can deduct the tax from the interest before it is paid out.
Under these circumstances it would be possible to raise the
progressive income and property tax as high as necessary--if necessary
as high as would come very near, if not actually amount to,
confiscation of the large property."[307] The foregoing is a simple
plan of swindling property-owners out of their holdings.
Some of the more moderate Socialists argue: "There is much to be said
in favour of the liberal treatment of the present generation of
proprietors and even of their children. But against the permanent
welfare of the community the unborn have no rights."[308] On the other
hand, Bax, the philosopher of British Socialism, quite logically and
honestly states that the idea of compensation has no room in the
Socialist code of ethics, that the bourgeois idea of compensation on
grounds of justice is irreconcilable with the Socialist conception of
justice. He says: "Between possession and confiscation is a great gulf
fixed, the gulf between the bourgeois and the Socialist worlds.
Well-meaning men seek to throw bridges over this gulf by schemes of
compensation, abolition of inheritance, and the like. But the
attempts, as we believe, even should they ever be carried out
practically, must fall disastrously short of their mark and be
speedily engulfed between the two positions they are intended to
unite. Nowhere can the phrase 'He that is not for us is against us' be
more aptly applied than to the moral standpoint of modern
individualism and of modern Socialism. To the one, individual
possession is right and justice, and social confiscation is wrong and
injustice; to the other, individual possession is wrong and injustice,
and confiscation is right and justice. This is the real issue. Unless
a man accept the last-named standpoint unreservedly, he has no right
to call himself a Socialist. If he does accept it, he will seek the
shortest and most direct road to the attainment of justice rather than
any longer and more indirect ones, of which it is at best doubtful
whether they will attain the end at all. For be it remembered the
moment you tamper with the sacredness of private property, no matter
how mildly, you surrender the conventional bourgeois principle of
justice, while the moment you talk of compensation you surrender the
Socialist principle of justice, for compensation can only be real if
it is adequate, and can only be adequate if it counterbalances, and
thereby annuls, the confiscation. It is just, says the individualist,
for a man to be able to do what he likes with his own. Good; but what
is his own?"[309] "The great act of confiscation will be the seal of
the new era; then and not till then will the knell of civilisation,
with its rights of property and its class society, be sounded; then,
and not till then, will justice--the justice not of civilisation but
of Socialism--become the corner-stone of the social arch."[310]
I think the straightforwardness of Bax is preferable to the crooked
and insincere explanations and proposals of the British and foreign
Socialist given in the foregoing. Bax's opinion is irrefutable.
According to the doctrines of Socialism given in Chapter IV., labour
is the source of all wealth; the greater part of the products of that
labour is dishonestly abstracted from the labourer by the capitalist
class, which has converted the result of that labour into property.
Hence Socialists think with Proudhon, and they very often openly
declare, that property is theft. Capitalist society will not
compensate the thief when taking from him his booty. Socialism will
not compensate property-owners when taking away their property.
Besides, compensation would be utterly opposed to the root idea of
Socialist justice. At present expropriation without indemnity is
called theft, but it would not be called theft under a Socialist
_regime_. The chapter on "Law and Justice under Socialism" will make
that quite clear.
Socialism teaches that no man is entitled to anything except that
which he has made himself. "No man has a right to call anything his
own but that which he himself has made. Now, no man makes the land.
The land is not created by labour, but it is the gift of God to all.
The earth belongs to the people. For the nonce please take the
statement on the authority of Herbert Spencer, All men 'have equal
rights to the use of the earth.' So that he who possesses land
possesses that to which he has no right, and he who invests his
savings in land becomes a purchaser of stolen property."[311] "No man
made the land, and laws and lawyers notwithstanding no man has any
moral right before God to call a solitary strip of God's earth his
than has the burglar to call his stolen goods his personal property.
It is therefore evident that the bite named 'rent' given to landlords
for permission to live upon and use God's free gift to man is as much
the fruit of robbery, the spoil of plunder, as is the result of a
burglar's night's marauding, a common pickpocket's day's
'takings.'"[312] Capital is in the same position as land, for "Land
and capital are indistinguishable."[313]
The more honest Socialists agree with Bax that compensation for
property acquired would be inadvisable and impracticable. "In a
pamphlet called 'Collectivism and Revolution' M. Jules Guesde said,
'Expropriation with indemnity is a chimera. And whatever regret one
may feel, however difficult may appear to peaceful natures the last
method, we have no other way than to retake violently that which
belongs to all, by--let us say the word--the Revolution.' He added,
'Capital which it is necessary to take from individuals, such as the
land, is not of human creation; it is anterior to man, for whom it is
a _sine qua non_ of existence. It cannot therefore belong to some to
the exclusion of others, without the others being robbed. And to make
the robbers deliver up, to oblige them to restore in any and every way
is not so much a right as a duty, the most sacred of duties."[314] A
respected English Socialist says bluntly, "How to secure the swag to
the workers is the problem."[315] A Christian Socialist clergyman
sarcastically proposes: "If you are a Christian and love your rich
neighbour as yourself, you will do all you can to help him to become
poorer. For if you believe in the Gospel, you know that to be rich is
the very worst thing that can happen to a man. That if a man is rich,
it is with the greatest difficulty that he can be saved; for 'it is
easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich
man to enter into the Kingdom of God' (Mark x. 25). This is startling
now, but it was not less strange and startling to the disciples who
'were astonished out of measure, saying among themselves, Who then can
be saved?' But the needle's eye has not grown any larger since then,
and the camels certainly have not grown smaller! All true Christians
then must desire to relieve the rich man of his excess for his own
sake, since the inequality that ruins the body of Lazarus ruins the
soul of Dives; and Dives is the more miserable of the two, because the
soul is more precious than the body."[316]
The abolition of private property requires also the abolition of the
right of inheritance, as otherwise capital might again be accumulated
in the hands of the thrifty and the enterprising. Therefore the
manifesto of Marx and Engels already demands the "abolition of all
right of inheritance."[317] Other Socialists say that this right
should not be abolished. "Socialists used to insist upon the abolition
of the right of inheritance and bequest. But if what I gain by my own
labour is rightfully my property--and the Co-operative Commonwealth
will, as we have seen, declare it to be so--it will be inexpedient in
that Commonwealth to destroy any of the essential qualities of
propertyship; and I can hardly call that my property which I may not
give to whom I please at my death. No man in a Co-operative
Commonwealth could acquire so much more wealth than his fellows as to
make him dangerous to them."[318] "Socialists do not object to
property; they are not opposed to private property. They are therefore
not opposed to inheritance. The right to acquire and hold involves the
right to dispose by will or by gift. We only object to such a use of
property as enables classes for generation after generation to live on
the proceeds of other people's labour without doing any useful service
to society."[319] This very diplomatic sentence may be explained in a
variety of ways. Probably it means that holders of property of large
size could summarily be deprived of their possessions by order of the
Government, as has been indicated by that writer in another passage
(see page 97). Such a power would make the right to hold and to
bequeath property a farce. Property could be held then only on the
same terms on which, I believe, it is held by Central African negroes.
Another Socialist states, "If I am entitled to what I produce, then it
follows that I am entitled to dispose of all that I produce;" and then
denies the right to personal property by continuing: "The Socialists
say, 'Not thine or mine, but ours.'"[320]
It would be only logical that the Socialist State, after abolishing
private property by following the principle "not thine but ours,"
should not allow its re-creation and re-accumulation. "This pernicious
right (wrong) of inheritance must be abolished. It is the means by
which the 'classes' perpetuate their robbery of the 'masses' from
generation to generation and age to age. The disinherited would of
course have the community to look to for sound education in youth,
suitable employment in years of maturity, generous pension in old age,
&c., and to what else can any rational human being lay just
claim?"[321] Some Socialists argue that in the Socialist State "there
will be nothing to bequeath, unless we choose to regard household
furniture as a legacy of any importance. This settles the question of
the right of inheritance, which Socialism will have no need to abolish
formally."[322] "Socialism condemns as reactionary and immoral all
that tends to the debasement of humanity. It condemns our industrial
and commercial system as a degrading system--degrading both to the few
who amass wealth and to the many who by their labour enable the few to
lay up riches. It is degrading to those who rob and to those who are
robbed; to those who cheat and to those who are cheated; to those who
swim and to those who sink; to those who revel in luxury and to those
who, barely sustaining their own lives, are compelled by their toil to
supply luxuries for others to enjoy."[323] Therefore Socialism means
to abolish the present system root and branch, and the most
straightforward Socialists are frankly in favour of the most thorough
measures for abolishing private property.
Children and poets proverbially speak the truth. Let us see what the
Socialist poets think of the expropriation of property-owners.
Some of the poets tell the workers that the labourers not only produce
all the wealth, but are also all-powerful, and, if they wish to, they
can do what they like with the country.
Shall you complain who feed the world--
Who clothe the world, who house the world?
Shall you complain who are the world
Of what the world may do?
As from this hour you use your power,
The world must follow you.
As from this hour you use your power.
The world must follow you.[324]
Others remind them of their grievances, and urge them to drive the
rich man out of the country:
Think on the wrongs ye bear,
Think on the rags ye wear,
Think on the insults endured from your birth;
Toiling in snow and rain,
Bearing up heaps of gain,
All for the tyrants who grind ye to earth.
Your brains are as keen as the brains of your masters.
In swiftness and strength ye surpass them by far,
Ye've brave hearts that teach ye to laugh at disasters,
Ye vastly outnumber your tyrants in war.
Why, then, like cowards stand.
Using not brain or hand,
Thankful, like dogs, when they throw ye a bone?
What right have they to take
Things that ye toil to make?
Know ye not, boobies, that all is your own?[325]
Arise, unite each scattered band,
To sweep all masters from our land,
Then shall each mine and lo
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