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diff --git a/30538-8.txt b/30538-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6b49277 --- /dev/null +++ b/30538-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9175 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of New Worlds For Old, by Herbert George Wells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: New Worlds For Old + A Plain Account of Modern Socialism + +Author: Herbert George Wells + +Release Date: November 24, 2009 [EBook #30538] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEW WORLDS FOR OLD *** + + + + +Produced by Malcolm Farmer, Barbara Tozier and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +NEW WORLDS FOR OLD + +A PLAIN ACCOUNT OF MODERN SOCIALISM + + + + +_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ + +_SHORT STORIES_ + + The Plattner Story and others + Tales of Space and Time + The Stolen Bacillus and other Stories + Twelve Stories and a Dream + +_ROMANCES_ + + The Time Machine + The Island of Dr. Moreau + The War of the Worlds + The Wonderful Visit + The Invisible Man + The First Men in the Moon + The Food of the Gods + The Sea Lady + When the Sleeper Wakes + In the Days of the Comet + +_NOVELS_ + + Love and Mr. Lewisham + Kipps + +_SOCIOLOGICAL AND SOCIALIST ESSAYS_ + + Anticipations + Mankind in the Making + A Modern Utopia + The Future in America + + + + +NEW WORLDS FOR OLD + +A PLAIN ACCOUNT OF MODERN SOCIALISM + + +BY + + + +H. G. WELLS + + + +LONDON +CONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD. +1912 + + + + +_Published March 1908. +Popular Edition Revised +June 1909. Reprinted +July 1909, Sept. 1922_ + + + + +INTRODUCTORY REMARKS + + +"Undiluted Atheism, theft and immorality.... I know of no language +sufficiently potent to express fully my absolute detestation of what I +believe to be the most poisonous doctrine ever put forward, namely +Socialism." + + HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF RUTLAND. + + +"Let all parties then unite to defeat this insidious Socialism which +is threatening the country, and take immediate steps to expose and +bring it to light. The country may truly be said to be sleeping over a +veritable volcano which the next general election may precipitate, +unless steps are taken at once to bring this nightmare into the light +of day and force it out of its creeping nocturnal habits." + + MR. DUDLEY S. A. COSBY in the _Westminster Review_. + + +"Many people think that it is possible to conduct a victorious +campaign with the single watchword 'Down with Socialism.' Well, I am +not fond of mere negatives. I do not like fighting an abstract noun. +My objection to Anti-Socialism as a platform is that Socialism means +so many different things. On this point I agree with Mr. Asquith. I +will wait before I denounce Socialism till I see what form it takes... +Socialism is not necessarily synonymous with robbery. Correctly used, +the word only signifies a particular view of the proper relation of +the State to its citizens, a tendency to substitute public for private +ownership, or to restrict the freedom of individual enterprise in the +interests of the public. But there are some forms of property which we +all admit should be public and not private, and the freedom of +individual enterprise is already limited by a hundred laws. Socialism +and Individualism,--I am not fond of these abstract phrases. There are +opposing principles which enter in various proportions into the +constitution of every civilized society. It is merely a question of +degree. One community is more Socialistic than another. The same +community is more Socialistic at one time than at another. This +country is far more Socialistic than it was fifty years ago, and for +most of the changes in that direction the Unionist or Tory Party is +responsible." + + LORD MILNER. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + CHAP. + + I. THE GOOD WILL IN MAN + II. THE FUNDAMENTAL IDEA OF SOCIALISM + III. THE FIRST MAIN GENERALIZATION OF SOCIALISM + IV. THE SECOND MAIN GENERALIZATION OF SOCIALISM + V. THE SPIRIT OF GAIN AND THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE + VI. WOULD SOCIALISM DESTROY THE HOME? + VII. WOULD MODERN SOCIALISM ABOLISH ALL PROPERTY? + VIII. THE MIDDLE-CLASS MAN, THE BUSINESS MAN, AND SOCIALISM + IX. SOME COMMON OBJECTIONS TO SOCIALISM + X. SOCIALISM A DEVELOPING DOCTRINE + XI. REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALISM + XII. ADMINISTRATIVE SOCIALISM + XIII. CONSTRUCTIVE SOCIALISM + XIV. SOME ARGUMENTS _AD HOMINEM_ + XV. THE ADVANCEMENT OF SOCIALISM. + + + + +NEW WORLDS FOR OLD + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE GOOD WILL IN MAN + + +§ 1. + +The present writer has long been deeply interested in the Socialist +movement in Great Britain and America, and in all those complicated +issues one lumps together as "social questions." In the last few years +he has gone into it personally and studied the Socialist movement +closely and intimately at first hand; he has made the acquaintance of +many of its leaders upon both sides of the Atlantic, joined numerous +organizations, attended and held meetings, experimented in Socialist +politics. From these inquiries he has emerged with certain very +definite conclusions as to the trend and needs of social development, +and these he is now rendering in this book. He calls himself a +Socialist, but he is by no means a fanatical or uncritical adherent. +To him Socialism presents itself as a very noble but a very human and +fallible system of ideas and motives, a system that grows and +develops. He regards its spirit, its intimate substance as the most +hopeful thing in human affairs at the present time, but he does also +find it shares with all mundane concerns the qualities of inadequacy +and error. It suffers from the common penalty of noble propositions; +it is hampered by the insufficiency of its supporters and advocates, +and by the superficial tarnish that necessarily falls in our +atmosphere of greed and conflict darkest upon the brightest things. In +spite of these admissions of failure and unworthiness in himself and +those about him, he remains a Socialist. + +In discussing Socialism with very various sorts of people he has +necessarily had, time after time, to encounter and frame a reply to a +very simple seeming and a really very difficult question: "What is +Socialism?" It is almost like asking "What is Christianity?" or +demanding to be shown the atmosphere. It is not to be answered fully +by a formula or an epigram. Again and again the writer has been asked +for some book which would set out in untechnical language, frankly and +straightforwardly, what Socialism is and what it is not, and always he +has hesitated in his reply. Many good books there are upon this +subject, clear and well written, but none that seem to tell the whole +story as he knows it; no book that gives not only the outline but the +spirit, answers the main objections, clears up the chief ambiguities, +covers all the ground; no book that one can put into the hands of +inquiring youth and say: "There! that will tell you precisely the +broad facts you want to know." Some day, no doubt, such a book will +come. In the meanwhile he has ventured to put forth this temporary +substitute, his own account of the faith that is in him.[1] + + [1] As I pass these proofs I am reminded that Mr. J. R. + MacDonald has in the press _Socialism_ (Jacks, Edinburgh)--a + general account of the movement. From Mr. Kirkup's _An + Enquiry into Socialism_ and from _Fabian Essays_ (the Fabian + Society, London) a good idea of the general Socialist + position may also be obtained. + + +Socialism, then, as he understands it, is a great intellectual +process, a development of desires and ideas that takes the form of a +project--a project for the reshaping of human society upon new and +better lines. That in the ampler proposition is what Socialism claims +to be. This book seeks to expand and establish that proposition, and +to define the principles upon which the Socialist believes this +reconstruction of society should go. The particulars and justification +of this project and this claim, it will be the business of this book +to discuss just as plainly as the writer can. + + +§ 2. + +Now, because the Socialist seeks the reshaping of human society, it +does not follow that he denies it to be even now a very wonderful and +admirable spectacle. Nor does he deny that for many people life is +even now a very good thing.... + +For his own part, though the writer is neither a very strong nor a +very healthy nor a very successful person, though he finds much +unattainable and much to regret, yet life presents itself to him more +and more with every year as a spectacle of inexhaustible interest, of +unfolding and intensifying beauty, and as a splendid field for high +attempts and stimulating desires. Yet none the less is it a spectacle +shot strangely with pain, with mysterious insufficiencies and +cruelties, with pitfalls into anger and regret, with aspects +unaccountably sad. Its most exalted moments are most fraught for him +with the appeal for endeavour, with the urgency of unsatisfied wants. +These shadows and pains and instabilities do not, to his sense at +least, darken the whole prospect; it may be indeed that they intensify +its splendours to his perceptions; yet all these evil and ugly aspects +of life come to him with an effect of challenge, as something not to +be ignored but passionately disputed, as an imperative call for +whatever effort and courage lurks in his composition. Life and the +world are fine, but not as an abiding place; as an arena--yes, an +arena gorgeously curtained with sea and sky, mountains and broad +prospects, decorated with all the delicate magnificence of leaf +tracery and flower petal and feather, soft fur and the shining wonder +of living skin, musical with thunder and the singing of birds; but an +arena nevertheless, an arena which offers no seats for idle +spectators, in which one must will and do, decide, strike and strike +back--and presently pass away. + +And it needs but a cursory view of history to realize--though all +knowledge of history confirms the generalization--that this arena is +not a confused and aimless conflict of individuals. Looked at too +closely it may seem to be that--a formless web of individual hates and +loves; but detach oneself but a little, and the broader forms appear. +One perceives something that goes on, that is constantly working to +make order out of casualty, beauty out of confusion; justice, +kindliness, mercy out of cruelty and inconsiderate pressure. For our +present purpose it will be sufficient to speak of this force that +struggles and tends to make and do, as Good Will. More and more +evident is it, as one reviews the ages, that there is this as well as +lust, hunger, avarice, vanity and more or less intelligent fear to be +counted among the motives of mankind. This Good Will of our race, +however arising, however trivial, however subordinated to individual +ends, however comically inadequate a thing it may be in this +individual case or that, is in the aggregate an operating will. In +spite of all the confusions and thwartings of life, the halts and +resiliencies and the counter strokes of fate, it is manifest that in +the long run human life becomes broader than it was, gentler than it +was, finer and deeper. On the whole--and now-a-days almost +steadily--things _get better_. There is a secular amelioration of +life, and it is brought about by Good Will working through the efforts +of men. + +Now this proposition lies quite open to dispute. There are people who +will dispute it and make a very passable case. One may deny the +amelioration, or one may deny that it is the result of any Good Will +or of anything but quite mechanical forces. The former is the commoner +argument. The appeal is usually to what has been finest in the past, +and to all that is bad and base in the present. At once the unsoundest +and the most attractive argument is to be found in the deliberate +idealization of particular ages, the thirteenth century in England, +for example, or the age of the Antonines. The former is presented with +the brightness of a missal, the latter with all the dignity of a Roman +inscription. One is asked to compare these ages so delightfully +conceived, with a patent medicine vendor's advertisement or a +Lancashire factory town, quite ignoring the iniquity of mediĉval law +or the slums and hunger and cruelty of Imperial Rome. + +But quite apart from such unsound comparisons, it is, we may admit, +possible to make a very excellent case against our general assertion +of progress. One can instance a great number of things, big and +little, that have been better in past times than they are now; for +example, they dressed more sumptuously and delightfully in mediĉval +Venice and Florence than we do--all, that is, who could afford it; +they made quite unapproachably beautiful marble figures in Athens in +the time of Pericles; there is no comparison between the brickwork of +Verona in the twelfth century and that of London when Cannon Street +Station was erected; the art of cookery declined after the splendid +period of Roman history for more than a thousand years; the Gothic +architecture of France and England exceeds in nobility and quality and +aggregated beauty, every subsequent type of structure. This much, one +agrees, is true, and beyond disputing. The philosophical thought of +Athens again, to come to greater things, was at its climax, more free, +more finely expressed than that of any epoch since. And the English of +Elizabeth's time was, we are told by competent judges, a more gracious +and powerful instrument of speech than in the days of Queen Anne or of +Queen Victoria. + +So one might go on in regard to a vast number of things, petty and +large alike; the list would seem overwhelming until the countervailing +considerations came into play. But, as a matter of fact, there is +hardly an age or a race that does not show us something better done +than ever it was before or since, because at no time has human effort +ceased and absolutely failed. Isolated eminence is no proof of general +elevation. Always in this field or that, whether it was in the binding +of books or the enamelling of metal, the refinement of language or the +assertion of liberty, particular men have, by a sort of necessity, +grasped at occasion, "found themselves," as the saying goes, and done +the best that was in them. So always while man endures, whatever else +betide, one may feel assured at this or that special thing some men +will find a way to do and get to the crown of endeavour. Such +considerations of decline in particular things from the standard of +the past do not really affect the general assertion of a continuous +accumulating betterment in the lot of men, do not invalidate the hopes +of those who believe in the power of men to end for ever many of the +evils that now darken the world, who look to the reservoirs of human +possibility as a supply as yet scarcely touched, who make of all the +splendour and superiorities of the past no more than a bright promise +and suggestion for the unborn future our every act builds up, into +which, whether we care or no, all our achievements pour. + +Many evils have been overcome, much order and beauty and scope for +living has been evolved since man was a hairy savage holding scarcely +more than a brute's intercourse with his fellows; but even in the +comparatively short perspective of history, one can scarcely deny a +steady process of overcoming evil. One may sneer at contemporary +things; it is a fashion with that unhappily trained type of mind which +cannot appreciate without invidious comparison, so poor in praise that +it cannot admit worth without venting a compensatory envy; but of one +permanent result of progress surely every one is assured. In the +matter of thoughtless and instinctive cruelty--and that is a very +fundamental matter--mankind mends steadily. I wonder and doubt if in +the whole world at any time before this an aged, ill-clad woman, or a +palpable cripple could have moved among a crowd of low-class children +as free from combined or even isolated insult as such a one would be +to-day, if caught in the rush from a London Council school. Then, for +all our sins, I am sure the sense of justice is quicker and more +nearly universal than ever before. Certain grave social evils, too, +that once seemed innate in humanity, have gone, gone so effectually +that we cannot now imagine ourselves subjected to them; the cruelties +and insecurities of private war, the duel, overt slavery, for example, +have altogether ceased; and in all Western Europe and America chronic +local famines and great pestilences come no more. No doubt it is still +an unsatisfactory world that mars the roadside with tawdry +advertisements of drugs and food; but less than two centuries ago, +remember, the place of these boards was taken by gibbets and +crow-pecked, tattered corpses swinging in the wind, and the heads of +dead gentlemen (drawn and quartered, and their bowels burnt before +their eyes) rotted in the rain on Temple Bar. + +The world is now a better place for a common man than ever it was +before, the spectacle wider and richer and deeper, and more charged +with hope and promise. Think of the universal things it is so easy to +ignore; of the great and growing multitude, for example, of those who +may travel freely about the world, who may read freely, think freely, +speak freely! Think of the quite unprecedented numbers of well-ordered +homes and cared-for, wholesome, questioning children! And it is not +only that we have this increasing sea of mediocre well-being in which +the realities of the future are engendering, but in the matter of +sheer achievement I believe in my own time. It has been the cry of the +irresponsive man since criticism began, that his own generation +produced nothing; it is a cry that I hate and deny. When the dross has +been cleared away and comparison becomes possible, I am convinced it +will be admitted that in the aggregate, in philosophy and significant +literature, in architecture, painting and scientific research, in +engineering and industrial invention, in statecraft, humanity and +valiant deeds, the last thirty years of man's endeavours will bear +comparison with any other period of thirty years whatever in his +history. + +And this is the result of effort; things get better because men mean +them to get better and try to bring betterment about; this progress +goes on because man, in spite of evil temper, blundering and vanity, +in spite of indolence and base desire, does also respond to Good Will +and display Good Will. You may declare that all the good things in +life are the result of causes over which man has no control, that in +pursuit of an "enlightened self-interest" he makes things better +inadvertently. But think of any good thing you know! Was it thus it +came? + + +§ 3. + +And yet, let us not disguise it from ourselves, for all the progress +one can claim, life remains very evil; about the feet of all these +glories of our time lurk darknesses. + +Let me take but one group of facts that cry out to all of us--and will +not cry in vain. I mean the lives of little children that are going on +now--as the reader sits with this book in his hand. Think, for +instance, of the little children who have been pursued and tormented +and butchered in the Congo Free State during the last year or so, +hands and feet chopped off, little bodies torn and thrown aside that +rubber might be cheap, the tyres of our cars run smoothly, and that +detestable product of political expediency, the King of the Belgians, +have his pleasures. Think too of the fear and violence, the dirt and +stress of the lives of the children who grow up amidst the lawless +internal strife of the Russian political chaos. Think of the emigrant +ships even now rolling upon the high seas, their dark, evil-smelling +holds crammed with humanity, and the huddled sick children in +them--fleeing from certain to uncertain wretchedness. Think of the +dreadful tale of childish misery and suffering that goes on wherever +there are not sane factory laws; how even in so civilized a part of +the world as the United States of America (as Spargo's _Bitter Cry of +the Children_ tells in detail) thousands of little white children of +six and seven, ill fed and often cruelly handled, toil without hope. + +And in all agricultural lands too, where there is no sense of +education, think of the children dragging weary feet from the filthy +hovels that still house peasants the whole world over, to work in the +mire and the pitiless winds, scaring birds, bending down to plant and +weed. Even in London again, think just a little of the real +significance of some facts I have happened upon in the Report of the +Education Committee of the London County Council for the year 1905. + +The headmaster of one casually selected school makes a special return +upon the quality of the clothing of his 405 children. He tells of 7.4 +per cent. of his boys whose clothing was "the scantiest +possible--_e.g._ one ragged coat buttoned up and practically nothing +found beneath it; and boots either absent or represented by a mass of +rags tied upon the feet"; of 34.8 per cent. whose "clothing was +insufficient to retain animal heat and needed urgent remedy"; of 45.9 +per cent, whose clothing was "poor but passable; an old and perhaps +ragged suit, with some attempt at proper underclothing--usually of +flannelette"; thus leaving only 12.8 per cent. who could, in the +broadest sense, be termed "well clad." + +Taking want of personal cleanliness as the next indication of neglect +at home, 11 per cent. of the boys are reported as "very dirty and +verminous"; 34.7 per cent. whose "clothes and body were dirty but not +verminous"; 42.5 per cent, were "passably clean, for boys," and only +"12 per cent. clean above the average." + +Eleven per cent. verminous; think what it means! Think what the homes +must be like from which these poor little wretches come! Better, +perhaps, than the country cottage where the cesspool drains into the +water supply and the hen-house vermin invades the home, but surely +intolerable beside our comforts! Give but a moment again to the +significance of the figures I have italicized in the table that +follows, a summarized return for the year 1906 of the "Ringworm" +Nurses who visit the London Elementary Schools and inspect the +children for various forms of dirt disease. + + ---------------------------------------------------------------- + | | Number of | | | | + | Departments. | children | Clean. | Partially | Verminous. | + | | examined. | | cleansed. | | + |--------------|-----------|-----------------------------------| + | Boys . | 34,345 | 32,726 | 847 | 1,139 | + | Girls . | 36,445 | 22,476 | 4,426 | 12,003 | + | Infants . | 42,140 | 6,675 | 2,661 | _29,675_ | + | Mixed . | 5,855 | 4,886 | 298 | 897 | + | Special . | 977 | 624 | 133 | 296 | + |--------------|-----------|----------|-----------|------------| + | Total . | 119,762 | 67,387 | 8,365 | 44,010 | + ---------------------------------------------------------------- + +Does not this speak of dirt and disorder we cannot suffer to continue, +of women ill trained for motherhood and worked beyond care for +cleanliness, of a vast amount of preventable suffering? And these +figures of filth and bad clothing are paralleled by others at least +equally impressive, displaying emaciation, under-nutrition, anĉmia and +every other painful and wretched consequence of neglect and +insufficiency. These underfed, under-clothed, undersized children are +also the backward children; they grow up through a darkened, joyless +childhood into a grey, perplexing, hopeless world that beats them down +at last, after servility, after toil, after crime it may be and +despair, to death. + +And while you grasp the offence of these facts, do not be carried away +into supposing that this age is therefore unprecedentedly evil. Such +dirt, toil, cruelty have always been, have been in larger measure. +Don't idealize the primitive cave, the British hut, the peasant's +cottage, damp and windowless, the filth-strewn, plague-stricken, +mediĉval town. In spite of all these crushed, mangled, starved, +neglected little ones about the feet of this fine time, in spite of a +thousand other disorders and miseries almost as cruel, the fact +remains that this age has not only more but a larger percentage of +healthy, happy, kindly-treated children than any age since the world +began; that to look back into the domestic history of other times is +to see greater squalor and more suffering. + +Why! read the tombstones and monuments in any old English church, +those, I mean, that date from earlier than 1800, and you will see the +history of every family, of even the prosperous county families, +_laced_ with the deaths of infants and children. Nearly half of them +died. Think, too, how stern was the upbringing. And always before +these days it seemed natural to make all but the children of the very +wealthy and very refined, fear and work from their earliest years. +There comes to us too, from these days, beautiful furniture, fine +literature, paintings; but there comes too, much evidence of harsh +whippings, dark imprisonments and hardly a children's book, hardly the +broken vestige of a toy. Bad as things are, they are better--rest +assured--and yet they are still urgently bad. The greater evil of the +past is no reason for contentment with the present. But it is an +earnest for hoping that our efforts, and that Good Will of which they +are a part and outcome, may still go on bearing fruit in perpetually +dwindling misery. + + +§ 4. + +It seems to me that the whole spirit and quality of both the evil and +the good of our time, and of the attitude not simply of the Socialist +but of every sane reformer towards these questions, was summarized in +a walk I had a little while ago with a friend along the Thames +Embankment, from Blackfriars Bridge to Westminster. We had dined +together and we went there because we thought that with a fitful moon +and clouds adrift, on a night when the air was a crystal air that +gladdened and brightened, that crescent of great buildings and steely, +soft-hurrying water must needs be altogether beautiful. And indeed it +was beautiful; the mysteries and mounting masses of the buildings to +the right of us, the blurs of this coloured light or that, blue-white, +green-white, amber or warmer orange, the rich black archings of +Waterloo Bridge, the rippled lights upon the silent-flowing river, the +lattice of girders and the shifting trains of Charing Cross +Bridge--their funnels pouring a sort of hot-edged moonlight by way of +smoke--and then the sweeping line of lamps, the accelerated run and +diminuendo of the Embankment lamps as one came into sight of +Westminster. The big hotels were very fine, huge swelling shapes of +dun dark-grey and brown, huge shapes seamed and bursting and +fenestrated with illumination, tattered at a thousand windows with +light and the indistinct, glowing suggestions of feasting and +pleasure. And dim and faint above it all and very remote was the +moon's dead wan face veiled and then displayed. + +But we were dashed by an unanticipated refrain to this succession of +magnificent things, and we did not cry, as we had meant to cry, how +good it was to be alive! We found something else, something we had +forgotten. + +Along the Embankment, you see, there are iron seats at regular +intervals, seats you cannot lie upon because iron arm-rests prevent +that, and each seat, one saw by the lamplight, was filled with +crouching and drooping figures. Not a vacant place remained, not one +vacant place. These were the homeless, and they had come to sleep +here. Now one noted a poor old woman with a shameful battered straw +hat awry over her drowsing face, now a young clerk staring before him +at despair; now a filthy tramp, and now a bearded, frock-coated, +collarless respectability; I remember particularly one ghastly long +white neck and white face that lopped backward, choked in some +nightmare, awakened, clutched with a bony hand at the bony throat, and +sat up and stared angrily as we passed. The wind had a keen edge that +night even for us who had dined and were well clad. One crumpled +figure coughed and went on coughing--damnably. + +"It's fine," said I, trying to keep hold of the effects to which this +line of poor wretches was but the selvage; "it's fine! But I can't +stand _this_." + +"It changes all that we expected," admitted my friend, after a +silence. + +"Must we go on--past them all?" + +"Yes. I think we ought to do that. It's a lesson, perhaps--for trying +to get too much beauty out of life as it is--and forgetting. Don't +shirk it!" + +"Great God!" cried I. "But must life always be like this? I could +die--indeed, I would willingly jump into this cold and muddy river +now, if by so doing I could stick a stiff dead hand through all these +things--into the future; a dead commanding hand insisting with a +silent irresistible gesture that this waste and failure of life should +cease, and cease for ever." + +"But it does cease! Each year its proportion is a little less." + +I walked in silence, and my companion talked by my side. + +"We go on. Here is a good thing done, and there is a good thing done. +The Good Will in man----" + +"Not fast enough. It goes so slowly--and in a little while we too must +die----" + +"It can be done," said my companion. + +"It could be avoided," said I. + +"It shall be in the days to come. There is food enough for all, +shelter for all, wealth enough for all. Men need only know it and will +it. And yet we have this!" + +"And so much like this!" said I.... + +So we talked and were tormented. + +And I remember how later we found ourselves on Westminster Bridge, +looking back upon the long sweep of wrinkled black water that +reflected lights and palaces and the flitting glow of steamboats, and +by that time we had talked ourselves past our despair. We perceived +that what was splendid remained splendid, that what was mysterious +remained insoluble for all our pain and impatience. But it was clear +to us the thing for us two to go upon was not the good of the present +nor the evil, but the effort and the dream of the finer order, the +fuller life, the banishment of suffering, to come. + +"We want all the beauty that is here," said my friend, "and more also. +And none of these distresses. We are here--we know not whence nor +why--to want that and to struggle to get it, you and I and ten +thousand others, thinly hidden from us by these luminous darknesses. +We work, we pass--whither I know not, but out of our knowing. But we +work--we are spurred to work. That yonder--those people are the +spur--for us who cannot answer to any finer appeal. Each in our +measure must do. And our reward? Our reward is our faith. Here is my +creed to-night. I believe--out of me and the Good Will in me and my +kind there comes a regenerate world--cleansed of suffering and sorrow. +That is our purpose here--to forward that. It gives us work for all +our lives. Why should we ask to know more? Our errors--our +sins--to-night they seem to matter very little. If we stumble and roll +in the mud, if we blunder against each other and hurt one another----" + +"We have to go on," said my friend, after a pause. + +We stood for a time in silence. + +One's own personal problems came and went like a ripple on the water. +Even that whisky dealer's advertisement upon the southern bank became +through some fantastic transformation a promise, an enigmatical +promise flashed up the river reach in letters of fire. London was +indeed very beautiful that night. Without hope she would have seemed +not only as beautiful but as terrible as a black panther crouching on +her prey. Our hope redeemed her. Beyond her dark and meretricious +splendours, beyond her throned presence jewelled with links and points +and cressets of fire, crowned with stars, robed in the night, hiding +cruelties, I caught a moment's vision of the coming City of Mankind, +of a city more wonderful than all my dreaming, full of life, full of +youth, full of the spirit of creation.... + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE FUNDAMENTAL IDEA OF SOCIALISM + + +The fundamental idea upon which Socialism rests is the same +fundamental idea as that upon which all real scientific work is +carried on. It is the denial that chance impulse and individual will +and happening constitute the only possible methods by which things may +be done in the world. It is an assertion that things are in their +nature orderly, that things may be computed, may be calculated upon +and foreseen. In the spirit of this belief Science aims at a +systematic knowledge of material things. "Knowledge is power," +knowledge that is frankly and truly exchanged--that is the primary +assumption of the _New Atlantis_ which created the Royal Society and +the organization of research. The Socialist has just that same faith +in the order, the knowableness of things and the power of men in +co-operation to overcome chance; but to him, dealing as he does with +the social affairs of men, it takes the form not of schemes for +collective research but for collective action and the creation of a +comprehensive design for all the social activities of man. While +Science gathers knowledge, Socialism in an entirely harmonious spirit +criticizes and develops a general plan of social life. Each seeks to +replace disorder by order. + +Each of these systems of ideas has, of course, its limits; we know in +matters of material science that no calculated quantity is ever exact, +no outline without a fogging at the edge, no angle without a curve at +the apex; and in social affairs also, there must needs always be +individuality and the unexpected and incalculable. But these things do +not vitiate the case for a general order, any more than the different +sizes and widths and needs of the human beings who travel prevent our +having our railway carriages and seats and doors of a generally +convenient size, nor our sending everybody over the same gauge of +rail. + +Now Science has not only this in common with Socialism that it has +grown out of men's courageous confidence in the superiority of order +to muddle, but these two great processes of human thought are further +in sympathy in the demand they make upon men to become less +egotistical and isolated. The main difference of modern scientific +research from that of the middle ages, the secret of its immense +successes, lies in its collective character, in the fact that every +fruitful experiment is published, every new discovery of relationships +explained. In a sense scientific research is a triumph over natural +instinct, over that mean instinct that makes men secretive, that makes +a man keep knowledge to himself and use it slyly to his own advantage. +The training of a scientific man is a training in what an illiterate +lout would despise as a weakness; it is a training in blabbing, in +blurting things out, in telling just as plainly as possible and as +soon as possible what it is he has found. To "keep shut" and +bright-eyed and to score advantages, that is the wisdom of the common +stuff of humanity still. To science it is a crime. The noble practice +of that noble profession medicine, for example, is to condemn as a +quack and a rascal every man who uses secret remedies. And it is one +of the most encouraging things for all who speculate upon human +possibility to consider the multitude of men in the last three +centuries who have been content to live laborious, unprofitable, and +for the most part quite undistinguished lives in the service of +knowledge that has transformed the world. Some names indeed stand out +by virtue of gigantic or significant achievement, such names as Bacon, +Newton, Volta, Darwin, Faraday, Joule; but these are but the +culminating peaks of a nearly limitless Oberland of devoted toiling +men, men one could list by the thousand. The rest have had the +smallest meed of fame, small reward, much toil, much abandonment, of +pleasure for their lot. One thing ennobles them all in common--their +conquest over the meanness of concealment, their systematic +application of energy to other than personal ends! + +And that, too, Socialism pre-eminently demands. It applies to social +and economic relationships the same high rule of frankness and +veracity, the same subordination of purely personal considerations to +a common end that Science demands in the field of thought and +knowledge. Just as Science aims at a common organized body of +knowledge to which all its servants contribute and in which they +share, so Socialism insists upon its ideal of an organized social +order which every man serves and by which every man benefits. Their +common enemy is the secret-thinking, self-seeking man. Secrecy, +subterfuge and the private gain; these are the enemies of Socialism +and the adversaries of Science. At times, I will admit, both Socialist +and scientific man forget this essential sympathy. You will find +specialized scientific investigators who do not realize they are, in +effect, Socialists, and Socialists so dull to the quality of their own +professions, that they gird against Science, and are secretive in +policy. But such purblind servants of the light cannot alter the +essential correlation of the two systems of ideas. + +Now the Socialist, inspired by this conception of a possible frank and +comprehensive social order to which mean and narrow ends must be +sacrificed, attacks and criticizes the existing order of things at a +great number of points and in a great variety of phraseology. At all +points, however, you will find upon analysis that his criticism +amounts to a declaration that there is wanting a sufficiency of +CONSTRUCTIVE DESIGN. That in the last resort is what he always comes +to. + +He wants a complete organization for all those human affairs that are +of collective importance. He says, to take instances almost haphazard, +that our ways of manufacturing a great multitude of necessary things, +of getting and distributing food, of conducting all sorts of business, +of begetting and rearing children, of permitting diseases to engender +and spread are chaotic and undisciplined, so badly done that here is +enormous hardship, and there enormous waste, here excess and +degeneration, and there privation and death. He declares that for +these collective purposes, in the satisfaction of these universal +needs, mankind presents the appearance and follows the methods of a +mob when it ought to follow the method of an army. In place of +disorderly individual effort, each man doing what he pleases, the +Socialist wants organized effort and a plan. And while the scientific +man seeks to make an orderly map of the half-explored wilderness of +fact, the Socialist seeks to make an orderly plan for the +half-conceived wilderness of human effort. + +That and no other is the essential Socialist idea. + +But do not let this image mislead you. When the Socialist speaks of a +plan, he knows clearly that it is impossible to make a plan as an +architect makes a plan, because while the architect deals with dead +stone and timber, the statesman and Socialist deal with living and +striving things. But he seeks to make a plan as one designs and lays +out a garden, so that sweet and seemly things may grow, wide and +beautiful vistas open and weeds and foulness disappear. Always a +garden plan develops and renews itself and discovers new +possibilities, but what makes all its graciousness and beauty possible +is the scheme and the persistent intention, the watching and the +waiting, the digging and burning, the weeder clips and the hoe. That +is the sort of plan, a living plan for things that live and grow, that +the Socialist seeks for social and national life. + +To make all this distincter I will show the planlessness of certain +contemporary things, of two main sets of human interests in fact, and +explain what inferences a Socialist draws in these matters. You will +then see exactly what is meant when we deny that this present state of +affairs has any constructive plan, and you will appreciate in the most +generalized form the nature of the constructive plan which Socialists +are making and offering the world. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE FIRST MAIN GENERALIZATION OF SOCIALISM + + +§ 1. + +The first--the chief aspect of social life in relation to which the +Socialist finds the world now planless and drifting, and for which he +earnestly propounds the scheme of a better order, is that whole side +of existence which is turned towards children, their begetting and +upbringing, their care and education. Perpetually the world begins +anew, perpetually death wipes out failure, disease, unteachableness +and all that has served life and accomplished itself; and to many +Socialists, if not to all, this is the supreme fact in the social +scheme. The whole measure of progress in a generation is the measure +in which the children improve in physical and mental quality, in +social co-ordination, in opportunity, upon their parents. Nothing else +matters in the way of success if in that way the Good Will fails. + +Let us now consider how such matters stand in our world at the present +time, and let us examine them in the light of the Socialist spirit. I +have already quoted certain facts from the London Education +Committee's Report, by which you have seen that by taking a school +haphazard--dipping a ladle, as it were, into the welter of the London +population--we find more than eighty in the hundred of the London +children insufficiently clad, more than half unwholesomely +dirty--eleven per cent. verminous--and more than half the infants +infested with vermin! The nutrition of these children is equally bad. +The same report shows clearly that differences in clothing and +cleanliness are paralleled with differences in nutrition that are +equally striking. + + "The 30 boys of the lowest class showed considerable failure + to reach the average weight for their age of the school; the + average shortage per boy for his age being as much as .7 + kilogram. The effect upon weight was more striking than upon + height, as the average failure in height was one centimetre. + The 141 boys of the next class worked out at exactly the + average. The 49 well-clad boys showed an average excess per + age-weight of .54 kilogram and age-height of 1.8 centimetres." + +And who can doubt the amount of mental and moral dwarfing that is +going on side by side with this physical shortage? + +Now, it may be argued that this is not a fair sample of our general +population, that these facts have been culled from a special section +of the population, that here we are dealing with the congestion of +London slums and altogether exceptional conditions. This is not so. +The school examined was not from a specially bad district. And it +happens that the entire working-class population of one typical +English town, York, has been exhaustively studied by Mr. B. S. +Rowntree, and here are some facts from his result that quite confirm +the impression given by the London figures. + + "It was quite impossible to make a thorough examination of the + physical condition of all the children, but as they came up to + be weighed and measured, they were classified under the four + headings, 'Very Good,' 'Good,' 'Fair,' or 'Bad,' by an + investigator whose training and previous experience in similar + work enabled her to make a reliable, even if rough, + classification.... + + "'Bad' implies that the child bore physical traces of + underfeeding and neglect. + + "The numbers classified under the various heads were as + follows:-- + + BOYS. + ------------------------------------------------------------------------ + | Very Good, | Good, | Fair, | Bad, + | per cent. | per cent. | per cent. | per cent. + ------------------------------------------------------------------------ + Section 1 (poorest) | 2.8 | 14.6 | 31. | 51.6 + Section 2 (middle) | 7.4 | 20.1 | 53.7 | 18.8 + Section 3 (highest) | 27.4 | 33.8 | 27.4 | 11.4 + + GIRLS. + + Section 1 (poorest) | 2.1 | 14.6 | 31. | 52.3 + Section 2 (middle) | 7.5 | 21.2 | 50.4 | 20.9 + Section 3 (highest) | 27.2 | 38. | 23.1 | 11.7 + ------------------------------------------------------------------------ + + "It will be seen that the proportion of children classed as + 'very good' in Section 3 is about ten times as large as in the + poorest section, and that _more than half of the children in + the poorest section are classed as 'bad.'_ + + "These 'bad' children presented a pathetic spectacle, all bore + some mark of the hard conditions against which they were + struggling. Puny and feeble bodies, dirty and often sadly + insufficient clothing, sore eyes, in many cases acutely + inflamed through continued want of attention, filthy heads, + cases of hip disease, swollen glands--all these and other + signs told the same tale of privation and neglect. It will be + noticed that the condition of the children in Section 2 + (middle-class labour) comes about half-way between Sections 1 + and 3. In considering the above table it must of course be + remembered that there was no absolute standard by which each + child could be judged, but the broad comparison between the + different classes is unimpeachable. The table affords further + evidence of serious physical deterioration amongst the poorest + section of the community." + +And if York and London will not satisfy, let the reader take +Edinburgh, whose Charity Organization Society has produced an +admirable but infinitely distressing report of the physical conditions +of the school children there. It gives a summary account of the homes +of fourteen hundred children in one of the Edinburgh Elementary +Schools, selected because it represented a fair mixture of prosperous +and unprosperous people. I take the first ten entries of this list +just as they come, representing thirty-eight children, and they are a +fair sample of the whole list. No amount of writing could make these +little thumbnail sketches of the reality of domestic life among our +population to-day more impressive than they are, thus barrenly given. + + "1. A bad home. Woman twice married; second husband deserted + her six or seven years ago and she now keeps a bad house in + which much drinking and rioting goes on. Daughter on stage + sends 10/- a week, son is out of work. A son is in an + institution. All as filthy as is the house. The food is + irregular. Two children have had free dinners from school this + and last winter, clothes were also given for one each time. + The boy attends regularly. The woman is a hard drinker, and + gets money in undesirable ways. The eldest child has glands, + neck; hair not good but clean; fleabitten. The second child, + adenoids and tonsils. Housing: five in one room. Evidence from + Police, School Charity, Headmistress, School Officers and + Doctors. + + "2. The drinking capacity of this family cannot be too much + emphasized. The parents can't agree, and live apart, the man + allowing 7/6 a week when girl is with mother, and 5/- when she + comes to him. She is verminous and very badly kept. Mother + can't get charing, as she lives in so bad a neighbourhood, so + means to move; at present she keeps other women's babies at + 6_d._ a day each. Elder boy out of work, a tidy lad, reads in + Free Library. One child has died. Housing: three in one room. + House not so very untidy. Evidence from Police, Church and + Officer. + + "3. A miserable family and in very wretched circumstances. + Father deserts home at intervals, but last time seemed 'sent + back by providence,' as the works in the town he was in were + burnt down. Children starving in his absence; one had + pneumonia, and died since of the effects. The eldest child has + adenoids; the second, urticaria; lice, bad; clothes full of + pediculi. Housing: six in two rooms. Mother hard-working, does + her best, but has chronic bronchitis; does not keep house over + tidy. The two elder boys are very idle, tiresome fellows, and + worry the father a great deal. They improved and found work + during the year following the visit, in which time the father + got into decent work in the City. The S. P. C. C. branch had + to interfere on behalf of small children. Three dead since + marriage, when parents were at ages 23 and 20. Food good when + there is any. School gave free dinners and clothes to two. + Evidence from Police, S. P. C. C. branch, School Charity, + Parish Sister, Employer, Headmistress, School Officer and + Doctors. + + "4. The father a complete wreck through intemperate and fast + living; speculation first brought him down. Was later moved to + hospital, where he died. Had worked on railway a little time. + Mother hard-working, works out, home untidy owing to her being + out so much. She pays rent regularly, and does her best. An + elder boy groom, fed and clad by his master, sends home what + he can. Eldest boy does odd jobs, but seems a wastrel. Parish + gave 7/6 after father ill, and feeds four children now. Winter + of visit school dined five free daily, and clothed three, and + previous winter three had free dinners and two had clothes. A + school-boy earns. The twins are delicate. There are two + lodgers. The eldest child very dirty; the second, glands; the + third, knock-kneed, pigeon chest; very feeble, enlarged + radices. Three children have died. Housing: nine in three + rooms. Evidence from Police, Poor Law Officer, Parish Sister, + School Charity, Army Charity, Children's Employment, School + Officer, Factor, Pawnbroker and Doctors. + + "5. The mother, a nice, clean, tidy woman, doing pretty well + by the children. They kept a little shop for a time, and she + used to do a day's charing now and then, but has too many + babies now. Parents married at 21 and 18 respectively; two + children dead and another expected. He reads papers a good + deal, gets them out of trains. This is his first spell of + regular work. Two boys sell papers, and a Mission gives cheap + meal. Food none too plentiful. One child gets free dinners. + The eldest child has glands; impetigo; thin and badly + nourished. The second, glands, hair lice and nits bad. The + third, boils on neck, glands, thin. The fourth, glands. + Housing: eight in two rooms. They are in two thrift societies. + Evidence from School-master, Police, Parish Sister, Club, Army + Charity, Charity School, Pawnbroker and Doctors. + + "6. Father works in a shop in daytime, and in a public-house + at night. Rather soft; but wife industrious and energetic and + does her best. Children well fed and regular at school. Two + children have enlarged tonsils. They get no help, and belong + to two thrift societies. One of six children dead in ten years + of married life. Housing: seven in two rooms. Evidence from + Police, Doctors, Society, Church, Mission, Club, Headmistress, + Charity School and Pawnbrokers. + + "7. A family where parents are much given to drink; father + invalided and being helped by a Sick Society, 3/- a week, and + Parish 5/- a week. Housing: five in two rooms. They are in a + burying club. Children fleabitten. Two have died. Food is + rather scanty. Wife _very_ quarrelsome and drunken. The boys + play truant often. Two were given free food and clothes two + winters ago, and this winter one has free dinners and clothes + given. A Mission has given cheap clothes. Evidence from + School-master, Police, Poor Law Officer, C.O.S. branch, + Church, School Charity, Sick Society, Children's Employment, + Factor, School Officer, Charity School, Pawnbroker and + Doctors. + + "8. Fairly decent family; mother washes out, and man has very + early work. He drinks, and his employment is somewhat + irregular. A son in the country on a farm, and two dead. They + were married at 21 and 18. The food is erratic, the children + getting 'pieces' at dinner-time, or free school dinners; or + when mother comes home, soup with her. The children are rather + neglected, and the police give the parents an indifferent + character. The eldest child has Eustacian catarrh and + nasopharyngitis; glands. The second, enlarged uvula. Housing: + four in two very small rooms. Evidence from School-master, + Police, Parish Sister, Church, Factor and Doctors. + + "9. Father an old soldier without a pension, who reads novels. + All the small children were found eating a large meal of ham + and eggs and strong tea after 8 p.m., he in bed at the time. + They have lapsed from thrift society membership. They are + extremely filthy and the man drinks. A Mission sells them meal + cheap. Wife 18 at marriage and one child died. They feed + pretty largely but unhealthily, and eat 'pieces' at + lunch-time. At time of visit, though very dirty, they were + tidier than ever found before. The eldest child has chronic + suppuration and large perforation of ear. Housing: five in two + rooms. Evidence from Police, Parish Sister, Factor, Soldiers' + Society, Charity School and Doctors. + + "10. The man a carter, who drank to a certain extent, and died + some months after visit, when a Charity gave her help. She had + an illegitimate child and two others. He was careless, and + both neglected church-going. No medical evidence. Housing: + five in two rooms. Evidence from Police, two Churches, Parish + Sister, Employer and Charity School." + + +§ 2. + +Now to the Socialist, as to any one who has caught any tinge of the +modern scientific spirit, these facts present themselves simply as an +atrocious failure of statesmanship. Indeed, a social system in which +the mass of the population is growing up under these conditions, he +scarcely recognizes as a State, rather it seems to him a mere +preliminary higgledy-piggledy aggregation of human beings, out of +which a State has to be made. It seems to him that this wretched +confusion of affairs which repeats itself throughout the country +wherever population has gathered, must be due to more than individual +inadequacy; it must be due to some general and essential failure, some +unsoundness in the broad principles upon which the whole organization +is conducted. + +What is this general principle of failure beneath all these particular +cases? + +In any given instance this or that reason for the failure of a child +may be given. In one case it may be the father or mother drinks, in +another that the child is an orphan, neglected by aunt or stepmother, +in another that the mother is an invalid or a sweated worker too +overwrought to do much for him, or, though a good-hearted soul, she is +careless and dirty or ignorant, or that she is immoral and reckless, +and so on and so on. Our haphazard sample of ten Scotch cases gives +instances of nearly all these alternatives. And from these proximate +causes one might work back to more general ones, to the necessity of +controlling the drink traffic, of abolishing sweating, of shortening +women's hours of labour, of suppressing vice. But for the present +argument it is not necessary to follow up these special causes. We can +make a wider generalization. For our present analysis it is sufficient +to say that one more general maladjustment covers every case of +neglected or ill-brought-up children in the world, and that is this, +that with or without a decent excuse, the parent has not been equal to +the task of rearing a civilized citizen. We have demanded too much +from the parent, materially and morally, and the ten cases we have +quoted are just ten out of ten millions of the replies to that demand. +Of fifty-two children born, fourteen are dead; and of the remainder we +can hardly regard more than thirteen as being tolerably reared. + +Is it not obvious then that, unless we are content that things should +remain as they are, we must put the relations of parent to child on +some securer and more wholesome footing than they are at the present +time? We demand too much from the parent, and this being recognized, +clearly there are only two courses open to us. The first is to relieve +the parents by lowering the standard of our demand; the second is to +relieve them by supplementing their efforts. + +The first course, the Socialist holds, is not only cruel and unjust to +the innocent child, but an entirely barbaric and retrogressive thing +to do. It is a frank abandonment of all ideas of progress and world +betterment. He puts it aside, therefore, and turns to the alternative. +In doing that he comes at once into harmony with all the developmental +tendencies of the last hundred years. For a hundred years there has +been going on a process of supplementing and controlling parental +effort. + +A hundred years or so ago, the parent was the supreme authority in a +child's destiny--short only of direct murder. Parents were held +responsible for their children's rearing to God alone; should they +fail, individual good-hearted people might, if they thought proper, +step in, give food, give help--provided the parents consented, that +is, but it was not admitted that the community as a whole was +concerned in the matter. Parents (and guardians in the absence of +parents) were allowed to starve their children, leave them naked, prey +upon their children by making them work in factories or as +chimney-sweeps and the like; the law was silent, the State acquiesced. +Good-hearted parents, on the other hand, who were unsuccessful in the +world's affairs, had the torment of seeing their children go short of +food and garments, grow up ignorant and feeble, their only hope of +help the chancy kindliness of their more prosperous neighbours and the +ill-organized charities left by the benevolent dead. + +Through all the nineteenth century the irresistible logic of necessity +has been forcing people out of the belief in that state of affairs, +has been making them see the impossibility of leaving things so +absolutely to parental discretion and conscience, has been forcing +them towards a constructive and organizing, that is to say towards a +Socialist attitude. Essentially the Socialist attitude is this, an +insistence that parentage can no longer be regarded as an isolated +private matter; that the welfare of the children is of universal +importance, and must, therefore, be finally a matter of collective +concern. The State, which a hundred years ago was utterly careless of +children, is now every year becoming more and more their Guardian, +their Over-Parent. + +To-day the power of the parents is limited in ways that would have +seemed incredible a hundred years ago. In the first place they must no +longer unrestrictedly use their very young children to earn money for +them in toil and suffering. A great mass of labour legislation forbids +them. In the next place their right to inflict punishment or to hurt +wantonly has been limited in many ways. The private enterprises of +charitable organizations for the prevention of cruelty and neglect has +led to a growing system of law in this direction also. Nor may a +parent now prevent a child getting some rudiments of an education. + +Between the parent and Heaven now, in addition to the more or less +legalized voluntary interference of well-disposed private people, +there do appear certain rare functionaries who--while they interfere +not at all between good and competent parents and their children, do, +in certain instances, save a parental default from its complete +fruition. There are the school attendance officer and the sanitary +inspector. Then there are--in the London County Council area--the +"Ringworm" nurses, who examine the children systematically and by +means of certain white and red cards of remonstrance and warning +intimidate the parent into good behaviour or pave the way for a +prosecution. Everywhere there is the factory inspector--and in certain +cases the police. All these functionaries and "accessory consciences" +have been thrust in between the supremacy of the parent and the child +within the century. + +So much the Socialist regards as all to the good, as all in the +direction of that great constructive plan of organized human welfare +at which he aims. And they all amount to a destruction, so much with +this and so much with that, of the independence of the family, an +invasion of the old moral isolation of parent and child. + +But while a number of people (who haven't read the Edinburgh Charity +Organization Society's Report) are content to regard these +interventions as "going far enough," the Socialist considers these +things as only the beginning of the organization of the welfare of the +nation's children. You will notice that all these laws and regulations +at which we have glanced are in the nature of prohibitions or +compulsions; few have any element of aid. By virtue of them we have +diminished the power of the inferior sort of parents to do evil by +their child, but we have done little or nothing to increase and +stimulate their powers to do good. We may prevent them doing some +sorts of evil things to the child; they may not give it poisonous +things, or let it live in morally or physically contagious places, but +we do not insure that they shall give it wholesome things--better than +they had themselves. We must, if our work is ever to reach effectual +fruition, go on to the logical completion of that process of +supplementing the parent that the nineteenth century began. + +Consider, for instance, the circumstances of parentage among the large +section of the working classes whose girls and women engage in factory +labour. In many cases the earnings of the woman are vitally necessary +to the solvency of the family budget, the father's wages do not nearly +cover the common expenditure. In some cases the women are unmarried, +or the man is an invalid or out of work. Consider such a woman on the +verge of motherhood. Either she must work in a factory right up to the +birth of her child--and so damage its health through her strain and +fatigue,[2] or she must give up her work, lose money and go short of +food and necessities and _so_ damage the coming citizen. Moreover, +after the child is born, either she must feed it artificially and +return to work (and prosperity) soon, with a very great risk indeed +that the child will die, or she must stay at home to nourish and tend +it--until her landlord sells her furniture and turns her out! + + [2] The facts of the case are put very clearly, and quite + invincibly, by Miss Margaret Macmillan in _Infant + Mortality_. See also _The Babies' Tribute to the Modern + Moloch_, by F. Victor Fisher. (Twentieth Century Press, + 1_d._) These are small polemical tracts. The case is treated + fully, authoritatively and without bias in _Infant + Mortality_ by Dr. G. Newman. + +Now it does not need that you should be a Socialist to see how cruel +and ridiculous it is to have mothers in such a dilemma. But while +people who are not Socialists have no remedy to suggest, or only +immediate and partial remedies, such, for example, as the forbidding +of factory work to women who are about to be or have recently been +mothers--an expedient which is bound to produce a plentiful crop of +"concealment of birth" and infanticide convictions--the Socialist does +proffer a general principle to guide the community in dealing not only +with this particular hardship, but with all the kindred hardships +which form a system with it. He declares that we are here in the +presence of an unsound and harmful way of regarding parentage; that we +treat it as a _private affair_, that we are still disposed to assume +that people's children are almost as much their private concern as +their cats, and as little entitled to public protection and +assistance. The right view, he maintains, is altogether opposed to +this; parentage is a public service and a public duty; a good mother +is the most precious type of common individual a community can have, +and to let a woman on the one hand earn a living as we do, by sewing +tennis-balls or making cardboard boxes or calico, and on the other, +not simply not to pay her, but to impoverish her because she bears and +makes sacrifices to rear children, is the most irrational aspect of +all the evolved and chancy ideas and institutions that make up the +modern State. It is as if we believed our civilization existed to make +cheap cotton and tennis-balls instead of fine human lives. + +The Socialist takes all that the nineteenth century has done in +remedial legislation as a mere earnest of all that it has still to do. +He works for a consistent application of the principle that England, +for example, tacitly admitted when she opened her public elementary +schools and compelled the children to come in; the principle that the +Community as a whole is the general Over-Parent of all its children; +that the parents must be made answerable to the community for the +welfare of their children, for their clear minds and clean bodies, +their eyesight and weight and training; and that, on the other hand, +the parents who do their duty well are as much entitled to collective +provision for their needs and economic security as a soldier, a judge +or any other sort of public servant. + + +§ 3. + +Now do not imagine the case for the State being regarded as the +Over-Parent, and for the financial support of parents is based simply +upon the consideration of neglected, underfed, undereducated and +poverty-blighted children. No doubt in every one of the great +civilized countries of the world at the present time such children are +to be counted by the hundred thousand--by the million; but there is a +much stronger case to be stated in regard to that possibly greater +multitude of parents who are not in default, those common people, the +mass of our huge populations, the wives of the moderately skilled +workers or the reasonably comfortable employees, of the middling sort +of people, the two, three and four hundred pounds a year families who +toil and deny themselves for love of their children, and do contrive +to rear them cleanly, passably well grown, decent minded, taught and +intelligent to serve the future. Consider the enormous unfairness with +which we treat them, the way in which the modern State, such as it is, +trades upon their instincts, their affections, their sense of duty and +self-respect, to get from them for nothing the greatest social service +in the world. + +For while the least fortunate sort of children have at any rate the +protection of the police and school inspectors, and the baser sort of +parent has all sorts of public and quasi-public helps and doles, the +families that make the middle mass of our population are still in the +position of the families of a hundred years ago, and have no help +under heaven against the world. It matters not how well the home of +the skilled artisan's wife or the small business man's wife has been +managed--she may have educated her children marvellously, they may be +clean, strong, courteous, intelligent--if the husband gets out of work +or suffers from business ill-luck or trade depression, or chances to +be killed uninsured, down they all go to want. Such insurance as they +are able to make, and it needs a tremendously heavy premium to secure +an insurance that will not mean a heavy fall of income with the +bread-winner's death--must needs be in a private insurance office, and +there is no effectual guarantee for either honesty or solvency in +that. In most of the petty insurance business the thrifty poor are +enormously overcharged and overreached. Rumour has been busy, and I +fear only too justly, with the financial outlook of some of the +Friendly Societies upon which the scanty security of so many +working-class families depends. Such investments as the lower and +middle-class father makes of surplus profits and savings must be made +in ignorance of the manoeuvres of the big and often quite ruthless +financiers who control the world of prices. If he builds or trades, he +does so as a small investor, at the highest cost and lowest profit. +Half the big businesses in the world have been made out of the lost +savings of the small investor; a point to which I shall return later. +People talk as though Socialism proposed to rob the thrifty +industrious man of his savings. He could not be more systematically +robbed of his savings than he is at the present time. Nowhere beyond +the limit of the Post Office Savings' Bank is there security--not even +in the gilt-edged respectability of Consols, which in the last ten +years have fallen from 114 to under 82. Consider the adventure of the +thrifty well-meaning citizen who used his savings-bank hoard to buy +Consols at the former price, and now finds himself the poorer for not +having buried his savings in his garden. The middling sort of man +saves for the sake of wife and child; our State not only fails to +protect him from the adventures of the manipulating financier, but it +deliberately avoids competition with banker, insurance agent and +promoter. In no way can the middle-class or artisan parent escape the +financier's power and get real security for his home or his children's +upbringing. + +Not only is every parent of any but the richest classes worried and +discouraged by the universal insecurity of outlook in this private +adventure world, but at every turn his efforts to do his best for his +children are discouraged. If he has no children, he will have all his +income to spend on his own pleasures; he need only live in a little +house, he pays nothing for school, less for doctor, less for all the +needs of life, and he is taxed less; his income tax is the same, no +bigger; his rent, his rates, his household bills are all less.... + +The State will not even help him to a tolerable home, to wholesome +food, to needed fuel for the new citizens he is training for it. The +State now-a-days in its slow awakening does show a certain concern in +the housing of the lowest classes, a concern alike stimulated and +supplemented by such fine charities as Peabody's for example, but no +one stands between the two-hundred-a-year man and his landlord in the +pitiless struggle to get. For every need of his children whom he toils +to make into good men and women, he must pay a toll of owner's +profits, he must trust to the anything but intelligent greed of +private enterprise. + +The State will not even insist that a sufficiency of comfortable, +sanitary homes shall be built for his class; if he wants the +elementary convenience of a bathroom, he must pay extra toll to the +water shareholder; his gas is as cheap in quality and dear in price as +it can be; his bread and milk, under the laws of supply and demand, +are at the legal minimum of wholesomeness; the coal trade cheerfully +raises his coal in mid-winter to ruinous prices. He buys clothes of +shoddy and boots of brown paper. To get any other is nearly impossible +for a man with three hundred pounds a year. His newspapers, which are +supported by advertisers and financiers, in order to hide the obvious +injustice of this one-man-fight against the allied forces of property, +din in his ears that his one grievance is local taxation, his one +remedy "to keep down the rates"--the "rates" which do at least repair +his roadway, police his streets, give him open spaces for his babies +and help to educate his children, and which, moreover, constitute a +burthen he might by a little intelligent political action shift quite +easily from his own shoulders to the broad support of capital and +land. + +If the children of the decent skilled artisan and middle-class suffer +less obviously than the poorer sort of children, assuredly the parents +in wearing anxiety, in toil and limitation and disappointment, suffer +more. And in less intense and dramatic, but perhaps even more +melancholy ways, the children of this class do suffer. They do not die +so abundantly in infancy, but they grow up, too many of them, to +shabby and limited lives; in Britain they are still, as a class, +extraordinarily ill educated--many of them still go to incompetent, +understaffed and ill-equipped private adventure schools--they are sent +into business prematurely, often at fourteen or fifteen, they become +mechanical "respectable" drudges in processes they do not understand. +They may escape want and squalor for a while, perhaps, but they cannot +escape narrowness and limitation and a cramped and anxious life. If +they get to anything better than that, it is chiefly through almost +heroic parental effort and sacrifice. + +The plain fact is that the better middle-class parents serve the State +in this matter of child-rearing, the less is their reward, the less is +their security, the greater their toil and anxiety. Is it any wonder +then that throughout this more comfortable but more refined and +exacting class, the skilled artisan and middle-class, there goes on +something even more disastrous, from the point of view of the State, +than the squalor, despair and neglect of the lower levels, and that is +a very evident strike against parentage? While the very poor continue +to have many children who die or grow up undersized, crippled or +half-civilized, the middle mass, which _can_ contrive with a struggle +and sacrifice to rear fairly well-grown and well-equipped offspring, +which has a conscience for the well-being and happiness of the young, +manifests a diminishing spirit for parentage, its families fall to +four, to three, to two--and in an increasing number of instances there +are no children at all. + +With regard to the struggling middle-class and skilled artisan class +parent, even more than to the lower poor, does the Socialist insist +upon the plain need, if only that our State and nation should +continue, of endowment and help. He deems it not simply unreasonable +but ridiculous that in a world of limitless resources, of vast +expenditure, of unparalleled luxury, in which two-million-pound +battleships and multi-millionaires are common objects, the supremely +important business of rearing the bulk of the next generation of the +middling sort of people should be left almost entirely to the unaided, +unguided efforts of impoverished and struggling women and men. It +seems to him almost beyond sanity to suppose that so things must or +can continue. + + +§ 4. + +And what I have said of the middle-class parent is true with certain +modifications of all the classes above it, except that in a monarchy +you reach at last one State-subsidized family--in the case of Britain +a very healthy and active group, the Royal family--which is not only +State supported, but also beyond the requirements of any modern +Socialist, State bred. There are enormous handicaps at every other +social level upon efficient parentage, and upon the training of +children for any public and generous end. Parentage is treated as a +private foible, and those who undertake its solemn responsibilities +are put at every sort of disadvantage against those who lead sterile +lives, who give all their strength and resources to vanity and +socially harmful personal indulgence. These latter, with an ampler +leisure and ampler means, determine the forms of pleasure and social +usage, they "set the fashion" and bar pride, distinction or relaxation +to the devoted parent. The typical British aristocrat is not parent +bred, but class bred, a person with a lively sense of social +influences and no social ideas. The one class that is economically +capable of making all that can be made of its children is demoralized +by the very irresponsibility of the wealth that creates this +opportunity. This is still more apparent in the American plutocracy, +where perhaps half the women appear to be artificially sterilized +spenders of money upon frivolous things. + +No doubt there is in the richer strata of the community a certain +proportion of families with a real tradition of upbringing and +service; such English families as the Cecils, Balfours and Trevelyans, +for example, produce, generation after generation, public-spirited and +highly competent men. But the family tradition in these cases is an +excess of virtue rather than any necessary consequence of a social +advantage; it is a defiance rather than a necessity of our economic +system. It is natural that such men as Lord Hugh and Lord Robert +Cecil, highly trained, highly capable, but without that gift of +sympathetic imagination which releases a man from the subtle mental +habituations of his upbringing, should idealize every family in the +world to the likeness of their own--and find the Socialist's +Over-Parent of the State not simply a needless but a mischievous and +wicked innovation. They think--they will, I fear, continue to +think--of England as a world of happy Hatfields, cottage Hatfields, +villa Hatfields, Hatfields over the shop, and Hatfields behind the +farmyard--wickedly and wantonly assailed and interfered with by a band +of weirdly discontented men. It is a dream that the reader must not +share. Even in the case of the rich and really prosperous it is an +illusion. In no class at the present time is there a real inducement +to the effectual rearing of trained and educated citizens; in every +class are difficulties and discouragements. + +This state of affairs, says the Socialist, is chaotic or indifferent +to a sea of wretchedness and failure, in health, vigour, order and +beauty. Such pleasure as it permits is a gaudy indulgence filched from +children and duty; such beauty--a hectic beauty stained with +injustice; such happiness--a happiness that can only continue so long +as it remains blind or indifferent to a sea of wretchedness and +failure. Our present system of isolated and unsupported families keeps +the mass of the world beyond all necessity painful, ugly and squalid. +It stands condemned, and it must end. + + +§ 5. + +Let me summarize what has been said in this chapter in a compact +proposition, and so complete the statement of the First Main +Generalization of Socialism. + +_The ideas of the private individual rights of the parent and of his +isolated responsibility for his children are harmfully exaggerated in +the contemporary world. We do not sufficiently protect children from +negligent, incompetent, selfish or wicked parents, and we do not +sufficiently aid and encourage good parents; parentage is too much a +matter of private adventure, and the individual family is too +irresponsible. As a consequence there is a huge amount of avoidable +privation, suffering and sorrow, and a large proportion of the +generation that grows up, grows up stunted, limited, badly educated +and incompetent in comparison with the strength, training and beauty +with which a better social organization could endow it._ + +_The Socialist holds that the community as a whole should be +responsible, and every individual in the community, married or single, +parent or childless, should be responsible for the welfare and +upbringing of every child born into that community. This +responsibility may be entrusted in whole or in part to parent, teacher +or other guardian--but it is not simply the right but the duty of the +State--that is to say of the organized power and intelligence of the +community--to direct, to inquire, and to intervene in any default for +the child's welfare._ + +_Parentage rightly undertaken is a service as well as a duty to the +world, carrying with it not only obligations but a claim, the +strongest of claims, upon the whole community. It must be provided for +like any other public service; in any completely civilized State it +must be sustained, rewarded and controlled. And this is to be done not +to supersede the love, pride and conscience of the parent, but to +supplement, encourage and maintain it._ + + +§ 6. + +This is the first of the twin generalizations upon which the whole +edifice of modern Socialism rests. Its fellow generalization we must +consider in the chapter immediately to follow. + +But at this point the reader unaccustomed to social questions will +experience a difficulty. He will naturally think of this much of +change we have broached, as if it was to happen in a world that +otherwise was to remain just as the world is now, with merchants, +landowners, rich and poor and all the rest of it. You are proposing, +he may say, what is no doubt a highly desirable but which is also a +quite impossible thing. You propose practically to educate all the +young of the country and to pay at least sufficient to support them +and their mothers in decency--out of what? Where will you get the +money? + +That is a perfectly legitimate question and one that must be answered +fully if our whole project is not to fall to the ground. + +So we come to the discussion of material means, of the wherewithal, +that is to say to the "Economics" of Socialism. The reader will see +very speedily that this great social revolution we propose necessarily +involves a revolution in business and industry that will be equally +far reaching. The two revolutions are indeed inseparable, two sides of +one wheel, and it is scarcely possible that one could happen without +the other. + +Of course the community supports all its children now--the only point +is that it does not support them in its collective character as a +State "as a whole." All the children in the world are supported by all +the people in the world, but very unfairly and irregularly, through +the intervention of that great multitude of small private proprietors, +the parents. When the parents fail, Charity and the Parish step in. If +the reader will refer to those ten cases from Edinburgh I have already +quoted in Chapter III., § 1, he will note that in eight out of the ten +there comes in the eleemosynary element; in the seventh case +especially he will get an inkling of its waste. A change in the system +that diminished (though it by no means abolished) this separate +dependence of children upon parents, each child depending upon those +"pieces" from its particular parental feast, need not necessarily +diminish the amount of wheat, or leather, or milk in the world; the +children would still get the bread and milk and boots, but through +different channels and in a different spirit. They might even get +more. The method of making and distribution will evidently have to be +a different one and run counter to currently accepted notions; that is +all. Not only is it true that a change of system need not diminish the +amount of food in the world; it might even increase it. The Socialist +declares that his system would increase it. He proposes a method of +making and distribution, a change in industrial conditions and in the +conventions of property, that he declares will not only not diminish +but greatly increase the production of the world, and changes in the +administration that he is equally convinced will insure a far juster +and better use of all that is produced. + +This side of his proposals we will proceed to consider in our next +chapter. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE SECOND MAIN GENERALIZATION OF SOCIALISM + + +§ 1. + +We have considered the Socialist criticism of the present state of +affairs in relation to the most important of all public questions, the +question of the welfare and upbringing of the next generation. We have +stated the general principle of social reconstruction that emerges +from that criticism. We have now to enter upon the question of ways +and means, the economic question. We have to ask whether the vision we +have conjured up of a whole population well fed, well clad, well +educated--in a word, well brought-up--is, after all, only an amiable +dream. Is it true that humanity is producing all that it can produce +at the present time, and managing everything about as well as it can +be managed; that, as a matter of fact, there isn't enough of food and +care to go round, and hence the unavoidable anxiety in the life of +every one (except in the case of a small minority of exceptionally +secure people), and the absolute wretchedness of vast myriads of the +poorer sort? + +The Socialist says, No! He asserts that our economic system is as +chaotic and wasteful as our system of rearing children--is only +another aspect of the same planlessness--that it does its work with a +needless excess of friction, that it might be far simpler and almost +infinitely more productive than it is. + +Let us detach ourselves a little from our everyday habits of thinking +in these matters; let us cease to take customary things for granted, +and let us try and consider how our economic arrangements would strike +a disinterested intelligence that looked at them freshly for the first +time. Let us take some matter of primary economic importance, such as +the housing of the population, and do our best to criticize it in this +spirit of personal aloofness. + +In order to do that, let us try to detach ourselves a little from our +own personal interest in these affairs. Imagine a mind ignorant of our +history and traditions, coming from some other sphere, from some world +more civilized, from some other planet perhaps, to this earth. Would +our system of housing strike it as the very wisest and most practical +possible, would it really seem to be the attainable maximum of outcome +for human exertion, or would it seem confused, disorderly, wasteful +and bad? The Socialist holds that the latter would certainly be the +verdict of such an impartial examination. + +What would our visitor find in such a country as England, for example? +He would find a few thousand people housed with conspicuous comfort +and sumptuousness, in large, airy and often extremely beautiful homes +equipped with every convenience--except such as economize labour--and +waited on by many thousands of attendants. He would find next, several +hundreds of thousands in houses reasonably well built, but for the +most part ill designed and unpleasant to the eye, houses passably +sanitary and convenient, fitted with bathrooms, with properly equipped +kitchens, usually with a certain space of air and garden about them. +And the rest of our millions he would find crowded into houses +evidently too small for a decent life, and often dreadfully dirty and +insanitary, without proper space or appliances to cook properly, wash +properly or indeed perform any of the fundamental operations of a +civilized life tolerably well--without, indeed, even the privacy +needed for common decency. In the towns he would find most of the +houses occupied by people for whose needs they were obviously not +designed, and in many cases extraordinarily crowded, ramshackle and +unclean; in the country he would be amazed to find still denser +congestion, sometimes a dozen people in one miserable, tumble-down, +outwardly picturesque and inwardly abominable two-roomed cottage, +people living up against pigsties and drawing water from wells they +could not help but contaminate. Think of how the intimate glimpses +from the railway train one gets into people's homes upon the outskirts +of any of our large towns would impress him. And being, as we assume, +clear minded and able to trace cause and effect, he would see all this +disorder working out in mortality, disease, misery and intellectual +and moral failure. + +All this would strike our visitor as a very remarkable state of +affairs for reasonable creatures to endure, and probably he would not +understand at first that millions of people were content to regard all +this disorder as the permanent lot of humanity. He would assume that +this must be a temporary state of affairs due to some causes unknown +to him, some great migration, for example. He would suppose we were +all busy putting things right. He would see on the one hand unemployed +labour and unemployed material; on the other, great areas of suitable +land and the crying need for more and better homes than the people +had, and it would seem the most natural thing in the world that the +directing intelligence of the community should set the unemployed +people to work with the unemployed material upon the land to house the +whole population fairly and well. There exists all that is needed to +house the whole population admirably, the building material, the room, +the unoccupied hands. Why is it not being done? + +Our answer would be, of course, that he did not understand our +difficulties; the land was not ours to do as we liked with, it did not +belong to the community but to certain persons, the Owners, who either +refused to let us build upon it or buy it or have anything to do with +it, or demanded money we could not produce for it; that equally the +material was not ours, but belonged to certain other Owners, and that, +thirdly, the community had insufficient money or credit to pay the +wages and maintenance and equipment of the workers who starved and +degenerated in our streets--for that money, too, was privately owned. + +This would puzzle our visitor considerably. + +"Why do you have Owners?" he would ask. + +We might find that difficult to answer. + +"But why do you let the land be owned?" he would go on. "You don't let +people own the air. And these bricks and timber you mustn't touch, the +mortar you need and the gold you need--they all came out of the +ground--they all belonged to everybody or nobody a little while ago!" + +You would say something indistinct about Property. + +"But why?" + +"Somebody must own the things." + +"Well, let the State own the things and use them for the common good. +It owns the roads, it owns the foreshores and the territorial +seas--nobody owns the air!" + +If you entered upon historical explanations with him, you would soon +be in difficulties. You would find that so recently as the Feudal +System--which was still living, so to speak, yesterday--the King, who +stood for the State, held the land as the Realm, and the predecessors +of the present owners held under him merely as the administrative +officials who performed all sorts of public services and had all sorts +of privileges thereby. They have dropped the services and stuck to the +land and the privileges; that is all. + +"I begin to perceive," our visitor would say as this became clear; +"your world is under the spell of an exaggerated idea, this +preposterous idea there must be an individual Owner for everything in +the world. Obviously you can't get on while you are under the spell of +that! So long as you have this private ownership in everything, +there's no help for you. You cut up your land and material in parcels +of all sorts and sizes among this multitude of irresponsible little +monarchs; you let all the material you need get distributed among +another small swarm of Owners, and clearly you can only get them to +work for public ends in the most roundabout, tedious and wasteful way. +Why should they? They're very well satisfied as they are! But if the +community as a whole insisted that this idea of private Ownership you +have in regard to land and natural things was all nonsense--and it is +all nonsense!--just think what you might not do with it now that you +have all the new powers and lights that Science has given you. You +might turn all your towns into garden cities, put an end to +overcrowding, abolish smoky skies----" + +"Hush!" I should have to interrupt; "if you talk of the things that +are clearly possible in the world to-day, they will say you are an +Utopian dreamer!" + +But at least one thing would have become clear, the little swarm of +Owners and their claims standing in the way of any bold collective +dealing with housing or any such public concern. The real work to be +done here is to change an idea, that idea of ownership, to so modify +it that it will cease to obstruct the rational development of life; +and that is what the Socialist seeks to do. + + +§ 2. + +Now the argument that the civilized housing of the masses of our +population now is impossible because if you set out to do it you come +up against the veto of the private owner at every stage, can be +applied to almost every general public service. Some little while ago +I wrote a tract for the Fabian Society about Boots;[3] and I will not +apologize for repeating here a passage from that. To begin with, this +tract pointed out the badness, unhealthiness and discomfort of +people's footwear as one saw it in every poor quarter, and asked why +it was that things were in so disagreeable a state. There was plenty +of leather in the world, plenty of labour. + + [3] _This Misery of Boots._ It is intended as an + introductory tract explaining the central idea of Socialism + for propaganda purposes, and it is published by the Fabian + Society, of 3 Clement's Inn, London, at 3_d._ That, together + with my tract _Socialism and the Family_ (A. C. Fifield, 44 + Fleet Street, London, 6_d._), gives the whole broad outline + of the Socialist attitude. + + "Here on the one hand--you can see for yourself in any + unfashionable part of Great Britain--are people badly, + uncomfortably, painfully shod in old boots, rotten boots, sham + boots; and on the other great stretches of land in the world, + with unlimited possibilities of cattle and leather and great + numbers of people who, either through wealth or trade + disorder, are doing no work. And our question is: 'Why cannot + the latter set to work and make and distribute boots?' + + "Imagine yourself trying to organize something of this kind of + Free Booting expedition and consider the difficulties you + would meet with. You would begin by looking for a lot of + leather. Imagine yourself setting off to South America, for + example, to get leather; beginning at the very beginning by + setting to work to kill and flay a herd of cattle. You find at + once you are interrupted. Along comes your first obstacle in + the shape of a man who tells you the cattle and the leather + belong to him. You explain that the leather is wanted for + people who have no decent boots in England. He says he does + not care a rap what you want it for; before you may take it + from him you have to buy him off; it is his private property, + this leather, and the herd and the land over which the herd + ranges. You ask him how much he wants for his leather, and he + tells you frankly, just as much as he can induce you to give. + + "If he chanced to be a person of exceptional sweetness of + disposition, you might perhaps argue with him. You might point + out to him that this project of giving people splendid boots + was a fine one that would put an end to much human misery. He + might even sympathize with your generous enthusiasm, but you + would, I think, find him adamantine in his resolve to get just + as much out of you for his leather as you could with the + utmost effort pay. + + "Suppose, now, you said to him: 'But how did you come by this + land and these herds so that you can stand between them and + the people who have need of them, exacting this profit?' He + would probably either embark upon a long rigmarole, or, what + is much more probable, lose his temper and decline to argue. + Pursuing your doubt as to the rightfulness of his property in + these things, you might admit he deserved a certain reasonable + fee for the rough care he had taken of the land and herds. But + cattle breeders are a rude violent race, and it is doubtful if + you would get far beyond your proposition of a reasonable fee. + You would, in fact, have to buy off this owner of the leather + at a good thumping price--he exacting just as much as he could + get from you--if you wanted to go on with your project. + + "Well, then you would have to get your leather here, and to do + that you would have to bring it by railway and ship to this + country. And here again you would find people without any + desire or intention of helping your project, standing in your + course resolved to make every possible penny out of you on + your way to provide sound boots for every one. You would find + the railway was private property and had an owner or owners; + you would find the ship was private property with an owner or + owners, and that none of these would be satisfied for a moment + with a mere fee adequate to their services. They too would be + resolved to make every penny of profit out of you. If you made + inquiries about the matter, you would probably find the real + owners of railway and ship were companies of shareholders, and + the profit squeezed out of your poor people's boots at this + stage went to fill the pockets of old ladies, at Torquay, + spendthrifts in Paris, well-booted gentlemen in London clubs, + all sorts of glossy people.... + + "Well, you get the leather to England at last; and now you + want to make it into boots. You take it to a centre of + population, invite workers to come to you, erect sheds and + machinery upon a vacant piece of ground, and start off in a + sort of fury of generous industry, boot-making.... Do you? + There comes along an owner for that vacant piece of ground, + declares it is his property, demands an enormous sum for rent. + And your workers all round you, you find, cannot get house + room until they too have paid rent--every inch of the country + is somebody's property, and a man may not shut his eyes for an + hour without the consent of some owner or other. And the food + your shoe-makers eat, the clothes they wear, have all paid + tribute and profit to land-owners, cart-owners, house-owners, + endless tribute over and above the fair pay for work that has + been done upon them.... + + "So one might go on. But you begin to see now one set of + reasons at least why every one has not good comfortable boots. + There could be plenty of leather; and there is certainly + plenty of labour and quite enough intelligence in the world to + manage that and a thousand other desirable things. But this + institution of Private Property in land and naturally produced + things, these obstructive claims that prevent you using + ground, or moving material, and that have to be bought out at + exorbitant prices, stand in the way. All these owners hang + like parasites upon your enterprise at its every stage; and by + the time you get your sound boots well made in England, you + will find them costing about a pound a pair--high out of reach + of the general mass of people. And you will perhaps not think + me fanciful and extravagant when I confess that when I realize + this and look at poor people's boots in the street, and see + them cracked and misshapen and altogether nasty, I seem to see + also a lot of little phantom land-owners, cattle-owners, + house-owners, owners of all sorts, swarming over their pinched + and weary feet like leeches, taking much and giving nothing + and being the real cause of all such miseries." + + +§ 3. + +Our visitor would not only be struck by the clogging of our social +activities through this system of leaving everything to private +enterprise; he would also be struck by the immense wastefulness. +Everywhere he would see things in duplicate and triplicate; down the +High Street of any small town he would find three or four +butchers--mostly selling New Zealand mutton and Argentine beef as +English--five or six grocers, three or four milk shops, one or two big +drapers and three or four small haberdashers, milliners, and "fancy +shops," two or three fishmongers, all very poor, all rather bad, most +of them in debt and with their assistants all insecure and underpaid. +He would find in spite of this wealth of competition that every one +who could contrive it, all the really prosperous people in fact, +bought most of their food and drapery from big London firms. + +But why should I go on writing fresh arguments when we have Elihu's +classic tract[4] to quote. + + [4] Elihu's tracts are published by the Independent Labour + Party at one penny each. The best are: _Whose Dog Art Thou?_ + _A Nation of Slaves_; _Milk and Postage Stamps_; _A Corner + in Flesh and Blood_; and _Simple Division_. + + "Observe how private enterprise supplies the streets with + milk. At 7.30 a milk cart comes lumbering along and delivers + milk at one house and away again. Half-an-hour later another + milk cart arrives and delivers milk, first on this side of the + street and then on that, until seven houses have been + supplied, and then he departs. During the next three or four + hours four other milk carts put in an appearance at varying + intervals, supplying a house here and another there, until + finally, as it draws towards noon, their task is accomplished + and the street supplied with milk. + + "The time actually occupied by one and another of these + distributors of milk makes in all about an hour and forty + minutes, six men and six horses and carts being required for + the purpose, and these equipages rattle along one after the + other, all over the district, through the greater part of the + day, in the same erratic and extraordinary manner." + + +§ 4. + +Our imaginary visitor would probably quite fail to grasp the reasons +why we do not forthwith shake off this obstructive and harmful idea of +Private Ownership, dispossess our Landowners and so forth as gently as +possible, and set to work upon collective housing and the rest of it. +And so he would "exit wondering." + +But that would be only the opening of the real argument. A competent +Anti-Socialist of a more terrestrial experience would have a great +many very effectual and very sound considerations to advance in +defence of the present system. + +He might urge that our present way of doing things, though it was +sometimes almost as wasteful as Nature when fresh spawn or pollen +germs are scattered, was in many ways singularly congenial to the +infirmities of humanity. The idea of property is a spontaneous product +of the mortal mind; children develop it in the nursery, and are +passionately alive to the difference of _meum_ and _tuum_, and its +extension to land, subterranean products and wild free things, even if +it is under analysis a little unreasonable, was at least singularly +acceptable to humanity. + +And there would be admirable soundness in all this. There can be +little or no doubt that the conception of personal ownership has in +the past contributed elements to human progress that could have come +through no other means. It has allowed private individuals in odd +corners to try experiments in new methods and new appliances, that the +general intelligence, such as it was, of the community could not have +understood. For all its faults, our present individualistic order +compared not simply with the communism of primitive tribes, but even +with the personal and largely illiterate control of the mediĉval +feudal governments, is a good efficient working method. I don't think +a Socialist need quarrel with the facts of history or human nature. +But he would urge that Private Ownership is only a phase, though no +doubt quite a necessary phase, in human development. The world has +needed Private Ownership just as (Lester F. Ward declares[5]) it once +needed slavery to discipline men and women to agriculture and habits +of industry, and just as it needed autocratic kings to weld warring +tribes into nations and nations into empires, to build high roads, end +private war and establish the idea of Law, and a wider than tribal +loyalty. But just as Western Europe has passed out of the phases of +slavery and of autocracy (which is national slavery) into +constitutionalism, so, he would hold, we are passing out of the phase +of private ownership of land and material and food. We are doing so +not because we reject it, but because we have worked it out, because +we have learnt its lessons and can now go on to a higher and finer +organization. + + [5] _Pure Sociology_, p. 271-2, by Lester F. Ward. (The + Macmillan Company, New York.) + +There the Anti-Socialist would join issue with a lesser advantage. He +would have to show not only that Private Ownership has been +serviceable and justifiable in the past--which many Socialists admit +quite cheerfully--but that it is the crown and perfection of human +methods, which the Socialists flatly deny. Universal Private +Ownership, an extreme development of the sentiment of individual +autonomy and the limitation of the State to the merest police +functions, were a necessary outcome of the breakdown of the +unprogressive authoritative Feudal System in alliance with a dogmatic +Church. It reached its maximum in the eighteenth century, when even +some of the prisons and workhouses were run by private contract, when +people issued a private money, the old token coinage, and even +regiments of soldiers were raised by private enterprise. It was, the +Socialist alleges, a mere phase of that breaking up of the old social +edifice, a weakening of the old circle of ideas that had to precede +the new constructive effort. But with land, with all sorts of property +and all sorts of businesses and public services, just as with the old +isolated private family, the old separateness and independence is +giving way to a new synthesis. The idea of Private Ownership, albeit +still the ruling idea of our civilization, does not rule nearly so +absolutely as it did. It weakens and falters before the inexorable +demands of social necessity--manifestly under our eyes. + +The Socialist would be able to appeal to a far greater number of laws +in the nature of limitation of the owner of property than could be +quoted to show the limitation of the old supremacy of the head of the +family. In the first place he would be able to point to a constantly +increasing interference with the right of the landowner to do what he +liked with his own, building regulations, intervention to create +allotments and so forth. Then there would be a vast mass of factory +and industrial legislation, controlling, directing, prohibiting; +fencing machinery, interfering on behalf of health, justice and public +necessity with the owner's free bargain with his work-people. His +business undertakings would be under limitations his grandfather never +knew--even harmless adulterations that merely intensify profit, +forbidden him! + +And in the next place and still more significant is the manifest +determination to keep in public hands many things that would once +inevitably have become private property. For example, in the middle +Victorian period a water supply, a gas supply, a railway or tramway +was inevitably a private enterprise, the creation of a new property; +now, this is the exception rather than the rule. While gas and water +and trains were supplied by speculative owners for profit, electric +light and power, new tramways and light railways are created in an +increasing number of cases by public bodies who retain them for the +public good. Nobody who travels to London as I do regularly in the +dirty, over-crowded carriages of the infrequent and unpunctual trains +of the South-Eastern Company, and who then transfers to the cleanly, +speedy, frequent--in a word, "civilized" electric cars of the London +County Council, can fail to estimate the value and significance of +this supersession of the private owner by the common-weal. + +All these things, the Socialists insist, are but a beginning. They +point to a new phase in social development, to the appearance of a +collective intelligence and a sense of public service taking over +appliances, powers, enterprises, with a growing confidence that must +end finally in the substitution of collective for private ownership +and enterprise throughout the whole area of the common business of +life. + + +§ 5. + +In relation to quite a number of large public services it can be shown +that even under contemporary conditions Private Ownership does work +with an enormous waste and inefficiency. Necessarily it seeks for +profit; necessarily it seeks to do as little as possible for as much +as possible. The prosperity of all Kent is crippled by a "combine" of +two ill-managed and unenterprising railway companies, with no funds +for new developments, grinding out an uncertain dividend by clipping +expenditure. + +I happen to see this organization pretty closely, and I can imagine no +State enterprise west of Turkey or Persia presenting even to the +passing eye so deplorable a spectacle of ruin and inefficiency. The +South-Eastern Company's estate at Seabrook presents the dreariest +spectacle of incompetent development conceivable; one can see its +failure three miles away; it is a waste with an embryo slum in one +corner protected by an extravagant sea-wall, already partly shattered, +from the sea. + +To-day (Nov. 4, 1907) the price of the ordinary South-Eastern stock is +65 and its deferred stock 31; of the London, Chatham and Dover +ordinary stock 10-1/2; an eloquent testimony to the disheartened state +of the owners who now cling reluctantly to this disappointing +monopoly. Spite of this impoverishment of the ordinary shareholder, +this railway system has evidently paid too much profit in the past for +efficiency; the rolling stock is old and ageing--much of it is by +modern standards abominable--the trains are infrequent, and the +shunting operations at local stations, with insufficient sidings and +insufficient staffs, produce a chronic dislocation and unpunctuality +in the traffic that is exaggerated by the defects of direction evident +even in the very time-tables. The trains are not well planned, the +connections with branch lines are often extremely ill managed. The +service is bad to its details. It is the exception rather than the +rule to find a ticket-office in the morning with change for a +five-pound note; and, as a little indication of the spirit of the +whole machine, I discovered the other day that the conductors upon the +South-Eastern trams at Hythe start their morning with absolutely no +change at all. Recently the roof of the station at Charing Cross fell +in--through sheer decay.... A whole rich county now stagnates +hopelessly under the grip of this sample of private enterprise, towns +fail to grow, trade flows sluggishly from point to point. No +population in the world would stand such a management as it endures at +the hands of the South-Eastern Railway from any responsible public +body. Out would go the whole board of managers at the next election. +Consider what would have happened if the London County Council had +owned Charing Cross Station three years ago. But manifestly there is +nothing better to be done under private ownership conditions. The +common shareholders are scattered and practically powerless, and their +collective aim is, at any expense to the public welfare, to keep the +price of the shares from going still lower. + +The South-Eastern Railway is only one striking instance of the general +unserviceableness of private ownership for public services. Nearly all +the British railway companies, in greater or less degree, present now +a similar degenerative process. Years of profit-sweating, of high +dividends, have left them with old stations, old rolling stock, old +staffs, bad habits and diminishing borrowing power. Only a few of +these corporations make any attempt to keep pace with invention. It is +remarkable now in an epoch of almost universal progress how stagnant +the British privately owned railways are. One travels now-a-days if +anything with a decrease of comfort from the 1880 accommodation, +because of the greater overcrowding; and there has been no general +increase of speed, no increase in smooth running, no increase in +immunity from accident now for quite a number of years. One travels in +a dingy box of a compartment that is too ill-lit at night for reading +and full of invincible draughts. In winter the only warmth is too +often an insufficient footwarmer of battered tin, for which the +passengers fight fiercely with their feet. An observant person cannot +fail to be struck--especially if he is returning from travel upon the +State railways of Switzerland or Germany--by the shabby-looking +porters on so many of our lines--they represent the standard of good +clothing for the year 1848 or thereabouts--and by the bleak misery of +many of the stations, the universal dirt that electricity might even +now abolish. You dare not drop a parcel on any British railway cushion +for fear of the cloud of horrible dust you would raise; you have to +put it down softly. Consider, too, the congested infrequent suburban +trains that ply round any large centre of population, the inefficient +goods and parcel distribution that hangs up the trade of the local +shopman everywhere. Not only in the arrested standard of comfort, but +in the efficiency of working also are our privately owned railways a +hopeless discredit to private ownership. + +None of them, hampered by their present equipment, are able to adapt +themselves readily to the new and better mechanism science produces +for them, electric traction, electric lighting and so forth; and it +seems to me highly probable that the last steam-engines and the last +oil lamps in the world will be found upon the southern railway lines +of Great Britain. How can they go on borrowing new capital with their +stock at the prices I have quoted, and how can they do anything +without new capital? The conception of profit-raising that rules our +railways takes rather an altogether different direction; it takes the +form of attempts to procure a monopoly even of the minor traffic by +resisting the development of light railways, and of keeping the +standard of comfort, decency and cleanliness low. As for the vast +social ameliorations that could be wrought now, and are urgently +needed now, by redistributing population through enhanced and +cheapened services scientifically planned, and by an efficient +collection and carriage of horticultural and agricultural produce, +these things lie outside the philosophy of the Private Owner +altogether. They would probably not pay him, and there the matter +ends; that they would pay the community enormously, does not for one +moment enter into his circle of ideas. + +There can be little doubt that in the next decade or so the secular +decay and lagging of the British railway services which is inevitable +under existing conditions (in speed, in comfort, they have long been +distanced by continental lines), the probable increase in accidents +due to economically administered permanent ways and ageing stations +and bridges, and the ever more perceptible check to British economic +development due to this clogging of the circulatory system, will be of +immense value to the Socialist propaganda as an object lesson in +private ownership. In Italy the thing has already passed its +inevitable climax, and the State is now struggling valiantly to put a +disorganized, ill-equipped and undisciplined network of railways, the +legacy of a period of private enterprise, into tolerable working +order. + + +§ 6. + +In a second great public service there is a perceptible, a growing +recognition of the evil and danger of allowing profit-seeking Private +Ownership to prevail; and that is the general food supply. A great +quickening of the public imagination in this matter has occurred +through the "boom" of Mr. Upton Sinclair's book, _The Jungle_--a book +every student of the elements of Socialism should read. He accumulated +a considerable mass of facts about the Chicago stockyards, and +incorporated them with his story, and so enabled people to realize +what they might with a little imaginative effort have inferred before; +that the slaughtering of cattle and the preparation of meat, when it +is done wholly and solely for profit, that is to say when it is done +as rapidly and cheaply as possible, is done _horribly_; that it is a +business cruel to the beasts, cruel to the workers and dangerous to +the public health. The United States has long recognized the +inadequacy of private consciences in this concern, and while all the +vast profits of the business go to the meat packers, the community has +maintained an insufficient supply of underpaid and, it is said in some +cases, bribable inspectors to look after the public welfare. + +In this country also, slaughtering is a private enterprise but +slightly checked by inspection, and if we have no Chicago, we probably +have all its mean savings, its dirt and carelessness and filth, +scattered here and there all over the country, a little in this +privately owned slaughter-house, a little in that. For what inducement +has a butcher to spend money and time in making his slaughter-house +decent, sanitary and humane above the standard of his fellows? To do +that will only make him poor and insolvent. Anyhow, few of his +customers will come to see their meat butchered, and, as they say in +the South of England, "What the eye don't see the heart don't grieve." + +Many witnesses concur in declaring that our common jam, pickle and +preserve trade is carried on under equally filthy conditions. If it is +not, it is a miracle, in view of the inducements the Private Owner has +to cut his expenses, economize on premises and wages, and buy his +fruit as near decay and his sugar as near dirt as he can. The scandal +of our milk supply is an open one; it is more and more evident that so +long as Private Ownership rules the milk trade, we can never be sure +that at every point in the course of the milk from cow to consumer +there will not creep in harmful and dishonest profit-making elements. +The milking is too often done dirtily from dirty cows and into dirty +vessels--why should a business man fool away his profits in paying for +scrupulous cleanliness when it is almost impossible to tell at sight +whether milk is clean or dirty?--and there come more or less harmful +dilutions and adulterations and exposures to infection at every +handling, at every chance at profit making. The unavoidable +inefficiency of the private milk trade reflects itself in infant +mortality--we pay our national tribute to private enterprise in milk, +a tribute of many thousands of babies every year. We try to reduce +this tribute by inspection. But why should the State pay money for +inspection, upon keeping highly-trained and competent persons merely +to pry and persecute in order that private incompetent people should +reap profits with something short of a maximum of child murder? It +would be much simpler to set to work directly, employ and train these +private persons, and run the dairies and milk distribution ourselves. + +There is an equally strong case for a public handling of bakehouses +and the bread supply. Already the public is put to great and entirely +unremunerative expense in inspecting and checking weights and hunting +down the grosser instances of adulteration, grubbiness and dirt, and +with it all the common bakehouse remains for the most part a +subterranean haunt of rats, mice and cockroaches, and the ordinary +baker's bread is so insipid and unnutritious that a great number of +more prosperous people now-a-days find it advantageous to health and +pocket alike to bake at home. A considerable amount of physical +degeneration may be connected with the general poorness of our bread. +The plain fact of the case is that our population will never get good +wholesome bread from the Private Owner's bakehouse, until it employs +one skilled official to watch every half-dozen bakers--and another to +watch him; and it seems altogether saner and cheaper to abolish the +Private Owner in this business also and do the job cleanly, honestly +and straightforwardly in proper buildings with properly paid labour as +a public concern. + +Now, what has been said of the food supply is still truer of the trade +in fuel. Between the consumer and the collier is a string of private +persons each resolved to squeeze every penny of profit out of the coal +on its way to the cheap and wasteful grate one finds in the +jerry-built homes of the poor. In addition there is every winter now, +whether in Great Britain or America, a manipulation of the coal market +and a more or less severe coal famine. Coal is jerked up to +unprecedented prices, and the small consumer, who has no place for +storage, who must buy, if not from day to day, from week to week, +finds he must draw upon his food fund and his savings to meet the +Private Owner's raised demands--or freeze. Every such coal famine +reaps its harvest for death of old people and young children, and +wipes out so many thousands of savings' bank accounts and hoarded +shillings. Consider the essential imbecility of allowing the nation's +life and the nation's thrift to be preyed upon for profit in this way! +Is it possible to doubt that the civilized community of the future +will have to resume possession of all its stores of fuel, will keep +itself informed of the fluctuating needs of its population, and will +distribute and sell coal, gas and oil--not for the maximum profit, but +the maximum general welfare?[6] + + [6] In Dakota, 1906-7, private enterprise led to a + particularly severe coal famine in the bitterest weather, + and the shortage was felt so severely that the population + rose and attacked and stopped passing coal-trains. + +Another great branch of trade in which Private Ownership and private +freedom is manifestly antagonistic to the public welfare is the Drink +Traffic. Here we have a commodity, essentially a drug, its use readily +developing a vice, deleterious at its best, complex in composition, +and particularly susceptible to adulteration and the enhancement of +its attraction by poisonous ingredients and indeed to every sort of +mischievous secret manipulation. Probably nothing is more rarely found +pure and honest than beer or whisky; whisky begins to be blended and +doctored before it leaves the distillery. And we allow the production +and distribution of this drug of alcoholic drink to be from first to +last a source of private profit. We so contrive it that we put money +prizes upon the propaganda of drink. Is it any wonder that drink is +not only made by adulteration far more evil than it naturally is, but +that it is forced upon the public in every possible way? + +"He tempts them to drink," I have heard a clergyman say of his village +publican. But what else did he think the publican was there for?--to +preach total abstinence? Naturally, inevitably, the whole of the Trade +is a propaganda--not of drunkenness, but of habitual heavy drinking. +The more successful propagandists, the great brewers and distillers +grow rich just in the proportion that people consume beer and spirits; +they gain honour and peerages in the measure of their success. + +It is very interesting to the Socialist to trace the long struggle of +the temperance movement against its initial ideas of freedom, and to +see how inevitably the most reluctant and unlikely people have been +forced to recognize Private Ownership in this trade and for profit as +the ultimate evil. I am delighted to have to hand an excellent little +tract by "A Ratepayer": _National Efficiency and the Drink Traffic_. +It has a preface by Mr. Haldane, and it is as satisfactory a +demonstration of the absolute necessity of thoroughgoing Socialism in +this particular field as any Socialist could wish. One encounters the +Bishop of Chester, for example, in its pages talking the purest +Socialism, and making the most luminous admissions of the +impossibility of continued private control, in phrases that need but a +few verbal changes to apply equally to milk, to meat, to bread, to +housing, to book-selling[7].... + + [7] For a clear and admirable account of the Socialist + attitude to the temperance question, see the tract on + _Municipal Drink Traffic_ published by the Fabian Society; + price one penny. + + +§ 7. + +Land and housing, railways, food, drink, coal, in each of these great +general interests there is a separate strong case for the substitution +of collective control for the Private Ownership methods of the present +time. There is a great and growing number of people like "A Ratepayer" +and Mr. Haldane, who do not call themselves Socialists but who are yet +strongly tinged with Socialist conceptions; who are convinced--some in +the case of the land, some in the case of the drink trade or the milk, +that Private Ownership and working for profit must cease. But they +will not admit a general principle, they argue each case on its +merits. + +The Socialist maintains that, albeit the details of each problem must +be studied apart, there does underlie all these cases and the whole +economic situation at the present time, one general fact, that through +our whole social system from top to base we find things under the +influence of a misleading idea that must be changed, and which, until +it is changed, will continue to work out in waste, unserviceableness, +cramped lives and suffering and death. Each man is for himself, that +is this misleading idea, seeking, perforce, ends discordant with the +general welfare; who serves the community without exacting pay, goes +under; who exacts pay without service prospers and continues; success +is not to do well, it is to have and to get; failure is not to do ill, +it is to lose and not have; and under these conditions how can we +expect anything but dislocated, unsatisfying service at every turn? + +The contemporary anti-Socialist moralist and the social satirist would +appeal to the Owner's sense of duty; he would declare in a +platitudinous tone that property had its duties as well as its rights, +and so forth. The Socialist, however, looks a little deeper, and puts +the thing differently. He brings both rights and duties to a keener +scrutiny. What underlies all these social disorders, he alleges, is +one simple thing, a misconception of property; an unreasonable +exaggeration, an accumulated, inherited exaggeration, of the idea of +property. He says the idea of private property, which is just and +reasonable in relation to intimate personal things, to clothes, +appliances, books, one's home or apartments, the garden one loves or +the horse one rides, has become unreasonably exaggerated until it +obsesses the world; that the freedom we have given men to claim and +own and hold the land upon which we must live, the fuel we burn, the +supplies of food and metal we require, the railways and ships upon +which our business goes, and to fix what prices they like to exact for +all these services, leads to the impoverishment and practical +enslavement of the mass of mankind. + +And so he comes to his second main generalization, which I may perhaps +set out in these words:-- + +_The idea of the private ownership of things and the rights of owners +is enormously and mischievously exaggerated in the contemporary world. +The conception of private property has been extended to land, to +material, to the values and resources accumulated by past generations, +to a vast variety of things that are properly the inheritance of the +whole race. As a result of this, there is much obstruction and waste +of human energy and a huge loss of opportunity and freedom for the +mass of mankind; progress is retarded, there is a vast amount of +avoidable wretchedness, cruelty and injustice._ + +_The Socialist holds that the community as a whole should be +inalienably the owner and administrator of the land, of raw materials, +of values and resources accumulated from the past, and that private +property must be of a terminable nature, reverting to the community, +and subject to the general welfare._ + +This is the second of the twin generalizations upon which the edifice +of modern Socialism rests. Like the first, and like the practical side +of all sound religious teaching, it is a specific application of one +general rule of conduct, and that is the subordination of the +individual motive to the happiness and welfare of the species. + + +§ 8. + +But now the reader unaccustomed to Socialist discussion will begin to +see the crude form of the answer to the question raised by the +previous chapter; he will see the resources from which the enlargement +of human life we there contemplated is to be derived, and realize the +economic methods to be pursued. Collective ownership is the necessary +corollary of collective responsibility. There are to be no private +land owners, no private bankers and lenders of money, no private +insurance adventurers, no private railway owners nor shipping owners, +no private mine owners, oil kings, silver kings, coal and wheat +forestallers or the like. All this realm of property is to be resumed +by the State, is to be State-owned and State-managed, and the vast +revenues that are now devoted to private ends will go steadily to +feed, maintain and educate a new and better generation, to promote +research and advance science, to build new houses, develop fresh +resources, plant, plan, beautify and reconstruct the world. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE SPIRIT OF GAIN AND THE SPIRIT OF SERVICE + + +§ 1. + +We have stated now how the constructive plan of Socialism aims to +replace the accepted ideas about two almost fundamental human +relations by broader and less fiercely egotistical conceptions; how it +denies a man "property" rights over his wife and children, leaving, +however, all his other relations with them intact, how it would insure +and protect their welfare, and how it asserts that a vast range of +inanimate things also which are now held as private property must be +regarded as the inalienable possession of the whole community. This +change in the circle of ideas (as the Herbartians put it) is the +essence of the Socialist project. + +It means no little change. It means a general change in the spirit of +living; it means a change from the spirit of gain (which now +necessarily rules our lives) to the spirit of service. + +I have tried to show in the preceding chapter that Socialism seeks to +make life less squalid and cruel, less degrading and dwarfing for the +children that are born into it, and I have tried also to make clear +that realization of, and revolt against, the bad management and waste +and muddle which result from our present economic system. I want now +to point out that Socialism seeks to ennoble the intimate personal +life, by checking and discouraging passions that at present run +rampant, and by giving wider scope for passions that are now thwarted +and subdued. The Socialist declares that life is now needlessly +dishonest, base and mean, because our present social organization, +such as it is, makes an altogether too powerful appeal to some of the +very meanest elements in our nature. + +Not perhaps to the lowest. There can be no disputing that our present +civilization does discourage much of the innate bestiality of man; +that it helps people to a measure of continence, cleanliness and +mutual toleration; that it does much to suppress brute violence, the +spirit of lawlessness, cruelty and wanton destruction. But on the +other hand it does also check and cripple generosity and frank +truthfulness, any disinterested creative passion, the love of beauty, +the passion for truth and research, and it stimulates avarice, +parsimony, overreaching, usury, falsehood and secrecy, by making +money-getting its criterion of intercourse. + +Whether we like it or not, we who live in this world to-day find we +must either devote a considerable amount of our attention to getting +and keeping money, and shape our activities--or, if you will, distort +them--with a constant reference to that process, or we must accept +futility. Whatever powers men want to exercise, whatever service they +wish to do, it is a preliminary condition for most of them that they +must, by earning something or selling something, achieve opportunity. +If they cannot turn their gift into some saleable thing or get some +propertied man to "patronize" them, they cannot exercise these gifts. +The gift for getting is the supreme gift--all others bow before it. + +Now this is not a thing that comes naturally out of the quality of +man; it is the result of a blind and complex social growth, of this +set of ideas working against that, and of these influences modifying +those. The idea of property has run wild and become a choking +universal weed. It is not the natural master-passion of a wholesome +man to want constantly to own. People talk of Socialism as being a +proposal "against human nature," and they would have us believe that +this life of anxiety, of parsimony and speculation, of mercenary +considerations and forced toil we all lead, is the complete and final +expression of the social possibilities of the human soul. But, indeed, +it is only quite abnormal people, people of a narrow, limited, +specialized intelligence, Rockefellers, Morgans and the like, people +neither great nor beautiful, mere financial monomaniacs, who can keep +themselves devoted to and concentrated upon gain. To the majority of +capable good human stuff, buying and selling, saving and investing, +insuring oneself and managing property, is a mass of uncongenial, +irrational and tiresome procedure, conflicting with the general trend +of instinct and the finer interests of life. The great mass of men and +women, indeed, find the whole process so against nature, that in spite +of all the miseries of poverty, all the slavery of the economic +disadvantage, they cannot urge themselves to this irksome cunning game +of besting the world, they remain poor. Most, in a sort of despair, +make no effort; many resort to that floundering endeavour to get by +accident, gambling; many achieve a precarious and unsatisfactory +gathering of possessions, a few houses, a claim on a field, a few +hundred pounds in some investment as incalculable as a kite in a gale; +just a small minority have and get--for the most part either +inheritors of riches or energetic people who, through a real dulness +toward the better and nobler aspects of life, can give themselves +almost entirely to grabbing and accumulation. To such as these, all +common men who are not Socialists do in effect conspire to give the +world. + +The Anti-Socialist argues that out of this evil of encouraged and +stimulated avarice comes good, and that this peculiar meanly greedy +type that predominates in the individualist world to-day, the +Rockefeller-Harriman type, "creates" great businesses, exploits the +possibilities of nature, gives mankind railways, power, commodities. +As a matter of fact, a modern intelligent community is quite capable +of doing all these things infinitely better for itself, and the +beneficent influence of commerce may easily become, and does easily +become, the basis of a cant. Exploitation by private persons is no +doubt a necessary condition to economic development in an illiterate +community of low intelligence, just as flint implements marked a +necessary phase in the social development of mankind; but to-day the +avaricious getter, like some obsolescent organ in the body, consumes +strength and threatens health. And to-day he is far more mischievous +than ever he was before, because of the weakened hold of the old +religious organization upon his imagination. For the most part the +great fortunes of the modern world have been built up by proceedings +either not socially beneficial, or in some cases positively harmful. +Consider some of the commoner methods of growing rich. There is first +the selling of rubbish for money, exemplified by the great patent +medicine fortunes and the fortunes achieved by the debasement of +journalism, the sale of prize-competition magazines and the like; next +there is forestalling, the making of "corners" in such commodities as +corn, nitrates, borax and the like; then there is the capture of what +Americans call "franchises," securing at low terms by expedients that +usually will not bear examination, the right to run some profitable +public service for private profit which would be better done in public +hands--the various private enterprises for urban traffic, for example; +then there are the various more or less complex financial operations, +watering stock, "reconstructing," "shaking out" the ordinary +shareholder, which transfer the savings of the common struggling +person to the financial magnate. All the activities in this list are +more or less anti-social, yet it is by practising them that the great +successes of recent years have been achieved. Fortunes of a second +rank have no doubt been made by building up manufactures and +industries of various types by persons who have known how to buy +labour cheap, organize it well and sell its produce dear, but even in +these cases the social advantage of the new product is often largely +discounted by the labour conditions. It is impossible, indeed, +directly one faces current facts, to keep up the argument of the +public good achieved by men under the incentive of gain and the +necessity of that incentive to progress and economic development. + +Now not only is it true that the subordination of our affairs to this +spirit of gain placed our world in the hands of a peculiar, +acquisitive, uncreative, wary type of person, and that the mass of +people hate serving the spirit of gain and are forced to do so through +the obsession of the whole community by this idea of Private +Ownership, but it is also true that even now the real driving force +that gets the world along is not that spirit at all, but the spirit of +service. Even to-day it would be impossible for the world to get along +if the mass of its population was really specialized for gain. A world +of Rockefellers, Morgans and Rothschilds would perish miserably after +a vigorous campaign of mutual skinning; it is only because the common +run of men is better than these profit-hunters that any real and human +things are achieved. + +Let us go into this aspect of the question a little more fully, +because it is one that appears to be least clearly grasped by those +who discuss Socialism to-day. + + +§ 2. + +This fact must be insisted upon, that most of the work of the world +and all the good work is done to-day for some other motive than gain; +that profit-seeking not only is not the moving power of the world but +that it cannot be, that it runs counter to the doing of effectual work +in every department of life. + +It is hard to know how to set about proving a fact that is to the +writer's perception so universally obvious. One can only appeal to the +intelligent reader to use his own personal observation upon the people +about him. Everywhere he will see the property-owner doing nothing, +the profit-seeker busy with unproductive efforts, with the writing of +advertisements, the misrepresentation of goods, the concoction of a +plausible prospectus and the extraction of profits from the toil of +others, while the real necessary work of the world--I don't mean the +labour and toil only, but the intelligent direction, the real planning +and designing and inquiry, the management and the evolution of ideas +and methods, is in the enormous majority of cases done by salaried +individuals working either for a fixed wage and the hope of increments +having no proportional relation to the work done, or for a wage +varying within definite limits. All the engineering design, all +architecture, all our public services,--the exquisite work of our +museum control, for example,--all the big wholesale and retail +businesses, almost all big industrial concerns, mines, estates, all +these things are really in the hands of salaried or quasi-salaried +persons _now_--just as they would be under Socialism. They are only +possible now because all these managers, officials, employees are as a +class unreasonably honest and loyal, are interested in their work and +anxious to do it well, and do not seek _profits_ in every transaction +they handle. Give them even a small measure of security and they are +content with interesting work; they are glad to set aside the urgent +perpetual search for personal gain that Individualists have persuaded +themselves is the ruling motive of mankind, they are glad to set these +aside altogether and, as the phrase goes, "get something done." And +this is true all up and down the social scale. A bricklayer is no good +unless he can be interested in laying bricks. One knows whenever a +domestic servant becomes mercenary, when she ceases to take, as people +say, "a pride in her work," and thinks only of "tips" and getting, she +becomes impossible. Does a signalman every time he pulls over a lever, +or a groom galloping a horse, think of his wages,--or want to? + +I will confess I find it hard to write with any patience and civility +of this argument that humanity will not work except for greed or need +of money and only in proportion to the getting. It is so patently +absurd. I suppose the reasonable Anti-Socialist will hardly maintain +it seriously with that crudity. He will qualify. He will say that +although it may be true that good work is always done for the interest +of the doing or in the spirit of service, yet in order to get and keep +people at work, and to keep the standard high through periods of +indolence and distraction, there must be the dread of dismissal and +the stimulating eye of the owner. That certainly puts the case a good +deal less basely and much more plausibly. + +There is, perhaps, this much truth in that, that most people do need a +certain stimulus to exertion and a certain standard of achievement to +do their best, but to say that this is provided by private ownership +and can only be provided by private ownership is an altogether +different thing. Is the British Telephone Service, for example, kept +as efficient as it is--which isn't very much, by the bye, in the way +of efficiency--by the protests of the shareholders or of the +subscribers? Does the grocer's errand-boy loiter any less than his +brother who carries the Post Office telegrams? In the matter of the +public milk supply, again, would not an intelligently critical public +anxious for its milk good and early be a far more formidable master +than a speculative proprietor in the back room of a creamery? And when +one comes to large business organizations managed by officials and +owned by dispersed shareholders, the contrast is all to the advantage +of the community. + +No! the only proper virtues in work, the virtues that must be relied +upon, and developed and rewarded in the civilized State we Socialists +are seeking to bring about, are the spirit of service and the passion +for doing well, the honourable competition not to get but to _do_. By +sweating and debasing urgency, we get meagrely done what we might get +handsomely done by the Good Will of emancipated mankind. For all who +really make, who really do, the imperative of gain is the +inconvenience, the enemy. Every artist, every scientific investigator, +every organizer, every good workman, knows that. Every good architect +knows that this is so and can tell of time after time when he has +sacrificed manifest profit and taken a loss to get a thing done as he +wanted it done, right and well; every good doctor, too, has turned +from profit and high fees to the moving and interesting case, to the +demands of knowledge and the public health; every teacher worth his or +her salt can witness to the perpetual struggle between business +advantage and right teaching; every writer has faced the alternative +of his ĉsthetic duty and the search for beauty on one hand and the +"saleable" on the other. All this is as true of ordinary making as of +special creative work. Every plumber capable of his business hates to +have to paint his leadwork; every carpenter knows the disgust of +turning out unfinished "cheap" work, however well it pays him; every +tolerable cook can feel shame for an unsatisfying dish, and none the +less shame because by making it materials are saved and economies +achieved. + +And yet, with all these facts clear as day before any observant +person, _we are content to live on in an economic system that raises +every man who subordinates these wholesome prides and desires to +watchful, incessant getting, over the heads of every other type of +character_; that in effect gives all the power and influence in our +State to successful getters; that subordinates art, direction, wisdom +and labour to these inferior narrow men, these men who clutch and +keep. + +Our social system, based on Private Ownership, encourages and +glorifies this spirit of gain, and cripples and thwarts the spirit of +service. You need but have your eyes once opened to its influence, and +thereafter you will never cease to see how the needs and imperatives +of property taint the honour and dignity of human life. Just where +life should flower most freely into splendour, this chill, malign +obsession most nips and cripples. The law that makes getting and +keeping an imperative necessity poisons and destroys the freedom of +men and women in love, in art and in every concern in which spiritual +or physical beauty should be the inspiring and determining factor. +Behind all the handsome professions of romantic natures the gaunt +facts of monetary necessity remain the rulers of life. Every youth who +must sell his art and capacity for gain, every girl who must sell +herself for money, is one more sacrifice to the Minotaur of Private +Ownership--before the Theseus of Socialism comes. + +Opponents of Socialism, ignoring all these things and inventing with +that profusion which is so remarkable a trait of the anti-Socialist +campaign, are wont to declare that we, whose first and last thought is +the honour and betterment of life, seek to destroy all beauty and +freedom in love, accuse us of aiming at some "human stud farm." The +reader will measure the justice of that by the next chapter, but here +I would say that just as the private ownership of all that is +necessary to humanity, except the air and sunlight and a few things +that it has been difficult to appropriate, debases work and all the +common services of life, so also it taints and thwarts the emotions, +and degrades the intimate physical and emotional existence of an +innumerable multitude of people. + +All this amounts to a huge impoverishment of life, a loss of beauty +and discrimination of rich and subtle values. Human existence to-day +is a mere tantalizing intimation of what it might be. It is +frostbitten and dwarfed from palace to slum. It is not only that a +great mass of our population is deprived of space, beauty and +pleasure, but that a large proportion of such space, beauty and +pleasure as there are in the world must necessarily have a +meretricious taint and be in the nature of things bought and made for +pay. + + +§ 3. + +If there is one profession more than another in which devotion is +implied and assumed, it is that of the doctor. It happens that on the +morning when this chapter was drafted, I came upon the paragraph that +follows; it seemed to me to supply just one striking concrete instance +of how life is degraded by our present system, and to offer me a +convenient text for a word or so more upon this question between gain +and service. It is a little vague in its reference to Mr. Tompkins "of +Birmingham," and I should not be surprised if it were a considerable +exaggeration of what really happened. But it is true enough to life in +this, that it is a common practice, a necessity with doctors in poor +neighbourhoods to insist inexorably upon a fee before attendance. + + "A case of medical inhumanity is reported from Birmingham. A + poor man named Tompkins was taken seriously ill early on + Christmas morning, and although snow was falling and the + atmosphere was terribly raw, his wife left the house in search + of a doctor. The nearest practitioner declined to leave the + house without being paid his fee; a second imposed the same + condition, and the woman then went to the police station. As + the horse ambulance was out, they could not help her, and she + tried other doctors. In all the poor woman called on eight, + and the only one who did not decline to get up without his fee + was down with influenza. Eventually a local chemist was + persuaded to see the man, and he ordered his removal to the + hospital." + +That is the story. You note the charge of "inhumanity" in the very +first line, and in much subsequent press comment there was the same +note. Apparently every one expects a doctor to be ready at any point +in the day or night to attend anybody for nothing. Most Socialists are +disposed to agree with the spirit of that expectation. A practising +doctor should be in lifelong perpetual war against pain and disease, +just as a campaigning soldier is continually alert and serving. But +existing conditions will not permit that. Existing conditions require +the doctor to get his fee at any cost; if he goes about doing work for +nothing, they punish him with shabbiness and incapacitating need, they +forbid his marriage or doom his wife and children to poverty and +unhappiness. A doctor _must_ make money whatever else he does or does +not do; he _must_ secure his fees. He is a private adventurer, +competing in a crowded market for gain, and keeping his energies +perforce for those who can pay best for them. To expect him to behave +like a public servant whose income and outlook are secure, or like a +priest whose church will never let him want or starve, is ridiculous. +If you put him on a footing with the greengrocer and coal merchant, +you must expect him to behave like a tradesman. Why should the press +blame the poor doctor of a poor neighbourhood because a moneyless man +goes short of medical attendance, when it does not for one moment +blame Mr. J. D. Rockefeller because a poor man goes short of oil, or +the Duke of Devonshire because tramps need lodgings in Eastbourne? One +never reads this sort of paragraph:-- + + "A case of commercial inhumanity is reported from Birmingham. + A poor man named Tompkins was seriously hungry early on + Christmas morning, and although snow was falling and the + atmosphere was terribly raw, his wife left the house in search + of food. The nearest grocer declined to supply provisions + without being paid his price; a second imposed the same + condition, and the woman then went to the police station. As + that is not a soup-kitchen, they could not help her, and she + tried other grocers and bread-shops. In all the poor woman + called on eight, and the only one who did not decline to + supply food without payment was for some reason bankrupt and + out of stock. Eventually a local overseer was persuaded to see + the man, and he ordered his removal to the workhouse, where, + after considerable hardship, he was partly appeased with + skilly." + +I, myself, have known an overworked, financially worried doctor at his +bedroom window call out, "Have you brought the fee?" and have pitied +and understood his ugly alternatives. "Once I began that sort of +thing," he explained to me a little apologetically, "they'd none of +them pay--none." + +The Socialist's remedy for this squalid state of affairs is plain and +simple. Medicine is a public service, an honourable devotion; it +should no more be a matter of profit-making than the food-supply +service or the house-supply service--or salvation. It should be a part +of the organization of a civilized State to have a Public Health +service of well-paid, highly-educated men distributed over the country +and closely correlated with public research departments and a reserve +of specialists, who would be as ready and eager to face dangers and to +sacrifice themselves for honour and social necessity as soldiers or +sailors. I believe every honourable man in the medical profession +under forty now would rather it were so. It is, indeed, a transition +from private enterprise to public organization that is already +beginning. We have the first intimation of the change in the +appearance of the medical officer of health, underpaid, overworked and +powerless though he is at the present time. It cannot be long before +the manifest absurdity of our present conditions begins a process of +socialization of the medical profession entirely analogous to that +which has changed three-fourths of the teachers in Great Britain from +private adventurers to public servants in the last forty years. + +And that is the aim of Socialism all along the line; to convert one +public service after another from a chaotic profit-scramble of +proprietors amidst a mass of sweated employees into a secure and +disciplined service, in which every man will work for honour, +promotion, achievement and the commonweal. + +I write a "secure and disciplined service," and I intend by that not +simply an exterior but an interior discipline. Let us have done with +this unnatural theory that men may submit unreservedly to the guidance +of "self-interest." Self-interest never took a man or a community to +any other end than damnation. For all services there is necessary a +code of honour and devotion which a man must set up for himself and +obey, to which he must subordinate a number of his impulses. The must +is seconded by an internal imperative. Men and women _want_ to have a +code of honour. In the army, for example, there is among the officers +particularly, a tradition of courage, cleanliness and good form, more +imperative than any law; in the little band of men who have given the +world all that we mean by science, the little host of volunteers and +underpaid workers who have achieved the triumphs of research, there is +a tradition of self-abnegation and of an immense, painstaking, +self-forgetful veracity. These traditions work. They add something to +the worth of every man who comes under them. + +Every writer, again, knows clearly the difference between gain-seeking +and doing good work, and few there are who have not at times done +something, as they say, "to please themselves." Then in the studio, +for all the non-moral protests of Bohemia, there is a tradition, an +admirable tradition, of disregard for mercenary imperatives, a scorn +of shams and plagiarism that triumphs again and again over economic +laws. The public services of the coming civilization will demand, and +will develop, a far completer discipline and tradition of honour. +Against the development and persistence of all such honourable codes +now, against every attempt at personal nobility, at a new chivalry, at +sincere artistry, our present individualist system wages pitiless +warfare, says in effect, "Fools you are! Look at Rockefeller! Look at +Pierpont Morgan! Get money! All your sacrifices only go to their +enrichment. You cannot serve humanity however much you seek to do so. +They block your way, enormously receptive of all you give. All the +increment of human achievement goes to them--they own it _a +priori_.... Get money! Money is freedom to do, to keep, to rule. Do +you care nothing for your wives and children? Are you content to breed +servants and dependants for the children of these men? Make things +beautiful, make things abundant, make life glorious! Fools! if you +work and sacrifice yourselves and do not _get_, they will possess. +Your sons shall be the loan-monger's employees, your daughters +handmaidens to the millionaire. Or, if you cannot face that, go +childless, and let your life-work gild the palace of the millionaire's +still more acquisitive descendants!" + +Who can ignore the base scramble for money under these alternatives? + + +§ 4. + +Let me here insert a very brief paragraph to point out one particular +thing, and that is that Socialism does not propose to "abolish +competition"--as many hasty and foolish antagonists declare. If the +reader has gone through what has preceded this he will know that this +is not so. Socialism trusts to competition, looks to competition for +the service and improvement of the world. And in order that +competition between man and man may have free play, Socialism seeks to +abolish one particular form of competition, the competition to get and +hold property--even to marry property, that degrades our present +world. But it would leave men free to compete for fame, for service, +for salaries, for position and authority, for leisure, for love and +honour. + + +§ 5. + +And now let me take up certain difficulties the student of Socialism +encounters. He comes thus far perhaps with the Socialist argument, and +then his imagination gets to work trying to picture a world in which a +moiety of the population, perhaps even the larger moiety, is employed +by the State, and in which the whole population is educated by the +State and insured of a decent and comfortable care and subsistence +during youth and old age. He then begins to think of how all this vast +organization is to be managed, and with that his real difficulties +begin. + +Now I for one am prepared to take these difficulties very seriously, +as the latter part of this book will show. I will even go so far as to +say that, to my mind, the contemporary Socialist controversialist +meets all this system of objections far too cavalierly. These +difficulties are real difficulties for the convinced Socialist as for +the inquirer; they open up problems that have still to be solved +before the equipment of Socialism is complete. "How will you +Socialists get the right men in the right place for the work that has +to be done? How will you arrange promotion? How will you determine" (I +put the argument in its crudest form) "who is to engage in historical +research in the Bodleian, and who is to go out seaward in November and +catch mackerel?" Such "posers"--they have a thousand variants--convey +the spirit of the living resistance to Socialism; they explain why +every rational man is not an enraptured Socialist at the present time. + +Throughout the rest of this book I hope that the reader will be able +to see growing together in this aspect and then in that, in this and +that suggestion, the complex solution of this complex system of +difficulties. My object in raising them now is not to dispose of them, +but to give them the fullest recognition--and to ask the student to +read on. In all these matters the world is imperfect now, and it will +still be imperfect under Socialism--though, I firmly believe, with an +infinitely lesser and altogether nobler imperfection. + +But I do want to point out here that though these are reasonable and, +to all undogmatic men, most helpful criticisms of the Socialist +design, they are no sort of justification for things as they are. All +the difficulties that the ordinary exposition of Socialism seems to +leave unsolved are at least equally not solved now. Only rarely does +the right man seem to struggle to his place of adequate opportunity. +Men and women get their chance in various ways; some of implacable +temper and versatile gifts thrust themselves to the position they need +for the exercise of their powers; others display an astonishing +facility in securing honours and occasions they can then only waste; +others, outside their specific gift, are the creatures of luck or the +victims of modesty, tactlessness or incapacity. Most of the large +businesses of the world now are in the hands of private proprietors +and managed either directly by an owner or by directors or managers +acting for directors. The quality of promotion or the recognition of +capacity varies very much in these great concerns, but they are on the +whole probably inferior to the public services. Even where the +administration is keenest it must be remembered it is not seeking the +men who work the machine best, but the men who can work it cheapest +and with the maximum of profit. It is pure romancing to represent the +ordinary business magnate as being in perpetual search for capacity +among the members of his staff. He wants them to get along and not +make trouble. + +Among the smaller businesses that still, I suppose, constitute the +bulk of the world's economic body, capacity is enormously hampered. I +was once an apprentice in a chemist's shop, and also once in a +draper's--two of my brothers have been shop assistants, and so I am +still able to talk understandingly with clerks and employees, and I +know that in all that world all sorts of minor considerations obstruct +the very beginnings of efficient selection. Every shop is riddled with +jealousies, "sucking up to the gov'nor" is the universal crime, and +among the women in many callings promotion is too often tainted by +still baser suspicions. No doubt in a badly criticized public service +there is such a thing as "sucking up to" the head of the department, +but at its worst it is not nearly so bad as things may be in a small +private concern under a petty autocrat. + +In America it is said that the public services are inferior in +personal quality to the staffs of the great private business +organizations. My own impression is that, considering the salaries +paid, they are, so far as Federal concerns go, immeasurably superior. +In State and municipal affairs, American conditions offer no +satisfactory criterion; the Americans are, for reasons I have +discussed elsewhere,[8] a "State-blind" people concentrated upon +private getting; they have been negligent of public concerns, and the +public appointments have been left to the peculiarly ruffianly type of +politician their unfortunate Constitution and their individualist +traditions have evolved. In England, too, public servants are +systematically undersalaried, so that the big businesses have merely +to pay reasonably well to secure the pick of the national capacity. +Moreover, it must be remembered by the reader that the public services +do not advertise, and that the private businesses do; so that while +there is the fullest ventilation of any defects in our military or +naval organization, there is a very considerable check upon the +discussion of individualist incapacity. An editor will rush into print +with the flimsiest imputations upon the breech of a new field-gun or +the housing of the militia at Aldershot, but he thinks twice before he +proclaims that the preserved fruits that pay his proprietor a tribute +of some hundreds a year are an unwholesome embalmment of decay. On the +whole it is probable that in spite of scandalously bad pay and of the +embarrassment of party considerations, the British Navy, Post Office, +and Civil Service generally, and the educational work and much of the +transit and building work of the London County Council and of many of +the greater English and Scotch municipalities, are as well managed as +any private businesses in the world. + + [8] _The Future in America_, Ch. IX. (Chapman & Hall, 1906.) + +On the other hand, one must admit there are political and social +conditions that can carry the quality of the State service almost as +low as the lowest type of private enterprise. It is little marvel that +under the typical eighteenth century monarchy, when the way to ship, +regiment and the apostolic succession alike lay through the +ante-chamber of the king's mistress, there was begotten that absolute +repudiation of State Control to which Herbert Spencer was destined at +last to give the complete expression, that irrational, passionate +belief that whatever else is right the State is necessarily +incompetent and wrong.... + +The gist of this matter seems to be that where you have honourable +political institutions, free speech and a general high level of +intelligence and education, you will have an efficient criticism of +men and their work and powers, and you will get a wholesome system of +public promotion and many right men in the right place. The higher the +collective intelligence, that is to say, the higher is the collective +possibility. Under Socialist institutions which will give education +and a sense of personal security to every one, this necessity of +criticism is likely to be most freely, frankly and disinterestedly +provided. But it is well to keep in mind the entire dependence of +Socialism upon a high level of intelligence, education and freedom. +Socialist institutions, as I understand them, are only possible in a +civilized State, in a State in which the whole population can read, +write, discuss, participate and in a considerable measure understand. +Education must precede the Socialist State. Socialism, modern +Socialism that is to say, such as I am now concerned with, is +essentially an exposition of and training in certain general ideas; it +is impossible in an illiterate community, a basely selfish community, +or in a community without the capacity to use the machinery and the +apparatus of civilization. At the best, and it is a poor best, a +stupid, illiterate population can but mock Socialism with a sort of +bureaucratic tyranny; for a barbaric population too large and various +for the folk-meeting, there is nothing but monarchy and the ownership +of the king; for a savage tribe, tradition and the undocumented will +of the strongest males. Socialism, I will admit, presupposes +intelligence, and demands as fundamental necessities schools, +organized science, literature and a sense of the State. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +WOULD SOCIALISM DESTROY THE HOME? + + +§ 1. + +For reasons that will become clearer when we tell something of the +early history and development of Socialism, the Socialist propositions +with regard to the family lie open to certain grave misconceptions. +People are told--and told quite honestly and believingly--that +Socialism will destroy the home, will substitute a sort of human stud +farm for that warm and intimate nest of human life, will bring up our +children in incubators and crèches and--Institutions generally. + +But before we come to what modern Socialists do desire in these +matters, it may be well to consider something of the present reality +of the home people are so concerned about. The reader must not +idealize. He must not shut his eyes to facts, dream, as Lord Hugh +Cecil and Lord Robert Cecil--those admirable champions of a bad +cause--probably do, of a beautiful world of homes, orderly, virtuous, +each a little human fastness, each with its porch and creeper, each +with its books and harmonium, its hymn-singing on Sunday night, its +dear mother who makes such wonderful cakes, its strong and happy +father--and then say, "These wicked Socialists want to destroy all +this." Because, in the first place, such homes are being destroyed and +made impossible now by the very causes against which Socialism fights, +and because in this world at the present time very few homes are at +all like this ideal. In reality every poor home is haunted by the +spectre of irregular employment and undermined by untrustworthy +insurance, it must shelter in insanitary dwellings and its children +eat adulterated food because none other can be got. And that, I am +sorry to say, it is only too easy to prove, by a second appeal to a +document of which I have already made use. + +One hears at times still of the austere, virtuous, kindly, poor Scotch +home, one has a vision of the "Cottar's Saturday night." "Perish all +other dreams," one cries, "rather than that such goodness and +simplicity should end." But now let us look at the average poor Scotch +home, and compare it with our dream. + +Here is the reality. + +These entries come from the recently published Edinburgh Charity +Organization Society's report upon the homes of about fourteen hundred +school-children, that is to say, about eight hundred Scotch homes. +Remember they are _sample homes_. They are, as I have already +suggested by quoting authorities for London and York--and as any +district visitor will recognize--little worse and little better than +the bulk of poor people's homes in Scotland and England at the present +time. I am just going to copy down--not a selection, mind--but a +series of consecutive entries taken haphazard from this implacable +list. My last quotation was from cases 1, 2, 3 and so on; I've now +thrust my fingers among the pages and come upon numbers 191 and 192, +etc. Here they are, one after the other, just as they come in the +list:-- + + "191. A widow and child lodging with a married son. Three + grown-up people and three children occupy one room and + bed-closet. The widow leads a wandering life, and is + intemperate. The house is thoroughly bad and insanitary. The + child is pallid and delicate looking, and receives little + attention, for the mother is usually out working. He plays in + the streets. Five children are dead. Boy has glands and is + fleabitten. Evidence from Police, School Officer and Employer. + + "192. A miserable home. Father dead. Mother and eldest son + careless and indifferent. Of the five children, the two eldest + are grown up. The elder girl is working, and she is of a + better type and might do well under better circumstances; she + looks overworked. The mother is supposed to char; she gets + parish relief, and one child earns out of school hours. Four + children are dead. The children at school are dirty and + ragged. The mother could get work if she did not drink. The + children at school get free dinners and clothing, and the + family is favourably reported on by the Church. The second + child impetigo; neck glands; body dirty. The third, glands; + dirty and fleabitten. Housing: six in two small rooms. + Evidence from Parish Sister, Parish Council, School Charity, + Police, Teacher, Children's Employment and School Officer. + + "193. A widow, apparently respectable and well-doing, but may + drink. She must in any case have a struggle to maintain her + family, though she has much help from Parish, Church, etc. She + works out. The children at school are fed, and altogether a + large amount of charity must be received, as two Churches have + interested themselves in the matter. Three children dead. + Housing: three in two tiny rooms. Evidence from Church, Parish + Council, School Charity, Police, Parish Sister, Teacher, + Insurance and Factor. + + "194. The father drinks, and, to a certain extent, the mother; + but the home is tidy and clean, and the rent is regularly + paid. Indeed, there is no sign of poverty. There is a daughter + who has got into trouble. Only two children out of nine are + alive. The father comes from the country and seems intelligent + enough, but he appears to have degenerated. They go to a + mission, it is believed for what they can get from it. + Housing: four in two rooms. Evidence from Club, Church, Factor + and Police. + + "195. The husband is intemperate. The mother is quiet, but it + is feared that she drinks also. She seems to have lost control + of her little boy of seven. The parents married very young, + and the first child was born before the marriage. The man's + work is not regular, and probably things are not improving + with him. Still, the house is fairly comfortable, and they pay + club money regularly, and have a good police report. One child + has died. Housing: five in two rooms. Evidence from Parish + Sister, Police, Club, Employer, School-mistress and Factor. + + "196. A filthy, dirty house. The most elementary notions of + cleanliness seem disregarded. The father's earnings are not + large, and the house is insanitary, but more might be made of + things if there were sobriety and thrift. There does not, + however, appear to be _great_ drunkenness, and five small + children must be difficult to bring up on the money coming in. + There are two women in the house. The eldest child dirty and + fleabitten. Housing: seven in two rooms. Evidence from Police, + Club, Employer, School-mistress and School Officer. + + "197. The parents are thoroughly drunken and dissolute. They + have sunk almost to the lowest depths of social degradation. + There is no furniture in the house, and the five children are + neglected and starved. One boy earns a trifle out of school + hours. All accounts agree as to the character of the father + and mother, though they have not been in the hands of the + police. Second child has rickets, bronchitis, slight glands + and is bow-legged. Two children have died. Housing: seven in + two rooms. Evidence from Police, Parish Sister, Employer and + School-mistress. + + "198. This house is fairly comfortable, and there is no + evidence of drink, but the surroundings have a bad and + depressing effect on the parents. The children are sent to + school very untidy and dirty, and are certainly underfed. The + father's wages are very small, and only one boy is working; + there are six altogether. The mother chars occasionally. Food + and clothing is given to school-children. The man is in a + saving club. The eldest child fleabitten; body unwashed. The + second, glands; fleabitten and dirty; cretinoid; much + undergrown. Two have died. Housing: seven in two rooms. + Evidence from School Charity, Factor, Police and + School-mistress. + + "199. The house was fairly comfortable and the man appeared to + be intelligent and the wife hard-working, but the police + reports are very bad; there are several convictions against + the former. He has consequently been idle, and the burden of + the family has rested on the wife. There are six children, two + of them are working and earning a little, but a large amount + of charity from school, church and private generosity keeps + the family going. The children are fearfully verminous. There + is a suggestion that some baby farming is done, so many are + about. Eldest child anĉmic; glands; head badly crusted; lice + very bad. Second child, numerous glands; head covered with + crusts; lice very bad. Four have died. Housing: eight in two + rooms. Evidence from Police, Teacher, Church, Parish Sister + and Factor. + + "200. The home is wretched and practically without furniture. + The parents were married at ages 17 and 18. One child died, + and their mode of life has been reckless, if not worse. The + present means of subsistence cannot be ascertained, as the man + is idle; however, he recently joined the Salvation Army and + signed the pledge. The child at school is helped with food and + clothes. The girl very badly bitten; lice and fleas, hair + nits. Housing: four in one room. Evidence from Church, School + Charity, Co-operative, Employer, Parish Sister, Police and + School-mistress." + +Total of children still living, 39. + +Total of children dead, 27. + +Need I go on? They are all after this fashion, eight hundred of them. + +And if you turn from the congested town to the wholesome, simple +country, here is the sort of home you have. This passage is a cutting +from the _Daily News_ of Jan. 1, 1907; and its assertions have never +been contradicted. It fills one with only the mildest enthusiasm for +the return of our degenerate townsmen "back to the land." I came upon +it as I read that morning's paper after drafting this chapter. + + "Our attention has been called to a sordid Herefordshire + tragedy recently revealed at an inquest on a child aged one + year and nine months, who died in Weobly Workhouse of + pneumonia. She entered the institution emaciated to half the + proper weight of her age and with a broken arm--till then + undiscovered--that the doctors found to be of about three + weeks' standing. Her mother was shown to be in an advanced + stage of consumption; one child had died at the age of seven + months, and seven now remain. The father, whose work consists + in tending eighty-nine head of cattle and ten pigs, is in + receipt of eleven shillings a week, three pints of skim milk a + day, and a cottage that has been condemned by the sanitary + inspector and described as having no bedroom windows. We are + not surprised to learn that the coroner, before taking the + verdict, asked the house surgeon, who gave evidence, whether + he could say that death 'was accelerated by anything.' Our + wonder is that the reply was in the negative. The cottage is + in the possession of the farmer who employs the man, but his + landlord is said to be liable for repairs. That landlord is a + clergyman of the Church of England, a J.P., a preserver of + game, and owner of three or four thousand acres of land." + +And here, again, is the _Times_, by no means a Socialist organ, +generalizing from official statements:-- + + "Houses unfit for human habitation, rooms destitute of light + and ventilation, overcrowding in rural cottages, contaminated + water supplies, accumulations of every description of filth + and refuse, a total absence of drainage, a reign of + unbelievable dirt in milk-shops and slaughter-houses, a total + neglect of bye-laws, and an inadequate supervision by + officials who are frequently incompetent; such, in a general + way, is the picture that is commonly presented in the reports + of inquiries in certain rural districts made by medical + officers of the Local Government Board." + +And even of such homes as this there is an insufficiency. In 1891-95, +more than a quarter of the deaths in London occurred in workhouses and +other charitable institutions.[9] Now suppose the modern Socialist did +want to destroy the home; suppose that some Socialists have in the +past really wanted to do so, remember that that is the reality they +wanted to destroy. + + [9] _Studies Scientific and Social_, Vol. II., Ch. XXIV.; by + Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace. (Macmillan & Co., 1900.) + +But does the modern Socialist want to destroy the home? Rather, I +hold, he wants to save it from a destruction that is even now going +on, to--I won't say restore it, because I have very grave doubts if +the world has ever yet held a high percentage of good homes, but raise +it to the level of its better realizations of happiness and security. +And it is not only I say this, but all my fellow Socialists say it +too. Read, for example, that admirable paper, "Economic and Social +Justice," in Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace's _Studies Scientific and +Social_, and you will have the clearest statement of the attitude of a +representative modern Socialist to this question. + + +§ 2. + +The reader must get quite out of his head the idea that the present +system maintains the home and social purity. + +In London at the present time there are thousands of prostitutes; in +Paris, in Berlin, in every great city of Europe or America, thousands; +in the whole of Christendom there cannot be less than a million of +these ultimate instances of our civilization. They are the logical +extremity of a civilization based on cash payments. Each of these +women represents a smashed and ruined home and wasted possibilities of +honour, service and love, each one is so much sheer waste. For the +food they consume, their clothing, their lodging, they render back +nothing to the community as a whole, and only a gross, dishonouring +satisfaction to their casual employers. And don't imagine they are +inferior women, that there has been any selection of the unfit in +their sterilization; they are, one may see for oneself, well above the +average in physical vigour, in spirit and beauty. Few of them have +come freely to their trade, the most unnatural in the world; few of +them have anything but shame and loathing for their life; and most of +them must needs face their calling fortified by drink and drugs. For +virtuous people do not begin to understand the things they endure. But +it _pays_ to be a prostitute, it does not pay to be a mother and a +home-maker, and the gist of the present system of individual property +is that a thing _must pay_ to exist.... So much for one aspect of our +present system of a "world of homes." + +Consider next the great army of employed men and women, shop +assistants, clerks, and so forth, living in, milliners, typists, +teachers, servants who have practically no prospect whatever of +marrying and experiencing those domestic blisses the Socialist is +supposed to want to rob them of. They are involuntary monks and nuns, +celibate not from any high or religious motive, but through economic +hardship. Consider all that amount of pent-up, thwarted or perverted +emotional possibility, the sheer irrational waste of life implied.... + +We have glanced at the reality of the family among the poor; what is +it among the rich? Does the wealthy mother of the upper middle-class +or upper class really sit among her teeming children, teaching them in +an atmosphere of love and domestic exaltation? As a matter of fact she +is a conspicuously devoted woman if she gives them an hour a day--the +rest of the time they spend with nurse or governess, and when they are +ten or eleven off they go to board at the preparatory school. Whenever +I find among my press-cuttings some particularly scathing denunciation +of Socialists as home-destroyers, as people who want to snatch the +tender child from the weeping mother to immure it in some terrible +wholesale institution, I am apt to walk out into my garden, from which +three boarding-schools for little children of the prosperous classes +are visible, and rub my eyes and renew that sight and marvel at my +kind.... + +Consider now, with these things in mind, the real drift of the first +main Socialist proposition, and compare its tendency with these +contemporary conditions. Socialism regards parentage under proper +safeguards and good auspices as "not only a duty but a service" to the +State; that is to say it proposes to pay for good parentage--in other +words to _endow the home_. Socialism comes not to destroy but to save. + +And how will the endowment be done? Very probably it will be found +that the most convenient and best method of doing this will be to +subsidize the mother--who is, or should be, the principal person +concerned in this affair--for her children; to assist her, not as a +charity, but as a right in the period before the birth of her +anticipated child, and afterwards to provide her with support for that +child so long as it is kept clean in a tolerable home, in good health, +well taught and properly clad. It will say to the sound mothering +woman, Not type-writing, nor shirt-sewing, nor charing is your +business--these children are. Neglect them, ill-treat them, prove +incompetent, and your mother-right will cease and we shall take them +away from you and do what we can for them; love them, serve them and, +through them, the State, and you will serve yourself. Is that +destroying the home? Is it not rather the rescue of the home from +economic destruction? + +Certain restrictions, it is true, upon our present way of doing things +would follow almost necessarily from the adoption of these methods. It +is manifest that no intelligent State would willingly endow the homes +of hopelessly diseased parents, of imbecile fathers or mothers, of +obstinately criminal persons or people incapable of education. It is +evident, too, that the State would not tolerate chance fatherhood, +that it would insist very emphatically upon marriage and the purity of +the home, much more emphatically than we do now. Such a case as the +one numbered 197, a beautiful instance of the sweet, old-fashioned, +homely, simple life of the poor we Socialists are supposed to be +vainly endeavouring to undermine--would certainly be dealt with in a +drastic and conclusive spirit.... + + +§ 3. + +So far Socialism goes toward regenerating the family and sustaining +the home. But let there be no ambiguity on one point. It will be +manifest that while it would reinvigorate and confirm the home, it +does quite decidedly tend to destroy what has hitherto been the most +typical form of the family throughout the world, that is to say the +family which is in effect the private property of the father, the +patriarchal family. The tradition of the family in which we are still +living, we must remember, has developed from a former state in which +man owned the wife or child as completely as he owned horse or hut. He +was the family's irresponsible owner. Socialism seeks to make him and +his wife its jointly responsible heads. Until quite recently the +husband might beat his wife and put all sorts of physical constraint +upon her; he might starve her or turn her out of doors; her property +was his; her earnings were his; her children were his. Under certain +circumstances it was generally recognized he might kill her. To-day we +live in a world that has faltered from the rigours of this position, +but which still clings to its sentimental consequences. The wife +now-a-days is a sort of pampered and protected half-property. If she +leaves her husband for another man, it is regarded not as a public +offence on her part, but as a sort of mitigated theft on the part of +the latter, entitling the former to damages. Politically she doesn't +exist; the husband sees to all that. But on the other hand he mustn't +drive her by physical force, but only by the moral pressure of +disagreeable behaviour. Nor has he the same large powers of violence +over her children that once he had. He may beat--within limits. He may +dictate their education so far as his religious eccentricities go, and +be generous or meagre with the supplies. He may use his "authority" as +a vague power far on into their adult life, if he is a forcible +character. But it is at its best a shorn splendour he retains. He has +ceased to be an autocrat and become a constitutional monarch; the +State, sustained by the growing reasonableness of the world, +intervenes more and more between him and the wife and children who +were once powerless in his hands. + +The Socialist would end that old legal predominance altogether. The +woman, he declares, must be as important and responsible a citizen in +the State as the man. She must cease to be in any sense or degree +private property. The man must desist from tyrannizing in the nursery +and do his proper work in the world. So far, therefore, as the family +is a name for a private property in a group of related human beings +vesting in one of them, the Head of the Family, Socialism repudiates +it altogether as unjust and uncivilized; but so far as the family is a +grouping of children with their parents, with the support and consent +and approval of the whole community, Socialism advocates it, would +make it for the first time, so far as a very large moiety of our +population is concerned, a possible and efficient thing. + +Moreover, as the present writer has pointed out elsewhere,[10] this +putting of the home upon a public basis destroys its autonomy. Just as +the Socialist and all who have the cause of civilization at heart +would substitute for the inefficient, wasteful, irresponsible, +unqualified "private adventure school" that did such infinite injury +to middle-class education in Great Britain during the Victorian period +a public school, publicly and richly endowed and responsible and +controlled, so the Socialist would put an end to the uncivilized +go-as-you-please of the private adventure family. "Socialism in fact +is the State family. The old family of the private individual must +vanish before it just as the old water-works of private enterprise or +the old gas company."[11] To any one not idiotic nor blind with a +passionate desire to lie about Socialism, the meaning of this passage +is perfectly plain. Socialism seeks to broaden the basis of the family +and to make the once irresponsible parent responsible to the State for +its welfare. Socialism creates parental responsibility. + + [10] _Socialism and the Family._ (A. C. Fifield. 6_d._) + + [11] _Socialism and the Family._ + + +§ 4. + +And here we may give a few words to certain questions that are in +reality outside the scope of Socialists altogether, special questions +involving the most subtle ethical and psychological decisions. Upon +them Socialists are as widely divergent as people who are not +Socialists, and Socialism as a whole presents nothing but an open +mind. They are questions that would be equally open to discussion in +relation to an Individualist State or to any sort of State. Certain +religious organizations have given clear and imperative answers to +some or all of these questions, and so far as the reader is a member +of such an organization, he may rest assured that Socialism, as an +authoritative whole, has nothing to say for or against his +convictions. This cannot be made too plain by Socialists, nor too +frequently repeated by them. A very large part of the so-called +arguments against them arise out of deliberate misrepresentations and +misconceptions of some alleged Socialist position in these indifferent +matters. + +I refer more particularly to the numerous problems in private morality +and social organization arising from sexual conduct. May a man love +one woman only in his life, or more, and may a woman love only one +man? Should marriage be an irrevocable life union or not? Is sterile +physical love possible, permissible, moral, honourable or intolerable? +Upon all these matters individual Socialists, like most other people, +have their doubts and convictions, but it is no more just to saddle +all Socialism with their private utterances and actions upon these +issues than it would be to declare that the Roman Catholic Communion +is hostile to beauty because worshippers coming and going have knocked +the noses off the figures on the bronze doors of the Church of San +Zeno at Verona, or that Christianity involves the cultivation of +private vermin, because of the condition of Saint Thomas à Beckett's +hair shirt.[12] To argue in that way is to give up one's birthright as +a reasonable being. + + [12] "The haircloth encased the whole body down to the + knees; the hair drawers, as well as the rest of the dress, + being covered on the outside with white linen so as to + escape observation; and the whole so fastened together as to + admit of being readily taken off for his daily scourgings, + of which yesterday's portion was still apparent in the + stripes on his body. Such austerity had hitherto been + unknown to English saints, and the marvel was increased by + the sight--to our notions so revolting--of the innumerable + vermin with which the haircloth abounded--boiling over with + them, as one account describes it, like water in a simmering + cauldron. At the dreadful sight all the enthusiasm of the + previous night revived with double ardour. They looked at + each other in silent wonder, then exclaimed, 'See, see what + a true monk he was, and we knew it not!' and burst into + alternate fits of weeping and laughter, between the sorrow + of having lost such a head, and the joy of having found such + a saint." (_Historical Memorials of Canterbury_, by the Rev. + Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, D.D.) + +Upon certain points modern Socialism is emphatic; women and children +must not be dealt with as private property, women must be citizens +equally with men, children must not be casually born, their parents +must be known and worthy; that is to say there must be deliberation in +begetting children, marriage under conditions. And there Socialism +stops. + +Socialism has not even worked out what are the reasonable conditions +of a State marriage contract, and it would be ridiculous to pretend it +had. This is not a defect in Socialism particularly, but a defect in +human knowledge. At countless points in the tangle of questions +involved, the facts are not clearly known. Socialism does not present +any theory whatever about the duration of marriage, whether, as among +the Roman Catholics, it should be absolutely for life, or, as some +hold, for ever; or, as among the various divorce-permitting Protestant +bodies, until this or that eventuality; or even, as Mr. George +Meredith suggested some years ago, for a term of ten years. In these +matters Socialism does not decide, and it is quite reasonable to argue +that Socialism need not decide. Socialism maintains an attitude of +neutrality. And the practical effect of an attitude of neutrality is +to leave these things as they are at present. The State is not +urgently concerned with these questions. So long as a marriage +contract provides for the health and sanity of the contracting +parties, and for their proper behaviour so far as their offspring is +concerned, and for so long as their offspring need it, the demands of +the community, as the guardian of the children, are satisfied. That +certainly would be the minimum marriage, the State marriage, and I, +for my own part, would exact nothing more _in the legal contract_. But +a number of more representative Socialists than I are for a legally +compulsory life marriage. Some--but they are mostly of the older, less +definite, Social Democratic teaching--are for a looser tie. Let us +clearly understand that we are here talking of the legal marriage +only--the State's share. We are not talking of what people will do, +but of how much they are to be made to do. A vast amount of stupid +confusion arises from forgetting that. What was needed more than that +minimum I have specified would be provided, I believe--it always has +been provided hitherto, even to excess--by custom, religion, social +influence, public opinion. + +For it may not be altogether superfluous to remind the reader how +little of our present moral code is ruled by law. We have in England, +it is true, certain laws prescribing the conditions of the marriage +contract, penalties of a quite ferocious kind to prevent bigamy, and a +few quite trivial disabilities put upon those illegitimately born. But +there is no legal compulsion upon any one to marry now, and far less +legal restriction upon irregular and careless parentage than would be +put in any scientifically organized Socialism. Do let us get it out of +our heads that monogamy is enforced by law at the present time. It is +not. You are only forbidden to enter into normal marriage with more +than one person. If a man of means chooses to have as many concubines +as King Solomon and live with them all openly, the law (I am speaking +of Great Britain) will do nothing to prevent him. If he chooses to go +through any sort of nuptial ceremony, provided it does not simulate a +legal marriage, with some or all of them he may. And to any one who +evades the legal marriage bond, there is a vast range of betrayal and +baseness as open as anything can be. "Free Love" is open to any one +who chooses to practise it to-day. The real controlling force in these +matters is social influence, public opinion, a sort of conscience and +feeling for the judgment of others that is part of the normal human +equipment. And the same motives and considerations that keep people's +lives pure and discreet now, will be all the more freely in operation +under Socialism, when money will count for less and reputation for +more than they do now. Modern Socialism is a project to change the +organization of living and the circle of human ideas; but it is no +sort of scheme to attempt the impossible, to change human nature and +to destroy the social sensitiveness of man. + +I do not deny the intense human interest of these open questions, the +imperative need there is to get the truth, whether one considers it to +be one's own truth or the universal truth, upon them. But my point is +that they are to be discussed apart from Socialist theory, and that +anyhow they have nothing to do with Socialist politics. It is no doubt +interesting to discuss the benefits of vaccination and the justice and +policy of its public compulsion, to debate whether one should eat meat +or confine oneself to a vegetable dietary, whether the overhead or the +slot system is preferable for tramway traction, whether steamboats are +needed on the Thames in winter, and whether it is wiser to use metal +or paper for money; but none of these things have anything to do with +the principles of Socialism. Nor need we decide whether Whistler, +Raphael or Carpaccio has left us the most satisfying beauty, or which +was the greater musician, Wagner, Scarlatti or Beethoven, nor +pronounce on the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy in any prescribed way, +because we accept Socialism. + +Coming to graver matters there are ardent theologians who would create +an absolute antagonism between Socialism and Christianity, who would +tie up Socialism with some extraordinary doctrine of Predestination, +or deny the possibility of a Christian being a Socialist or a +Socialist being a Christian. But these are matters on different +planes. In a sense Socialism is a religion; to me it is a religion, in +the sense, that is, that it gives a work to do that is not +self-seeking, that it determines one in a thousand indecisions, that +it supplies that imperative craving of so many human souls, a +devotion. But I do not see why a believer in any of the accepted +creeds of Christianity, from the Apostles' Creed upward, should not +also whole-heartedly give himself to this great work of social +reconstruction. To believe in a real and personal Heaven is surely not +to deny earth with its tragedy, its sorrows, its splendid +possibilities. It is simply to believe a little more concretely than I +do, that is all. To assert the brotherhood of man under God seems to +me to lead logically to a repudiation of the severities of Private +Ownership--that is to Socialism. When the rich young man was told to +give up his property to follow Christ, when the disciples were told to +leave father and mother, it seems to me ridiculous to present +Christianity as opposed to the self-abnegation of the two main +generalizations of Socialism--that relating to property in things, and +that relating to property in persons. It is true that the Church of +Rome has taken the deplorable step of forbidding Socialism (or at +least _Socialismus_) to its adherents; but there is no need for +Socialists to commit a reciprocal stupidity. Let us Socialists at any +rate keep our intellectual partitions up. The Church that now quarrels +with Socialism once quarrelled with astronomy and geology, and +astronomers and geologists went on with their own business. Both +religion and astronomy are still alive and in the same world together. +And the Vatican observatory, by the bye, is honourably distinguished +for its excellent stellar photographs. Perhaps, after all, the Church +does not mean by _Socialismus_ Socialism as it is understood in +English; perhaps it simply means the dogmatically anti-Christian +Socialism of the Continental type. + +I am not advocating indifference to any interest I have here set aside +as irrelevant to Socialism. Men have discussed and will, I hope, +continue to discuss such questions as I have instanced with passionate +zeal; but Socialism need not be entangled by their decisions. We can +go on our road to Socialism, we can get to Socialism, to the Civilized +State, whichever answer is given to any of these questions, great or +small. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +WOULD MODERN SOCIALISM ABOLISH ALL PROPERTY? + + +§ 1. + +Having in the previous chapter cleared up a considerable mass of +misconception and possibility of misrepresentation about the attitude +of Socialism to the home, let us now devote a little more attention to +the current theory of property and say just exactly where Modern +Socialism stands in that matter. + +The plain fact of the case is that the Socialist, whether he wanted to +or no, would no more be able to abolish personal property altogether +than he would be able to abolish the human liver. The extension of +one's personality to things outside oneself is indeed as natural and +instinctive a thing as eating. But because the liver is necessary and +inevitable, there is no reason why it should be enlarged to +uncomfortable proportions, and because eating is an unconquerable +instinct there is no excuse for repletion. The position of the modern +Socialist is that the contemporary idea of personal property is +enormously exaggerated and improperly extended to things that ought +not to be "private"; not that it is not a socially most useful and +desirable idea within its legitimate range. + +There can be no doubt that many of those older writers who were +"Socialists before Socialism," Plato, for instance, and Sir Thomas +More, did very roundly abolish private property altogether. They were +extreme Communists, and so were many of the earlier Socialists; in +More's Utopia, doors might not be fastened, they stood open; one +hadn't even a private room. These earlier writers wished to insist +upon the need of self-abnegation in the ideal State, and to startle +and confound, they insisted overmuch. The early Christians, one +gathers, were almost completely communistic, and that interesting +experiment in Christian Socialism (of a rather unorthodox type of +Christianity), the American Oneida community, was successfully +communistic in every respect for many years. But the modern Socialist +is not a communist; the modern Socialist, making his scheme of social +reconstruction for the whole world and for every type of character, +recognizes the entire impracticability of such dreams, recognizing, +too, it may be, the sacrifice of human personality and distinction +such ideals involve. + +The word "property," one must remember, is a slightly evasive word. +Absolute property hardly exists--absolute, that is to say, in the +sense of unlimited right of disposal; almost all property is +incomplete and relative. A man, under our present laws, has no +absolute property even in his own life; he is restrained from suicide +and punished if he attempt it. He may not go offensively filthy nor +indecently clad; there are limits to his free use of his body. The +owner of a house, of land, of a factory is subject to all sorts of +limitations, building regulations for example, and so is the owner of +horse or dog. Nor again is any property exempt from taxation. Even now +property is a limited thing, and it is well to bear that much in mind. +It can be defined as something one may do "what one likes with," +subject only to this or that specific restriction, and at any time, it +would seem, the State is at least legally entitled to increase the +quantity and modify the nature of the restriction. The extremest +private property is limited to a certain sanity and humanity in its +use. + +In that sense every adult now-a-days has private property in his or +her own person, in clothes, in such personal implements as hand-tools, +as a bicycle, as a cricket-bat or golf-sticks. In quite the same sense +would he have it under Socialism so far as these selfsame things go. +The sense of property in such things is almost instinctive; my little +boys of five and three have the keenest sense of _mine_ and (almost, +if not quite so vividly) _thine_ in the matter of toys and garments. +The disposition of modern Socialism is certainly no more to override +these natural tendencies than it is to fly in the face of human nature +in regard to the home. The disposition of modern Socialism is indeed +far more in the direction of confirming and insuring this natural +property. And again modern Socialism has no designs upon the money in +a man's pocket. It is quite true that the earlier and extreme +Socialist theorists did in their communism find no use for money, but +I do not think there are any representative Socialists now who do not +agree that the State must pay and receive in money, that money is +indispensable to human freedom. The featurelessness of money, its +universal convertibility, gives human beings a latitude of choice and +self-expression in its spending that is inconceivable without its use. + +All such property Socialism will ungrudgingly sustain, and it will +equally sustain property in books and objects of ĉsthetic +satisfaction, in furnishing, in the apartments or dwelling-house a man +or woman occupies and in their household implements. It will sustain +far more property than the average working-class man has to-day. Nor +will it prevent savings or accumulations, if men do not choose to +expend their earnings--nor need it interfere with lending. How far it +will permit or countenance usury is another question altogether. There +will no doubt remain, after all the work-a-day needs of the world have +been met by a scientific public organization of the general property +in Nature, a great number of businesses and enterprises and new and +doubtful experiments outside the range of legitimate State activity. +In these, interested and prosperous people will embark their surplus +money as shareholders in a limited liability company, making +partnership profits or losses in an entirely proper manner. But +whether there should be debentures and mortgages or preference shares, +or suchlike manipulatory distinctions, or interest in any shape or +form, I am inclined to doubt. A money-lender should share risk as well +as profit--that is surely the moral law in lending that forbids usury; +he should not be allowed to bleed a failing business with his +inexorable percentage and so eat up the ordinary shareholder or +partner any more than the landlord should be allowed to eat up the +failing tenant for rent. That was once the teaching of Christianity, +and I do not know enough of the history or spiritual development of +the Catholic Church to tell when she became what she now appears to +be--the champion of the rent-exacting landlord and the usurer against +Socialism. It is the present teaching of Socialism. If usury obtains +at all under the Socialist State, if inexorable repayments are to be +made in certain cases, it will, I conceive, be a State monopoly. The +State will be the sole banker for every hoard and every enterprise, +just as it will be the universal landlord and the universal fire and +accident and old age insurance office. In money matters as in public +service and administration, it will stand for the species, the +permanent thing behind every individual accident and adventure. + +Posthumous property, that is to say the power to bequeath and the +right to inherit things, will also persist in a mitigated state under +Socialism. There is no reason whatever why it should not do so. There +is a strong natural sentiment in favour of the institution of +heirlooms, for example; one feels a son might well own--though he +should certainly not sell--the intimate things his father desires to +leave him. The pride of descent is an honourable one, the love for +one's blood, and I hope that a thousand years from now some descendant +will still treasure an obsolete weapon here, a picture there, or a +piece of faint and faded needlework from our days and the days before +our own. One may hate inherited privileges and still respect a family +tree. + +Widows and widowers again have clearly a kind of natural property in +the goods they have shared with the dead; in the home, in the garden +close, in the musical instruments and books and pleasant home-like +things. Now, in nine cases out of ten, we do in effect bundle the +widow out; she remains nominally owner of the former home, but she has +to let it furnished or sell it, to go and live in a boarding-house or +an exiguous flat. + +Even perhaps a proportion of accumulated money may reasonably go to +friend or kin. It is a question of public utility; Socialism has done +with absolute propositions in all such things, and views these +problems now as questions of detail, matters for fine discriminations. +We want to be quit of pedantry. All that property which is an +enlargement of personality, the modern Socialist seeks to preserve; it +is that exaggerated property that gives power over the food and needs +of one's fellow-creatures, property and inheritance in land, in +industrial machinery, in the homes of others and in the usurer's grip +upon others, that he seeks to destroy. The more doctrinaire Socialists +will tell you they do not object to property for use and consumption, +but only to property in "the means of production," but I do not choose +to resort to over-precise definitions. The general intention is clear +enough, the particular instance requires particular application. But +it is just because we modern Socialists want every one to have play +for choice and individual expression in all these realities of +property that we object to this monstrous property of a comparatively +small body of individuals expropriating the world. + + +§ 2. + +I am inclined to think--but here I speak beyond the text of +contemporary Socialist literature--that in certain directions +Socialism, while destroying property, will introduce a compensatory +element by creating rights. For example, Socialism will certainly +destroy all private property in land and in natural material and +accumulated industrial resources; it will be the universal landlord +and the universal capitalist, but that does not mean that we shall all +be the State's tenants-at-will. There can be little doubt that the +Socialist State will recognize the rights of the improving occupier +and the beneficial hirer. It is manifestly in accordance both with +justice and public policy that a man who takes a piece of land and +creates a value on it--by making a vineyard, let us say--is entitled +to security of tenure, is to be dispossessed only in exceptional +circumstances and with ample atonement. If a man who takes an +agricultural or horticultural holding comes to feel that there he will +toil and there later he will rest upon his labours, I do not think a +rational Socialism will war against this passion for the vine and +fig-tree. If it absolutely refuses the idea of freehold, it will +certainly not repudiate leasehold. I think the State may prove a far +more generous and sentimental landlord in many things than any private +person. + +In another correlated direction, too, Socialism is quite reconcilable +with a finer quality of property than our landowner-ridden Britain +allows to any but the smallest minority. I mean property in the house +one occupies.... If I may indulge in a quite unauthorized speculation, +I am inclined to think there may be two collateral methods of +home-building in the future. For many people always there will need to +be houses to which they may come and go for longer and shorter +tenancies and which they will in no manner own. Now-a-days such people +are housed in the exploits of the jerry-builder--all England is +unsightly with their meagre pretentious villas and miserable cottages +and tenement houses. Such homes in the Socialist future will certainly +be supplied by the local authority, but they will be fair, decent +houses by good architects, fitted to be clean and lit, airy and +convenient, the homes of civilized people, sightly things altogether +in a generous and orderly world. But in addition there will be the +prosperous private person with a taste that way, building himself a +home as a lease-holder under the public landlord. For him, too, there +will be a considerable measure of property, a measure of property that +might even extend to a right, if not of bequest, then at any rate of +indicating a preference among his possible successors in the occupying +tenancy.... + +Then there is a whole field of proprietary sensations in relation to +official duties and responsibility. Men who have done good work in any +field are not to be lightly torn from it. A medical officer of health +who has done well in his district, a teacher who has taught a +generation of a town, a man who has made a public garden, have a moral +lien upon their work for all their lives. They do not get it under our +present conditions. I know that it will be quite easy to say all this +is a question of administration and detail. It is. But it is, +nevertheless, important to state it clearly here, to make it evident +that the coming of Socialism involves no destruction of this sort of +identification of a man with the thing he does; this identification +that is so natural and desirable--that this living and legitimate +sense of property will if anything be encouraged and its claims +strengthened under Socialism. To-day that particularly living sort of +property-sense is often altogether disregarded. Every day one hears of +men who have worked up departments in businesses, men who have created +values for employers, men who have put their lives into an industrial +machine, being flung aside because their usefulness is over, or out of +personal pique, or to make way for favourites, for the employer's son +or cousin or what not, without any sort of appeal or compensation. +Ownership is autocracy; at the best it is latent injustice in all such +matters of employment. + +Then again, consider the case of the artist and the inventor who are +too often forced by poverty now to sell their early inventions for the +barest immediate subsistence. Speculators secure these initial +efforts--sometimes to find them worthless, sometimes to discover in +them the sources of enormous wealth. In no matter is it more difficult +to estimate value than in the case of creative work; few geniuses are +immediately recognized, and the history of art, literature and +invention is full of Chattertons and Savages who perished before +recognition came, and of Dickenses who sold themselves unwisely. +Consider the immense social benefit if the creator even now possessed +an inalienable right to share in the appreciation of his work. Under +Socialism it would for all his life be his--and the world's, and +controllable by him. He would be free to add, to modify, to repeat. + +In all these respects modern Socialism tends to create and confirm +property and rights, the property of the user, the rights of the +creator. It is quite other property it tends to destroy; the property, +the claim, of the creditor, the mortgagee, the landlord, and usurer, +the forestaller, gambling speculator, monopolizer and absentee.... In +very truth Socialism would destroy no property at all, but only that +sham property that, like some wizard-cast illusion, robs us all. + + +§ 3. + +And now we are discussing the Socialist attitude towards property, it +may be well to consider a little group of objections that are often +made in anti-Socialist tracts. I refer more particularly to a certain +hard case, the hard case of the Savings of the Virtuous Small Man. + +The reader, if he is at all familiar with this branch of controversial +literature, probably knows how that distressing case is put. One is +presented with a poor man of inconceivable industry, goodness and +virtue; he has worked, he has saved; at last, for the security of his +old age, he holds a few shares in a business, a "bit of land" +or--perhaps through a building society--house property. Would we--the +Anti-Socialist chokes with emotion--so alter the world as to rob him +of _that_? ... The Anti-Socialist gathers himself together with an +effort and goes on to a still more touching thought ... the widow![13] + + [13] "The ethical case for slavery in the Southern States of + America," my friend Mr. Graham Wallas reminds me, "was + largely argued on the instance of the widow 'with a few + strong slaves.'" + +Well, I think there are assurances in the previous section to disabuse +the reader's mind a little in this matter. This solicitude for the +Saving Small Man and for the widow and orphan seems to me one of the +least honest of all the anti-Socialist arguments. The man "who has +saved a few pounds," the poor widow woman and her children clinging to +some scrap of freehold are thrust forward to defend the harvest of the +landlord and the financier. Let us look at the facts of the case and +see how this present economic system of ours really does treat the +"stocking" of the poor. + +In the first place it does not guarantee to the small investor any +security for his little hoard at all. He comes into the world of +investment ill-informed, credulous or only unintelligently +suspicious--and he is as a class continually and systematically deprived +of his little accumulations. One great financial operation after another +in the modern world, as any well-informed person can witness, eats up +the small investor. Some huge, vastly respectable-looking enterprise is +floated with a capital of so many scores or hundreds of thousands, +divided into so many thousands of ordinary shares, so many five or six +per cent. preference, so much debentures. It begins its career with a +flourish of prosperity, the ordinary shares for a few years pay seven, +eight, ten per cent. The Virtuous Small Man provides for his widow and +his old age by buying this estimable security. Its price clambers to a +premium, and so it passes slowly and steadily from its first speculative +holder into the hands of the investing public. Then comes a slow, quiet, +downward movement, a check at the interim dividend, a rapid contraction. +Consider such a case as that of the great British Electric Traction +Company which began with ordinary shares at ten, which clambered above +twenty-one (21-7/8), which is now (October 1907) fluctuating about two. +Its six per cent, preference shares have moved between fourteen and five +and a half. Its ordinary shares represent a total capital of +£1,333,010, and its preference £1,614,370; so that here in this one +concern we have a phantom appearance and disappearance of over two +million pounds' worth of value and a real disappearance of perhaps half +that amount. It requires only a very slight knowledge of the world to +convince one that the bulk of that sum was contributed by the modest +investments of mediocre and small people out of touch with the real +conditions of the world of finance. + + +These little investors, it is said, are the bitter champions of +private finance against the municipalities and Socialists. One wonders +why. + +One could find a score of parallels and worse instances representing +in the end many scores of millions of pounds taken from the investing +public in the last few years. I will, however, content myself with one +sober quotation from the New York _Journal of Commerce_, which the +reader will admit is not likely to be a willing witness for Socialism. +Commenting on the testimony of the principal witness, Mr. Harriman, of +the Illinois Central Railroad, before the Inter-State Commerce +Commission (March 1907), it says:-- + + "On his own admission he was one of a 'combine' of four who + got possession of the Chicago and Alton Railroad, and + immediately issued bonds for $40,000,000, out of the proceeds + of which they paid themselves a dividend of 30 per cent, on + the stock they held, besides taking the bonds at 65 and + subsequently selling them at 90 or more, some of them to life + insurance companies with which Mr. Harriman had some kind of + relation. There were no earnings or surplus out of which the + dividend could be paid, but the books of the company were + juggled by transferring some $12,000,000 expended for + betterments to capital account as a sort of bookkeeping basis + for the performance. + + "Besides this, the Chicago and Alton Railroad was transformed + into a 'railway,' and a capitalization of a little under + $40,000,000 was swollen to nearly $123,000,000 to cover an + actual expenditure in improvements of $22,500,000. In the + process there was an injection of about $60,600,000 of 'water' + into the stock held by the four, some of which was sold to the + Union Pacific, of which Mr. Harriman was president, and more + was 'unloaded' upon the Rock Island. Mr. Harriman refused to + tell how much he made out of that operation. + + "It shows how some of our enormous fortunes are made, as well + as what motives and purposes sometimes prevail in the use of + the power entrusted to the directors and officers of + corporations. It is a simple and elementary principle that all + values are created by the productive activity of capital, + labour and ability in industrial operations of one kind and + another. No wealth comes out of nothing, but all must be + produced and distributed, and what one gets by indirection + another loses or fails to get. The personal profit of these + speculative operations in which the capital, credit and power + of corporations are used by those entrusted with their + direction come out of the general body of stockholders whose + interests are sacrificed, or out of the public investors who + are lured and deceived, or out of shippers who are overtaxed + for the service for which railroads are chartered, or out of + all these in varying proportions. In other words they are the + fruits of robbery." + +So that you see it is not only untrue that Socialism would rob a poor +man of his virtuously acquired "bit of property," but the direct +contrary is the truth, that the present system, non-Socialism, is now +constantly _butchering thrift_! Simple people believe the great +financiers win and lose money to each other. They are not--to put it +plainly--such fools. They use the public, and the public goes on being +used, as a perpetual source of freshly accumulated wealth. I know one +case of a man of fifty who serves in a shop, a most industrious, +competent man, who has been saving and investing money all his life in +what he had every reason to believe were safe and sober businesses; he +has been denying himself pleasures, cramping his life to put by about +a third of his wages every year since he was two-and-twenty, and +to-day he has not got his keep for a couple of years, and his only +security against disablement and old age is his subscription to a +Friendly Society, a society which I have a very strong suspicion is no +better off than most other Friendly Societies--and that is by no means +well off, and by no means confident of the future. + +It is possible to argue that the small man ought to take more pains +about his investments, but, as a matter of fact, investing money +securely and profitably is a special occupation of extraordinary +complexity, and the common man with a few hundred pounds has no more +chance in that market than he would have under water in Sydney Harbour +amidst a shoal of sharks. It may be said that he is greedy, wants too +much interest, but that is nonsense. One of the crudest gulfs into +which small savings have gone in the case of the British public has +been the trap of Consols, which pay at the present price less than +three per cent. Servants and working men with Post Office Savings' +Bank accounts were urged, tempted and assisted to invest in this +solemn security--even when it stood at 114. Those who did so have now +(November 1907) lost almost a third of their money. + +It is scarcely too much to say that a very large proportion of our +modern great properties, tramway systems, railways, gas-works, bread +companies, have been created for their present owners the debenture +holders and mortgagers, the great capitalists, by the unintentional +altruism of that voluntary martyr, the Saving Small Man. + +Of course the habitual saver can insure with an insurance company for +his old age and against all sorts of misadventures, and because of the +Government interference with "private enterprise" in that sort of +business, be reasonably secure; but under Socialism he would be able +to do that with absolute security in the State Insurance Office--if +the universal old age pension did not satisfy him. That, however, is +beside our present discussion. I am writing now only of the sort of +property that Socialism would destroy, and to show how little benefit +or safety it brings to the small owner now. The unthinking rich prate +"thrift" to the poor, and grow richer by a half-judicious, +half-unconscious absorption of the resultant savings; that, in brief, +is the grim humour of our present financial method. + +It is not only in relation to investments that this absorption of +small parcels of savings goes on. In every town the intelligent and +sympathetic observer may see, vivid before the eyes of all who are not +blind by use and wont, the slow subsidence of petty accumulations, The +lodging-house and the small retail shop are, as it were, social +"destructors"; all over the country they are converting hopeful, +enterprising, ill-advised people with a few score or hundreds of +pounds, slowly, inevitably into broken-hearted failures. It is, to my +mind, the crudest aspect of our economic struggle. In the little High +Street of Sandgate, over which my house looks, I should say between a +quarter and a third of the shops are such downward channels from +decency to despair; they are sanctioned, inevitable citizen breakers. +Now it is a couple of old servants opening a "fancy" shop or a tobacco +shop, now it is a young couple plunging into the haberdashery, now it +is a new butcher or a new fishmonger or a grocer. This perpetual +procession of bankruptcies has made me lately shun that +pleasant-looking street, that in my unthinking days I walked through +cheerfully enough. The doomed victims have a way of coming to the +doors at first and looking out politely and hopefully. There is a rich +and lucrative business done by certain wholesale firms in starting the +small dealer in almost every branch of retail trade; they fit up his +shop, stock him, take his one or two hundred pounds and give him +credit for forty or fifty. The rest of his story is an impossible +struggle to pay rent and get that debt down. Things go on for a time +quite bravely. I go furtively and examine the goods in the window, +with a dim hope that this time something really will come off; I learn +reluctantly from my wife that they are no better than any one else's, +and rather dearer than those of the one or two solid and persistent +shops that do the steady business of the place. Perhaps I see the new +people going to church once or twice very respectably, as I set out +for a Sunday walk, and if they are a young couple the husband usually +wears a silk hat. Presently the stock in the window begins to +deteriorate in quantity and quality, and then I know that credit is +tightening. The proprietor no longer comes to the door, and his first +bright confidence is gone. He regards one now through the darkling +panes with a gloomy animosity. He suspects one all too truly of +dealing with the "Stores." ... Then suddenly he has gone; the savings +are gone, and the shop--like a hungry maw--waits for a new victim. +There is the simple common tragedy of the little shop; the landlord of +the house has _his_ money all right, the ground landlord has, of +course, every penny of his money, the kindly wholesalers are well out +of it, and the young couple or the old people, as the case may be, are +looking for work or the nearest casual ward--just as though there was +no such virtue as thrift in the world. + +The particular function of the British lodging-house--though the +science of economics is silent on this point--is to use up the last +strength of the trusty old servant and the plucky widow. These people +will invest from two or three hundred to a thousand pounds in order to +gain a bare subsistence by toiling for boarders and lodgers. It is +their idea of a safe investment. They can see it all the time. All +over England this process goes on. The curious inquirer may see every +phase for himself by simply looking for rooms among the apartment +houses of such a region as Camden Town, London; he will realize more +and more surely as he goes about that none of these people gain money, +none of them ever recover the capital they sink, they are happy if +they die before their inevitable financial extinction. It is so +habitual with people to think of classes as stable, of a butcher or a +baker as a man who keeps a shop of a certain sort at a certain level +throughout a long and indeterminate life, that it may seem incredible +to many readers that those two typically thrifty classes, the +lodging-letting householder and the small retailer, are maintained by +a steady supply of failing individuals; the fact remains that it is +so. Their little savings are no good to them, investments and business +beginnings mock them alike: steadily, relentlessly our competitive +system eats them up. + +It is said that no class of people in the community is more hostile to +Socialism and Socialistic legislation than these small owners and +petty investors, these small ratepayers. They do not understand. Rent +they consider in the nature of things like hunger and thirst; the +economic process that dooms the weak enterprise to ruin is beyond the +scope of their intelligence; but the rate-collector who calls and +calls again for money, for more money, to educate "other people's +children," to "keep paupers in luxury," to "waste upon roads and light +and trams," seems the agent of an unendurable wrong. So the poor +creatures go out pallidly angry to vote down that hated thing +municipal enterprise, and to make still more scope for that big +finance that crushes them in the wine-press of its exploitation. It is +a wretched and tragic antagonism, for which every intelligent +Socialist must needs have sympathy, which he must meet with +patience--and lucid explanations. If the public authority took rent +there would be no need of rates; that is the more obvious proposition. +But the ampler one is the cruelty, the absurdity and the social injury +of the constant consumption of unprotected savings which is an +essential part of our present system. + +It is a doctrinaire and old-fashioned Socialism that quarrels with the +little hoard; the quarrel of modern Socialism is with the landowner +and the great capitalist who devour it. + + +§ 4. + +While we are discussing the true attitude of modern Socialism to +property, it will be well to explain quite clearly the secular change +of opinion that is going on in the Socialist ranks in regard to the +process of expropriation. Even in the case of those sorts of property +that Socialism repudiates, property in land, natural productions, +inherited business capital and the like, Socialism has become +humanized and rational from its first extreme and harsh positions. + +The earlier Socialism was fierce and unjust to owners. "Property is +Robbery," said Proudhon, and right down to the nineties Socialism kept +too much of the spirit of that proposition. The property owner was to +be promptly and entirely deprived of his goods, and to think himself +lucky he was not lynched forthwith as an abominable rascal. The first +Basis of the Fabian Society, framed so lately as 1884, seems to +repudiate "compensation," even a partial compensation of property +owners, though in its practical proposals the Fabian Society has +always admitted compensatory arrangements. The exact words of the +Basis are "without compensation though not without such relief to +expropriated individuals as may seem fit to the community." The +wording is pretty evidently the result of a compromise between modern +views and older teachings. If the Fabian Society were rewriting its +Basis now I doubt if any section would insist even upon that +eviscerated "without compensation." + +Now property is not robbery. It may be a mistake, it may be unjust and +socially disadvantageous to recognize private property in these great +common interests, but every one concerned, and the majority of the +property owners certainly, held and hold in good faith, and do their +best by the light they have. We live to-day in a vast tradition of +relationships in which the rightfulness of that kind of private +property is assumed, and suddenly, instantly, to deny and abolish it +would be--I write this as a convinced and thorough Socialist--quite +the most dreadful catastrophe human society could experience. For what +sort of provisional government should we have in that confusion? + +Expropriation must be a gradual process, a process of economic and +political readjustment, accompanied at every step by an explanatory +educational advance. There is no reason why a cultivated property +owner should not welcome and hasten its coming. Modern Socialism is +prepared to compensate him, not perhaps "fully" but reasonably, for +his renunciations and to avail itself of his help, to relieve him of +his administrative duties, his excess of responsibility for estate and +business. It does not grudge him a compensating annuity nor +terminating rights of user. It has no intention of obliterating him +nor the things he cares for. It wants not only to socialize his +possessions, but to socialize his achievement in culture and all that +leisure has taught him of the possibilities of life. It wants all men +to become as fine as he. Its enemy is not the rich man but the +aggressive rich man, the usurer, the sweater, the giant plunderer, who +are developing the latent evil of riches. It repudiates altogether the +conception of a bitter class-war between those who Have and those who +Have Not. + +But this new tolerant spirit in method involves no weakening of the +ultimate conception. Modern Socialism sets itself absolutely against +the creation of new private property out of land, or rights or +concessions not yet assigned. All new great monopolistic enterprises +in transit, building and cultivation, for example, must from the first +be under public ownership. And the chief work of social statesmanship, +the secular process of government, must be the steady, orderly +resumption by the community, without violence and without delay, of +the land, of the apparatus of transit, of communication, of food +distribution and of all the great common services of mankind, and the +care and training of a new generation in their collective use and in +more civilized conceptions of living. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE MIDDLE-CLASS MAN, THE BUSINESS MAN, AND SOCIALISM + + +§ 1. + +Let me insert here a few remarks upon a question that arises naturally +out of the preceding discussion, and that is the future of that +miscellaneous section of the community known as the middle class. It +is one that I happen to know with a peculiar intimacy. + +For a century or more the grinding out of the middle class has been +going on. I began to find it interesting--altogether too interesting +indeed, when I was still only a little boy. My father was one of that +multitude of small shopkeepers which has been caught between the +"Stores" and such-like big distributors above and the rising rates +below, and from the knickerbocker stage onward I was acutely aware of +the question hanging over us. "This isn't going on," was the +proposition. "This shop in which our capital is invested will never +return it. Nobody seems to understand what is happening, and there is +nobody to advise or help us. What are we going to do?" + +Except that people are beginning to understand a little now what it +all means, exactly the same question hangs over many hundreds of +thousands of households to-day, not only over the hundreds of small +shopkeepers, but of small professional men, of people living upon +small parcels of investments, of clerks who find themselves growing +old and their value depreciated by the competition of a new, +better-educated generation, of private school-masters, of boarding-and +lodging-house keepers and the like. They are all vaguely aware of +something more than personal failure, of a drift and process which is +against all their kind, of the need of "doing something" for +themselves and their children, something different from just sticking +to the shop or the "situation"--and they don't know what to do! What +ought they to do? + +Well, first, before one answers that, let us ask what it is exactly +that is grinding the middle class in this way. Is it a process we can +stop? Can we direct the millstones? If we can, ought we to do so? And +if we cannot, or decide that it isn't worth while, then what can we do +to mitigate this cruelty of slowly impoverishing and taxing out of +existence a class that was once the backbone of the community? It is +not mere humanity dictates this much, it is a question that affects +the State as a whole. It must be extremely bad for the spirit of the +nation and for our national future that its middle mass should be in a +state of increasing financial worry and stress, irritated, depressed, +and broken in courage. One effect is manifest in our British politics +now. Each fresh election turns upon expenditure more evidently than +the last, and the promise to reduce taxation or lower the rates +overrides more and more certainly any other consideration. What are +Empire or Education to men who feel themselves drifting helplessly +into debt? What chance has any constructive scheme with an electorate +of men who are being slowly submerged in an economic bog? + +The process that has brought the middle class into these troubles is a +complex one, but the essential thing about it seems to be this, that +there is a _change of scale_ going on in most human affairs, a +substitution of big organizations for detached individual effort +almost everywhere. A hundred and fifty years ago or so the only very +rich people in the community were a handful of great landowners and a +few bankers; the rest of the world's business was being done by small +prosperous independent men. The labourers were often very poor and +wretched, ill clad, bootless, badly housed and short of food, but +there was nevertheless a great deal of middle-class comfort and +prosperity. The country was covered with flourishing farmers, every +country town was a little world in itself, with busy tradespeople and +professional men; manufacturing was still done mainly by small people +employing a few hands, master and apprentice working together; in +every town you found a private school or so, an independent doctor and +the like, doing well in a mediocre, comfortable fashion. All the +carrying trade was in the hands of small independent carriers; the +shipping was held by hundreds of small shipowners. And London itself +was only a larger country town. It was, in effect, a middle-class +world ruled over by aristocrats; the millstones had as yet scarcely +stirred. + +Then machinery came into the lives of men, and steam power, and there +began that change of scale which is going on still to-day, making an +ever-widening separation of master and man and an ever-enlarging +organization of industry and social method. Its most striking +manifestation was at first the substitution of organized manufacture +in factories for the half-domestic hand-industrialism of the earlier +period; the growth of the fortunes of some of the merchants and +manufacturers to dimensions comparable with the wealth of the great +landowners, and the sinking of the rest of their class towards the +status of wage-earners. The development of joint-stock enterprise +arose concurrently with this to create a new sort of partnership +capable of handling far greater concerns than any single wealthy +person, as wealth was measured by the old scale, could do. There +followed a great development of transit, culminating for a time in the +coming of the railways and steamships, which abolished the isolation +of the old towns and brought men at the remotest quarters of the earth +into business competition. Big towns of the modern type, with +half-a-million inhabitants or more, grew up rapidly all over Europe +and America. For the European big towns are as modern as New York, and +the East End and south side of London scarcely older than Chicago. +Shopkeeping, like manufactures, began to concentrate in large +establishments, and big wholesale distribution to replace individual +buying and selling. As the need for public education under the +changing conditions of life grew more and more urgent, the individual +enterprise of this school-master and that gave place to the organized +effort of such giant societies as (in Britain) the old National School +Society and the British School Society, and at last to State +education. And one after another the old prosperous middle-class +callings fell under the stress of the new development. + +The process still goes on, and there can be little doubt of the +ultimate issue. The old small manufacturers are either ruined or +driven into sweating and the slums; the old coaching innkeeper and +common carrier have been impoverished or altogether superseded by the +railways and big carrier companies; the once flourishing shopkeeper +lives to-day on the mere remnants of the trade that great distributing +stores or the branches of great companies have left him. Tea +companies, provision-dealing companies, tobacconist companies, make +the position of the old-established private shop unstable and the +chances of the new beginner hopeless. Railways and tramways take the +custom more and more effectually past the door of the small draper and +outfitter to the well-stocked establishments at the centre of things; +telephone and telegraph assist that shopping at the centre more and +more. The small "middle-class" school-master finds himself beaten by +revived endowed schools and by new public endowments; the small +doctor, the local dentist, find Harley Street always nearer to them +and practitioners in motor-cars from the great centres playing havoc +with their practices. And while the small men are more and more +distressed, the great organizations of trade, of production, of public +science, continue to grow and coalesce, until at last they grow into +national or even world trusts, or into publicly-owned monopolies. In +America slaughtering and selling meat has grown into a trust, steel +and iron are trustified, mineral oil is all gathered into a few hands. +All through the trades and professions and sciences and all over the +world the big eats up the small, the new enlarged scale replaces the +old. + +And this is equally true, though it is only now beginning to be +recognized, of the securities of that other section of the middle +class, the section which lives upon invested money. There, too, big +eats little. There, too, the small man is more and more manifestly at +the mercy of the large organization. It was a pleasant illusion of the +Victorian time that one put one's hundred pounds or thousand pounds +"into something," beside the rich man's tens of thousands, and drew +one's secure and satisfying dividends. The intelligent reader of Mr. +Lawson's _Frenzied Finance_ or of the bankruptcy proceedings of Mr. +Hooley realizes this idyll is scarcely true to nature. Through the +seas and shallows of investment flow great tides and depressions, on +which the big fortunes ride to harbour while the little accumulations, +capsized and swamped, quiver down to the bottom. It becomes more and +more true that the small man saves his money for the rich man's +pocket. Only by drastic State intervention is a certain measure of +safety secured for insurance, and in America recently we have had the +spectacle of the people's insurance-money used as a till by the rich +financiers. + +And when the middle-class man turns in his desperation from the +advance of the big competitor who is consuming him, as a big codfish +eats its little brother, to the State, he meets a tax-paper; he sees +as the State's most immediate aspect the rate-collector and inexorable +demands. The burthen of taxation certainly falls upon him, and it +falls upon him because he is collectively the weakest class that +possesses any property to be taxed. Below him are classes either too +poor to tax or too politically effective to stand taxation. Above him +is the class which owns a large part of the property in the world; but +it also owns the newspapers and periodicals that are necessary for an +adequate discussion of social justice, and it finds it cheaper to pay +a voluntary tax to the hoardings at election time than to take over +the small man's burdens. He rolls about between these two parties, +antagonized first to one and then the other, and altogether helpless +and ineffectual. So the millstones grind, and so it would seem they +will continue to grind until there is nothing between them; until +organized property in the hands of the few on the one hand and the +proletariat on the other grind face to face. So, at least, Karl Marx +taught in _Das Kapital_. + +But when one says the middle class will disappear, one means that it +will disappear as a class. Its individuals and its children will +survive, and the whole process is not nearly so fatalistic as the +Marxists would have us believe. The new great organizations that are +replacing the little private enterprises of the world before machinery +are not all private property. There are alternatives in the matter of +handling a great business. To the exact nature of these alternatives +the middle-class mind needs to direct itself if it is to exert any +control whatever over its future. Take the case of the butcher. It is +manifestly written on the scroll of destiny that the little private +slaughter-house, the little independent butcher's shop, buying and +selling locally, must disappear. The meat will all be slaughtered at +some great, conveniently organized centre, and distributed thence to +shops that will necessarily be mere agencies for distributing meat. +Now, this great slaughtering and distributing business may either be +owned by one or a group of owners working it for profit--in which case +it will be necessary for the State to employ an unremunerative army of +inspectors to see that the business is kept decently clean and +honest--or it may be run by the public authority. In the former case +the present-day butcher or his son will be a slaughterman or +shopkeeper employed by the private owners; in the latter case by the +public authority. This is equally true of a milk-seller, of a small +manufacturer, of a builder, of a hundred and one other trades. They +are bound to be incorporated in a larger organization; they are bound +to become salaried men where formerly they were independent men, and +it is no good struggling against that. It is doubtful, indeed, whether +from the standpoint of welfare it would be worth the middle-class +man's while to struggle against that. But in the case of very many +great public services--meat, milk, bread, transit, housing and land +administration, education and research, and the public health--it is +still an open question whether the big organization is to be publicly +owned, publicly controlled, and constantly refreshed by public +scrutiny and comment, or whether it is to be privately owned, and +conducted solely for the profit of a small group of very rich owners. +The alternatives are Plutocracy or Socialism, and between these the +middle-class man remains weakly undecided and ineffectual, lending no +weight to and getting small consideration therefore from either side. +He remains so because he has not grasped the real nature of his +problem, because he clings in the face of overwhelming fate to the +belief that in some way the wheels of change may be arrested and his +present method of living preserved. + +I think, if he could shake himself free from that impossible +conservatism he would realize that his interests lie with the +interests of the intelligent working-class man--that is to say, in the +direction of Socialism rather than in the direction of capitalistic +competition; that the best use he can make of such educational and +social advantages as still remain for him is to become the willing +leader instead of the panic-fierce antagonist of the Socialist +movement. His place, I hold, is to forward the development of that +State and municipal machinery the Socialist foreshadows, and to secure +for himself and his sons and daughters an adequate position and voice +in the administration. Instead of struggling to diminish that burthen +of public expenditure which educates and houses, conveys and protects +him and his children, he ought rather to increase it joyfully, while +at the same time working manfully to transfer its pressure to the +broad shoulders of those very rich people who have hitherto evaded +their legitimate share of it. The other course is to continue his +present policy of obstinate resistance to the extension of public +property and public services. In which case these things will +necessarily become that basis of monopolistic property on which the +coming plutocracy will establish itself. The middle-class man will be +taxed and competed out of independence just the same, and he will +become a salaried officer just the same, but with a different sort of +master and under different social conditions according as one or other +of these alternatives prevails. + +Which is the better master--the democratic State or a "combine" of +millionaires? Which will give the best social atmosphere for one's +children to breathe--a Plutocracy or a Socialism? That is the real +question to which the middle-class man should address himself. + +No doubt to many minds a Plutocracy presents many attractions. In the +works of Thomas Love Peacock, and still more clearly in the works of +Mr. W. H. Mallock, you will find an agreeable rendering of that +conception. The bulk of the people will be organized out of sight in a +state of industrious and productive congestion, and a wealthy, +leisurely, and refined minority will live in spacious homes, with +excellent museums, libraries, and all the equipments of culture; will +go to town, concentrate in Paris, London, and Rome, and travel about +the world. It is to these large, luxurious, powerful lives that the +idealist naturally turns. Their motor-cars, their aeroplanes, their +steam yachts will awaken terror and respect in every corner of the +globe. Their handsome doings will fill the papers. They will patronize +the arts and literature, while at the same time mellowing them by +eliminating that too urgent insistence upon contemporary fact which +makes so much of what is done to-day harsh and displeasing. The +middle-class tradition will be continued by a class of stewards, +tenants, managers, and foremen, secretaries and the like, respected +and respectful. The writer, the artist, will lead lives of comfortable +dependence, a link between class and class, the lowest of the rich +man's guests, the highest of his servants. As for the masses, they +will be fed with a sort of careless vigour and considerable economy +from the Chicago stockyards, and by agricultural produce trusts, big +breweries, fresh-water companies, and the like; they will be organized +industrially and carefully controlled. Their spiritual needs will be +provided for by churches endowed by the wealthy, their physical +distresses alleviated by the hope of getting charitable aid, their +lives made bright and adventurous by the crumbs of sport that fall +from the rich man's table. They will crowd to see the motor-car races, +the aeroplane competitions. It will be a world rich in contrasts and +not without its gleam of pure adventure. Every bright young fellow of +capacity will have the hope of catching the eye of some powerful +personage, of being advanced to some high position of trust, of even +ending his days as a partner, a subordinate assistant plutocrat. Or he +may win a quite agreeable position by literary or artistic merit. A +pretty girl, a clever woman of the middle class would have before her +even more brilliant and romantic possibilities. + +There can be no denying the promises of colour and eventfulness a +Plutocracy holds out, and though they do not attract me, I can quite +understand their appeal to the more ductile and appreciative mind of +Mr. Mallock. But there are countervailing considerations. There is, it +is said, a tendency in Plutocracies either to become unprogressive, +unenterprising and stagnantly autocratic, or to develop states of +stress and discontent, and so drift towards Cĉsarism. The latter was +the fate of the Roman Republic, and may perhaps be the destiny of the +budding young Plutocracy of America. But the developing British +Plutocracy, like the Carthaginian, will be largely Semitic in blood, +and like the Carthaginian may resist these insurgent tendencies. + +So much for the Plutocratic possibility. If the middle-class man on +any account does not like that outlook, he can turn in the other +direction; and then he will find fine promises indeed, but much more +uncertainty than towards Plutocracy. Plutocracies the world has seen +before, but a democratic civilization organized upon the lines laid +down by modern Socialists would be a new beginning in the world's +history. It is not a thing that will come about by itself; it will +have to be the outcome of a sustained moral and intellectual effort in +the community. If there is not that effort, if things go on as they +are going now, the coming of a Plutocracy is inevitable. That effort, +I am convinced, cannot be successfully made by the lower-class man +alone; from him, unaided and unguided, there is nothing to be expected +but wild convulsive attempts at social upheaval, which, whether they +succeed (as the French Revolution did) or fail (as did the +insurrectionary outbreaks of the Republic in Rome), lead ultimately to +a Napoleon or a Cĉsar. But our contemporary civilization is +unprecedented in the fact that the whole population now reads, and +that intelligence and free discussion saturate the whole mass. Only +time can show what possibilities of understanding, leadership, and +political action lie in our new generation of the better-educated +middle class. Will it presently begin to define a line for itself? +Will it remain disorganized and passive, or will it become intelligent +and decisive between these millstones of the organized property and +the organizing State, between Plutocracy and Socialism, whose +opposition is the supreme social and political fact in the world at +the present time? + + +§ 2. + +Perhaps, also, it may be helpful here to insert a view of the +contemporary possibilities of Socialism from a rather different angle, +a view that follows on to the matter of the previous section, but +appeals to a different section of the Middle Class. It is a quotation +from the _Magazine of Commerce_ for September 1907, and leads to an +explanation by the present writer. + + "The recent return of Mr. Grayson, a Socialist, as member of + Parliament for the Colne Valley, has brought prominently + before the public mind the question of Socialism. Mr. Pete + Curran's success at Jarrow a month or so ago, and the large + number of Labour members returned at the last General + Election, caused more or less desultory comment on Socialism + as a possible feature of practical politics in the remote + future; but Mr. Grayson can certainly claim that his + achievement at Colne Valley brought the question of Socialism + in to the very forefront at one bound. It is difficult to + ignore Socialism, to dismiss it as a mere fad and fancy of a + few hare-brained enthusiasts, after Mr. Grayson's success. The + verdict of Colne Valley may be the verdict of many another + constituency where the so-called working-class electors are + numerically predominant. When we consider that the manual + worker represents the majority of the electorate of the + country, this contingency does not appear to be so very + remote, provided that the leaders of Socialism can organize + their resources and canvass the working-men on a wide and + carefully-planned scale. In this respect the Colne Valley + result may very well give them the lead and stimulus they have + been waiting for. It must be borne in mind, too, that the + forward section of the Labour Party is avowedly Socialist in + its sympathies, and a definite start may therefore be said to + have been made towards capturing the machinery of Government + in the Cause of Socialism. + + "How will Socialism affect the business world? This is a + question which many thoughtful business men must have already + put to themselves. For reply we must go to the leaders of + Socialism, and discover what their policy actually is. The + common impression that Socialism spells barefaced confiscation + is too superficial to be seriously adduced as an argument + against Socialism. The leaders of the Cause include some of + the cleverest men of the day--men who have a more rational + basis for their policy than that of simply robbing Peter to + pay Paul. The suggestion that Socialism means a compulsory + 'share out' may be rightly dismissed as an idle scare. The + most bitter opponent of Socialism must at least admit that + there is a stronger argument to be met than that implied by + the parrot-cry of 'spoliation.' Socialism has, at any rate, so + far advanced as to be allowed the ordinary courtesies of + debate. We may oppose it tooth and nail, but we must confront + argument with argument and not with abuse. + + "Despite much excellent literature which is read widely by + cultured people, very little is known by the general public of + the principles which modern British Socialists have adopted as + their guiding rules. Few business men care to study the + subject. We have therefore addressed a letter to the chief + leaders of the Cause, with the purpose of ascertaining the + effect which Socialism would have on our business habits. Our + object was to discover how far Socialism might disturb or + improve business; whether it would altogether subvert present + methods, or whether it could be applied without injury to + these methods. To put the matter very plainly, we wished to + learn whether we should carry on our business much as we do + now, giving free play to individual effort and individual + fortune-building. + + "The reply of Mr. Wells is as follows:-- + + "'MY DEAR SIR, + + "'I wish very much I could reply at adequate length to + your very admirably framed question. The constant stream + of abuse and of almost imbecile misrepresentations of + Socialism in the Press has no doubt served to distort + the idea of our movement in the minds of a large + proportion of busy men, and filled them with an + unfounded dread of social insecurity. If it were + possible to allay that by an epigrammatic programme, + "Socialism in a Nutshell," so to speak, I would do my + best. But the economic and trading system of a modern + State is not only a vast and complex tangle of + organizations, but at present an uncharted tangle, and + necessarily the methods of transition from the limited + individualism of our present condition to the + scientifically-organized State, which is the Socialist + ideal, must be gradual, tentative and various. + + "'To build up a body of social and economic science, to + develop a class of trained administrators, to rearrange + local government areas, to educate the whole community + in the "sense of the State" are necessary parts of the + Socialist scheme. You must try and induce your readers + to recognize that when Socialism finds such supporters + as Sir Oliver Lodge and Professor Karl Pearson, as + William Morris (who revolutionized the furniture trade), + as Granville Barker (who is revolutionizing the London + stage), as Mr. George Cadbury and Mr. Fels (whose names + are not unknown in the world of advertisement), as Mr. + Allan (of the Allan Line), as Mr. George Bernard Shaw + and Mrs. Shaw, Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb and Sir Sidney + Olivier (the present Governor of Jamaica)--all of them + fairly comfortable and independent people, practically + acquainted with the business of investment and affairs + generally and quite alive to the present relations of + property to the civilized life--the suggestion that it + is a raid of the ignorant "Have-nots" on the possessions + of the wise and good "Haves" cannot be a very + intelligent one nor addressed to very intelligent + people. Essentially Socialism is the + scientifically-organized State as distinguished from the + haphazard, wasteful, blundering, child-sweating State of + the eighteenth century. It is the systematization of + present tendency. Necessarily its methods of transition + will be progressively scientific and humane. + + "'So far as your specific questions go, I do not think + there could possibly be anything in the nature of + "compulsory profit-sharing" if a Socialist Government + came into office. There is at present a compulsory + profit-sharing in the form of an income-tax, but that + tax does not appeal to the Socialist as a particularly + scientific one. The advent of a strongly-Socialist + Government would mean no immediate revolutionary changes + at all. There would be, no doubt, a vigorous + acceleration of the educational movement to increase the + economic value and productivity of the average citizen + of the next generation, and legislation upon the lines + laid down by the principle of the "minimum wage" to + check the waste of our national resources by destructive + employment. Also a systematic shifting of the burthen of + taxation from enterprise to rent would begin. But + nothing convulsive would occur.'" + + "'The means of transit and communication of the country + (both internal and external), and especially the + railways and canals (which are now rapidly falling into + inefficiency through the exhaustion of their capital + upon excessive dividends in the past), would probably be + transferred from competitive private to organized public + control--a transfer that would certainly be enormously + stimulating to business generally. There would be no + "robbery," the former shareholders would become stock or + annuity holders. Nor would there be any financial + convulsion due to the raising of the "enormous sum" + necessary to effect this purchase. The country would + simply create stock, while at the same time taking over + assets to balance the new liability. + + "'A Socialist Government would certainly also acquire + the coal mines and the coal trade, and relieve industry + from the inconveniences due to the manipulation of the + supply of this vitally important factor, and it would + accelerate the obvious tendency of the present time to + bring the milk trade, the drink trade, slaughtering, + local traffic, lighting and power supply into public + hands. But none of this is the destruction of property, + but only its organization and standardization. Such a + State organization of public services is, I submit, + enough to keep a Socialist Government busy for some few + years, and makes not only for social progress, but + social stability. + + "'And does an honest and capable business man stand to + lose or gain by the coming of such a Socialist + Government? I submit that, on the whole, he stands to + gain. Let me put down the essential points in his + outlook as I conceive them. + + "'Under a Socialist Government such as is quite possible + in England at the present time:-- + + "'He will be restricted from methods of production and + sale that are socially mischievous. + + "'He will pay higher wages. + + "'He will pay a larger proportion of his rate-rent + outgoings to the State and Municipality, and less to the + landlord. Ultimately he will pay it all to the State or + Municipality, and as a voter help to determine how it + shall be spent, and the landlord will become a + Government stock-holder. Practically he will get his + rent returned to him in public services. + + "'He will speedily begin to get better-educated, + better-fed and better-trained workers, so that he will + get money value for the higher wages he pays. + + "'He will get a regular, safe, cheap supply of power and + material. He will get cheaper and more efficient + internal and external transit. + + "'He will be under an organized scientific State, which + will naturally pursue a vigorous scientific collective + policy in support of the national trade. + + "'He will be less of an adventurer and more of a + citizen....'" + +So I wrote to the _Magazine of Commerce_, and that for the energetic +man who is conducting a real and socially useful business is the +outlook. Socialism is not the coming of chaos and repudiation, it is +the coming of order and justice. For confusion and accident and waste, +the Socialist seeks to substitute design and collective economy. That +too is the individual aim of every good business man who is not a mere +advertising cheat or financial adventurer. To the sound-minded, +clear-headed man of affairs, Socialism appeals just as it appeals to +the scientific man, to the engineer, to the artist, because it is the +same reality, the large scale aspect of the same constructive motive, +that stirs in himself. + + +§ 3. + +Let me finally quote the chairman of one of the most enterprising and +enlightened business organizations of our time to show that in +claiming the better type of business man for modern Socialism I am +making no vain boast. Sir John Brunner may not call himself a +Socialist, but this is very probably due to the fact that he gets his +ideas of Socialism from the misquotations of its interested +adversaries. This that follows from the _Manchester Guardian_ is pure +Socialism. + + Speaking at the annual meeting of Brunner, Mond and Co., Ltd., + in Liverpool (1907), the chairman, Sir John Brunner, M.P., + made a remarkable pronouncement on the subject of the + collective ownership of canals. He said:-- + + "I have been one of a Royal Commission visiting the North of + France, Belgium, and Northern Germany, and our duty has been + to examine what those three countries have done in the + improvement of their canals and their waterways. We have been + very deeply impressed by what we have seen, and I can tell you + to-day, speaking as a man of business to men of business, that + the fact that in these three countries there is communal + effort--that is to say, that the State in money and in credit + for the benefit of the national trade--has brought to those + three countries enormous, almost incalculable, benefits; and I + think that any man, any intelligent man, who studies this + matter as I have studied it for a great many years, will come + the conclusion, as I have come very clearly and decidedly, + that the old policy which we have adopted for generations of + leaving all public works to private enterprise--the old + policy, so called, of _laissez faire_--is played out + completely, and I am of opinion, very firmly, that, if we mean + to hold our own in matters of trade, we must learn to follow + the example that has been set us not only by France, Belgium, + and Germany, but by the United States and by every one of the + Colonies of our Empire. Everywhere do you find that trade is + helped by the effort of the community, by the force of the + State, and I shall be very heartily pleased if those who hear + me will think the matter over and decide for themselves + whether or not we as business people--preeminently the + business people of the world--are to maintain the old policy + of leaving everything to private enterprise, or whether we are + to act together for the good of all in this important matter + of the national trade." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +SOME COMMON OBJECTIONS TO SOCIALISM + + +§ 1. + +In the preceding eight chapters I have sought to give as plain and +full an account of the great generalizations of Socialism as I can, +and to make it clear exactly what these generalizations convey, and +how far they go in this direction and that. Before we go on to a brief +historical and anticipatory account of the actual Socialist movement, +it may be worth while to take up and consider compactly the chief +objections that are urged against the general propositions of +Socialism in popular discussion. + +Now a very large proportion of these arise out of the commonest vice +of the human mind, its disposition to see everything as "yes" or "no," +as "black" or "white," its impatience, its incapacity for a fine +discrimination of intermediate shades.[14] The queer old scholastic +logic still prevails remarkably in our modern world; you find Mr. +Mallock, for example, going about arranging his syllogisms, extracting +his opponent's "self-contradictions," and disposing of Socialism with +stupendous self-satisfaction in all the magazines. He disposes of +Socialism quite in the spirit of the young mediĉval scholar returning +home to prove beyond dispute that "my cat has ten tails" and, given a +yard's start, that a tortoise can always keep ahead of a running man. +The essential fallacy is always to declare that either a thing is A or +it is not A; either a thing is green or it is not green; either a +thing is heavy or it is not heavy. Unthinking people, and some who +ought to know better, fall into that trap. They dismiss from their +minds the fact that there is a tinge of green in nearly every object +in the world, and that there is no such thing as pure green, unless it +be just one line or so in the long series of the spectrum; they forget +that the lightest thing has weight and that the heaviest thing can be +lifted. The rest of the process is simple and has no relation whatever +to the realities of life. They agree to some hard and fast impossible +definition of Socialism, permit the exponent to extract absurdities +therefrom as a conjurer gets rabbits from a hat, and retire with a +conviction that on the whole it is well to have had this disturbing +matter settled once for all. + + [14] See "Scepticism of the Instrument," the Appendix to _A + Modern Utopia_. (Chapman & Hall.) + +For example, the Anti-Socialist declares that Socialism "abolishes +property." He makes believe there is a hard absolute thing called +"property" which must either be or not be, which is now, and which +will not be under Socialism. To any person with a philosophical +education this is a ridiculous mental process, but it seems perfectly +rational to an untrained mind--and that is the usual case with the +Anti-Socialist. Having achieved this initial absurdity, he then asks +in a tone of bitter protest whether a man may not sleep in his own +bed, and is he to do nothing if he finds a coal-heaver already in +possession when he retires? This is the method of Mr. G. R. Sims, that +delightful writer, who from altitudes of exhaustive misunderstanding +tells the working-man that under Socialism he will have--I forget his +exact formula, but it is a sort of refrain--no money of his own, no +home of his own, no wife of his own, no hair of his own! It is +effective nonsense in its way--but nonsense nevertheless. In my +preceding chapters I hope I have made it clear that "property" even +to-day is a very qualified and uncertain thing, a natural vague +instinct capable of perversion and morbid exaggeration and needing +control, and that Socialism seeks simply to give it a sharper, juster +and rationally limited form in relation to the common-weal. + +Or again, the opponent has it that Socialism "abolishes the +family"--and with it, of course, "every sacred and tender +association," etc., etc. To that also I have given a chapter. + +I do not think much Anti-Socialism is dishonest in these matters. The +tricks of deliberate falsification, forgery and falsehood that +discredit a few Conservative candidates and speakers in the north of +England and smirch the reputations of one or two London papers, are +due to a quite exceptional streak of baseness in what is on the whole +a straightforward opposition to Socialism. Anti-Socialism, as its name +implies, is no alternative doctrine; it is a mental resistance, not a +mental force. For the most part one is dealing with sheer intellectual +incapacity; with people, muddle-headed perhaps, but quite +well-meaning, who are really unable to grasp the quantitative element +in things. They think with a simple flat certitude that if, for +example, a doctor says quinine is good for a case it means that he +wishes to put every ounce of quinine that can be procured into his +patient, to focus all the quinine in the world upon him; or that if a +woman says she likes dancing, that thereby she declares her intention +to dance until she drops. They are dear lumpish souls who like things +"straightforward" as they say--all or nothing. They think +qualifications or any quantitative treatment "quibbling," to be loudly +scorned, bawled down and set aside. + +In controversy the temptations for a hot and generous temperament, +eager for victory, to misstate and overstate the antagonist's position +are enormous, and the sensible Socialist must allow for them unless he +is to find discussion intolerable. The reader of the preceding +chapters should know exactly how Socialism stands to the family +relations, the things it urges, the things it regards with +impartiality or patient toleration, the things it leaves alone. The +preceding chapters merely summarize a literature that has been +accessible for years. Yet it is extraordinary how few antagonists of +Socialism seem able even to approach these questions in a rational +manner. One admirably typical critic of a pamphlet in which I +propounded exactly the same opinions as are here set out in the third +chapter, found great comfort in the expression "brood mares." He took +hold of my phrase, "State family," and ran wild with it. He declared +it to be my intention that women were no longer to be wives but "brood +mares" for the State. Nothing would convince him that this was a +glaring untruth. His mind was essentially equestrian; "human stud +farm" was another of his expressions.[15] Ridicule and argument failed +to touch him; I believe he would have gone to the stake to justify his +faith that Socialists want to put woman in the Government _haras_. His +thick-headedness had, indeed, a touch of the heroic. + + [15] What makes the expression particularly inappropriate in + my case is the fact that in my _Mankind in the Making_ there + is a clearly-reasoned chapter (Ch. II.) which has never been + answered, in which I discuss and, I think, conclusively + dispose of Mr. Francis Galton's ideas of Eugenics and + deliberate stirpiculture. + +Then a certain Father Phelan of St. Louis, no doubt in a state of +mental exaltation as honest as it was indiscriminating, told the world +through the columns of an American magazine that I wanted to tear the +babe from the mother's breast and thrust it into an "Institution." He +said worse things than that--but I set them aside as pulpit eloquence. +Some readers, no doubt, knew better and laughed, but many were quite +sincerely shocked, and resolved after that to give Socialism a very +wide berth indeed. _Honi soit qui mal y pense_; the revolting ideas +that disgusted them were not mine, they came from some hot dark +reservoir of evil thoughts that years of chastity and discipline seem +to have left intact in Father Phelan's soul. + +The error in all these cases is the error of overstatement, of getting +into a condition of confused intellectual excitement, and because a +critic declares your window curtains too blue, saying, therefore, and +usually with passion, that he wants the whole universe, sky and sea +included, painted bright orange. The inquirer into the question of +Socialism will find that an almost incurable disease of these +controversies. Again and again he will meet with it. If after that +critic's little proposition about your window curtains he chances to +say that on the whole he thinks an orange sky would be unpleasant, the +common practice is to accuse him of not "sticking to his guns." + +My friends, Mr. G. K. Chesterton and Mr. Max Beerbohm, those brilliant +ornaments of our age, when they chance to write about Socialism, +confess this universal failing--albeit in a very different quality and +measure. They are not, it is true, distressed by that unwashed +coal-heaver who haunts the now private bed of the common +Anti-Socialist, nor have they any horrid vision of the fathers of the +community being approved by a select committee of the County +Council--no doubt wrapped in horse-cloths and led out by their +grooms--such as troubles the spurred and quivering soul of that +equestrian--I forget his name--the "brood-mare" gentleman who +denounced me in the _Pall Mall Gazette_; but their souls fly out in a +passion of protest against the hints of discipline and order the +advancement of Socialism reveals. Mr. G. K. Chesterton mocks valiantly +and passionately, I know, against an oppressive and obstinately +recurrent anticipation of himself in Socialist hands, hair clipped, +meals of a strictly hygienic description at regular hours, a fine for +laughing--not that he would want to laugh--and austere exercises in +several of the more metallic virtues daily. Mr. Max Beerbohm's +conception is rather in the nature of a nightmare, a hopeless, horrid, +frozen flight from the pursuit of Mr. Sidney Webb and myself, both of +us short, inelegant men indeed, but for all that terribly resolute, +indefatigable, incessant, to capture him, to drag him off to a +mechanical Utopia and there to take his thumb-mark and his name, +number him distinctly in indelible ink, dress him in an unbecoming +uniform, and let him loose (under inspection) in a world of neat round +lakes of blue lime water and vistas of white sanitary tiling.... + +The method of reasoning in all these cases is the same; it is to +assume that whatever the Socialist postulates as desirable is wanted +without limit or qualification, to imagine whatever proposal is chosen +for the controversy is to be carried out by uncontrolled monomaniacs, +and so to make a picture of the Socialist dream. This picture is +presented to the simple-minded person in doubt with "This is +Socialism. Surely! SURELY! you don't want this!" + +And occasionally the poor, simple-minded person really is overcome by +these imagined terrors. He turns back to our dingy realities again, to +the good old grimy world he knows, thanking God beyond measure that he +will never live to see the hateful day when one baby out of every four +ceases to die in our manufacturing towns, when lives of sordid care +are banished altogether from the earth, and when the "sense of humour" +and the cult of Mark Tapley which flourishes so among these things +will be in danger of perishing from disuse.... + +But the reader sees now what Socialism is in its essentials, the +tempered magnificence of the constructive scheme to which it asks him +to devote his life. It is a laborious, immense project to make the +world a world of social justice, of opportunity and full living, to +abolish waste, to abolish the lavish unpremeditated cruelty of our +present social order. Do not let the wit or perversity of the +adversary or, what is often a far worse influence, the zeal and +overstatement of the headlong advocate, do not let the manifest +personal deficiencies of this spokesman or that, distract you from the +living heart in Socialism, its broad generosity of conception, its +immense claim in kinship and direction upon your Good Will. + + +§ 2. + +For the convenience of those readers who are in the position of +inquirers, I had designed at this point a section which was to contain +a list of the chief objections to Socialism--other than mere +misrepresentations--which are current now-a-days. I had meant at first +to answer each one fully and gravely, to clear them all up +exhaustively and finally before proceeding. But I find now upon +jotting them down, that they are for the most part already anticipated +by the preceding chapters, and so I will note them here, very +compactly indeed, and make but the briefest comment upon each. + +There is first the assertion, which effectually bars a great number of +people from further inquiry into Socialist teaching, that _Socialism +is contrary to Christianity_. I would urge that this is the absolute +inversion of the truth. Christianity involves, I am convinced, a +practical Socialism if it is honestly carried out. This is not only my +conviction, but the reader, if he is a Nonconformist, can find it set +out at length by Dr. Clifford in a Fabian tract, _Socialism and the +Teaching of Christ_; and, if a Churchman, by the Rev. Stewart Headlam +in another, _Christian Socialism_. He will find a longer and fuller +discussion of this question in the Rev. R. J. Campbell's _Christianity +and Social Order_. In the list of members of such a Socialist Society +as the Fabian Society will be found the names of clergy of the +principal Christian denominations, excepting only the Roman Catholic +Church. It is said, indeed, that a good Catholic of the Roman +Communion cannot also be any sort of Socialist. Even this very general +persuasion may not be correct. I believe the papal prohibition was +originally aimed entirely at a specific form of Socialism, the +Socialism of Marx, Engels and Bebel, which is, I must admit, +unfortunately strongly anti-Christian in tone, as is the Socialism of +the British Social Democratic Federation to this day. It is true that +many leaders of the Socialist party have also been Secularists, and +that they have mingled their theological prejudices with their +political work. This is the case not only in Germany and America, but +in Great Britain, where Mr. Robert Blatchford of the _Clarion_, for +example, has also carried on a campaign against doctrinal +Christianity. But this association of Secularism and Socialism is only +the inevitable throwing together of two sets of ideas because they +have this in common, that they run counter to generally received +opinions; there is no other connection. Many prominent Secularists, +like Charles Bradlaugh and Mr. J. M. Robertson, are as emphatically +anti-Socialist as the Pope. Secularists and Socialists get thrown +together and classed together just as early Christians and criminals +and rebels against the Emperor were no doubt thrown together in the +Roman gaols. They had this much in common, that they were in conflict +with what most people considered to be right. It is a confusion that +needs constant explaining away. It is to me a most lamentable +association of two entirely separate thought processes, one +constructive socially and the other destructive intellectually, and I +have already, in Chapter VI., § 4, done my best to disavow it. + +_Socialism is pure Materialism, it seeks only physical +well-being_,--just as much as nursing lepers for pity and the love of +God is pure materialism that seeks only physical well-being. + +_Socialism advocates Free Love._ This objection I have also disposed +of in Chapter VI., §§ 2 and 4. + +_Socialism renders love impossible, and reduces humanity to the +condition of a stud farm._ This, too, has been already dealt with; see +Chapter III., §§ 2 and 5, and Chapter VI., §§ 2, 3, and 4. These two +objections generally occur together in the same anti-Socialist speech +or tract. + +_Socialism would destroy parental responsibility._ This absurd +perversion is altogether disposed of in Chapter VI., § 3. It is a +direct inversion of current Socialist teaching. + + +§ 3. + +_Socialism would open the way to vast public corruption._ This is +flatly opposed to the experience of America, where local +administration has been as little Socialistic and as corrupt as +anywhere in the world. Obviously in order that a public official +should be bribed, there must be some wealthy person outside the system +to bribe him and with an interest in bribing him. When you have a weak +administration with feeble powers and resources and strong +unscrupulous private corporations seeking to override the law and +public welfare, the possibilities of bribing are at the highest point. +In a community given over to the pursuit of gain, powerful private +enterprises will resort to corruption to get and protract franchises, +to evade penalties, to postpone expropriation, and they will do it +systematically and successfully. And even where there is partial +public enterprise and a competition among contractors, there will +certainly be, at least, attempts at corruption to get contracts. But +where the whole process is in public hands, where can the bribery +creep in; who is going to find the money for the bribes, and why? + +It is urged that in another direction there is likely to be a +corruption of public life due to the organized voting of the +_employés_ in this branch of the public service or that, seeking some +advantage for their own service. This is Lord Avebury's bogey.[16] +Frankly, such voting by services is highly probable. The tramway men +or the milk-service men may think they are getting too long hours or +too low pay in comparison with the teachers or men on the ocean +liners, and the thing may affect elections. That is only human nature, +and the point to bear in mind is that this sort of thing goes on +to-day, and goes on with a vigour out of all proportion to the mild +possibilities of a Socialist _régime_. The landowners of Great +Britain, for example, are organized in the most formidable manner +against the general interests of the community, and constantly +subordinate the interests of the common-weal to their conception of +justice to their class; the big railways are equally potent, and so +are the legal profession and the brewers. But to-day these political +interventions of great organized services athwart the path of +statesmanship are sustained by enormous financial resources. The State +_employés_ under Socialism will be in the position of employing one +another and paying one another; the teacher, for example, will be +educating the sons of the tramway men up to the requirements of the +public paymaster, and travelling in the trams to and from his work; +there will be close mutual observation and criticism, therefore, and a +strong community of spirit, and that will put very definite limits +indeed upon the possibly evil influence of class and service interests +in politics. + + [16] _On Municipal and National Trading_, by Lord Avebury. + (Macmillan & Co., 1907.) + +_Socialism would destroy Incentive and Efficiency._ This is dealt with +in Chapter V. on the Spirit of Gain and the Spirit of Service. + +_Socialism is economically unsound._ The student of Socialism who +studies--and every student of Socialism should study very +carefully--the literature directed against Socialism, will encounter a +number of rather confused and frequently very confusing arguments +running upon "business" or "economic" lines. In nearly all of these +the root error is a misconception of the nature and aim of Socialist +claims. Sometimes this misconception is stated and manifest, often it +is subtly implied, and then it presents the greatest difficulties to +the inexpert dialectician. I find, for instance, Mr. W. H. Lever, in +an article on Socialism and Business in the _Magazine of Commerce_ for +October 1907, assuming that there will be no increase in the total +wealth of the community under Socialism, whereas, as my fourth chapter +shows, Socialist proposals in the matter of property aim directly at +the cessation of the waste occasioned by competition through the +duplication and multiplication of material and organizations (see for +example the quotation from Elihu, p. 69), and at the removal of the +obstructive claims of private ownership (see p. 65) from the path of +production. If Socialism does not increase the total wealth of the +community, Socialism is impossible. + +Having made this assumption, however, Mr. Lever next assumes that all +contemporary business is productive of honest, needed commodities, and +that its public utility and its profitable conduct measure one +another. But this ignores the manifest fact that success in business +now-a-days is far more often won by the mere salesmanship of mediocre +or inferior or short-weight goods than it is by producing exceptional +value, and the Kentish railways, for example, are a standing contrast +of the conflict between public service and private profit-seeking. But +having committed himself to these two entirely unsound assumptions, it +is easy for Mr. Lever to show that since Socialism will give no more +wealth, and since what he calls Labour, Capital and the Employer (_i.e._ +Labour, Plant and Management) are necessary to production and must +be maintained out of the total product, there will be little more, +practically, for the Labourer under Socialist conditions than under +the existing _régime_. Going on further to assume that the Owner is +always enterprising and intelligent and public-spirited, and the State +stupid (which is a quite unjustifiable assumption), he shows their +share may even be less. But the whole case for the Socialist +proposals, the student must bear in mind, rests upon the recognition +that private management of our collective concerns means chaotic and +socially wasteful management--however efficient it may be in +individual cases for competitive purposes--and that the systematic +abolition of the parasitic Owner from our economic process implies the +replacement of confusion by order and an immense increase in the +efficiency of that economic process. Socialism is economy. If the +student of Socialism does not bear this in mind, if once he allows the +assumption to creep in that Socialism is not so much a proposal to +change, concentrate and organize the economic process, as one to +distribute the existing wealth of the country in some new manner, he +will find there is a bad case for Socialism. + +It is an amusing and I think a fair comment on the arguments of Mr. +Lever that a year or so ago he was actually concerned--no doubt in the +interests of the public as well as his own--in organizing the +production and distribution of soap so as to economize the waste and +avoid the public disservice due to the extreme competition of the soap +dealers. He wanted to do in the soap industry just exactly what +Socialism wants to do in the case of all public services, that is to +say he wanted to give it the economic advantages of a Great Combine. +In some directions the saving to the soap interest would have been +immense; all the vast expenditure upon newspaper advertisements, for +example, all the waste upon competing travellers would have been +saved. Whether the public would have benefited greatly or not is +beside the present question; Mr. Lever and other great soap +proprietors would certainly have benefited enormously. They would have +benefited by working as a collective interest instead of as +independent private owners. But in this little experiment in what was +really a sort of voluntary Socialism for particular ends, Mr. Lever +reckoned without another great system of private adventurers, the +halfpenny newspaper proprietors, who had hitherto been drawing large +sums from soap advertisement, and who had in fact been so far +parasitic on the public soap supply. One group of these papers at once +began a campaign against the "Soap Trust," a campaign almost as noisy +and untruthful as the anti-Socialist campaign. They accused Mr. Lever +of nearly every sort of cheating that can be done by a soap seller, +and anticipated every sort of oppression a private monopolist can +practise. In the end they paid unprecedented damages for libel, but +they stopped Mr. Lever's intelligent and desirable endeavours to +replace the waste and disorder of our existing soap supply by a simple +and more efficient organization. Mr. Lever cannot have forgotten these +facts; they were surely in the back of his mind when he wrote his +"Socialism and Business" paper, and it is a curious instance of the +unconscious limitations one may encounter in a mind of exceptional +ability that he could not bring them forward and apply them to the +problem in hand. + +_Socialism is unbusinesslike._ See Chapter VIII., §§ 2 and 3. + + +§ 4. + +_Socialism would destroy freedom._ This is a more considerable +difficulty. To begin with it may be necessary to remind the reader +that absolute freedom is an impossibility. As I have written in my +_Modern Utopia_:-- + + "The idea of individual liberty is one that has grown in + importance and grows with every development of modern thought. + To the classical Utopists freedom was relatively trivial. + Clearly they considered virtue and happiness as entirely + separable from liberty, and as being altogether more important + things. But the modern view, with its deepening insistence + upon individuality and upon the significance of its + uniqueness, steadily intensifies the value of freedom, until + at last we begin to see liberty as the very substance of life, + that indeed it is life, and that only the dead things, the + choiceless things live in absolute obedience to law. To have + free play for one's individuality is, in the modern view, the + subjective triumph of existence, as survival in creative work + and offspring is its objective triumph. But for all men, since + man is a social creature, the play of will must fall short of + absolute freedom. Perfect human liberty is possible only to a + despot who is absolutely and universally obeyed. Then to will + would be to command and achieve, and within the limits of + natural law we could at any moment do exactly as it pleased us + to do. All other liberty is a compromise between our own + freedom of will and the wills of those with whom we come in + contact. In an organized state each one of us has a more or + less elaborate code of what he may do to others and to + himself, and what others may do to him. He limits others by + his rights and is limited by the rights of others, and by + considerations affecting the welfare of the community as a + whole. + + "Individual liberty in a community is not, as mathematicians + would say, always of the same sign. To ignore this is the + essential fallacy of the cult called Individualism. But in + truth, a general prohibition in a State may increase the sum + of liberty, and a general permission may diminish it. It does + not follow, as these people would have us believe, that a man + is more free where there is least law, and more restricted + where there is most law. A socialism or a communism is not + necessarily a slavery, and there is no freedom under + anarchy.... + + "It follows, therefore, in a modern Utopia, which finds the + final hope of the world in the evolving interplay of unique + individualities, that the State will have effectually chipped + away just all those spendthrift liberties that waste liberty, + and not one liberty more, and so have attained the maximum + general freedom."... + +That is the gist of the Socialist's answer to this accusation. He asks +what freedom is there to-day for the vast majority of mankind? They +are free to do nothing but work for a bare subsistence all their +lives, they may not go freely about the earth even, but are prosecuted +for trespassing upon the health-giving breast of our universal mother. +Consider the clerks and girls who hurry to their work of a morning +across Brooklyn Bridge in New York, or Hungerford Bridge in London; go +and see them, study their faces. They are free, with a freedom +Socialism would destroy. Consider the poor painted girls who pursue +bread with nameless indignities through our streets at night. They are +free by the current standard. And the poor half-starved wretches +struggling with the impossible stint of oakum in a casual ward, they +too are free! The nimble footman is free, the crushed porter between +the trucks is free, the woman in the mill, the child in the mine. Ask +them! They will tell you how free they are. They have happened to +choose these ways of living--that is all. No doubt the piquancy of the +life attracts them in many such cases. + +Let us be frank; a form of Socialism might conceivably exist without +much freedom, with hardly more freedom than that of a British worker +to-day. A State Socialism tyrannized over by officials who might be +almost as bad at times as uncontrolled small employers, is so far +possible that in Germany it is practically half-existent now. A +bureaucratic Socialism might conceivably be a state of affairs +scarcely less detestable than our own. I will not deny there is a +clear necessity of certain addenda to the wider formulĉ of Socialism +if we are to be safeguarded effectually from the official. We need +free speech, free discussion, free publication, as essentials for a +wholesome Socialist State. How they may be maintained I shall discuss +in a later chapter. But these admissions do not justify the present +system. Socialism, though it failed to give us freedom, would not +destroy anything that we have in this way. We want freedom now, and we +have it not. We speak of freedom of speech, but to-day, in innumerable +positions, Socialist _employés_ who declared their opinions openly +would be dismissed. Then again in religious questions there is an +immense amount of intolerance and suppression of social and religious +discussion to-day, especially in our English villages. As for freedom +of action, most of us, from fourteen to the grave, are chased from +even the leisure to require freedom by the necessity of earning a +living.... + +Socialism, as I have stated it thus far, and as it is commonly stated, +would give economic liberty to men and women alike, it would save them +from the cruel urgency of need, and so far it would enormously enlarge +freedom, but it does not guarantee them political or intellectual +liberty. That I frankly admit, and accept as one of the +incompletenesses of contemporary Socialism. I conceive, therefore, as +I shall explain at length in a later chapter, that it is necessary to +supplement such Socialism as is currently received by certain new +propositions. But to admit that Socialism does not guarantee freedom, +is not to admit that Socialism will destroy it. It is possible, given +certain conditions, for men to be nearly absolutely free in speech, in +movement, in conduct; enormously free, that is, as compared with our +present conditions, in a Socialist State established upon the two +great propositions I have formulated in Chapters III. and IV. So that +the statement that Socialism will destroy freedom is a baseless one of +no value as a general argument against the Socialist idea. + + +§ 5. + +_Socialism would reduce life to one monotonous dead level!_ This in a +world in which the majority of people live in cheap cottages, villa +residences and tenement houses, read halfpenny newspapers and wear +ready-made clothes! + +_Socialism would destroy Art, Invention and Literature._ I do not know +why this objection is made, unless it be that the objectors suppose +that artists will not create, inventors will not think, and no one +write or sing except to please a wealthy patron. Without his opulent +smile, where would they be? Well, do not let us be ungrateful; the +arts owe much to patronage. Go to Venice, go to Florence, and you will +find a glorious harvest of pictures and architecture, sown and reaped +by a mercantile plutocracy. But then in Rome, in Athens, you will find +an equal accumulation made under very different conditions. Reach a +certain phase of civilization, a certain leisure and wealth, and art +will out, however the wealth may be distributed. In certain sumptuous +directions art flourishes now, and would certainly flourish less in a +Socialist State; in the gear of ostentatious luxury, in private +furniture of all sorts, in palace building, in the exquisite +confections of costly feminine adornment, in the luxurious binding of +books, in the cooking of larks, in the distinguished portraiture of +undistinguished persons, in the various refinements of prostitution, +in the subtle accommodations of mystic theology, in jewellery. It is +quite conceivable that in such departments Socialism will discourage +and limit ĉsthetic and intellectual effort. But no mercantile +plutocracy could ever have produced a Gothic cathedral, a folk-lore, a +gracious natural type of cottage or beautiful clothing for the common +people, and no mercantile plutocracy will ever tolerate a literature +of power. If the coming of Socialism destroys arts, it will also +create arts; the architecture of private palaces will give place to an +architecture of beautiful common homes, cottages and colleges, and to +a splendid development of public buildings, the Sargents of Socialism +will paint famous people instead of millionaires' wives, poetry and +popular romantic literature will revive. For my own part I have no +doubt where the balance of advantage lies. + +It seems reasonable to look to the literary and artistic people +themselves for a little guidance in this matter. Well, we had in the +nineteenth century an absolute revolt of artists against +Individualism. The proportion of open and declared Socialists among +the great writers, artists, playwrights, critics, of the Victorian +period was out of all proportion to the number of Socialists in the +general population. Wilde in his _Soul of Man under Socialism_, Ruskin +in many volumes of imperishable prose, Morris in all his later life, +have witnessed to the unending protest of the artistic spirit against +the rule of gain. Some of these writers are not, perhaps, to be +regarded as orthodox Socialists in the modern sense, but their disgust +with and contempt for Individualist competition is entirely in the +vein of our teaching. + +Even this Individualistic country of ours, after the shameful shock of +the Great Exhibition of 1851, decided that it could no longer leave +art to private enterprise, and organized that systematic government +Art Teaching that has, in spite of its many defects, revolutionized +the ĉsthetic quality of this country. And so far as research and +invention go, one may very reasonably appeal to such an authority on +the other side, as the late Mr. Beit, of Wernher Beit & Co. The +outcome of his experience as an individualist financier was to +convince him that the only way to raise the standard of technical +science in England, and therewith of economic enterprise, was by the +endowment of public teaching, and the huge "London Charlottenburg" +rises--out of his conviction. Even Messrs. Rockefeller and Carnegie +admit the failure of Individualism in this matter by pouring money +into public universities and public libraries. All these heads of the +commercial process confess by such acts just exactly what this +objection of the inexperienced denies, that is to say the power of the +State to develop art, invention and knowledge; the necessity that this +duty should be done if not by, then at any rate through, the State. + +Socialism may very seriously change the direction of intellectual and +ĉsthetic endeavour; that one admits. But there is no reason whatever +for supposing it will not, and there are countless reasons for +supposing that it will, enormously increase the opportunities and +encouragements for ĉsthetic and intellectual endeavour. + + +§ 6. + +_Socialism would arrest the survival of the Fittest._ Here is an +objection from quite a new quarter. It is the stock objection of the +science student. Hitherto we have considered religious and ĉsthetic +difficulties, but this is the difficulty of the mind that realizes +clearly the nature of the biological process, the secular change in +every species under the influence of its environment, and is most +concerned with that. Species, it is said, change--and the student of +the elements of science is too apt to conclude that this change is +always ascent in the scale of being--by the killing off of the +individuals out of harmony with the circumstances under which the +species is living. This is not quite true. The truer statement is that +species change because, allowing for chance and individual exceptions, +only those individuals survive to reproduce themselves who are fairly +well adjusted to the conditions of life; so that in each generation +there is only a small proportion of births out of harmony with these +conditions. This sounds very like the previous proposition, but it +differs in this that the accent is shifted from the "killing" to the +suppression of births, that is the really important fact. In any case, +then, the believer in evolution holds that the qualities encouraged by +the environment increase in the species and the qualities discouraged +diminish. The qualities that have survival value are not always what +we human beings consider admirable--that is a consideration many +science students fail to grasp. The remarkable habits of all the +degenerating crustacea, for example, the appetite of the vulture, the +unpleasing personality of the common hyĉna, all that less charming +side of Mother Nature that her scandalized children may read of in +Cobbold's _Human Parasites_, are the result of survival under the +pressure of environment, just as much as the human eye or the wing of +an eagle. Let the objector therefore ask himself what sort of +"fittest" are surviving now. + +The plain answer is that under our present conditions the +_Breeding-Getter_ wins, the man who can hold and keep and reproduce +his kind. People with the instinct of owning stronger than any other +instinct float out upon the top of our seething mass, and flourish +there. Aggressive, intensely acquisitive, reproductive people--the +ignoble sort of Jew is the very type of it--are the people who will +prevail in a social system based on private property and mercantile +competition. No creative power, no nobility, no courage can battle +against them. And below--in the slums and factories, what will be +going on? The survival of a race of stunted toilers, with great +resisting power to infection, contagion and fatigue, omnivorous as +rats.... + +Don't imagine that the high infantile death rate of our manufacturing +centres spares the fine big children. It does not. Here is the +effectual answer to that. It is taken from the Report of the Education +Committee of the London County Council for the year 1905, and it is +part of an account of an inquiry conducted by the headmaster of one +school in a poor neighbourhood. + + "The object of the inquiry was to discover the causes of + variation in the physical condition of children within the + limits of this single school. Each of the 405 boys was + carefully weighed and measured without boots, a note was made + of the condition of the teeth, and a general estimate of the + personal cleanliness and sufficiency of clothing as a basis + for determining the home conditions of neglect or otherwise + from external evidence. The teacher of each class added an + estimate of mental capacity." (Here follow tabular + arrangements of results, and height and weight charts.) + + "... It may be noted in the heights and weights for each age + that the curve is not a continuous line of growth, but that at + some ages it springs nearer to, and at others sinks further + from, the normal. The greatest effect upon the life capital of + the population is produced by the infantile mortality, which + in some years actually kills off during the first year one in + five of all children born; the question naturally arises what + is its effect upon the survivors--do the weakly ones get + killed off and only the strong muddle through, or does the + adverse environment which slaughters one in five have a + maiming effect upon those left?... When the infantile + mortality for the parish in which the school is situate was + charted above the physique curve, an absolute correspondence + is to be observed. The children born in a year when infantile + mortality is low show an increased physique, rising nearest to + the normal in the extraordinary good year 1892; and those born + in the years of high mortality show a decreased physique.... + It appears certain, therefore, that in years of high infantile + mortality the conditions, to which one in five or six of the + children born are sacrificed, have a maiming effect upon the + other four or five." + +_The fine big children are born in periods of low infantile +mortality_, that is the essential point. + +So that anyhow, since the fittest under present conditions is +manifestly the ratlike, the survival of the fittest that is going on +now is one that it is highly desirable to stop as soon as possible, +and so far Socialism _will_ arrest the survival of the fittest. But +that does not mean that it will stop the development of the species +altogether. It will merely shift the incident of selection and +rejection to a new set of qualities. I think I have already hinted +(Chapter VI., § 2) that a State that undertakes to sustain all the +children born into it will do its best to secure good births. That +implies a distinct bar to the marriage and reproduction of the halt +and the blind, the bearers of transmissible diseases and the like. And +women being economically independent will have a far freer choice in +wedlock than they have now. Now they must in practice marry men who +can more or less keep them, they must subordinate every other +consideration to that. Under Socialism they will certainly look less +to a man's means and acquisitive gifts, and more to the finer +qualities of his personality. They will prefer prominent men, able +men, fine, vigorous and attractive persons. There will, indeed, be far +more freedom of choice on either side than under the sordid conditions +of the present time. I submit that such a free choice is far more +likely to produce a secular increase in the beauty, the intellectual +and physical activity and the capacity of the race, than our present +haphazard mercenariness. + +The science student will be interested to read in this connection _The +Ethic of Free Thought_ (A. & C. Black, 1888), _Socialism in Theory and +Practice_ (1884), and _The Chances of Death, and other Studies in +Evolution_ (Arnold, 1897), by Karl Pearson. Professor Pearson is not +in all respects to be taken as an authoritative exponent of Modern +Socialism, and he is associated with no Socialist organization, but +his treatment of the biological aspect is that of a specialist and a +master. + + +§ 7. + +_Socialism is against Human Nature._ This objection I have left until +last because, firstly, it is absolutely true, and secondly, it leads +naturally to the newer ideas that have already peeped out once or +twice in my earlier chapters and which will now ride up to a +predominance in what follows, and particularly the idea that an +educational process and a moral discipline are not only a necessary +part, but the most fundamental part of any complete Socialist scheme. +Socialism is against Human Nature. That is true, and it is equally +true of everything else; capitalism is against human nature, +competition is against human nature, cruelty, kindness, religion and +doubt, monogamy, polygamy, celibacy, decency, indecency, piety and sin +are all against human nature. The present system in particular is +against human nature, or what is the policeman for, the soldier, the +debt-collector, the judge, the hangman? What means the glass along my +neighbour's wall? Human nature is against human nature. For human +nature is in a perpetual conflict; it is the Ishmael of the universe, +against everything, and with everything against it; and within, no +more and no less than a perpetual battleground of passion, desire, +cowardice, indolence and good will. So that our initial proposition as +it stands at the head of this section, is, as an argument against +Socialism, just worth nothing at all. + +None the less valuable is it as a reminder of the essential +constructive task of which the two primary generalizations of +Socialism we have so far been developing are but the outward and +visible forms. There is no untutored naturalness in Socialism, no +uneducated blind force on our side. Socialism is made of struggling +Good Will, made out of a conflict of wills. I have tried to let it +become apparent that while I do firmly believe not only in the +splendour and nobility of the Socialist dream but in its ultimate +practicality, I do also recognize quite clearly that with people just +as they are now, with their prejudices, their ignorances, their +misapprehensions, their unchecked vanities and greeds and jealousies, +their crude and misguided instincts, their irrational traditions, no +Socialist State can exist, no better State can exist, than the one we +have now with all its squalor and cruelty. Every change in human +institutions must happen concurrently with a change of ideas. Upon +this plastic, uncertain, teachable thing Human Nature, within us and +without, we have, if we really contemplate Socialism as our +achievement, to impose guiding ideas and guiding habits, we have to +co-ordinate all the Good Will that is active or latent in our world in +one constructive plan. To-day the spirit of humanity is lost to +itself, divided, dispersed and hidden in little narrow distorted +circles of thought. These divided, misshapen circles of thought are +not "human nature," but human nature has fallen into these forms and +has to be released. Our fundamental business is to develop the human +spirit. It is in the enlargement and enrichment of the average circle +of thought that the essential work and method of Socialism is to be +found. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +SOCIALISM A DEVELOPING DOCTRINE + + +§ 1. + +So far we have been discussing the broad elementary propositions of +Modern Socialism. As we have dealt with them, they amount to little +more than a sketch of the foundation for a great scheme of social +reconstruction. It would be a poor service to Socialism to pretend +that this scheme is complete. From this point onward one enters upon a +series of less unanimous utterances and more questionable suggestions. +Concerning much of what follows, Socialism has as yet not elaborated +its teaching. It has to do so, it is doing so, but huge labours lie +before its servants. Before it can achieve any full measure of +realization, it has to overcome problems at present but half solved, +problems at present scarcely touched, the dark unsettling suggestion +of problems that still await formulation. The Anti-Socialist is freely +welcome to all these admissions. No doubt they will afford grounds for +some cheap transitory triumph. They affect our great generalizations +not at all; they detract nothing from the fact that Socialism presents +the most inspiring, creative scheme that ever came into the chaos of +human affairs. The fact that it is not cut and dried, that it lives +and grows, that every honest adherent adds not only to its forces but +to its thought and spirit, is itself inspiration. + +The new adherent to Socialism in particular must bear this in mind, +that Socialism is no garment made and finished that we can reasonably +ask the world to wear forthwith. It is not that its essentials remain +in doubt, it is not that it does not stand for things supremely true, +but that its proper method and its proper expedients have still to be +established. Over and above the propaganda of its main constructive +ideas and the political work for their more obvious and practical +application, an immense amount of intellectual work remains to be done +for Socialism. The battle for Socialism is to be fought not simply at +the polls and in the market-place, but at the writing-desk and in the +study. To many questions, the attitude of Socialism to-day is one of +confessed inquiring imperfection.[17] It would indeed be very +remarkable if a proposition for changes so vast and comprehensive as +Socialism advances was in any different state at this present time. + + [17] The student will find very clear, informing, and + suggestive reading in Kirkup's _History of Socialism_ (A. & + C. Black, 1906). It is a fine, impartial account of these + developments, which may well be used as a corrective (or + confirmation) of this book. + +It is so recently as 1833 that the world first heard the word +Socialism.[18] It appeared then, with the vaguest implications and the +most fluctuating definition, as a general term for a disconnected +series of protests against the extreme theories of Individualism and +Individualist Political Economy; against the cruel, race-destroying +industrial spirit that then dominated the world. Of these protests the +sociological suggestions and experiments of Robert Owen were most +prominent in the English community, and he it is, more than any other +single person, whom we must regard as the father of Socialism. But in +France ideas essentially similar were appearing about such movements +and personalities as those of Saint Simon, Proudhon and Fourier. They +were part of a vast system of questionings and repudiations, political +doubts, social doubts, hesitating inquiries and experiments. + + [18] It was probably first used in the _Poor Man's Guardian_ + in that year. See _The Life of Francis Place_, by Graham + Wallas, p. 353. + +It is only to be expected that early Socialism should now appear as +not only an extremely imperfect but a very inconsistent system of +proposals. Its value lay not so much in its plans as in its hopeful +and confident denials. It had hold of one great truth; it moved one +great amendment to the conception of practical equality the French +Revolution had formulated, and that was its clear indication of the +evil of unrestricted private property and of the necessary antagonism +of the interests of the individual to the common-weal, of "Wealth +against Commonwealth," that went with that. While most men had to go +propertyless in a world that was privately owned, the assertion of +equality was an empty lie. For the rest, primordial Socialism was +entirely sketchy and experimental. It was wild as the talk of +school-boys. It disregarded the most obvious needs. It did not provide +for any principle of government, or for the maintenance of collective +thought and social determination, it offered no safeguards and +guarantees for even the most elementary privacies and freedoms; it was +extraordinarily non-constructive. It was extreme in its proposed +abolition of the home, and it flatly ignored the huge process of +transition needed for a change so profound and universal. + +The early Socialism was immediately millennial. It had no patience. +The idea was to be made into a definite project forthwith; Fourier +drew up his compact scheme, arranged how many people should live in +each _phalange_ and so forth, and all that remained to do, he thought, +was to sow _phalanges_ as one scatters poppy seed. With him it was to +be Socialism by contagion, with many of his still hastier +contemporaries it was to be Socialism by proclamation. All the evils +of society were to crumble to ruins like the Walls of Jericho at the +first onset of the Great Idea. + +Our present generation is less buoyant perhaps, but wiser. However +young you may be as a reformer, you know you must face certain facts +those early Socialists ignored. Whatever sort of community you dream +of, you realize that it has to be made of the sort of people you meet +every day or of the children growing up under their influence. The +damping words of the old philosopher to the ardent Social reformer of +seventeen were really the quintessence of our criticism of +revolutionary Socialism: "Will your aunts join us, my dear? No! +Well--is the grocer on our side? And the family solicitor? We shall +have to provide for them all, you know, unless you suggest a lethal +chamber." + +For a generation Socialism, in the exaltation of its self-discovery, +failed to measure these primary obstacles, failed to recognize the +real necessity, the quality of the task of making these people +understand. To this day the majority of Socialists still fail to grasp +completely the Herbartian truth, the fact that every human soul moves +within its _circle of ideas_, resisting enlargement, incapable indeed +if once it is adult of any extensive enlargement, and that all +effectual human progress can be achieved only through such +enlargement. Only ideas cognate to a circle of ideas are assimilated +or assimilable; ideas too alien, though you shout them in the ear, +thrust them in the face, remain foreign and incomprehensible. + +The early Socialists, arriving at last at their Great Idea, after +toilsome questionings, after debates, disputations, studies, trials, +_saw_, and instantly couldn't understand those others who did not see; +they failed altogether to realize the leaps they had made, the +brilliant omissions they had achieved, the difficulties they had +evaded to get to this magnificent conception. I suppose such +impatience is as natural and understandable as it is unfortunate. None +of us escape it. Much of this early Socialism is as unreal as +mathematics, has much the same relation to truth as the abstract +absolute process of calculation has to concrete individual things; +much of it more than justifies altogether that "black or white" method +of criticism of which I wrote in the preceding chapter. They were as +downright and unconsidering, as little capable of the reasoned middle +attitude. Proudhon, perceiving that the world was obsessed by a +misconception of the scope of property whereby the many were enslaved +to the few, went off at a tangent to the announcement that "Property +is Robbery," an exaggeration that, as I have already shown, still +haunts Socialist discussion. The ultimate factor of all human affairs, +the psychological factor, was disregarded. Like the classic +mathematical problem, early Socialism was always "neglecting the +weight of the elephant"--or some other--from the practical point of +view--equally essential factor. This was, perhaps, an unavoidable +stage. It is probable that by no other means than such exaggeration +and partial statement could Socialism have got itself begun. The world +of 1830 was fatally wrong in its ideas of property; early Socialism +rose up and gave those ideas a flat, extreme, outrageous +contradiction. After that analysis and discussion became possible. + +The early Socialist literature teems with rash, suggestive schemes. It +has the fertility, the confusion, the hopefulness, the promise of +glowing youth. It is a quarry of ideas, a mine of crude expedients, a +fountain of emotions. The abolition of money, the substitution of +Labour Notes, the possibility, justice and advantage of equalizing +upon a time-basis the remuneration of the worker, the relation of the +new community to the old family, a hundred such topics were +ventilated--were not so much ventilated as tossed about in an +impassioned gale. + +Much of this earlier Socialist literature was like Cabet's book, +actually Utopian in form; a still larger proportion was Utopian in +spirit; its appeal was imaginative, and it aimed to be a plan of a new +state as definite and detailed as the plan for the building of a +house. It has been the fashion with a number of later Socialist +writers and speakers, mind-struck with that blessed word "evolution," +confusing "scientific," a popular epithet to which they aspired, with +"unimaginative," to sneer at the Utopian method, to make a sort of +ideal of a leaden practicality, but it does not follow because the +Utopias produced and the experiments attempted were in many aspects +unreasonable and absurd that the method itself is an unsound one. At a +certain phase of every creative effort you must cease to study the +thing that is, and plan the thing that is not. The early Socialisms +were only premature plans and hasty working models that failed to +work. + +And it must be remembered when we consider Socialism's early +extravagancies, that any idea or system of ideas which challenges the +existing system is necessarily, in relation to that system, outcast. +Mediocre men go soberly on the highroads, but saints and scoundrels +meet in the gaols. If A and B rebel against the Government, they are +apt, although they rebel for widely different reasons, to be classed +together; they are apt indeed to be thrown together and tempted to +sink even quite essential differences in making common cause against +the enemy. So that from its very beginning Socialism was mixed up--to +this day it remains mixed up--with other movements of revolt and +criticism, with which it has no very natural connection. There is, for +example, the unfortunate entanglement between the Socialist theory and +that repudiation of any but subjective sexual limitations which is +called "free love," and there is that still more unfortunate +association of its rebellion against orthodox economic theories, with +rebellion against this or that system of religious teaching. Several +of the early Socialist communities, again, rebelled against ordinary +clothing, and their women made short hair and bloomers the outward and +visible associations of the communistic idea. In Holyoake's _History +of Co-operation_ it is stated that one early experiment was known to +its neighbours as "the grass-eating Atheists of Ham Common." I have +done my very best (in Chapter VIII., § 2) to clear the exposition of +Socialism from these entanglements, but it is well to recognize that +these are no corruptions of its teaching, but an inevitable +birth-infection that has still to be completely overcome. + + +§ 2. + +The comprehensively constructive spirit of modern Socialism is very +much to seek in these childhood phases that came before Marx. These +early projects were for the most part developed by literary men (and +by one philosophic business man, Owen) to whose circle of ideas the +conception of State organization and administration was foreign. They +took peace and order for granted--they left out the school-master, the +judge and the policeman, as the amateur architect of the anecdote left +out the staircase. They set out to contrive a better industrial +organization, or a better social atmosphere within the present scheme +of things. They wished to reform what they understood, and what was +outside their circle of ideas they took for granted, as they took the +sky and sea. Not only was their literature Utopian literature, about +little islands of things begun over again from the beginning, but +their activities tended in the direction of Utopian experiments +equally limited and isolated. Here again a just critic will differ +from many contemporary Socialists in their depreciation of this sort +of work. Owen's experiments in socialized production were of enormous +educational and scientific value. They were, to use a mining expert's +term, "hand specimens" of human welfare of the utmost value to +promoters. They made factory legislation possible; they initiated the +now immense co-operative movement; they stirred commonplace +imaginations as only achievement can stir them; they set going a +process of amelioration in industrial conditions that will never, I +believe, cease again until the Socialist state is attained. + +But apart from Owen and the general advertisement given to Socialist +ideas, it must be admitted that a great majority of Socialist +communities have, by every material standard, failed rather than +succeeded. Some went visibly insolvent and to pieces, others were +changed by prosperity. Some were wrecked by the sudden lapse of the +treasurer into an extreme individualism. Essentially Socialism is a +project for the species, but these communities made it a system of +relationships within a little group; to the world without they had +necessarily to turn a competitive face, to buy and sell and advertise +on the lines of the system as it is. If they failed, they failed; if +they succeeded they presently found themselves landlords, employers, +no more and no less than a corporate individualism. I have described +elsewhere[19] the fate of the celebrated Oneida community of New York +State, and how it is now converted into an aggressive, wealthy, +fighting corporation of the most modern type, employing immigrant +labour. + + [19] _The Future in America._ (Chapman & Hall, 1906.) + +Professed and conscious Socialism in its earliest stages, then, was an +altogether extreme proposition, it was at once imperfect and +over-emphatic, and it was confused with many quite irrelevant and +inconsistent novelties with regard to diet, dress, medicine and +religion. Its first manifest, acknowledged and labelled fruits were a +series of futile "communities"--Noyes' _History of American +Socialisms_ gives their simple history of births and of fatal +infantile ailments--Brook Farm, Fourierite "Phalanges" and the like. +But correlated with these extreme efforts, drawing ideas and +inspiration from them, was the great philanthropic movement for the +amelioration of industrialism, that was, I insist, for all its absence +of a definite Socialist label in many cases, an equally legitimate +factor in the making of the great conception of modern Socialism. +Socialism may be the child of the French Revolution, but it certainly +has one aristocratic Tory grandparent. There can be little dispute of +the close connection of Lord Shaftesbury's Factory Acts, that +commencement of constructive statesmanship in industrialism, with the +work of Owen. The whole Victorian period marks a steady development of +social organization out of the cruel economic anarchy of its +commencement; the beginnings of public education, adulteration acts +and similar checks upon the extremities of private enterprise, the +great successful experiments of co-operative consumers' associations +and the development of what has now become a quasi-official +representation of labour in the State through the Trade Unions. Two +great writers, Carlyle and Ruskin, the latter a professed Socialist, +spent their powers in a relentless campaign against the harsh theories +of the liberty of property, the gloomy superstitions of political +economy that barred the way to any effectual constructive scheme. An +enormous work was done throughout the whole Victorian period by +Socialists and Socialistic writers, in criticizing and modifying the +average circle of ideas, in bringing conceptions that had once seemed +weird, outcast and altogether fantastic, more and more within the +range of acceptable practicality. + +The first early Socialisms were most various and eccentric upon the +question of government and control. They had no essential political +teaching. Many, but by no means all, were inspired by the democratic +idealism of the first French Revolution. They believed in a mystical +something that was wiser and better than any individual,--the People, +the Common Man. But that was by no means the case with all of them. +The Noyes community was a sort of Theocratic autocracy; the Saint +Simonian tendency was aristocratic. The English Socialism that in the +middle Victorian period developed partly out of the suggestions of +Owen's beginnings and partly as an independent fresh outpouring of the +struggling Good Will in man, that English Socialism that found a voice +in Ruskin and in Maurice and Kingsley and the Christian Socialists, +was certainly not democratic. It kept much of what was best in the +"public spirit" of contemporary English life, and it implied if it did +not postulate a "governing class." Benevolent and even generous in +conception, its exponents betray all too often the ties of social +habituations, the limited circle of ideas of English upper and upper +middle-class life, easy and cultivated, well served and distinctly, +most unmistakably, authoritative. + +While the experimental Utopian Socialisms gave a sort of variegated +and conflicting pattern of a reorganized industrialism and +(incidentally to that) a new heaven and earth, the benevolent +Socialism, Socialistic Liberalism and Socialistic philanthropy of the +middle Victorian period, really went very little further in effect +than a projected amelioration and moralization of the relations of +rich and poor. It needed the impact of an entirely new type of mind +before Socialism began to perceive its own significance as an ordered +scheme for the entire reconstruction of the world, began to realize +the gigantic breadth of its implications. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +REVOLUTIONARY SOCIALISM + + +§ 1. + +It was Karl Marx who brought the second great influx of suggestion +into the intellectual process of Socialism. Before his time there does +not seem to have been any clear view of economic relationships as +having laws of development, as having interactions that began and went +on and led towards new things. But Marx had vision. He had--as Darwin +and the evolutionists had, as most men with a scientific training, and +many educated men without that advantage now have--a sense of secular +change. Instead of being content with the accepted picture of the +world as a scene where men went on producing and distributing wealth +and growing rich or poor, it might be for endless ages, he made an +appeal to history and historical analogies, and for the first time +viewed our age of individualist industrial development, not as a +possibly permanent condition of humanity, but as something unstable +and in motion, as an economic process, that is to say, with a +beginning, a middle, and as he saw it, an almost inevitable end. + +The last thing men contrive to discern in every question is the +familiar obvious, and it came as a great and shattering discovery to +the economic and sociological thought of the latter half of the +nineteenth century that there was going on not simply a production but +an immense concentration of wealth, a differentiation of a special +wealthy class of landholder and capitalist, a diminution of small +property owners and the development of a great and growing class of +landless, nearly propertyless men, the _proletariat_. Marx showed--he +showed so clearly that to-day it is recognized by every intelligent +man--that _given a continuance of our industrial and commercial +system_, of uncontrolled gain seeking, that is, given a continuance of +our present spirit and ideas of property, there must necessarily come +a time when the owner and the proletarian will stand face to face, +with nothing--if we except a middle class of educated professionals +dependent on the wealthy, who are after all no more than the upper +stratum of the proletariat--to mask or mitigate their opposition. We +shall have two classes, the class-conscious worker and the +class-conscious owner, and they will be at war. And with a broad +intellectual sweep he flung the light of this conception upon the +whole contemporary history of mankind. _Das Kapital_ was no sketch of +Utopias, had no limitation to the conditions or possibilities of this +country or that. "Here," he says, in the widest way, "is what is going +on all over the world. So long as practically untrammelled private +property, such as you conceive it to-day, endures, this must go on. +The worker gravitates steadily everywhere to a bare subsistence, the +rest of the proceeds of his labour swell the power of the owners. So +it will go on while gain and getting are the rule of your system, +until accumulated tensions between class and class smash this present +social organization and inaugurate a new age." + +In considering the thought and work of Karl Marx, the reader must bear +in mind the epoch in which that work commenced. The intellectual world +was then under the sway of an organized mass of ideas known as the +Science of Political Economy, a mass of ideas that has now not so much +been examined and refuted as slipped away imperceptibly from its hold +upon the minds of men. In the beginning, in the hands of Adam +Smith--whose richly suggestive book is now all too little +read--political economy was a broad-minded and sane inquiry into the +statecraft of trade based upon current assumptions of private +ownership and personal motives, but from him it passed to men of +perhaps, in some cases, quite equal intellectual energy but inferior +vision and range. The history of Political Economy is indeed one of +the most striking instances of the mischief wrought by intellectual +minds devoid of vision, in the entire history of human thought. +Special definition, technicality, are the stigmata of second-rate +intellectual men; they cannot work with the universal tool, they +cannot appeal to the general mind. They must abstract and separate. On +such men fell the giant's robe of Adam Smith, and they wore it after +their manner. Their arid atmospheres are intolerant of clouds, an +outline that is not harsh is abominable to them. They criticized their +master's vagueness and must needs mend it. They sought to give +political economy a precision and conviction such a subject will not +stand. They took such words as "_value_," an incurably and necessarily +vague word, "_rent_," the name of the specific relation of landlord +and tenant, and "_capital_," and sought to define them with relentless +exactness and use them with inevitable effect. So doing they departed +more and more from reality. They developed a literature more abundant, +more difficult and less real than all the exercises of the schoolmen +put together. To use common words in uncommon meanings is to sow a +jungle of misunderstanding. It was only to be expected that the bulk +of this economic literature resolves upon analysis into a ponderous, +intricate, often astonishingly able and foolish wrangling about +terminology. + +Now in the early Victorian period in which Marx planned his +theorizing, political economy ruled the educated world. Ruskin had +still to attack the primary assumptions of that tyrannous and dogmatic +edifice. The duller sort of educated people talked of the "immutable +laws of political economy" in the blankest ignorance that the basis of +everything in this so-called science was a plastic human convention. +Humane impulses were checked, creative effort tried and condemned by +these mystical formulĉ. Political economy traded on the splendid +achievements of physics and chemistry and pretended to an inexorable +authority. Only a man of supreme intelligence and power, a man +resolved to give his lifetime to the task, could afford in those days +to combat the pretensions of the political economist; to deny that his +categories presented scientific truth, and to cast that jargon aside. +As for Marx, he saw fit to accept the verbal instruments of his time +(albeit he bent them not a little in use), to accommodate himself to +their spirit and to split and re-classify and re-define them at his +need. So that he has become already difficult to follow, and his more +specialized exponents among Socialists use terms that arouse no echoes +in the contemporary mind. The days when Socialism need present its +theories in terms of a science whose fundamental propositions it +repudiates, are at an end. One hears less and less of "surplus value" +now, as one hears less and less of McCulloch's Law of Wages. It may +crop up in the inquiries of some intelligent mechanic seeking +knowledge among the obsolescent accumulations of a public library, or +it may for a moment be touched upon by some veteran teacher. But the +time when social and economic science had to choose between debatable +and inexpressive technicalities on the one hand or the stigma of +empiricism on the other, is altogether past. + +The language a man uses, however, is of far less importance than the +thing he has to say, and it detracts little from the cardinal +importance of Marx that his books will presently demand restatement in +contemporary phraseology, and revision in the light of contemporary +facts. He opened out Socialism. It is easy to quibble about Marx, and +say he didn't see this or that, to produce this eddy in a backwater or +that as a triumphant refutation of his general theory. One may quibble +about the greatness of Marx as one may quibble about the greatness of +Darwin; he remains great and cardinal. He first saw and enabled the +world to see capitalistic production as a world process, passing by +necessity through certain stages of social development, and unless +some change of law and spirit came to modify it, moving towards an +inevitable destiny. His followers are too apt to regard that as an +absolutely inevitable destiny, but the fault lies not at his door. He +saw it as Socialism. It did not appear to him as it does to many that +there is a possible alternative to Socialism, that the process may +give us, not a triumph for the revolting proletariat, but their +defeat, and the establishment of a plutocratic aristocracy culminating +in imperialism and ending in social disintegration. From his study, +from the studious rotunda of the British Museum Reading-room he made +his prophecy of the growing class consciousness of the workers, of the +inevitable class war, of the revolution and the millennium that was to +follow it. He gathered his facts, elaborated his deductions and waited +for the dawn. + +So far as his broad generalization of economic development goes, +events have wonderfully confirmed Marx. The development of Trusts, the +concentration of property that America in particular displays, he +foretold. Given that men keep to the unmodified ideas of private +property and individualism, and it seems absolutely true that so the +world must go. And in the American _Appeal to Reason_, for example, +which goes out weekly from Kansas to a quarter of a million of +subscribers, one may, if one chooses, see the developing class +consciousness of the workers, and the promise--and when strikers take +to rifles and explosives as they do in Pennsylvania and Colorado, +something more than the promise--of the class war.... + +But the modern Socialist considers that this generalization is a +little too confident and comprehensive; he perceives that a change in +custom, law or public opinion may delay, arrest or invert the economic +process, and that Socialism may arrive after all not by a social +convulsion, but by the gradual and detailed concession of its +propositions. The Marxist presents dramatically what after all may +come methodically and unromantically, a revolution as orderly and +quiet as the precession of the equinoxes. There may be a concentration +of capital and a relative impoverishment of the general working mass +of people, for example, and yet a general advance in the world's +prosperity and a growing sense of social duty in the owners of capital +and land may do much to mask this antagonism of class interests and +ameliorate its miseries. Moreover, this antagonism itself may in the +end find adequate expression through temperate discussion, and the +class war come disguised beyond recognition, with hates mitigated by +charity and swords beaten into pens, a mere constructive conference +between two classes of fairly well-intentioned albeit perhaps still +biassed men and women. + + +§ 2. + +The circle of ideas in which Marx moved was that of a student deeply +tinged with the idealism of the renascent French Revolution. His life +was the life of a recluse from affairs--an invalid's life; a large +part of it was spent round and about the British Museum Reading-room, +and his conceptions of Socialism and the social process have at once +the spacious vistas given by the historical habit and the abstract +quality that comes with a divorce from practical experience of human +government. Only in England and in the eighties did the expanding +propositions of Socialism come under the influence of men essentially +administrative. As a consequence Marx, and still more the early +Marxists, were and are negligent of the necessities of government and +crude in their notions of class action. He saw the economic process +with a perfect lucidity, practically he foretold the consolidation of +the Trusts, and his statement of the necessary development of an +entirely propertyless working-class with an intensifying class +consciousness is a magnificent generalization. He saw clearly up to +that opposition of the many and the few, and then his vision failed +because his experience and interests failed. There was to be a class +war, and numbers schooled to discipline by industrial organization +were to win. + +After that the teaching weakens in conviction. The proletariat was to +win in the class war; then classes would be abolished, property in the +means of production and distribution would be abolished, all men would +work reasonably--and the millennium would be with us. + +The constructive part of the Marxist programme was too slight. It has +no psychology. Contrasted, indeed, with the splendid destructive +criticisms that preceded it, it seems indeed trivial. It diagnoses a +disease admirably, and then suggests rather an incantation than a +plausible remedy. And as a consequence Marxist Socialism appeals only +very feebly to the man of public affairs or business or social +experience. It does not attract teachers or medical men or engineers. +It arouses such men to a sense of social instability but it offers no +remedy. They do not believe in the mystical wisdom of the People. They +find no satisfactory promise of a millennium in anything Marx +foretold. + +To the labouring man, however, accustomed to take direction and +government as he takes air and sky, these difficulties of the +administrative and constructive mind do not occur. His imagination +raises no questioning in that picture of the proletariat triumphant +after a class war and quietly coming to its own. It does not occur to +him for an instant to ask "how?" + +Question the common Marxist upon these difficulties and he will +relapse magnificently into the doctrine of _laissez faire_. "That will +be all right," he will tell you. + +"How?" + +"We'll take over the Trusts and run them."... + +It is part of the inconveniences attending all powerful new movements +of the human mind that the disciple bolts with the teacher, overstates +him, underlines him, and it is no more than a tribute to the potency +of Marx that he should have paralyzed the critical faculty in a number +of very able men. To them Marx is a final form of truth. They talk +with bated breath of a "classic Socialism," to which no man may add +one jot or one tittle, to which they are as uncritically pledged as +extreme Bible Christians are bound to the letter of the "Word."... + +The peculiar evil of the Marxist teaching is this, that it carries the +conception of a necessary economic development to the pitch of +fatalism, it declares with all the solemnity of popular "science" that +Socialism _must_ prevail. Such a fatalism is morally bad for the +adherent; it releases him from the inspiring sense of uncertain +victory, it leads him to believe the stars in their courses will do +his job for him. The common Marxist is apt to be sterile of effort, +therefore, and intolerant--preaching predestination and salvation +without works. + +By a circuitous route, indeed, the Marxist reaches a moral position +curiously analogous to that of the disciple of Herbert Spencer. Since +all improvement will arrive by leaving things alone, the worse things +get, the better; for so much the nearer one comes to the final +exasperation, to the class war and the Triumph of the Proletariat. +This certainty of victory in the nature of things makes the Marxists +difficult in politics, pedantic sticklers for the letter of the +teaching, obstinate opponents of what they call "Palliatives"--of any +instalment system of reform. They wait until they can make the whole +journey in one stride, and would, in the meanwhile, have no one set +forth upon the way. In America the Marxist fatalism has found a sort +of supreme simplification in the gospel of Mr. H. G. Wilshire. The +Trusts, one learns, are to consolidate all the industry in the +country, own all the property. Then when they own everything, the +Nation will take them over. "Let the Nation own the Trusts!" The +Nation in the form of a public, reading capitalistic newspapers, +inured to capitalistic methods, represented and ruled by +capital-controlled politicians, will suddenly take over the Trusts and +begin a new system.... + +It would be quite charmingly easy--if it were only in the remotest +degree credible. + + +§ 3. + +The Marxist teaching tends to an unreasonable fatalism. Its conception +of the world after the class war is over is equally antagonistic to +intelligent constructive effort. It faces that Future, utters the word +"democracy," and veils its eyes. + +The conception of democracy to which the Marxist adheres is that same +mystical democracy that was evolved at the first French Revolution; it +will sanction no analysis of the popular wisdom. It postulates a sort +of spirit hidden as it were in the masses and only revealed by a +universal suffrage of all adults--or, according to some Social +Democratic Federation authorities who do not believe in women, all +adult males--at the ballot box. Even a large proportion of the adults +will not do--it must be all. The mysterious spirit that thus peers out +and vanishes again at each election is the People, not any particular +person, but the quintessence, and it is supposed to be infallible; it +is supposed to be not only morally but intellectually omniscient. It +will not even countenance the individuality of elected persons, they +are to be mere tools, _delegates_, from this diffused, intangible +Oracle, the Ultimate Wisdom.... + +Well, it may seem ungracious to sneer at the grotesque formulation of +an idea profoundly wise, at the hurried, wrong, arithmetical method of +rendering that collective spirit a community undoubtedly can and +sometimes does possess--I myself am the profoundest believer in +democracy, in a democracy awake intellectually, conscious and +self-disciplined--but so long as this mystic faith in the crowd, this +vague, emotional, uncritical way of evading the immense difficulties +of organizing just government and a collective will prevails, so long +must the Socialist project remain not simply an impracticable but, in +an illiterate, badly-organized community, even a dangerous suggestion. +I as a Socialist am not blind to these possibilities, and it is +foolish because a man is in many ways on one's side that one should +not call attention to his careless handling of a loaded gun. +Social-Democracy may conceivably become a force that in the sheer +power of untutored faith may destroy government and not replace it. I +do not know how far that is not already the case in Russia. I do not +know how far this may not ultimately be the case in the United States +of America. + +The Marxist teaching, great as was its advance on the dispersed +chaotic Socialism that preceded it, was defective in other directions +as well as in its innocence of any scheme of State organization. About +women and children, for example, it was ill-informed; its founders do +not seem to have been inspired either by educational necessities or +philoprogenitive passion. No biologist--indeed no scientific mind at +all--seems to have tempered its severely "economic" tendencies. It so +over-accentuates the economic side of life that at moments one might +imagine it dealt solely with some world of purely "productive" +immortals, who were never born and never aged, but only warred for +ever in a developing industrial process. + +Now reproduction and not production is the more central fact of social +life. Women and children and education are things in the background of +the Marxist proposal--like a man's dog, or his private reading, or his +pet rabbits. They are in the foreground of modern Socialism. The +Social Democrat's doctrines go little further in this direction than +the Liberalism that founded the United States, which ignored women, +children and niggers, and made the political unit the adult white man. +They were blind to the supreme importance of making the next +generation better than the present as the aim and effort of the whole +community. Herr Bebel's book, _Woman_, is an ample statement of the +evils of woman's lot under the existing _régime_, but the few pages +upon the Future of Woman with which he concludes are eloquent of the +jejune insufficiency of the Marxist outlook in this direction. +Marriage, which modern Socialism tends more and more to sustain, was +to vanish--at least as a law-made bond; women were to count as men so +far as the State is concerned.... + +This disregard of the primary importance of births and upbringing in +human affairs and this advocacy of mystical democracy alike contribute +to blind the Marxist to the necessity of an educational process and of +social discipline and to the more than personal importance of marriage +in the Socialist scheme. He can say with a light and confident heart +to untrained, ignorant, groping souls: "Destroy the Government; +expropriate the rich, establish manhood suffrage, elect delegates +strictly pledged--and you will be happy!" + +A few modern Marxists stipulate in addition for a Referendum, by which +the acts of the elected delegates can be further checked by referring +disputed matters to a general vote of all the adults in the +community.... + + +§ 4. + +My memory, as I write these things of Marxism, carries me to the dusky +largeness of a great meeting in Queen's Hall, and I see again the back +of Mr. Hyndman's head moving quickly, as he receives and answers +questions. It was really one of the strangest and most interesting +meetings I have ever attended. It was a great rally of the Social +Democratic Federation, and the place--floor, galleries and +platform--was thick but by no means overcrowded with dingy, earnest +people. There was a great display of red badges and red ties, and many +white faces, and I was struck by the presence of girls and women with +babies. It was more like the Socialist meetings of the popular novel +than any I had ever seen before. In the chair that night was Lady +Warwick, that remarkable intruder into the class conflict, a blond +lady, rather expensively dressed, so far as I could judge, about whom +the atmosphere of class consciousness seemed to thicken. Her fair +hair, her floriferous hat, told out against the dim multitudinous +values of the gathering unquenchably; there were moments when one +might have fancied it was simply a gathering of village tradespeople +about the lady patroness, and at the end of the proceedings, after the +red flag had been waved, after the "Red Flag" had been sung by a choir +and damply echoed by the audience, some one moved a vote of thanks to +the Countess in terms of familiar respect that completed the illusion. + +Mr. Hyndman's lecture was entitled "In the Rapids of Revolution," and +he had been explaining how inevitable the whole process was, how +Russia drove ahead, and Germany and France and America, to the +foretold crisis and the foretold millennium. But incidentally he also +made a spirited exhortation for effort, for agitation, and he taunted +England for lagging in the schemes of fate. Some one amidst the dim +multitude discovered an inconsistency in that. + +Now the questions were being handed in, written on strips of paper, +and at last that listener's difficulty cropped up. + +"What's this?" said Mr. Hyndman; unfolded the slip and read out: "Why +trouble to agitate or work if the Trusts are going to do it all for +us?" + +The veteran leader of the Social Democratic Federation paused only for +a moment. + +"Well, we've got to get _ready_ for it, you know," he said, rustling +briskly with the folds of the question to follow--and with these +words, it seemed to me, that fatalistic Marxism crumbled down to dust. + +We _have_ got to get ready for it. Indeed, we have to make it--by +education and intention and set resolve. Socialism is to be attained +not by fate, but by will. + + +§ 5. + +And here, as a sort of Eastern European gloss upon Marxist Socialism, +as an extreme and indeed ultimate statement of this marriage of +mystical democracy to Socialism, we may say a word of Anarchism. +Anarchism carries the administrative _laissez faire_ of Marx to its +logical extremity. "If the common, untutored man is right anyhow--why +these ballot boxes; why these intermediaries in the shape of law and +representative?" + +That is the perfectly logical outcome of ignoring administration and +reconstruction. The extreme Social-Democrat and the extreme +Individualist meet in a doctrine of non-resistance to the forces of +Evolution--which in this connection they deify with a capital letter. +Organization, control, design, the disciplined will, these are evil, +they declare--_the_ evil of life. So you come at the end of the +process, if you are active-minded, to the bomb as the instrument of +man's release to unimpeded virtue, and if you are pacific in +disposition to the Tolstoyan attitude of passive resistance to all +rule and property. + +Anarchism, then, is as it were a final perversion of the Socialist +stream, a last meandering of Socialist thought, released from +vitalizing association with an active creative experience. Anarchism +comes when the Socialist repudiation of property is dropped into the +circles of thought of men habitually ruled and habitually +irresponsible, men limited in action and temperamentally adverse to +the toil, to the vexatious rebuffs and insufficiencies, the dusty +effort, fatigue, and friction of the practical pursuit of a complex +ideal. So that it most flourishes eastwardly, where men, it would +seem, are least energetic and constructive, and it explodes or dies on +American soil. + +Anarchism, with its knife and bomb, is a miscarriage of Socialism, an +acephalous birth from that fruitful mother. It is an unnatural +offspring, opposed in nature to its parent, for always from the +beginning the constructive spirit, the ordering and organizing spirit +has been strong among Socialists. It was by a fallacy, an oversight, +that _laissez faire_ in politics crept into a movement that was before +all things an organized denial of _laissez faire_ in economic and +social life.... + +I write this of the Anarchism that is opposed to contemporary +Socialism, the political Anarchism. But there is also another sort of +Anarchism, which the student of these schools of thought must keep +clear in his mind from this, the Anarchism of Tolstoy and that other +brand of William Morris, neither of which waves any flag of black, nor +counsels violence; they present that conception of untrammelled and +spontaneous rightness and goodness which is, indeed, I hazard, the +moral ideal of all rightly-thinking men. It is worth while to define +very clearly the relation of this second sort of Anarchism, the nobler +Anarchism, to the toiling constructive Socialism which many of us now +make our practical guide in life's activities, to say just where they +touch and where they are apart. + +Now the ultimate ideal of human intercourse is surely not Socialism at +all, but a way of life that is not litigious and not based upon +jealously-guarded rights, which is free from property, free from +jealousy, and "above the law." There, there shall not be "marriage or +giving in marriage." The whole mass of Christian teaching points to +such an ideal; Paul and Christ turn again and again to the ideal of a +world of "just men made perfect," in which right and beauty come by +instinct, in which just laws and regulations are unnecessary and +unjust ones impossible. "Turn your attention," says my friend, the +Rev. Stewart Headlam, in his admirable tract on Christian Socialism-- + + "Turn your attention to that series of teachings of Christ's + which we call parables--comparisons, that is to say, between + what Christ saw going on in the every-day world around Him and + the Kingdom of Heaven. If by the Kingdom of Heaven in these + parables is meant a place up in the clouds, or merely a state + in which people will be after death, then I challenge you to + get any kind of meaning out of them whatever. But if by the + Kingdom of Heaven is meant (as it is clear from other parts of + Christ's teaching is the case) the righteous society to be + established upon earth, then they all have a plain and + beautiful meaning; a meaning well summed up in that saying so + often quoted against us by the sceptic and the atheist, 'Seek + ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all + these things shall be added unto you;' or, in other words, + 'Live,' Christ said, 'all of you together, not each of you by + himself; live as members of the righteous society which I have + come to found upon earth, and then you will be clothed as + beautifully as the Eastern lily and fed as surely as the + birds.'" + +And the Rev. R. J. Campbell, who comes to Socialism by way of +Nonconformity, is equally convincing in support of this assertion that +the "Kingdom of Heaven" was and is a terrestrial ideal. + +This is not simply the Christian ideal of society, it is the ideal of +every right-thinking man, of every man with a full sense of beauty. +You will find it rendered in two imperishably beautiful Utopias of our +own time, both, I glory to write, by Englishmen, the _News from +Nowhere_ of William Morris, and Hudson's exquisite _Crystal Age_. Both +these present practically Anarchist States, both assume idealized +human beings, beings finer, simpler, nobler than the heated, limited +and striving poor souls who thrust and suffer among the stresses of +this present life. And the present writer, too--I must mention him +here to guard against a confusion in the future--when a little while +ago he imagined humanity exalted morally and intellectually by the +brush of a comet's tail,[20] was forced by the logic of his premises +and even against his first intention to present not a Socialist State +but a glorious anarchism as the outcome of that rejuvenescence of the +world. + + [20] _In the Days of the Comet._ (Macmillan & Co., 1906.) + Anti-Socialist speakers and writers are in the habit of + quoting passages of a review from the _Times Literary + Supplement_, published during the heat of the "Book War," + and promptly controverted, as though they were quotations + from this book. + +But the business of Socialism lies at a lower level and concerns +immediate things; our material is the world as it is, full of unjust +laws, bad traditions, bad habits, inherited diseases and weaknesses, +germs and poisons, filths and envies. We are not dealing with +magnificent creatures such as one sees in ideal paintings and splendid +sculpture, so beautiful they may face the world naked and unashamed; +we are dealing with hot-eared, ill-kempt people, who are liable to +indigestion, baldness, corpulence and fluctuating tempers; who wear +top-hats and bowler hats or hats kept on by hat-pins (and so with all +the other necessary clothing); who are pitiful and weak and vain and +touchy almost beyond measure, and very naughty and intemperate; who +have, alas! to be bound over to be in any degree faithful and just to +one another. To strip such people suddenly of law and restraint would +be as dreadful and ugly as stripping the clothes from their poor +bodies.... + +That Anarchist world, I admit, is our dream; we do believe--well, I, +at any rate, believe this present world, this planet, will some day +bear a race beyond our most exalted and temerarious dreams, a race +begotten of our wills and the substance of our bodies, a race, so I +have said it, "who will stand upon the earth as one stands upon a +footstool, and laugh and reach out their hands amidst the stars," but +the way to that is through education and discipline and law. Socialism +is the preparation for that higher Anarchism; painfully, laboriously +we mean to destroy false ideas of property and self, eliminate unjust +laws and poisonous and hateful suggestions and prejudices, create a +system of social right-dealing and a tradition of right-feeling and +action. Socialism is the school-room of true and noble Anarchism, +wherein by training and restraint we shall make free men. + +There is a graceful and all too little known fable by Mr. Max +Beerbohm, _The Happy Hypocrite_, which gives, I think, not only the +relation of Socialism to philosophic Anarchism, but of all discipline +to all idealism. It is the story of a beautiful mask that was worn by +a man in love, until he tired even of that much of deceit and, a +little desperately, threw it aside--to find his own face beneath +changed to the likeness of the self he had desired. So would we veil +the greed, the suspicion of the self-seeking scramble of to-day under +institutions and laws that will cry "duty and service" in the ears and +eyes of all mankind, keep down the evil so long and so effectually +that at last law will be habit, and greed and self-seeking cease for +ever, from being the ruling impulse of the world. Socialism is the +mask that will mould the world to that better Anarchism of good men's +dreams.... + +But these are long views, glimpses beyond the Socialist horizon. The +people who would set up Anarchism to-day are people without human +experience or any tempering of humour, only one shade less impossible +than the odd one-sided queer beings one meets, ridiculously +inaccessible to laughter, who, caricaturing their Nietzsche and +misunderstanding their Shaw, invite one to set up consciously with +them in the business of being Overmen, to rule a world full of our +betters, by fraud and force. It is a foolish teaching saved only from +being horrible by being utterly ludicrous. For us the best is faith +and humility, truth and service, our utmost glory is to have seen the +vision and to have failed--not altogether.... For ourselves and such +as we are, let us not "deal in pride," let us be glad to learn a +little of this spirit of service, to achieve a little humility, to +give ourselves to the making of Socialism and the civilized State +without presumption--as children who are glad they may help in a work +greater than themselves and the toys that have heretofore engaged them. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +ADMINISTRATIVE SOCIALISM + + +§ 1. + +Marx gave to Socialism a theory of world-wide social development, and +rescued it altogether from the eccentric and localized associations of +its earliest phases; he brought it so near to reality that it could +appear as a force in politics, embodied first as the International +Association of Working Men, and then as the Social Democratic movement +of the continent of Europe that commands to-day over a third of the +entire poll of German voters. So much Marx did for Socialism. But if +he broadened its application to the world, he narrowed its range to +only the economic aspect of life. He arrested for a time the +discussion of its biological and moral aspects altogether. He left it +an incomplete doctrine of merely economic reconstruction supplemented +by mystical democracy, and both its mysticism and incompleteness, +while they offered no difficulties to a labouring man ignorant of +affairs, rendered it unsubstantial and unattractive to people who had +any real knowledge of administration. + +It was left chiefly to the little group of English people who founded +the Fabian Society to supply a third system of ideas to the amplifying +conception of Socialism, to convert Revolutionary Socialism into +Administrative Socialism. + +This new development was essentially the outcome of the reaction of +its broad suggestions of economic reconstruction upon the circle of +thought of one or two young officials of genius, and of one or two +persons upon the fringe of that politic-social stratum of Society, the +English "governing class." I make this statement, I may say, in the +loosest possible spirit. The reaction is one that was not confined to +England, it was to some extent inevitable wherever the new movement in +thought became accessible to intelligent administrators and officials. +But in the peculiar atmosphere of British public life, with its +remarkable blend of individual initiative and a lively sense of the +State, this reaction has had the freest development. There was, +indeed, Fabianism before the Fabian Society; it would be ingratitude +to some of the most fruitful social work of the middle Victorian +period to ignore the way in which it has contributed in suggestion and +justification to the Socialist synthesis. The city of Birmingham, for +example, developed the most extensive process of municipalization as +the mere common-sense of local patriotism. But the movement was +without formulĉ and correlation until the Fabians came. + +That unorganized, unpaid public service of public-spirited +aristocratic and wealthy financial and business people, the "governing +class," which dominated the British Empire throughout the nineteenth +century, has, through the absence of definite class boundaries in +England and the readiness of each class to take its tone from the +class above, that "Snobbishness" which is so often heedlessly +dismissed as altogether evil, given a unique quality to British +thought upon public questions and to British conceptions of Socialism. +It has made the British mind as a whole "administrative." As compared +with the American mind, for example, the British is State-conscious, +the American State-blind. The American is no doubt intensely +patriotic, but the nation and the State to which his patriotism points +is something overhead and comprehensive like the sky, like a flag +hoisted; something, indeed, that not only does not but must not +interfere with his ordinary business occupations. To have public +spirit, to be aware of the State as a whole and to have an +administrative feeling towards it, is necessarily to be accessible to +constructive ideas--that is to say, to Socialistic ideas. In the +history of thought in Victorian Great Britain, one sees a constant +conflict of this administrative disposition with the individualistic +commercialism of the aggressively trading and manufacturing class, the +class that in America reigns unchallenged to this day. In the latter +country Individualism reigns unchallenged, it is assumed; in the +former it has fought an uphill fight against the traditions of Church +and State and has never absolutely prevailed. The political economists +and Herbert Spencer were its prophets, and they never at any time held +the public mind in any invincible grip. Since the eighties that grip +has weakened more and more. Socialistic thought and legislation, +therefore, was going on in Great Britain through all the Victorian +period. Nevertheless, it was the Fabian Society that, in the eighties +and through the intellectual impetus of at most four or five +personalities, really brought this obstinately administrative spirit +in British affairs into relation with Socialism as such. + +The dominant intelligence of this group was Mr. Sidney Webb, and as I +think of him thus coming after Marx to develop the third phase of +Socialism, I am struck by the contrast with the big-bearded Socialist +leaders of the earlier school and this small, active, unpretending +figure with the finely-shaped head, the little imperial under the lip, +the glasses, the slightly lisping, insinuating voice. He emerged as a +Colonial Office clerk of conspicuous energy and capacity, and he was +already the leader and "idea factory" of the Fabian Society when he +married Miss Beatrice Potter, the daughter of a Conservative Member of +Parliament, a girl friend of Herbert Spencer, and already a brilliant +student of sociological questions. Both he and she are devotees to +social service, living laborious, ordered, austere, incessant lives, +making the employment of secretaries their one extravagance, and +alternations between research and affairs their change of occupation. +A new type of personality altogether they were in the Socialist +movement, which had hitherto been richer in eloquence than discipline. +And during the past twenty years of the work of the Fabian Society +through their influence, one dominant question has prevailed. Assuming +the truth of the two main generalizations of Socialism, taking that +statement of intention for granted, _how is the thing to be done_? +They put aside the glib assurances of the revolutionary Socialists +that everything would be all right when the People came to their own; +and so earned for themselves the undying resentment of all those who +believe the world is to be effectually mended by a liberal use of +chest notes and red flags. They insisted that the administrative and +economic methods of the future must be a secular development of +existing institutions, and inaugurated a process of study--which has +long passed beyond the range of the Fabian Society, broadening out +with the organized work of the New University of London, with its +special School of Economics and Political Science and of a growing +volume of university study in England and America--to the end that +this "_how?_" should be answered.... + +The broad lines of the process of transition from the present state of +affairs to the Socialist state of the future as they are developed by +administrative Socialism lie along the following lines. + +1. The peaceful and systematic taking over from private enterprise, by +purchase or otherwise, whether by the national or by the municipal +authorities as may be most convenient, of the great common services of +land control, mining, transit, food supply, the drink trade, lighting, +force supply and the like. + +2. Systematic expropriation of private owners by death-duties and +increased taxation. + +3. The building up of a great scientifically organized administrative +machinery to carry on these enlarging public functions. + +4. A steady increase and expansion of public education, research, +museums, libraries and all such public services. The systematic +promotion of measures for raising the school-leaving age, for the +public feeding of school children, for the provision of public baths, +parks, playgrounds and the like. + +5. The systematic creation of a great service of public health to take +over the disorganized confusion of hospitals and other charities, +sanitary authorities, officers of health and private enterprise +medical men. + +6. The recognition of the claim of every citizen to welfare by +measures for the support of mothers and children and by the +establishment of old-age pensions. + +7. The systematic raising of the minimum standard of life by factory +and other labour legislation, and particularly by the establishment of +a legal minimum wage.... + +These are the broad forms of the Fabian Socialist's answer to the +question of _how_, with which the revolutionary Socialists were +confronted. The diligent student of Socialism will find all these +proposals worked out to a very practicable-looking pitch indeed in +that Bible of Administrative Socialism, the collected tracts of the +Fabian Society,[21] and to that volume I must refer him. The theory of +the minimum standard and the minimum wage is explained, moreover, with +the utmost lucidity in that Socialist classic, _Industrial Democracy_, +by Sidney and Beatrice Webb. It is a theory that must needs be +mastered by every intelligent Socialist, but it is well to bear in +mind that the method of the minimum wage is no integral part of the +general Socialist proposition, and that it still lies open to +discussion and modification. + + [21] _Fabian Tracts._ (Fabian Society, 5_s._) + + +§ 2. + +Every movement has the defects of its virtues, and it is not, perhaps, +very remarkable that the Fabian Society of the eighties and nineties, +having introduced the conception of the historical continuity of +institutions into the Propaganda of Socialism, did certainly for a +time greatly over-accentuate that conception and draw away attention +from aspects that may be ultimately more essential. + +Beginning with the proposition that the institutions and formulĉ of +the future must necessarily be developed from those of the present, +that one cannot start _de novo_ even after a revolution; one may +easily end in an attitude of excessive conservatism towards existing +machinery. In spite of the presence of such fine and original +intelligences as Mr. (now Sir) Sydney Olivier and Mr. Graham Wallas in +the Fabian counsels, there can be no denial that for the first twenty +years of its career, Mr. Webb was the prevailing Fabian. Now his is a +mind legal as well as creative, and at times his legal side quite +overcomes his constructive element; he is extraordinarily fertile in +expedients and skilful in adaptation, and with a real horror of open +destruction. This statement by no means exhausts him, but it does to a +large extent convey the qualities that were uppermost in the earlier +years, at any rate, of his influence. His insistence upon continuity +pervaded the Society, was re-echoed and intensified by others, and +developed into something like a mania for achieving Socialism without +the overt change of any existing ruling body. His impetus carried this +reaction against the crude democratic idea to its extremest opposite. +Then arose Webbites to caricature Webb. From saying that the +unorganized people cannot achieve Socialism, they passed to the +implication that organization alone, without popular support, might +achieve Socialism. Socialism was to arrive as it were insidiously. + +To some minds this new proposal had the charm of a school-boy's first +dark-lantern. Socialism ceased to be an open revolution, and became a +plot. Functions were to be shifted, quietly, unostentatiously, from +the representative to the official he appointed; a bureaucracy was to +slip into power through the mechanical difficulties of an +administration by debating representatives; and since these officials +would by the nature of their positions constitute a scientific +bureaucracy, and since Socialism is essentially scientific government +as distinguished from haphazard government, they would necessarily run +the country on the lines of a pretty distinctly undemocratic +Socialism. + +The process went even further than secretiveness in its reaction from +the large rhetorical forms of revolutionary Socialism. There arose +even a repudiation of "principles" of action, and a type of worker +which proclaimed itself "Opportunist-Socialist." It was another +instance of Socialism losing sight of itself, it was a process quite +parallel at the other extreme with the self-contradiction of the +Anarchist-Socialist. Socialism as distinguished from mere Liberalism, +for example, is an organized plan for social reconstruction, while +Liberalism relies upon certain vague "principles"; Socialism declares +that good intentions and doing what comes first to hand will not +suffice. Now Opportunism is essentially benevolent adventure and the +doing of first-hand things. + +This conception of indifference to the forms of government, of +accepting whatever governing bodies existed and using them to create +officials and "_get something done_," was at once immediately fruitful +in many directions, and presently productive of many very grave +difficulties in the path of advancing Socialism. Webb himself devoted +immense industry and capacity to the London County Council--it is +impossible to measure the share he has had in securing such great +public utilities as water supply, traction and electric supply, for +example, from complete exploitation by private profit seekers, but +certainly it is a huge one--and throughout England and presently in +America, there went on a collateral activity of Fabian Socialists. +They worked like a ferment in municipal politics, encouraging and +developing local pride and local enterprise in public works. In the +case of large public bodies, working in suitable areas and commanding +the services of men of high quality, striking advances in Social +organization were made, but in the case of smaller bodies in +unsuitable districts and with no attractions for people of gifts and +training, the influence of Fabianism did on the whole produce effects +that have tended to discredit Socialism. Aggressive, ignorant and +untrained men and women, usually neither inspired by Socialist faith +nor clearly defining themselves as Socialists, persons too often of +wavering purpose and doubtful honesty, got themselves elected in a +state of enthusiasm to undertake public functions and challenge +private enterprise under conditions that doomed them to waste and +failure. This was the case in endless parish councils and urban +districts; it was also the case in many London boroughs. It has to be +admitted by Socialists with infinite regret that the common +borough-council Socialist is too often a lamentable misrepresentative +of the Socialist idea. + +The creation of the London Borough Councils found English Socialism +unprepared. They were bodies doomed by their nature to incapacity and +waste. They represented neither natural communities nor any +practicable administrative unit of area. Their creation was the result +of quite silly political considerations. The slowness with which +Socialists have realized that for the larger duties that they wish to +have done collectively, a new scheme of administration is necessary; +that bodies created to sweep the streets and admirably adapted to that +duty may be conspicuously not adapted to supply electric power or +interfere with transit, is accountable for much disheartening +bungling. Instead of taking a clear line from the outset, and +denouncing these glorified vestries as useless, impossible and +entirely unscientific organs, too many Socialists tried to claim +Bumble as their friend and use him as their tool. And Bumble turned +out to be a very bad friend and a very poor tool.... + +In all these matters the real question at issue is one between the +emergency and the implement. One may illustrate by a simple +comparison. Suppose there is a need to dig a hole and that there is no +spade available, a Fabian with Mr. Webb's gifts becomes invaluable. He +seizes upon a broken old cricket-bat, let us say, uses it with +admirable wit and skill, and presto! there is the hole made and the +moral taught that one need not always wait for spades before digging +holes. It is a lesson that Socialism stood in need of, and which +henceforth it will always bear in mind. But suppose we want to dig a +dozen holes, it may be worth while to spend a little time in going to +beg, borrow or buy a spade. If we have to dig holes indefinitely, day +after day, it will be sheer foolishness sticking to the bat. It will +be worth while then not simply to get a spade, but to get just the +right sort of spade in size and form that the soil requires, to get +the proper means of sharpening and repairing the spade, to insure a +proper supply. Or to point the comparison, the reconstruction of our +legislative and local government machinery is a necessary preliminary +to Socialization in many directions. Mr. Webb has very effectually +admitted that, is in fact himself leading us away from that by taking +up the study of local government as his principal occupation, but the +typical "Webbite" of the Fabian Society, who is very much to Webb what +the Marxist is to Marx, entranced by his leader's skill, still clings +to a caricature distortion of this earlier Fabian ideal. He dreams of +the most foxy and wonderful digging by means of box-lids, +table-spoons, dish-covers--anything but spades designed and made for +the job in hand--just as he dreams of an extensive expropriation of +landlords by a legislature that includes the present unreformed House +of Lords.... + + +§ 3. + +It was only at the very end of the nineteenth century that the Fabian +Socialist movement was at all quickened to the need of political +reconstruction as extensive as the economic changes it advocated, and +it is still far from a complete apprehension of the importance of the +political problem. To begin with, Mr. and Mrs. Webb, having completed +their work on Labour Regulation, took up the study of local government +and commenced that colossal task that still engages them, their book +upon _English Local Government_, of which there has as yet appeared +(1907) only one volume out of seven. (Immense as this service is, it +is only one part of conjoint activities that will ultimately give +constructive social conceptions an enormous armoury of scientifically +arranged fact.) + +As the outcome of certain private experiences, the moral of which was +pointed by discussion with Mr. and Mrs. Webb, the present writer in +1902 put before the Fabian Society a paper on Administrative +Areas,[22] in which he showed clearly that the character and +efficiency and possibilities of a governing body depend almost +entirely upon the suitability to its particular function of the size +and quality of the constituency it represents and the area it +administers. This may be stated with something approaching scientific +confidence. A local governing body for too small an area or elected +upon an unsound franchise _cannot_ be efficient. But obviously before +you can transfer property from private to collective control you must +have something in the way of a governing institution which has a +reasonably good chance of developing into an efficient controlling +body. The leading conception of this Administrative Area paper +appeared subsequently running through a series of tracts, _The New +Heptarchy Series_, in which one finds it applied first to this group +of administrative problems and then to that.[23] These tracts are +remarkable if only because they present the first systematic +recognition on the part of any organized Socialist body of the fact +that a scientific reconstruction of the methods of government +constitutes not simply an incidental but a necessary part of the +complete Socialist scheme, the first recognition of the widening scope +of the Socialist design that makes it again a deliberately +constructive project.[24] + + [22] See Appendix to _Mankind in the Making_. (Chapman and + Hall, 1905.) + + [23] 1. _Municipalization by Provinces._ 2. _On the Reform + of Municipal Service._ 3. _Public Control of Electric Power + and Transit._ 4. _The Revival of Agriculture: a National + Policy for Great Britain._ 5. _The Abolition of Poor Law + Guardians._ Others to follow. (Fabian Society, 1905-6.) + + [24] This generalization is a sweeping one, and would need, + were one attempting to give more than a very broad + impression of the sequence of Socialist ideas, considerable + modification. Such earlier tracts as _The New Reform Bill_, + _Facts for Londoners_, _Facts for Bristol_, dealt mainly + with the question of machinery. + +It is only an initial recognition, a mere first raid into a great and +largely unexplored province of study. This province is in the broadest +terms, social psychology. A huge amount of thought, discussion, +experiment, is to be done in this field--needs imperatively to be done +before the process of the socialization of economic life can go very +far beyond its present attainments. Except for these first admissions, +Socialism has concerned itself only with the material reorganization +of Society and its social consequences, with economic changes and the +reaction of these changes on administrative work; it has either +accepted existing intellectual conditions and political institutions +as beyond its control or assumed that they will obediently modify as +economic and administrative necessity dictates. Declare the Social +revolution, we were told in a note of cheery optimism by the Marxist +apostles, and political institutions will come like flowers in May! +Achieve your expropriation, said the early Fabians, get your network +of skilled experts spread over the country, and your political forms, +your public opinion, your collective soul will not trouble you. + +The student of history knows better. These confident claims ignore the +psychological factors in government and human association; they +disregard a jungle of difficulties that lie directly in our way. +Socialists have to face the facts; firstly, that the political and +intellectual institutions of the present time belong to the present +condition of things, and that the intellectual methods, machinery and +political institutions of the better future must almost inevitably be of +a very different type; secondly, that such institutions will not come +about of themselves--which indeed is the old superstition of _laissez +faire_ in a new form--but must be thought out, planned and organized +just as completely as economic socialization has had to be planned and +organized; and thirdly, that so far Socialism has evolved scarcely any +generalizations even, that may be made the basis of new intellectual and +governmental--as distinguished from administrative--methods. It has +preached collective ownership and collective control, and it has only +begun to recognize that this implies the necessity of a collective will +and new means and methods altogether for the collective mind. + +The administrative Socialism which Mr. Webb and the Fabian Society +developed upon a modification of the broad generalizations of the Marx +phase, is as it were no more than the first courses above those +foundations of Socialism. It supplies us with a conception of methods +of transition and with a vision of a great and disciplined +organization of officials, a scientific bureaucracy appointed by +representative bodies of diminishing activity and importance, and +coming to be at last the real working control of the Socialist State. +But it says nothing of what is above the officials, what drives the +officials. It is a palace without living rooms, with nothing but +offices; a machine, as yet unprovided with a motor. No doubt we must +have that organization of officials if we mean to bring about a +Socialist State, but the mind recoils with something like terror from +the conception of a State run and ruled by officials, terminating in +officials, with an official as its highest expression. One has a +vision of a community with blue-books instead of a literature, and +inspectors instead of a conscience. The mystical democracy of the +Marxist, though manifestly impossible, had in it something attractive, +something humanly and desperately pugnacious and generous, something +indeed heroic; the bureaucracy of the Webbite, though far more +attainable, is infinitely less inspiring. But that may be because the +inspiring elements remain to be stated rather than that these +practical constructive projects are in their nature, and incurably, +hard and narrow. Instead of a gorgeous flare in the darkness, we have +the first cold onset of daylight heralding the sun. If the letter of +the teaching of Mr. and Mrs. Webb is bureaucracy, that is certainly +not the spirit of their lives. + +The earlier Socialists gave Socialism substance, _rudis indigestaque +moles_, but noble stuff; Administrative Socialism gave it a physical +structure and nerves, defined its organs and determined its functions; +it remains for the Socialist of to-day to realize in this shaping body +of the civilized State of the future the breath of life already +unconfessedly there, to state in clear terms the reality for which our +plans are made, by which alone they can be realized, that is to say, +_the collective mind of humanity, the soul and moral being of +mankind_. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +CONSTRUCTIVE SOCIALISM + + +§ 1. + +Such a group of ideas and motives as Socialism, fundamentally true as +it is to the needs of life, and arising as it does from the inevitable +suggestion of very widely dispersed evils and insufficiencies, does +not spring from any one source, nor develop along any single line. It +appears as a smouldering fire appears, first here, then there, first +in one form of expression and then another, now under this name and +now under that. + +The manifest new possibilities created by the progress of applied +science, the inevitable change of scale and of the size and conception +of a community that arises out of them, _necessitate_ at least the +material form of Socialism--that is to say, the replacement of +individual action by public organization, in spite of a hundred vested +interests. The age that regarded Herbert Spencer as its greatest +philosopher, for example, was urged nevertheless, unwillingly and +protestingly but effectually, through phase after phase of more and +more co-ordinated voluntary effort, until at last it had to undertake +a complete system of organized free public primary education. There +the moving finger of change halts not a moment; already it is going on +to secondary education, to schemes for a complete public educational +organization from reformatory school up to professorial chair. The +practical logic of the case is invincible. + +So, too, the public organization of scientific research goes on +steadily against all prejudices and social theories, and, in a very +different field, the plain inconveniences of a private control of +traffic in America and England alike, force the affected property +owners whose businesses are hampered and damaged towards the +realization that freedom of private property, in these services at +least, is evil and must end. As the proofs of these pages pass through +my hands comes the news of Mr. Lloyd George's settlement of the +dispute between railway directors and _employés_ by the establishment +of a method of compulsory arbitration. Then, again, the movement for +public sanitation and hygiene spreads and broadens, and the natural +alarm of even the most conservative at the falling birth-rate and the +stationary infantile death-rate is evidently ripening for an advance +towards public control and care even in the relation of child to +parent, the most intimate of all personal affairs. + +Inevitably all such movements must coalesce--their spirit is one, the +spirit of construction--and inevitably their coalescence will take the +form of a wide and generous restatement of Socialism. Nothing but a +broader understanding of the broadening propositions of Socialism is +needed for that recognition now. + +Socialism, indeed, does not simply look, it appeals to the +constructive professions at the present time, to the medical man, the +engineer, the architect, the scientific agriculturist. + +Each of these sorts of men, in just so far as he is concerned with the +reality of his profession, in just so far as he is worthy of his +profession, must resent the considerations of private profit, of base +economies, that constantly limit and spoil his work and services in +the interests of a dividend or of some financial manoeuvre. So far they +have been antagonized towards Socialism by the errors of its +adherents, by the impression quite wantonly created, that Socialism +meant either mob rule or the rule of pedantic, unsympathetic +officials. They have heard too much of democracy, too much of +bureaucracy, and not enough of construction. They have felt that on +the whole the financial exploiter, detestable master as he often is, +was better than the rule of either clamour on the one hand or red tape +on the other. But, as I have been seeking to suggest, mob rule and +official rule do not exhaust the possible alternatives. Neither +ignorant democracy nor narrow bureaucracy can be the destined rulers +of a Socialist State. The only conceivable rule in a Socialist +civilization is through the operation of a collective mind that must +be by its nature constructive and enterprising, because only through +the creation of such a mind can Socialism be brought about. A +Socialist State cannot exist without that mind existing also, and a +collective mind can scarcely appear without some form of Socialism +giving it a material body. Now it is only under an intelligent +collective mind that any of the dreams of these constructive +professions can attain an effective realization. Where will the +private profit in a universal sanitation, for example, be found, in +the abolition of diseases, in the planned control of the public +health, in the abolition of children's deaths? What thought of private +gain will ever scrap our obsolescent railroads and our stagnating +industrial monopolies for new clean methods? So long as they pay a +dividend they will keep on upon their present lines. The modern +architect knows, the engineer knows we might build ourselves perfectly +clean, smokeless magnificent cities to-day, as full of pure water as +ancient Rome, as full of pure air as the Engadine, if private +ownership did not block the way. Who can doubt it who understands what +a doctor, or an electrical engineer, or a real architect understands? +Surely all the best men in these professions are eager to get to work +on the immense possibilities of life, possibilities of things cleared +up, of things made anew, that their training has enabled them to +visualize! What stands in their way, stands in our way; social +disorganization, individualist self-seeking, narrowness of outlook, +self-conceit, ignorance. + +With that conception they must surely turn in the end, as we +Socialists turn, to the most creative profession of all, to that great +calling which with each generation renews the world's "circle of +ideas," the Teachers! + +The whole trend and purpose of this book from the outset has been to +insist upon _the mental quality of Socialism_, to maintain that it is +a business of conventions about property and plans of reorganization, +that is to say, of changes and expansions of the ideas of men, changes +and expansions of their spirit of action and their habitual circles of +ideas. Unless you can change men's minds you cannot effect Socialism, +and when you have made clear and universal certain broad +understandings, Socialism becomes a mere matter of science and devices +and applied intelligence. That is the constructive Socialist's +position. Logically, therefore, he declares the teacher master of the +situation. Ultimately the Socialist movement _is_ teaching, and the +most important people in the world from the Socialist's point of view +are those who teach--I mean of course not simply those who teach in +schools, but those who teach in pulpits, in books, in the press, in +universities and lecture-theatres, in parliaments and councils, in +discussions and associations and experiments of every sort, and, last +in my list but most important of all, those mothers and motherly women +who teach little children in their earliest years. Every one, too, who +enunciates a new and valid idea, or works out a new contrivance, is a +teacher in this sense. + +And these Teachers collectively, perpetually renew the collective +mind. In the measure that in each successive generation they apprehend +Socialism and transmit its spirit, is Socialism nearer its goal. + + +§ 2. + +At the present time in America and all the western European countries, +there is a collective mind, a public opinion made up of the most +adventitious and interesting elements. It is not even a national or a +racial thing, it is curiously international, curiously responsive to +thought from every quarter; a something, vague here, clear there, here +diffused, there concentrated. It demands the closest attention from +Socialists this something, this something which is so hard to define +and so impossible to deny--civilized feeling, the thought of our age, +the mind of the world. It has organs, it has media, yet it is as hard +to locate as the soul of a man. We know that somewhere in the brain +and body of a man lives his Self; that you must preserve that brain +entire, aërate it, nourish it lest it die and his whole being die, and +yet you cannot say it is in this cell--or in that. So with an equal +mystery of diffusion the mind of mankind exists. No man, no +organization, no authority, can be more than a part of it. Twice at +least have there been attempts of parts to be the whole; the Catholic +Church and the Chinese Academy have each in varying measure sought to +play the part of a collective mind for all humanity and failed. All +individual achievement, fine books, splendid poems, great discoveries, +new generalizations, lives of thought, are no more than flashes in +this huge moral and intellectual being which grows now self-conscious +and purposeful, just as a child grows out of its early self-ignorance +to an elusive, indefinable, indisputable sense of itself. This +collective mind has to be filled and nourished with the Socialist +purpose, to receive and assimilate our great idea. That is the true +work of Socialism. + +Consider the organs and media of the collective mind as one finds them +in England or America now, how hazardous they are and accidental! At +the basis of this strange thought-process is the intelligence of the +common man, once illiterate and accessible only to the crude, +inarticulate influences of talk and rumour, now rapidly becoming +educated, or at any rate educated to the level of a reader and writer, +and responding more and more to literary influences. The great mass of +the population is indeed at the present time like clay which has +hitherto been a mere deadening influence underneath, but which this +educational process, like some drying and heating influence upon that +clay, is rendering resonant, capable of, in a dim answering way, +_ringing_ to the appeals made upon it. Reaching through this mass, +appealing to it in various degrees at various levels and to various +ends, there are a number of systems of organizations of unknown value +and power. Its response, such as it is, robbed by multitudinousness of +any personality or articulation, is a broad emotional impulse. + +Above this fundamental mass is the growing moiety which has a +conscious thought-process, of a sort. Its fundamental ideas, its +preconceptions, are begotten of a mixture of social traditions learnt +at home and in school and from the suggestions of contemporary customs +and affairs. But it reads and listens more or less. And scattered +through this, here and there, are people really learning, really +increasing and accumulating knowledge, really thinking and +conversing--the active mind-cells, as it were, of the world. Their +ideas are conveyed into the mass much as impulses are conveyed into an +imperfectly innervated tissue, they are conveyed by books and +pamphlets, by lecturing, by magazine articles and newspaper articles, +by the agency of the pulpit, by organized propaganda, by political +display and campaigns. The gross effect is considerable, but it is +just as well that the Socialist should look a little closely at the +economic processes that underlie these intellectual activities at the +present time. Except for the universities and much of the public +educational organization, except for a few pulpits endowed for good +under conditions that limit freedom of thought and expression, except +for certain needy and impecunious propagandas, the whole of this +apparatus of public thought and discussion to-day has been created and +is sustained by commercial necessity. + +For example, consider what is I suppose by far the most important +vehicle of ideas at the present time, which for a huge majority of +adults is the sole vehicle of ideas, the newspaper. It is universal +because it is cheap, and it is cheap because the cost of production is +paid for by the advertisements of private enterprise. The newspaper is +to a very large extent parasitic upon competition; its criticism, its +discussion, its correspondence, are, from the business point of view, +written on the backs of puffs of competing tobaccos, soaps, medicines +and the like. No newspaper could pay upon its sales alone, and the +same thing is true of most popular magazines and weekly publications. +It is highly probable that whatever checks public advertisement in +other directions, the prohibition of bill-posting upon hoardings, for +example, the protection of scenery, railway carriages and architecture +from the advertiser, stimulates the production of attractive +literature. Necessarily what is published in newspapers and magazines +must be acceptable to advertising businesses and not too openly +contrary to their interests. With that limitation the newspapers +provide a singularly free and various arena for discussion at the +present time. It must, however, be obvious that to advance towards +Socialism is, if not to undermine the newspaper altogether, at least +to change very profoundly this material vehicle of popular thought.... + +The newspaper disseminates ideas. So, too, does the book and the +pamphlet, and so far as these latter are concerned, their distribution +does not at present rest in the same degree upon their value as +vehicles of advertisement. They are saleable things unaided. The +average book of to-day at its nominal price of six shillings pays in +itself and supports its producers. So in a lesser degree does the +sixpenny pamphlet, but neither book nor pamphlet reach so wide a +public as the halfpenny and penny press. The methods and media of the +book trade have grown up, no man designing them; they change, and no +one is able to foretell the effect of their changes. At present there +is a great movement to cheapen new books, and it would seem the +cheapening is partly to be made up for in enhanced sales and partly by +an increased use of new books for advertisement. Many people consider +this cheapening of new books as being detrimental to the interests of +all but the most vulgarly popular authors. They believe it will +increase the difficulty of new writers, and hopelessly impoverish just +the finest element in our literary life, those original and +exceptional minds who demand educated appreciation and do not appeal +to the man in the street. This may or may not be true; the aspect of +interest to Socialists is that here is a process going on which is +likely to produce the most far-reaching results upon the collective +mind, upon that thought-process of the whole community which is +necessary for the progressive organization of Society. It is a process +which is likely to spread one type of writer far and wide, which may +silence or demoralize another, which may vulgarize and debase +discussion, and which will certainly make literature far more +dependent than it is at present upon the goodwill of advertising +firms. Yet as Socialists they have no ideas whatever in this matter; +their project of activities ignores it altogether.... + +Books and newspapers constitute two among the chief mental organs of a +modern community, but almost, if not equally important is that great +apparatus for the dissemination of ideas made up of the pulpits and +lecture halls of a thousand sects and societies. Towards all these +things Socialism has hitherto maintained an absurd attitude of +_laissez faire_.... + +So far I have looked at the collective mind as a thought process only, +but it has much graver and more immediate functions in a democratic +State. It has, one must remember, to _will_ social order and +development. In every country the machinery for determining and +expressing this will is complex. The common method in the modern +western State is through the voting of a numerous electorate, which +tends, it would seem, to become more and more the entire manhood, if +not the entire adult population of the country. It is a curious but +perhaps inevitable method. Practically thought has to percolate down +to the common man through all those strange and accidental channels, +newspapers which are advertisement sheets, books which may be +boycotted in a "Book War," pulpits pledged to doctrine and lecture +halls kept open by rich people's subscriptions; it has to reach him, +to mingle itself with generalized emotional forces in the heat of +mysteriously subsidized election campaigns, and then return as a +collective determination. For the Statesman and the Socialist there +could hardly be any study more important, one might think, than the +science of these processes and methods. Yet the world has still to +produce even the rudimentary generalizations of this needed science of +collective psychology. + + +§ 3. + +Now, I ask the reader to consider very carefully how the Socialist +movement, using that expression now in its wider sense, stands to this +very vague and very real outcome of social evolution, the Collective +Mind; what it is really aspiring to do in that Collective Mind. + +One has to recognize that this mind is at present a mind in a state of +confusion, full of warring suggestions and warring impulses. It is +like a very disturbed human mind, it is without a clear aim, it does +not know except in the vaguest terms what it wants to do, it has +impulses, it has fancies, it begins and forgets. In addition it is +afflicted with a division within itself that is strictly analogous to +that strange mental disorder, which is known to psychologists as +multiple personality. It has no clear conception of the whole of +itself, it goes about forgetting its proper name and address. Part of +it thinks of itself as one great being, as, let us say, Germany; +another thinks of itself as Catholicism, another as the White Race, or +Judĉa. At times one might deem the whole confusion not so much a mind +as incurable dementia, a chaos of mental elements, haunted by +invincible and mutually incoherent fixed ideas. This you will remember +is the gist of that melancholy torso of irony, Flaubert's _Bouvard et +Pécuchet_. + +In its essence the Socialist movement amounts to this; it is an +attempt in this warring chaos of a collective mind to pull itself +together, to develop and establish a governing idea of itself. It is +like a man saying to himself resolutely, "What am I? What am I doing +with myself? Where am I drifting?" and making an answer, hesitating at +first, crude at first, and presently clear and lucid. + +The Socialist movement is from this point of view, no less than the +development of the collective self-consciousness of humanity. +Necessarily, therefore, it must be international as well as outspoken, +making no truce with prejudices against race and colour. These +national and racial collective consciousnesses of to-day are things as +vague, as fluctuating as mists or clouds, they melt, dissolve into one +another, they coalesce, they split. No clear isolated national mind +can ever maintain itself under modern conditions; even the mind of +Japan now comes into the common melting-pot of thought. We Socialists +take up to-day the assertion the early Christians were the first to +make, that mankind is of one household and one substance; the +Samaritan who stoops to the wounded stranger by the wayside our +brother rather than that Levite.... + +In a very different sense indeed the Socialist propaganda must be _the +germ of the collective self-consciousness of mankind in the coming +time_. If the purpose of Socialism is to prevail, its scattered +writings, its dispersed, indistinct and confused utterances must +increase in height and breadth and range, increase in power and +service, gather to themselves every means of expression, grow into an +ordered system of thought, art, literature and will. The Socialist +Propaganda of to-day must beget the whole Public Opinion of to-morrow +or fail, the Socialists must play the part of a little leaven to +leaven the whole world. If they do not leaven it then they are +altogether defeated.... + + +§ 4. + +Now, this conception of Socialism as being ultimately a moral and +intellectual synthesis of mankind from which fresh growth may come, +sets a fresh test of value upon all the activities of the +Socialist--and opens up altogether new departments for research. Let +us face the peculiar difficulty of the Socialist position. We propose +to destroy the competitive capitalistic system that owns and sustains +our present newspapers, gives and leaves money to universities, endows +fresh pulpits, publishes, advertises, and buys books; we have to ask, +as reasonable creatures, what new media we propose to give in the +place of these accidental and unsatisfactory methods of distributing +and exchanging thought. It would almost seem as though current +Socialism breathes public opinion as the Middle Ages breathed air, +without realizing that it existed, that it might be vitiated or +withheld. And so we are beyond the range of prepared and digested +Socialist proposals here altogether. It is still open to the +Anti-Socialist to allege that Socialism may incidentally destroy +itself by choking the channels of its own thinking, and the Socialist +has still to reply in vague general terms. + +_We must insure the continuity of the collective mind_; that is +manifestly a primary necessity for Socialism. The attempt to realize +the Marxist idea of a democratic Socialism without that, might easily +fail into the abortive birth of an acephalous monster, the secular +development of administrative Socialism give the world over to a +bureaucratic mandarinate, self-satisfied, interfering and unteachable, +with whom wisdom would die. And yet we Socialists can produce in our +plans no absolute bar to these possibilities. Here I can suggest only +in the most general terms methods and certain principles. They need to +be laid down as vitally necessary to Socialism, and so far they have +not been so laid down. They have still to be incorporated in the +Socialist creed. They are essentially principles of that Liberalism +out of whose generous aspirations Socialism sprang, but they are +principles that even to-day, unhappily, do not figure in the +fundamental professions of any Socialist body. + +The first of these is the principle of _freedom of speech_; the +second, _freedom of writing_; and the third, _universality of +information_. In the civilized State every one must be free to know, +knowledge must be patent and at hand, and any one must be free to +discuss, write, suggest and persuade. These freedoms must be guarded +as sacred things. It is not in the untutored nature of man to respect +any of these freedoms; it is not in the bureaucratic habit of mind. +Indeed, the desire to suppress opinions adverse to our own is almost +instinctive in human nature. It is an instinct we have to conquer. +Fair play in discussion is sustained by a cultivated respect, by a +correction of natural instinct; men need to be _trained_ to be jealous +of obscurantism, of unfair argument, of authoritative interference +with opinion when that opinion is against them. In England such a +jealousy does already largely exist, it has been cultivated with us +since the seventeenth century at least; America, it seemed to me +during my short visit to the States, has somewhat retrograded from its +former British standard in this respect, there is a crude majority +tyranny in the matter of publication, an un-English disposition to +boycott libraries, books, authors and publications upon petty issues, +a growing disposition to discriminate in the mails against unpopular +views. These interferences with open statement and discussion are +decivilizing forces. + +Given a clear public understanding of these necessities as primary, +then one may point out that the next necessity for the mental +existence of a Socialist State is an extension and cheapening of the +impartial universal distributing activity of the public post so that +it becomes not only the means of correspondence, but also of +distributing books and newspapers, pamphlets and every form of printed +matter. The post-office must become bookseller and newsagent. In +France this is already the case with the press, and newspapers are +handed in not by the newsboy but by the public mail. In England +Messrs. Smith and Mudie, and so forth, may censor what they like among +periodicals or books. The remedy is more toilsome and vexatious than +the injury. Neither England nor America has any security against +finding its public supply of magazines or literature suddenly choked +by the manoeuvres of some blackmailing Book or News Trust squalidly +"fighting" author or publisher for an increase in its proportion of +profits, or interested in financial exploitations liable to exposure. +Neither country is secure against the complete control of its channels +of thought by some successful monopolistic adventurer.... + +The Socialist State will not for a moment permit such risks as these; +it must certainly be a ubiquitous newsvendor and bookseller; the +ordinary newsvendor and bookseller must become an impartial State +official, working for a sure and comfortable salary instead of for +precarious profits. And this amplification of the book and news post +and the book and news trades will need to be not simply a municipal +but a State service of the widest range. + +Distribution, however, is only the beginning of the problem. There is +the more difficult issue of getting books and papers printed and +published. And here we come to an intricate puzzle in reconciling the +indisputable need for untrammelled individual expression on the one +hand with public ownership on the other, and also with the difficult +riddle how authors may be supported under Socialist conditions. It is +not within the design of this book to do more than indicate a possible +solution. These are problems the Socialist has still to work out. At +present authors with business shrewdness and the ability to be +interesting get an income from the sale of their books, and it seems +possible that they might continue to be paid in that way under +Socialism. It is difficult outside the field of specialist work (which +under any social system has to be endowed in relation to colleges and +universities) to find any other just way of discriminating between the +author who ought to get a living from writing, and the author who has +no reasonable claim to do so. But under Socialism, in addition to the +private publisher or altogether replacing him, there will have to be +some sort of public publisher. + +Here again difficulties arise. It is difficult to see how, if there is +only one general State publishing department, a sort of censorship can +be altogether avoided, and even if, for example, one insists upon the +right of every one who cares to pay for it to have matter printed, +bound and issued by the public presses and binders, it still leaves a +disagreeable possibility of uniformity haunting the mind. But the +whole trend of administrative Socialism is towards a conception of +great local governments, of land, elementary education, +omnibus-transit, power distribution and the like, vesting in the hands +of municipalities as great as mediĉval principalities; and it seems +possible to look to these great bodies and to the municipal patriotism +and inter-municipal rivalries that will develop about them, for just +that spirited and competitive publishing that is desirable, just as +one looks now to their rivalries as a stimulus for art and +architecture and public dignity and display.[25] Already, as I have +pointed out in a previous chapter (Chapter IX., § 5), the decorative +arts had to be rescued from the degrading influence of private +enterprise; no one wants to go back now to the early Victorian state +of affairs, and so it is reasonable to hope that out of the municipal +art and technical schools, which teach printing, binding and the like, +public presses, public binderies and all the machinery of book +production may be developed in a natural and convenient manner. So, +too, the municipalities might publish, seek out, maintain and honour +writers and sell the books they produced, against each other all over +the world. It would be a matter of pride for authors still +unrecognized to go forth to the world with the arms of some great city +on their covers, and it would be a matter of pride for any city to +have its arms upon work become classic and immortal. So at least one +method of competition is possible in this matter.... + + [25] I visited Liverpool and Manchester the other day for + the first time in my life, and was delighted to find how the + inferiority of the local art galleries to those of Glasgow + rankled in people's minds. + +This, however, is but one passing suggestion out of many +possibilities. But in all these issues of the intellectual life, it is +manifest that public ownership must be so contrived, and can be so +contrived as to avoid centralization and a control without +alternatives. Moreover, whatever public publishing is done, it must be +left open to any one to set up as an independent publisher or printer, +and to sell and advertise through the impartial public book and news +distributing organization. + +I lay some stress upon this matter of book issuing because I think it +is a remarkable and regrettable thing about contemporary Socialist +discussion that it does not seem to be in the least alive to the great +public disadvantage of leaving this vitally important service to +private gain getting. Municipal coal, municipal milk, municipal house +owning, the Socialists seem prepared for, and even municipal theatres, +but municipal publication they still do not take into consideration. +They leave the capitalist free to contrive the control of their book +supply and to check and determine all the provender of their minds.... + +The problem of the press is perhaps to be solved by some parallel +combination of individual enterprise and public resources. All sorts +of things may happen to the newspaper of to-day even in the near +future, it cannot but be felt that in its present form it is an +extremely transitory phenomenon, that it no longer embodies and rules +public thought as it did in the middle and later Victorian period, and +that a separation of public discussion from the news sheet is already +in progress. Both in England and America the popular magazine seems +taking over an increasing share of the public thinking. The newspaper +appears to be in the opening throes of a period of fundamental change. + +But I will not go into the future of the newspaper here. All these +suggestions are merely thrown out in the most tentative way to +indicate the nature of the field for study that lies open for any +intelligent worker to cultivate, and that Socialists have so far been +too busy to consider.... + +The same truth that controls must be divided and a competition at +least for honour and repute kept alive under Socialism, needs also to +be applied to schools and colleges, and all the vast machinery of +research. It is imperative that there should be overlapping and +competing organizations. An educated and prosperous community such as +we postulate for the Socialist State will necessarily be more alert +for interest and intellectual quality than our present "driven" +multitude; its ampler leisure, its wider horizons, will keep it +critical and exacting of what claims its attention. The rivalries of +institutions and municipalities will be part of the drama of life. +Under Socialism, with the extension of the educational process it +contemplates, universities and colleges must become the most prominent +of facts; nearly every one will have that feeling for some such place +which now one finds in a Trinity man for Trinity; the sort of feeling +that sent the last thoughts of Cecil Rhodes back to Oriel. Everywhere, +balanced against the Town Hall or the Parliament House, will be the +great university buildings and art museums, the lecture halls open to +all comers, the great noiseless libraries, the book exhibitions and +book and pamphlet stores, keenly criticized, keenly used, will teem +with unhurrying, incessant, creative activities. + +And all this immense publicly sustained organization will be doing +greatly and finely what now our scattered line of Socialist +propagandists is doing under every disadvantage, that is to say it +will be developing and sustaining the social self-consciousness, the +collective sense of the State. + + +§ 5. + +I am naturally preoccupied with the Mind of that Civilized State we +seek to make; because my work lies in this department. But while the +writer, the publisher and printer, the bookseller and librarian, and +teacher and preacher must chiefly direct himself to developing this +great organized mind and intention in the world, other sorts of men +will be concerned with parallel aspects of the Socialist synthesis. +The medical worker or the medical investigator will be building up the +body of a new generation, the Body of the Civilized State, and he will +be doing all he can not simply as an individual, but as a citizen, to +_organize_ his services of cure and prevention, of hygiene and +selection. And the specialized man of science--he will be concerned +with his own special synthesis, the Knowledge of the Civilized State, +whether he measure crystals or stain microtome sections or count +stars. A great and growing multitude of men will be working out the +Apparatus of the Civilized State; the students of transit and housing, +the engineers in their incessantly increasing variety, the miners and +geologists estimating the world's resources in metals and minerals, +the mechanical inventors perpetually economizing force. The scientific +agriculturist, again, will be studying the food supply of the world as +a whole, and how it may be increased and distributed and economized. +And to the student of law comes the task of rephrasing his intricate +and often quite beautiful science in relation to the new social +assumptions we have laid down. All these and a hundred other aspects +are integral to the wide project of Constructive Socialism as it +shapes itself now. + +And to the man or woman who looks at these issues not as one +specialized in relation to some constructive calling but as a common +citizen, a mere human being eager to make and do from the standpoint +of personal liberty and personal affections, the appeal of this great +constructive project is equally strong. You want security and liberty! +Here it is, safe from the greed of trust and landlord; here is +investment with absolute assurance and trading with absolute justice; +this is the only safe way to build your own house in perfect security, +to make your own garden safe for yourself and for your children's +children, the only way in which you can link a hundred million kindred +wills in loyal co-operation with your own, and that is to do it not +for yourself alone and for your children alone, but for all the +world--all the world doing it also for you--to join yourself to this +great making of a permanent well-being for mankind. + +And here, finally, let me set out a sort of programme of Constructive +Socialism, as it seems to be shaping itself in the minds of +contemporary Socialists out of the Fabianism of the eighties and +nineties, in order that the reader may be able to measure this fuller +and completer proposition against the earlier Administrative Socialism +whose propositions are set out in Chapter XI., § 1. All those are +incorporated in this that follows--there is no contradiction whatever +between them, but there is amplification; new elements are taken into +consideration, once disregarded difficulties have been faced and +partially resolved. + +First, then, the Constructive Socialist has to do whatever lies in his +power towards _the enrichment of the Socialist idea_. He has to give +whatever gifts he has as artist, as writer, as maker of any sort to +increasing and refining the conception of civilized life. He has to +embody and make real the State and the City. And the Socialist idea, +constantly restated, refreshed and elaborated, has to be made a part +of the common circle of ideas; has to be grasped and felt and +assimilated by the whole mass of mankind, has to be made the basis of +each individual's private morality. That mental work is the primary, +most essential function of Constructive Socialism. + +And next, Constructive Socialism has in every country to direct its +energies and attention to _political reform_, to the scientific +reconstruction of our representative and administrative machinery so +as to give power and real expression to the developing collective mind +of the community, and to remove the obstructions to Socialization that +are inevitable where institutions stand for "interests" or have fallen +under the sway of aggressive private property or of narrowly organized +classes. Governing and representative bodies, advisory and +investigatory organizations of a liberal and responsive type have to +be built up, bodies that shall be really capable of the immense +administrative duties the secular abolition of the great bulk of +private ownership will devolve upon them. + +Thirdly, the constructive Socialist sets himself to forward _the +resumption of the land by the community_, by increased control, by +taxation, by death duties, by purchase and by partially compensated +confiscation as circumstances may render advisable, and so to make the +municipality the sole landlord in the reorganized world. + +And meanwhile the constructive Socialist goes on also with the work of +_socializing the main public services_, by transferring them steadily +from private enterprise to municipal and State control, by working +steadily for such transfers and by opposing every party and every +organization that does not set its face resolutely against the private +exploitation of new needs and services. + +There are four distinct systems of public service which could very +conveniently be organized under collective ownership and control now, +and each can be attacked independently of the others. There is first +the need of public educational machinery, and by education I mean not +simply elementary education, but the equally vital need for great +colleges not only to teach and study technical arts and useful +sciences, but also to enlarge learning and sustain philosophical and +literary work. A civilized community is impossible without great +public libraries, public museums, public art schools, without public +honour and support for contemporary thought and literature, and all +these things the constructive Socialist may forward at a hundred +points. + +Then next there is the need and opportunity of organizing the whole +community in relation to health, the collective development of +hospitals, medical aid, public sanitation, child welfare, into one +great loyal and efficient public service. This, too, may be pushed +forward either as part of the general Socialist movement or +independently as a thing in itself by those who may find the whole +Socialist proposition unacceptable or inconvenient. + +A third system of interests upon which practical work may be done at +the present time lies in the complex interdependent developments of +transit and housing, questions that lock up inextricably with the +problem of re-planning our local government areas. Here, too, the +whole world is beginning to realize more and more clearly that private +enterprise is wasteful and socially disastrous, that collective +control, collective management, and so on to collective enterprise and +ownership of building-land, houses, railways, tramways and omnibuses, +give the only way of escape from an endless drifting entanglement and +congestion of our mobile modern population. + +The fourth department of economic activity in which collectivism is +developing, and in which the constructive Socialist will find enormous +scope for work, is in connection with the more generalized forms of +public trading, and especially with the production, handling and +supply of food and minerals. When the lagging enterprise of +agriculture needs to be supplemented by endowed educational machinery, +agricultural colleges and the like; when the feeble intellectual +initiative of the private adventure miner and manufacturer +necessitates a London "Charlottenburg," it must be manifest that State +initiative has altogether out-distanced the possibilities of private +effort, and that the next step to the public authority instructing men +how to farm, prepare food, run dairies, manage mines and distribute +minerals, is to cut out the pedagogic middleman and undertake the work +itself. The State education of the expert for private consumption +(such as we see at the Royal School of Mines) is surely too ridiculous +a sacrifice of the community to private property to continue at that. +The further inevitable line of advance is the transfer from private to +public hands by purchase, by competing organizations or what not, of +all those great services, just as rapidly as the increasing capacity +and experience of the public authority permits. + +This briefly is the work and method of Constructive Socialism to-day. +Under one or other head it can utilize almost every sort of capacity +and every type of opportunity. It refuses no one who will serve it. It +is no narrow doctrinaire cult. It does not seek the best of an +argument, but the best of a world. Its worst enemies are those foolish +and litigious advocates who antagonize and estrange every development +of human Good Will that does not pay tribute to their vanity in open +acquiescence. Its most loyal servants, its most effectual helpers on +the side of art, invention and public organization and political +reconstruction, may be men who will never adopt the Socialist name. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +SOME ARGUMENTS _AD HOMINEM_ + + +§ 1. + +Before I conclude this compact exposition of modern Socialism, it is +reasonable that the reader should ask for some little help in figuring +to himself this new world at which we Socialists aim. + +"I see the justice of much of the Socialist position," he will say, +"and the soundness of many of your generalizations. But it still seems +to remain--generalizations; and I feel the need of getting it into my +mind as something concrete and real. What will the world be _like_ +when its state is really a Socialist one? That's my difficulty." + +The full answer to that would be another book. I myself have tried to +render my own personal dream in a book called _A Modern Utopia_,[26] +but that has not been so widely read as I could have wished, it does +not appeal strongly enough, perhaps, to the practical every-day side +of life, and here I may do my best to give very briefly some +intimation of a few of the differences that would strike a +contemporary if he or she could be transferred to the new order we are +trying to evolve. + + [26] Chapman & Hall. + +It would be a world and a life in no fundamental respect different +from the world of to-day, made up of the same creatures as ourselves, +as limited in capacity if not in outlook, as hasty, as quick to take +offence, as egotistical essentially, as hungry for attention, as +easily discouraged--they would indeed be better educated and better +trained, less goaded and less exasperated, with ampler opportunities +for their finer impulses and smaller scope for rage and secrecy, but +they would still be human. At bottom it would still be a struggle for +individual ends, albeit ennobled individual ends; for self-gratification +and self-realization against external difficulty and internal +weakness. Self-gratification would be sought more keenly in +self-development and self-realization in service, but that is a change +of tone and not of nature. We shall still be individuals. You might, +indeed, were you suddenly flung into it, fail to note altogether for a +long time the widest of the differences between the Socialist State +and our present one--the absence of that worrying urgency to earn, +that sense of constant economic insecurity, which afflicts all but the +very careless or the very prosperous to-day. Painful things being +absent are forgotten. On the same principle certain common objects of +our daily life you might not miss at all. There would be no slums, no +hundreds of miles of insanitary, ignoble homes, no ugly +health-destroying cheap factories. If you were not in the habit of +walking among slums and factories you would scarcely notice that. Din +and stress would be enormously gone. But you would remark simply a +change in the atmosphere about you and in your own contentment that +would be as difficult to analyze as the calm of a Sunday morning in +sunshine in a pleasant country. + +Let me put my conception of the Socialist world to a number of typical +readers, as it were, so that they may see clearly just what difference +in circumstances there would be for them if we Socialists could have +our way now. Let me suppose them as far as possible exactly what they +are now save for these differences. + +Then first let us take a sample case and suppose yourself to be an +elementary teacher. So far as your work went you would be very much as +you are to-day; you would have a finer and more beautiful school-room +perhaps, better supplied with apparatus and diagrams; you would have +cleaner and healthier, that is to say brighter and more responsive +children, and you would have smaller and more manageable classes. +Schools will be very important things in the Socialist State, and you +will find outside your class-room a much ampler building with open +corridors, a library, a bath, refectory for the children's midday +meal, and gymnasium, and beyond the playground a garden. You will be +an enlisted member of a public service, free under reasonable +conditions to resign, liable under extreme circumstances to dismissal +for misconduct, but entitled until you do so to a minimum salary, a +maintenance allowance, that is, and to employment. You will have had a +general education from the State up to the age of sixteen or +seventeen, and then three or four years of sound technical training, +so that you will know your work from top to bottom. You will have +applied for your present position in the service, whatever it is, and +have been accepted, much as you apply and are accepted for positions +now, by the school managers, and you will have done so because it +attracted you and they will have accepted you because your +qualifications seemed adequate to them. You will draw a salary +attached to the position, over and above that minimum maintenance +salary to which I have already alluded. You will be working just as +keenly as you are now, and better because of the better training you +have had, and because of shorter hours and more invigorating +conditions, and you will be working for much the same ends, that is to +say for promotion to a larger salary and wider opportunities and for +the interest and sake of the work. In your leisure you may be +studying, writing, or doing some work of supererogation for the school +or the State--because _under Socialist conditions it cannot be too +clearly understood that all the reasons the contemporary Trade +Unionist finds against extra work and unpaid work will have +disappeared_! You will not in a Socialist State make life harder for +others by working keenly and doing much if you are so disposed. You +will be free to give yourself generously to your work. You will have +no anxiety about sickness or old age, the State, the universal +Friendly Society, will hold you secure against that; but if you like +to provide extra luxury and dignity for your declining years, if you +think you will be amused to collect prints or books, or travel then, +or run a rose garden or grow chrysanthemums, the State will be quite +ready for you to pay it an insurance premium in order that you may +receive in due course an extra annuity to serve that end you +contemplate. + +You will probably live as a tenant in a house which may either stand +alone or be part of a terrace or collegiate building, but instead of +having a private landlord, exacting of rent and reluctant of repairs, +your house landlord will very probably be, and your ground landlord +will certainly be, the municipality, the great Birmingham or London or +Hampshire or Glasgow or such-like municipality; and your house will be +built solidly and prettily instead of being jerry-built and +mean-looking, and it will have bathroom, electric light, electrically +equipped kitchen and so forth, as every modern civilized house might +have and should have now. If your taste runs to a little close garden +of your own, you will probably find plenty of houses with one; if that +is not so, and you want it badly, you will get other people of like +tastes to petition the municipality to provide some, and if that will +not do, you will put yourself up as a candidate for the parish or +municipal council to bring this about. You will pay very much the sort +of rent you pay now, but you will not pay it to a private landlord to +spend as he likes at Monte Carlo or upon foreign missions or in +financing "Moderate" bill-posting or what not, but to the +municipality, and you will pay no rates at all. The rent will do under +Socialism what the rates do now. You cannot grasp too clearly that +_Socialism will abolish rates_ absolutely. Rates for public purposes +are necessary to-day because the landowners of the world evade the +public obligations that should, in common sense, go with the rent. + +Light, heating, water and so on will either be covered by the rent or +charged for separately, and they will be supplied just as near +cost-price as possible. I don't think you will buy coals, because I +think that in a few years' time it will be possible to heat every +house adequately by electricity; but if I am wrong in that, then you +will buy your coals just as you do now, except that you will have an +honest coal merchant, the Public Coal Service, a merchant not greedy +for profit nor short in the weight, calculating and foreseeing your +needs, not that it may profit by them but in order to serve them, +storing coal against a demand and so never raising the price in +winter. + +I am assuming you are going to be a house occupier, but if you are a +single man, you will probably live in pleasant apartments in an hotel +or college and dine in a club, and perhaps keep no more than a couple +of rooms, one for sleep and one for study and privacy of your own. But +if you are a married man, then I must enlarge a little further upon +your domestic details, because you will probably want a "home of your +own."... + + +§ 2. + +Now, just how a married couple lives in the Socialist State will +depend very much, as indeed it does now, on the individual relations +and individual taste and proclivities of the two people most +concerned. Many couples are childless now, and indisposed for home and +children, and such people will also be found in the Socialist State, +and in their case the wife will probably have an occupation and be a +teacher, a medical practitioner, a government clerk or official, an +artist, a milliner, and earn her own living. In which case they will +share apartments, perhaps, and dine in a club and go about together +very much as a childless couple of journalists or artists or +theatrical people do in London to-day. But of course if either of them +chooses to idle more or less and live on the earnings of the other, +that will be a matter quite between themselves. No one will ask who +pays their rent and their bills; that will be for their own private +arrangement. + +But if they are not childless people, but have children, things will +be on a rather different footing. Then they will probably have a home +all to themselves, and that will be the wife's chief affair; only +incidentally will she attend to any other occupation. You will +remember that the State is to be a sort of universal Friendly Society +supplying good medical advice and so forth, and so soon as a woman is +likely to become a mother, her medical adviser, man or woman as the +case may be, will report this to the proper officials and her special +income as a prospective mother in the State will begin. Then, when her +child is born, there will begin an allowance for its support, and +these payments will continue monthly or quarterly, and will be larger +or smaller according first to the well-being of the child, and +secondly to the need the State may have for children--so long as the +children are in their mother's care. All this money for maternity will +be the wife's independent income, and normally she will be the house +ruler--just as she is now in most well-contrived households. Her +personality will make the home atmosphere; that is the woman's gift +and privilege, and she will be able to do it with a free hand. I +suppose that for the husband's cost in the household the present +custom of cultivated people of independent means will continue, and he +will pay over to his wife his share of the household expenses.... + +After the revenue in the domestic budget under Socialism one must +consider the expenditure. I have already given an idea how the rent +and rates, lighting and water are to be dealt with under Socialist +conditions. For the rest, the housewife will be dealing on very +similar lines to those she goes upon at present. She will buy what she +wants and pay cash for it. The milkman will come in the morning and +leave his "book" at the end of the week, but instead of coming from +Mr. Watertap Jones' or the Twenty-per-cent. Dairy Company, he will +come from the Municipal Dairy; he will have no interest in giving +short measure, and all the science in the State will be behind him in +keeping the milk clean and pure. If he is unpunctual or trying in any +way, the lady will complain just as she does now, but to his official +superiors instead of his employer; and if that does not do, she and +her aggrieved neighbours (all voters, you will understand) will put +the thing to their representative in the parish or municipal council. +Then she will buy her meat and grocery and so on, not in one of a +number of inefficient little shops with badly assorted goods under +unknown brands as she does now if she lives in a minor neighbourhood, +but in a branch of a big, well-organized business like Lipton's or +Whiteley's or Harrod's. She may have to go to it on a municipal +electric car, for which she will probably pay a fare just as she does +now, unless, perhaps, her house rent includes a season ticket. The +store will not belong to Mr. Lipton or Mr. Whiteley or Mr. Harrod, but +to the public--that will be the chief difference--and if she does not +like her service she will be able to criticize and remedy it, just as +one can now criticize and remedy any inefficiency in one's local +post-office. If she does not like the brands of goods supplied she +will be able to insist upon others. There will be brands, too, +different from the household names of to-day in the goods she will +buy. The county arms of Devon will be on the butter paper, Hereford +and Kent will guarantee her cider, Hampshire and Wiltshire answer for +her bacon--just as now already Australia brands her wines and New +Zealand protects her from deception (and insures clean, decent +slaughtering) in the matter of Canterbury lamb. I rather like to think +of the red dagger of London on the wholesome bottled ales of her great +(municipalized) breweries, and Maidstone or Rochester, let us say, +boasting a special reputation for jam or pickles. Good honest food all +of it will be, made by honest unsweated women and men, with the pride +of broad vales and uplands, counties, principalities and great cities +behind it. Each county and municipality will be competing freely +against its fellows, not in price but quality, the cheeses of Cheshire +against the cheeses of France and Switzerland, the beer of Munich +against the Kentish brew; bread from the bakeries of London and Paris, +biscuits from Reading town, chocolates from Switzerland and +Bourneville, side by side with butter from the meadows of Denmark and +Russia. + +Then, when the provisions have been bought, she will go perhaps to the +other departments of the great store and buy or order the fine linen +and cotton of the Manchester men, the delicate woollens of the +Bradford city looms, the silks of London or Mercia, Northampton or +American boots, and so forth, just as she does now in any of the great +stores. But, as I say, all these goods will be honest goods, made to +wear as well as look well, and the shopman will have no "premiums" to +tempt him to force rubbish upon her instead of worthy makes by +specious "introduction." + +But suppose she wants a hat or a dress made. Then, probably, for all +that the world is under Socialism she will have to go to private +enterprise; a matter of taste and individuality such as dress cannot +be managed in a wholesale way. She will probably find in the same +building as the big department store, a number of little +establishments, of Madame This, of Mrs. That, some perhaps with +windows displaying a costume or so or a hat or so, and here she will +choose her particular artiste and contrive the thing with her. I am +inclined to think the dressmaker or milliner will charge a fee +according to her skill and reputation for designing and cutting and so +on, and that the customer will pay the store separately for material +and the municipal workshop for the making under the artiste's +direction. I don't think, that is, that the milliner or dressmaker +will make a trading profit, but only an artiste's fee. + +And if the lady wants to buy books, music, artistic bric-a-brac, or +what not, she will find the big store displaying and selling all these +things on commission for the municipal or private producers all over +the world.... + +So much for the financial and economic position of an ordinary woman +in a Socialist State. But management and economies are but the basal +substance of a woman's life. She will be free not merely financially; +the systematic development of the social organisation and of the +mechanism of life will be constantly releasing her more and more from +the irksome duties and drudgeries that have consumed so much of the +energies of her sex in the past. She will be a citizen, and free as a +man to read for herself, think for herself and seek expression. Under +the law, in politics and all the affairs of life she will be the equal +of a man. No one will control her movements or limit her actions or +stand over her to make decisions for her. All these things are +implicit in the fundamental generalization of Socialism, which denies +property in human beings. + + +§ 3. + +Perhaps now the reader will be able to figure a little better the +common texture of the life of a teacher or a housewife under +Socialism. And incidentally I have glanced at the position a clever +milliner or dressmaker would probably have under the altered +conditions. The great mass of the _employés_ in the distributing trade +would obviously be living a sort of clarified, dignified version of +their present existence, freed from their worst anxieties, the terror +of the "swap," the hopeless approach of old age, and from the sweated +food and accommodation of the living-in system. Under Socialism the +"living-in" system would be incredible. Their conditions of life would +approximate to those of the teacher. Like him they would be enrolled a +part of a great public service, and like him entitled to a minimum +wage, and over and above that they would draw salaries commensurate +with the positions their energy and ability had won. The prosperous +merchant of to-day would find himself somewhere high in the hierarchy +of the distributing service. If, for example, you are a tea merchant +or a provision broker, then probably if you like that calling, you +would be handling the same kind of goods, not for profit but +efficiency, "shipping into the Midlands" from Liverpool, let us say, +much as you do now. You would be keener on quality and less keen on +deals; that is all. You would not be trying to "skin" a business +rival, but very probably you would be just as keen to beat the London +distributers and distinguish yourself in that way. And you would get a +pretty good salary; modern Socialism does not propose to maintain any +dead-level to the detriment of able men. Modern Socialism has cleared +itself of that jealous hatred of prosperity that was once a part of +class-war Socialism. You would be, you see, far more than you are now, +one of the pillars of your town's prosperity--and the Town Hall would +be a place worth sitting in.... + +So far as the rank and file of the distributing service is concerned +the chief differences would be a better education, security for a +minimum living, an assured old age, shorter hours, more private +freedom and more opportunity. Since the whole business would be public +and the customer would be one's indirect master through the polling +booth, promotion would be far more by merit than it is now in private +businesses, where irrelevant personal considerations are often +overpowering, and it would be open to any one to apply for a transfer +to some fresh position if he or she found insufficient scope in the +old one. The staff of the stores will certainly "live out," and their +homes and way of living will be closely parallel to that of the two +people I have sketched in §§ 1 and 2. + +In the various municipal and State Transit Services, the condition of +affairs would be even closer to a broadened and liberalized version of +things as they are. The conductors and drivers will no doubt wear +uniforms for convenience of recognition, but a uniform will carry with +it no association with the idea of a livery as it does at the present +time. Mostly this service will be run by young men, and each one, like +the private of the democratic French Army, will feel that he has a +marshal's _batôn_ in his knapsack. He will have had a good education; +he will have short hours of duty and leisure for self-improvement or +other pursuits, and if he remains a conductor or driver all his life +he will have only his own unpretending qualities to thank for that. He +will probably remain a conductor if he likes to remain a conductor, +and go elsewhere if he does not. He is not obliged to take that +_batôn_ out and bother with it if he has quiet tastes. + +The great organized industries, mining, cotton, iron, building and the +like, would differ chiefly in the permanence of employment and the +systematic evasion of the social hardship caused now-a-days by new +inventions and economies in method. There will exist throughout the +world an organized economic survey, which will continually prepare and +revise estimates of the need of iron, coal, cloth and so forth in the +coming months; the blind speculative production of our own times is +due merely to the dark ignorance in which we work in these matters, +and with such a survey, employment will lose much of the cruel +intermittence it now displays. The men in these great productive +services, quite equally with teachers and railwaymen, will be +permanently employed. They will be no more taken on and turned off by +the day or week than we should take on or turn off an extra policeman, +or depend for our defence upon soldiers casually engaged upon the +battlefield at sixpence an hour. And if by adopting some ingenious +device we dispense suddenly with the labour of hundreds of men, the +Socialist State will send them, not into the casual wards and colonies +as our State does, to become a social burthen there, but into the +technical schools to train for some fresh use of their energies. Taken +all round, of course, these men, even the least enterprising or able, +will be better off than they are now, with a fuller share of the +product of their industry. Many will no doubt remain as they are, +rather through want of ambition than want of push, because under +Socialism life will be tolerable for a poor man. A man who chooses to +do commonplace work and spend his leisure upon chess or billiards, or +in gossip or eccentric studies, or amusing but ineffectual art, will +remain a poor man indeed, but not be made a wretched one. Sheer toil +of a mechanical sort there is little need of in the world now, it +could be speedily dispensed with at a thousand points were human +patience not cheaper than good machinery, but there will still remain +ten thousand undistinguished sorts of work for unambitious men.... + +If you are a farmer or any sort of horticulturist, a fruit or flower +grower, let us say, or a seedsman, you will probably find yourself +still farming under Socialism--that is to say, renting land and +getting what you can out of it. Your rent will be fixed just as it is +to-day by what people will give. But your landlord will be the +Municipality or the County, and the rent you pay will largely come +back to you in repairs, in the guiding reports and advice of the +Agricultural Department, in improved roads, in subventions to a good +electric car service to take your produce to market; in aids and +education for your children. You will probably have a greater fixity +of tenure and a clearer ownership in improvements than you have +to-day. I am inclined to think that your dairying and milking and so +forth will be done for you wholesale in big public dairies and mills +because of the economy of that; you will send up the crude produce and +sell it, perhaps, to the county association to brand and distribute. +It is probable you will sell your crops standing, and the public +authority will organize the harvesting and bring out an army of +workers from the towns to gather your fruit, hops and corn. You will +need, therefore, only a small permanent staff of labourers, and these +are much more likely to be partners with you in the enterprise than +wage workers needing to be watched and driven. + +In your leisure you will shoot, perhaps, or hunt, if your tastes +incline that way--it is quite likely that scattered among the farms of +the future countryside will be the cottages and homes of all sorts of +people with open-air tastes who will share their sports with you. One +need not dread the disappearance of sport with the disappearance of +the great house.... In the dead winter-time you will probably like to +run into the nearest big town with your wife and family, stay in an +hotel for a few weeks to talk to people in your clubs, see what plays +there are in the municipal theatres and so forth. And you will no +doubt travel also in your holidays. All the world will know something +of the pleasures and freedom of travel, of wandering and the enjoyment +of unfamiliar atmospheres, of mountains and deserts and remote cities +and deep forests, and the customs of alien peoples. + + +§ 4. + +A medical man or woman, or a dentist or any such skilled professional, +like the secondary school-master, will cease to be a private +adventurer under Socialism, concerned chiefly with the taking of a +showy house and the use of a showy conveyance; he or she will become +part of one of the greatest of all the public services in the coming +time, the service of public health. Either he--I use this pronoun and +imply its feminine--will be on the staff of one of the main hospitals +(which will not be charities, but amply endowed public institutions), +or he will be a part of a district staff, working in conjunction with +a nursing organization, a cottage hospital, an isolation hospital and +so forth, or he will be an advising specialist, or mainly engaged in +research or teaching and training a new generation in the profession. + +He must not judge his life and position quite by the lives and +position of publicly endowed investigators and medical officers of +health to-day. At present, because of the jealousy of the private +owner who has, as he says, to "find the funds," almost all public +employment is badly paid relatively to privately earned incomes. The +same thing is true of all scientific investigators and of most public +officials. The state of things to which Socialism points is a world +that will necessarily be harmonious with these constructive +conceptions and free from these jealousies. Whitehall and South +Kensington have much to fear from the wanton columns of a vulgarized +capitalistic press and from the greedy intrigues of syndicated +capital, but nothing from a sane constructive Socialism. To the public +official, therefore, of the present time, the Socialist has merely to +say that he will probably be better paid, relatively, than he is now, +and in the matter of his house rents and domestic marketing, _vide +supra_.... + +But now, suppose you are an artist--and I use the word to cover all +sorts of art, literary, dramatic and musical, as well as painting, +sculpture, design and architecture--you want before all things freedom +for personal expression, and you probably have an idea that this is +the last thing you will get in the Socialist State. But, indeed, you +will get far more than you do now. You will begin as a student, no +doubt, in your local Municipal Art Schools, and there you will win +prizes and scholarships and get some glorious years of youth and work +in Italy or Paris, or Germany or London, or Boston or New York, or +wherever the great teachers and workers of your art gather thickest; +and then you will compete, perhaps, for some public work, and have +something printed or published or reproduced and sold for you by your +school or city; or get a loan from your home municipality for +material--if your material costs money--and set to work making that +into some saleable beautiful thing. If you are at all distinguished in +quality, you will have a competition among public authorities from the +beginning, to act as sponsors and dealers for your work; benevolent +dealers they will be, and content with a commission. And if you make +things that make many people interested and happy, you may by that +fortunate gift of yours, grow to be as rich and magnificent a person +as any one in the Socialist State. But if you do not please people at +all, either the connoisseurs of the municipal art collection or +private associations of art patrons or the popular buyer, well, then +your lot will be no harder than the lot of any unsuccessful artist +now; you will have to do something else for a time and win leisure to +try again. + +Theatrical productions will be run on a sort of improvement upon +contemporary methods, but there will be no cornering of talent +possible, no wild advertisement of favoured stars upon strictly +commercial lines, no Theatrical Trust. The theatres will be municipal +buildings, every theatre-going voter will be keen to see them +comfortable and fine; they will, perhaps, be run in some cases by a +public repertoire company and in another by a lessee, and this latter +may be financed by his own private savings or by subscribers or +partners, or by a loan from the public bank as the case may be. This +latter method of exploitation by a lessee will probably also work best +in the public Music Halls, but it is quite equally possible that these +may be controlled by managers under partly elected and partly +appointed public committees. In some cases the theatrical lessee might +be a kind of stage society organized for the production of particular +types of play. The spectators will pay for admission, of course, as +they do now, but to the municipal box offices; and I suppose the +lessee or the author and artists will divide up the surplus after the +rent of the theatre has been deducted for the municipal treasury. In +every town of any importance there will be many theatres, music halls +and the like, perhaps under competing committees. In all these +matters, as every intelligent person understands, one has to maintain +variety of method, a choice of avenues, freedom from autocracies; and +since the Socialist community will contain a great number of +intelligent persons with leisure and opportunity for artistic +appreciation, there is little chance of this important principle being +forgotten, much less than there is in this world where a group of +dealers can often make an absolute corner in this artistic market or +that. You will not, under Socialism, see Sarah Bernhardt playing in a +tent as she had to do in America, because all the theatres have been +closed against her through some mean dispute with a Trust about the +sharing of profits.... + +And if it is not too sudden a transition, it seems most convenient in +a Socialist State to leave religious worship entirely to the care of +private people; to let them subscribe among themselves, subject, of +course, to a reasonable statute of mortmain, to lease land, and build +and endow and maintain churches and chapels, altars and holy places +and meeting-houses, priests and devout ceremonies. This will be the +more easily done since the heavy social burthens that oppress +religious bodies at the present time will be altogether lifted from +them; they will have no poor to support, no schools, no hospitals, no +nursing sisters, the advance of civilization will have taken over +these duties of education and humanity that Christianity first taught +us to realize. So, too, there seems no objection and no obstacle in +Socialism to religious houses, to nunneries, monasteries and the like, +so far as these institutions are compatible with personal freedom and +the public health, but of course factory laws and building laws will +run through all these places, and the common laws and limitations of +contract override their vows, if their devotees repent. So that you +see Socialism will touch nothing living of religion, and if you are a +religious minister, you will be very much as you are at the present +time, but with lightened parochial duties. If you are an earnest woman +and want to nurse the sick and comfort the afflicted, you will need +only, in addition to your religious profession, to qualify as a nurse +or medical practitioner. There will still be ample need of you. +Socialism will not make an end of human trouble, either of the body or +of the soul, albeit it will put these things into such comfort and +safety as it may. + + +§ 5. + +And now let me address a section to those particular social types +whose method of living seems most threatened by the development of an +organized civilization, who find it impossible to imagine lives at all +like their own in the Socialist State.... + +But first it may be well to remind them again of something I have +already done my best to make clear, that the modern Socialist +contemplates no swift change of conditions from those under which we +live, to Socialism. There will be no wonderful Monday morning when the +old order will give place to the new. Year by year the great change +has to be brought about, now by this socialization of a service, now +by an alteration in the incidence of taxation, now by a new device of +public trading, now by an extension of education. This problem at the +utmost is a problem of adaptation, and for most of those who would +have no standing under the revised conceptions of social intercourse, +it is no more than to ask whether it is wise they should prepare their +sons or daughters to follow in their footsteps or consent to regard +their callings as a terminating function. + +So far as many professions and callings go, this matter may be +dismissed in a few words. Under Socialism, while the particular trade +or profession might not exist, there would probably be ample scope in +the public machine for the socially more profitable employment of the +same energies. A family solicitor, such as we know now, would have a +poor time in a Socialist State, but the same qualities of watchful +discretion would be needed at a hundred new angles and friction +surfaces of the State organization. In the same way the private +shopkeeper, as I have already explained, would be replaced by the +department managers and buyers of the public stores, the rent +collector, the estate bailiff--one might make long lists of social +types who would undergo a parallel transformation. + +But suppose now you are a servant, I mean a well-trained, expert, +prosperous servant; would the world have no equivalent of you under +the new order? I think probably it would. With a difference, there +will be room for a vast body of servants in the Socialist State. But I +think there will be very few servants to private people, and that the +"menial" conception of a servant will have vanished in an entirely +educated community. The domestic work of the ordinary home, one may +prophesy confidently, will be very much reduced in the near future +whether we move toward Socialism or no; all the dirt of coal, all the +disagreeableness attendant upon lamps and candles, most of the heavy +work of cooking will be obviated by electric lighting and heating, and +much of the bedroom service dispensed with through the construction of +properly equipped bath-dressing-rooms. In addition, it is highly +probable that there will be a considerable extension of the club idea; +ordinary people will dine more freely in public places, and +conveniences for their doing so will increase. The single-handed +servant will have disappeared, and if you are one of that class you +must console yourself by thinking that under Socialism you would have +been educated up to seventeen or eighteen and then equipped for some +more interesting occupation. But there will remain much need of +occasional help of a more skilled sort, in cleaning out the house +thoroughly every now and then, probably with the help of mechanisms, +in recovering and repairing furniture, and in all this sort of +"helping" which will be done as between one social equal and another, +many people who are now, through lack of opportunity and education, +servants, will no doubt be employed. But where the better type of +service will be found will probably be in the clubs and associated +homes, where pleasant-mannered, highly-paid, skilful people will see +to the ease and comfort of a considerable _clientèle_ without either +offence or servility. There still remains, no doubt, a number of +valets, footmen, maids and so on, who under Socialism would not be +servants at all, but something far better, more interesting and more +productive socially. + +But this writing of servants brings me now to another possibility, and +that is that perhaps you are, dear reader, one of that small number of +fortunate people, rich and well placed in the world, who even under +existing conditions seem to possess all that life can offer a human +being. You live beautifully in a great London house, waited upon by +companies of servants, you have country seats with parks about them +and fine gardens, you can travel luxuriously to any part of the +civilized world and live sumptuously there. All things are done for +you, all ways are made smooth for you. A skilled maid or valet saves +you even the petty care of your person; skilled physicians, wonderful +specialists intervene at any threat of illness or discomfort; you keep +ten years younger in appearance than your poorer contemporaries and +twice as splendid. And above all you have an immense sense of downward +perspectives, of being special and apart and above the common herd of +mankind. + +Now frankly Socialism will be incompatible with this patrician style. +You must contemplate the end of all that. You may still be healthy, +refined, free, beautifully clothed and housed; but you will not have +either the space or the service or the sense of superiority you enjoy +now, under Socialism. You would have to take your place among the +multitude again. Only a moiety of your property will remain to your +sort of person if any revolution is achieved. The rents upon which you +live, the investments that yield the income that makes the employment +of that army of butlers and footmen, estate workers and underlings +possible, that buys your dresses, your jewels, your motorcars, your +splendid furnishings and equipments, will for the most part be public +property, yielding revenue to some national or municipal treasury. You +will have to give up much of that. There is no way out of it, your way +to Socialism is through "the needle's eye." From your rare class and +from your class alone does Socialism require a real material +sacrifice. You must indeed give up much coarse pride. There is no help +for it, you must face that if you face Socialism at all. You must come +down to a simpler and, in many material aspects, less distinguished +way of living. + +This is so clearly evident that to any one who believes self-seeking +is the ruling motive, the only possible motive in mankind, it seems +incredible that your class ever will do anything than oppose to the +last the advancement of Socialism. You will fight for what you have, +and the Have-nots will fight to take it away. Therefore it is that the +Socialists of the Social Democratic Federation preach a class war; to +my mind a lurid, violent and distasteful prospect. We shall have to +get out of the miseries and disorder of to-day, they think, if not by +way of chateau-burning and tumbrils, at least by a mitigated +equivalent of that. But I am not of that opinion. I have a lurking +belief that you are not altogether eaten up by the claims of your own +magnificence. While there are no doubt a number of people in your +class who would fight like rats in a corner against, let us say, the +feeding of poor people's starving children or the recovery of the land +by the State to which it once belonged, I believe there is enough of +nobility in your class as a whole to considerably damp their +resistance. Because you have silver mirrors and silver hairbrushes, it +does not follow that you have not a conscience. I am no believer in +the theory that to be a _sans-culotte_ is to be morally impeccable, or +that a man loses his soul because he possesses thirty pairs of +trousers beautifully folded by a valet. I cherish the belief that your +very refinement will turn--I have seen it in one or two fine minds +visibly turning--against the social conditions that made it possible. +All this space, all this splendour has its traceable connection with +the insufficiencies and miseries from which you are so remote. Once +that realization comes to you the world changes. In certain lights, +correlated with that, your magnificence can look, you will +discover--forgive the word!--a little _vulgar_.... + +Once you have seen that you will continue to see it. The _nouveau +riche_ of the new Plutocratic type comes thrusting among you, +demonstrating that sometimes quite obtrusively. You begin by feeling +sorry for his servants and then apologetic to your own. You cannot "go +it" as the rich Americans and the rich South Africans, or prosperous +book-makers or rich music-hall proprietors, "go it," their silver and +ivory and diamonds throw light on your own. And among other things you +discover you are not nearly so dependent on the numerous men in +livery, the spaces and enrichments, for your pride and comfort, as +these upstart people. + +I trust also to the appeal of the intervening spaces. You cannot so +entirely close your world in from the greater world without that, in +transit at least, the other aspects do not intrude. Every time you +leave Charing Cross for the Continent, for example, there are all +those horrible slums on either side of the line. These things _are_, +you know, a part of your system, part of you; they are the reverse of +that splendid fabric and no separate thing, the wide rich tapestry of +your lives comes through on the other side, stitch for stitch in +stunted bodies, in children's deaths, in privation and anger. Your +grandmothers did not realize that. You do. You _know_. In that +recognition and a certain nobility I find in you, I put my hope, much +more than in any dreadful memories of 1789 and those vindictive pikes. +Your class is a strangely mixed assembly of new and old, of base and +fine. But through it all, in Great Britain and Western Europe +generally, soaks a tradition truly aristocratic, a tradition that +transcends property; you are aware, and at times uneasily aware, of +duty and a sort of honour. You cannot bilk cabmen nor cheat at cards; +there is something in your making forbids that as strongly as an +instinct. But what if it is made clear to you (and it is being made +clear to you) that the wealth you have is, all unwittingly on your +part, the outcome of a colossal--if unpremeditated--social bilking? + +Moreover, though Socialism does ask you to abandon much space and +service, it offers you certain austere yet not altogether inadequate +compensations. If you will cease to have that admirable house in +Mayfair and the park in Kent and the moorlands and the Welsh castle, +yet you will have another ownership of a finer kind to replace those +things. For all London will be yours, a city to serve indeed, and a +sense of fellowship that is, if you could but realize it, better than +respect. The common people will not be common under Socialism. That is +a very important thing for you to remember. But better than those +thoughts is this, that you will own yourself too, more than you do +now. All that state, all that prominence of yours--do you never feel +how it stands between you and life? + +So I appeal from your wealth to your nobility, to help us to +impoverish your class a little relatively and make all the world +infinitely richer by that impoverishment. And I am sure that to some +of you I shall not appeal in vain.... + + +§ 6. + +And lastly, perhaps you are chiefly a patriot and you are concerned +for the flag and country with which your emotions have interwoven. You +find that the Socialist talks constantly of internationalism and the +World State, and that presents itself to your imagination as a very +vague and colourless substitute for a warm and living reality of +England or "these States" or the Empire. Well, your patriotism will +have suffered a change, but I do not think it need starve under +Socialist conditions. It may be that war will have ceased, but the +comparison and competition and pride of communities will not have +ceased. Philadelphia and Chicago, Boston and New York are at peace, in +all probability for ever at peace, so far as guns and slaughter go, +but each perpetually criticizes, goads and tries to outshine the +other. And the civic pride and rivalry of to-day will be nothing to +that pride and rivalry when every man's business is the city and the +city's honour and well-being is his own. You will have, therefore, +first this civic patriotism, your ancient pride in your city, a city +which will be like the city of the ancient Athenian's, or the mediĉval +Italian's, the centre of a system of territories and the property and +chief interest of its citizens. I, for instance, should love and +serve, even as I love to-day, my London and my Cinque Ports, these +Home Counties about London, the great lap of the Thames valley and the +Weald and Downland, my own country in which all my life has been +spent; for you the city may be Ulster or Northumbria, or Wales or East +or West Belgium, or Finland or Burgundy, or Berne or Berlin, or +Venetia, Pekin, Calcutta, Queensland or San Francisco. And keeping the +immediate peace between these vigorous giant municipal states and +holding them together there will still be in many cases the old +national or Imperial government and the old flag, a means of joint +action between associated and kindred municipalities with a common +language and a common history and a common temper and race. The nation +and the national government will be the custodian of the national +literature and the common law, the controller and perhaps the vehicle +of intermunicipal and international trade, and an intermediary between +its municipal governments and that great Congress to which all things +are making, that permanent international Congress which will be +necessary to insure the peace of the world. + +That, at least, is my own dream of the order that may emerge from the +confusion of distrusts and tentatives and dangerous absurdities, those +reactions of fear and old traditional attitudes and racial +misconceptions which one speaks of as international relations to-day. +For I do not believe that war is a necessary condition to human +existence and progress, that it is anything more than a confusion we +inherit from the less organized phases of social development. I think +but a little advancement in general intelligence will make it an +impossible thing. + +But suppose after all that I am wrong in my estimate in this matter, +and that war will still be possible in a Socialist or partly Socialist +world; suppose that the Socialist State in which I am imagining you to +live is threatened by some military power. Then I don't think the +military power that threatens it need threaten very long. Because +consider, here will be a State organized for collective action as +never a State has been organized before, a State in which every man +and woman will be a willing and conscious citizen saturated with the +spirit of service, in which scientific research will be at a maximum +of vigour and efficiency. What individualist or autocratic militarism +will stand a chance against it? It goes quite without saying from the +essential principles of Socialism that _if war is necessary_ then +every citizen will, as a matter of course, take his part in that war. +It is mere want of intellectual grasp that has made a few +working-class Socialists in England and France oppose military +service. Universal military service, given the need for it, is innate +in the Socialist idea, just as it is blankly antagonistic to the +"private individual" ideas of Eighteenth-Century Liberalism. It is +innate in the Socialist idea, but equally innate in that is the +conception of establishing and maintaining for ever a universal peace. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE ADVANCEMENT OF SOCIALISM + + +§ 1. + +And here my brief exposition of the ideals of Modern Socialism may +fitly end. + +I have done my best to set out soberly and plainly this great idea of +deliberately making a real civilization by the control and +subordination of the instinct of property, and the systematic +development of a state of consciousness out of the achievements and +squalor, out of the fine forces and wasted opportunities of to-day. I +may have an unconscious bias perhaps, but so far as I have been able I +have been just and frank, concealing nothing of the doubts and +difficulties of Socialism, nothing of the divergencies of opinion +among its supporters, nothing of the generous demands it makes upon +the social conscience, the Good Will in man. Its supporters are +divergent upon a hundred points, but upon its fundamental +generalizations they are all absolutely agreed, and some day the whole +world will be agreed. Their common purport is the resumption by the +community of all property that is not justly and obviously personal, +and the substitution of the spirit of service for the spirit of gain +in all human affairs. + +It must be clear to the reader who has followed my explanations +continuously, that the present advancement of Socialism must lie now +along three several lines. + + FIRST, and most important, is the primary intellectual + process, the elaboration, criticism, discussion, enrichment + and enlargement of the project of Socialism. This includes all + sorts of sociological and economic research, the critical + literature of Socialism, and every possible way--the drama, + poetry, painting, music--of expressing and refining its + spirit, its attitudes and conceptions. It includes, too, all + sorts of experiments in living and association. In its widest + sense it includes all science, literature and invention. + + SECONDLY, comes the propaganda; the publication, distribution, + repetition, discussion and explanation of this growing body of + ideas, until this conception of a real civilized State as + being in the making, becomes the common intellectual property + of all intelligent people in the world; until the laws and + social injustices that now seem, to the ordinary man, as much + parts of life as the east wind and influenza, will seem + irrational, unnatural and absurd. This educational task is at + the present time the main work that the mass of Socialists + have before them. Most other possibilities wait upon that + enlargement of the general circle of ideas. It is a work that + every one can help forward in some measure, by talk and + discussion, by the distribution of literature, by writing and + speaking in public, by subscribing to propagandist + organizations. + + And THIRDLY, there is the actual changing of practical things + in the direction of the coming Socialized State, the actual + socialization, bit by bit and more and more completely, of the + land, of the means of production, of education and child + welfare, of insurance and the food supply, the realization, in + fact, of that great design which the intellectual process of + Socialism is continually making more beautiful, attractive and + worthy. Now this third group of activities is necessarily + various and divergent, and at every point the conscious and + confessed Socialist will find himself co-operating with + partial or unintentional Socialists, with statesmen and + officials, with opportunist philanthropists, with trade + unionists, with religious bodies and religious teachers, with + educationists, with scientific and medical specialists, with + every sort of public-spirited person. He should never lose an + opportunity of explaining to such people how necessarily they + are Socialists, but he should never hesitate to work with them + because they refuse the label. For in the house of Socialism + as in the house of God, there are many mansions. + +These are the three main channels for Socialist effort, thought, +propaganda and practical social and political effort, and between them +they afford opportunity for almost every type of intelligent human +being. One may bring leisure, labour, gifts, money, reputation, +influence to the service of Socialism; there is ample use for them +all. There is work to be done for this idea, from taking tickets at a +doorway and lending a drawing-room for a meeting, to facing death, +impoverishment and sorrow for its sake. + + +§ 2. + +Socialism is a moral and intellectual process, let me in conclusion +reiterate that. Only secondarily and incidentally does it sway the +world of politics. It is not a political movement; it may engender +political movements, but it can never become a political movement; any +political body, any organization whatever, that professes to stand for +Socialism, makes an altogether too presumptuous claim. The whole is +greater than the part, the will than the instrument. There can be no +official nor pontifical Socialism; the theory lives and grows. It +springs out of the common sanity of mankind. Constructive Socialism +shapes into a great system of developments to be forwarded, points to +a great number of systems of activity amidst which its adherents may +choose their field for work. Parties and societies may come or go, +parties and organizations and names may be used and abandoned; +constructive Socialism lives and remains. + +There is a constantly recurring necessity to insist on the difference +between two things, the larger and the lesser, the greater being the +Socialist movement, the lesser the various organizations that come and +go. There is this necessity because there is a sort of natural +antagonism between the thinker and writer who stand by the scheme and +seek to develop and expound it, and the politician who attempts to +realize it. They are allies, but allies who often pull against each +other, whom a little heat and thoughtlessness may precipitate into a +wasteful conflict. The former is, perhaps, too apt to resent the +expenditure of force in those conflicts of cliques and personal +ambition that inevitably arise among men comparatively untrained for +politics, those squabbles and intrigues, reservations and +insincerities that precede the birth of a tradition of discipline; the +latter is equally prone to think literature too broad-minded for daily +life, and to associate all those aspects of the Socialist project +which do not immediately win votes, with fads, kid gloves, +"gentlemanliness," rose-water and such-like contemptible things. These +squabbles of the engineer and the navigating officer must not be +allowed to confuse the mind of the student of Socialism. They are +quarrels of the mess-room, quarrels on board the ship and within +limits, they have nothing to do with the general direction of +Socialism. Like all indisciplines they hinder but they do not +contradict the movement. Socialism, the politicians declare, can only +be realized through politics. Socialism, I would answer, can never be +narrowed down to politics. Your parties and groups may serve +Socialism, but they can never be Socialism. Scientific progress, +medical organization, the advancement of educational method, artistic +production and literature are all aspects of Socialism, they are all +interests and developments that lie apart from anything one may +call--except by sheer violence to language--politics. + +And since Socialism is an intellectual as well as a moral thing, it +will never tolerate in its adherents the abnegation of individual +thought and intention. It demands devotion to an idea, not devotion to +a leader. No addicted follower of so-and-so or of so-and-so can be a +good Socialist any more than he can be a good scientific investigator. +So far Socialism has produced no great leaders at all. Lassalle alone +of all its prominent names was of that romantic type of personality +which men follow with enthusiasm. The others, Owen, Saint Simon, and +Fourier, Proudhon, Marx, and Engels, Bebel, Webb, J. S. Mill, Jaurès, +contributed to a process they never seized hold upon, never made their +own, they gave enrichment and enlargement and the movement passed on; +passes on gathering as it goes. Kingsley, Morris, Ruskin--none are too +great to serve this idea, and none so great they may control it or +stand alone for it. So it will continue. Socialism under a great +leader, or as a powerfully organized party would be the end of +Socialism. No doubt it might also be its partial triumph; but the +reality of the movement would need to take to itself another name; to +call itself "constructive civilization" or some such synonym, in order +to continue its undying work. Socialism no doubt will inspire great +leaders in the future, and supply great parties with ideas; in itself +it will still be greater than all such things. + + +§ 3. + +But here, perhaps, before the finish, since the business of this book +is explanation, it may be well to define a little the relation of +Socialism to the political party that is most closely identified with +it in the popular mind. This is the Labour Party. There can be no +doubt of the practical association of aim and interest of the various +Labour parties throughout modern civilized communities with the +Socialist movement. The Social democrats of Germany are the Labour +Party of that country, and wherever the old conception of Socialism +prevails, those "class war" ideas of the Marxist that have been +superseded in English Socialism for nearly a quarter of a century, +there essentially the Socialist movement will take the form of a +revolutionary attack upon the owning and governing sections of the +community. But in Great Britain and America the Labour movement has +never as a whole been revolutionary or insurrectionary in spirit, and +in these countries Socialism has been affected from its very +beginnings by constructive ideas. It has never starkly antagonized +Labour on the one hand, and the other necessary elements in a +civilized State on the other; it has never--I speak of the movement as +a whole and not of individual utterances--contemplated a community +made up wholly of "Labour" and emotionally democratic, such as the +Marxist teaching suggests. The present labouring classes stand to gain +enormously in education, dignity, leisure, efficiency and opportunity +by the development of a Socialist State, and just in so far as they +become intelligent will they become Socialist; but we all, all of us +of Good Will, we and our children, of nearly every section of the +community stand also to gain and have also our interest in this +development. Great as the Labour movement is, the Socialist movement +remains something greater. The one is the movement of a class, the +other a movement of the best elements in every class. + +None the less it remains true that under existing political conditions +it is to the Labour Party that the Socialist must look for the mass +and emotion and driving force of political Socialism. Among the wage +workers of the modern civilized community Socialists are to be counted +now by the hundred thousand, and in those classes alone does an +intelligent self-interest march clearly and continuously in the +direction of constructive civilization. In the other classes the +Socialists are dispersed and miscellaneous in training and spirit, +hampered by personal and social associations, presenting an enormous +variety of aspects and incapable, it would seem, of co-operation +except in relation to the main Socialist body, the Labour mass. +Through that, and in relation and service to that, they must, it would +seem, spend their political activities (I am writing now only of +political activities) if they are not to be spent very largely to +waste. The two other traditional parties in British politics are no +doubt undergoing remarkable changes and internal disruptions, and the +constructive spirit of the time is at work within them; but it does +not seem that either is likely to develop anything nearly so +definitely a Socialist programme as the Labour Party. The old +Conservative Party, in spite of its fine aristocratic traditions, +tends more and more to become the party of the adventurous Plutocracy, +of the aggressive _nouveau riche_, inclines more and more towards the +inviting financial possibilities of modern "Imperialism" and "Tariff +Reform." The old Liberal Party strains between these two antagonists +and its own warring and conflicting traditions of Whiggery and +Radicalism. There can be no denying the great quantity of "Good Will" +and constructive intention that finds a place in its very +miscellaneous ranks, but the strong strain of obstinate and +irreconcilable individualism is equally indisputable. + +But the official Liberal attitude is one thing, and a very +unsubstantial and transitory thing, and the great mass of Good Will +and broad thinking in the ranks of Liberalism and the middle class +quite another. Socialists are to be found not only in every class, but +in every party. There can be no "Socialist" party as such. That is the +misleading suggestion of irresponsible and destructive adventurers. It +is impossible to estimate what forces of political synthesis may be at +work at the present time, or what ruptures and coalitions may not +occur in the course of a few years. These things belong to the drama +of politics. They do not affect the fact that the chief Interest in +the community on the side of Socialism is Labour; through intelligent +Labour it is that Socialism becomes a political force and possibility, +and it is to the Labour Party that the Socialist who wishes to engage +in active political work may best give his means and time and energy +and ability. + +I write "political work," and once more I would repeat that it is to +the field of electioneering and parliamentary politics under present +conditions that this section refers. The ultimate purpose of Socialism +can rely upon no class because it aims to reconstitute all classes. In +a Socialist State there will be no class doomed to mere "labour," no +class privileged to rule and decide. For every child there will be +fair opportunity and education and scope to the limit of its +possibilities. To the best there will be given difficulty and +responsibility, honour and particular rewards, but to all security and +reasonable work and a tolerable life. The interests and class +traditions upon which our party distinctions of to-day rely must +necessarily undergo progressive modification with every step we take +towards the realization of the Socialist ideal. + + +§ 4. + +So this general account of Socialism concludes. I have tried to put it +as what it is, as the imperfect and still growing development of the +social idea, of the collective Good Will in man. I have tried to +indicate its relation to politics, to religion, to art and literature, +to the widest problems of life. Its broad generalizations are simple +and I believe acceptable to all clear-thinking minds. And in a way +they do greatly simplify life. Once they have been understood they +render impossible a thousand confusions and errors of thought and +practice. They are in the completest sense of the word, illumination. + +But Socialism is no panacea, no magic "Open Sesame" to the millennium. +Socialism lights up certain once hopeless evils in human affairs and +shows the path by which escape is possible, but it leaves that path +rugged and difficult. Socialism is hope, but it is not assurance. +Throughout this book I have tried to keep that before the reader. + +Directly one accepts those great generalizations one passes on to a +jungle of incurably intricate problems, through which man has to make +his way or fail, the riddles and inconsistencies of human character, +the puzzles of collective action, the power and decay of traditions, +the perpetually recurring tasks and problems of education. To have +become a Socialist is to have learnt something, to have made an +intellectual and a moral step, to have discovered a general purpose in +life and a new meaning in duty and brotherhood. But to have become a +Socialist is not, as many suppose, to have become generally wise. +Rather in realizing the nature of the task that could be done, one +realizes also one's insufficiencies, one's want of knowledge, one's +need of force and training. Here and in this manner, says Socialism, a +palace and safety and great happiness may be made for mankind. But it +seems to me the Socialist as he turns his hand and way of living +towards that common end knows little of the nature of his task if he +does so with any but a lively sense of his individual weakness and the +need of charity for all that he achieves. + +In that spirit, and with no presumption of finality, this little book +of explanations is given to the world. + + + + +THE END + + + + +RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, + +BRUNSWICK STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E., + +AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. + + + + +SYNDICALISM + +A CRITICAL EXAMINATION + +BY + +J. RAMSAY MACDONALD. M.P. + +_Cloth, 1s. net._ + +_A clear and concise explanation of what Syndicalism means, with a +Critical Examination of its Aims and Principles_ + +CONTENTS + + I Trade Unionism, Socialism, and Syndicalism + II Political Action and the General Strike + III The Philosophy of Sorel + IV The Programme of Direct Action + V Syndicalism in Europe and America + VI Syndicalism in Great Britain + VII An Examination of Syndicalist Principles +VIII The Programme of Syndicalism + IX Conclusion + +"Mr. Ramsay Macdonald has done a genuine service in writing this +little book."--_Westminster Gazette_. + +"A lucid and accurate account of the ideas behind a movement which is +much talked about, but little understood."--_Daily Chronicle_. + +"A clever and creditable piece of work."--_Western Morning News_. + +"Tells everything that need be known in regard to +Syndicalism."--_Yorkshire Observer_. + + +London: CONSTABLE & COMPANY Ltd. + + + + +A HISTORY OF LABOUR REPRESENTATION + +By A. W. HUMPHREY + +With an Introduction by GILBERT SLATER, Principal of Ruskin College, +Oxford + +_Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. net._ + +The objects of this book are to present a record of the movement for +labour representation in the United Kingdom from its first beginning +in 1857 to the end of 1911, and the arguments for and against class +representation. Professor Gilbert Slater in his introduction writes: +"Mr. Humphrey has earned the gratitude of students by the striking and +straightforward narrative he has put together." + +"A clear business-like and detailed history of the rise of the labour +representation."--_Times_. + +"A well-studied and interesting account."--_Scotsman_. + +"Mr. Humphrey has earned the gratitude of all earnest students of +sociology."--_Western Mail_. + + +THE CHILD AND THE PARENT + +By DOUGLAS PEPLER + +_Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. net._ + +A small volume containing the history of the provision of meals to the +children of poor parents, and an account of children's care +committees, their work and organization, with particular reference to +the place of the voluntary worker and the duties of an official. + +"The history of the origin and work of the Care Committee is dealt +with by Mr. Douglas Pepler in an interesting way, and he writes +suggestively of the great problems with which its workers are brought +into contact."--_Nation_. + +"It would be impossible to put the conditions of the problem in +clearer or better words."--_Evening News_. + + +London: CONSTABLE & COMPANY Ltd. + + + + +THE TASK OF SOCIAL HYGIENE + +By HAVELOCK ELLIS + +Author of "The World of Dreams," "The Soul of Spain," etc. + +_Large Crown 8vo, 8s. 6d. net._ + +CONTENTS + +Introduction--The Changing Status of Women--The New Aspect of the +Woman's Movement--The Emancipation of Women in relation to Romantic +Love--The Significance of a Falling Birth-rate--Eugenics and +Love--Religion and the Child--The Problem of Sexual +Hygiene--Immorality and Law--The War against War--The Problem of an +International Language--Individualism and Socialism--Index. + +"A singularly powerful book."--_Daily Graphic_. + +"The work of one who thinks of, and fearlessly looks to, the +future."--_The Times_. + +"Should be read by our legislators, philanthropists, and +reformers."--_Daily News_. + +"Those who like to have their thoughts stimulated will find his book +delightful."--_Observer_. + +"A most interesting and suggestive book."--_Scotsman_. + + +RATIONALISM + +By Rt. Hon. J. M. ROBERTSON. M.P. + +_Cloth - 1s. net._ + +CONTENTS + +The Term--The Practical Position--The Religious Challenge--The +Philosophical Challenge--The Skeptical Religious Challenge--The +Meaning of Reason--The Test of Truth--Ultimate Problems--Ideals. + + +London: CONSTABLE & COMPANY Ltd. + + + + +MAN AND SUPERMAN + +A COMEDY AND A PHILOSOPHY + +BY + +BERNARD SHAW + +_Paper, 6d._ + +"Of extraordinary brilliance and suggestiveness."--_Vanity Fair_. + +"From first to last it is a royal feast of witticisms."--_Yorkshire +Daily Observer_. + +"This is his masterpiece."--_Saturday Review_. + + +JOHN BULL'S OTHER ISLAND + +BY + +BERNARD SHAW + +_New Edition in Paper, with a new Preface, 6d._ + +"The cleverest play Mr. Shaw has written."--_Evening Standard_. + +"John Bull's 'Other Island' is so far the author's +masterpiece."--_Glasgow Herald_. + +"One of the choicest and most stimulating of all the author's +plays."--_Yorkshire Post_. + + +London: CONSTABLE & COMPANY Ltd. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's New Worlds For Old, by Herbert George Wells + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NEW WORLDS FOR OLD *** + +***** This file should be named 30538-8.txt or 30538-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/0/5/3/30538/ + +Produced by Malcolm Farmer, Barbara Tozier and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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