effective use of any materials, that no mere system of taxation of
Rent and Interest, even when so drastic as Mr. Henry George’s scheme
of universal State absentee landlordism, is likely to exist except as
a transition stage towards Social Democracy. Indeed the anarchist idea
which allows the State to receive Rent and Interest, but forbids it to
employ labor, is obviously impracticable. Unless we are willing to pay
every citizen in hard cash a share of the State Rent of the future,
it, like the taxes of to-day, must be wholly invested in payments for
work done. It would always be a very serious difficulty for a Socialist
legislature to decide how far communities should be allowed to incur
debts or pay interest. Socialism once established, the chief danger
to its stability would be just at this point. We all know the inept
attack on Socialism which comes from a debating-society orator who
considers the subject for the first time, or from the cultured person
who has been brought up on the _Saturday Review_. He tells us that if
property were equally divided to-morrow, there would be for the next
ten years forty men out of every hundred working extremely hard, and
the other sixty lazy. After that time, the sixty would have to work
hard and keep the forty, who would then be as lazy as the sixty were
before. It is very easy to explain that we do not want to divide all
property equally; but it is not so easy to guard against any result
of that tendency in human nature on which the argument is grounded.
Men differ so widely in their comparative appreciation of present and
future pleasures, that wherever life can be supported by four hours’
work a day, there will always be some men anxious to work eight hours
in order to secure future benefits for themselves or their children,
and others anxious to avoid their four hours’ work for the present
by pledging themselves or their children to any degree of future
privation. As long as this is so, communities as well as individuals
will be tempted to avail themselves of the freely offered services of
the exceptionally energetic and farsighted, and to incur a common debt
under the excuse that they are spreading the payment of such services
over all those benefited by them. The municipalities, Boards of Works,
School Boards, etc., of England have already created enormous local
debts; and unless men grow wiser in the next few months the new County
Councils will probably add to the burden. As we sit and think, it may
seem easy to prevent any such trouble in the future by a law forbidding
communities to incur debts under any circumstances. But in the case
of a central and supreme government such a law would, of course,
be an absurdity. No nation can escape a national debt or any other
calamity if the majority in that nation desire to submit to it. It is
reassuring to see how the feeling that national governments should
pay their way from year to year grows stronger and stronger. National
debts no longer even in France go up with the old light-hearted leaps
and bounds. But local debts still increase. In Preston the local debt
is said to amount to seven times the annual rating valuation. And
although at present (November, 1888), since the “surf at the edge of
civilisation” is only thundering to the extent of three small colonial
wars, our own national debt is slowly going down; still if war were
declared to-morrow with any European State no ministry would dare to
raise all the war expenses by immediate taxation either on incomes
or on property. It may be objected that no such danger would arise
under Socialism; for there would be no fund from which a loan could be
offered that would not be equally easily reached by a direct levy. But
if we are speaking of society in the near future there would certainly
be plenty of members of non-Socialist States, or English holders of
property in them, ready to lend money on good security to a timid or
desperate or dishonest Socialist government. Again, in times of extreme
stress a government might believe itself to require even personal
possessions; and it might be difficult under such circumstances not to
offer to restore them with or without interest. In any case there would
be no more economic difference between the new fund-holders and the old
landlords than between Lord Salisbury as owner of the Strand district
and Lord Salisbury now that he has sold his slums and bought consols.
Perhaps the most serious danger of the creation of a common debt would
arise from the earnings of exceptional ability. Modern Socialists have
learnt, after a long series of co-operative experiments and failures,
that the profits of private adventure will withdraw men of exceptional
business talent from communal service unless work of varying scarcity
and intensity is paid for at varying rates. How great this variation
need be in order to ensure full efficiency can only be decided by
experience, and as the education and moralisation of society improves,
and industry becomes so thoroughly socialised that the alternative of
private enterprise will be less practicable, something like equality
may at last be found possible. But, meanwhile, comparatively large
incomes will be earned by men leading busy and useful lives, but often
keenly anxious to secure leisure and comfort for their old age and
aggrandisement for their family.[71] I have already suggested that some
of the earnings of a man employed by the community might be left for
a time in the common treasury to accumulate without interest. Now, it
would suit both these men and the lazier of their contemporaries that
the reward of their services should be fixed at a very high rate, and
be left to the next generation for payment; while the next generation
might prefer a small permanent charge to any attempt to pay off the
capital sum. It is often hinted that one way to obviate this would be
for each generation to cultivate a healthy indifference to the debts
incurred on its behalf by its forefathers. But the citizens of each new
generation attain citizenship not in large bodies at long intervals,
but in small numbers every week. One has only to warn sanguine lenders
that veiled repudiations may always be effected in such emergencies
by a judicious application of the Income Tax, and to hope that the
progress of education under Socialism would tend to produce and
preserve on such matters a certain general minimum of common sense. If
this minimum is sufficient to control the central government the debts
of local bodies can be easily and sternly restricted.
Property in services means of course property in future services. The
wealth which past services may have produced can be exchanged or owned;
but the services themselves cannot. Now all systems of law which we
know have allowed private persons to contract with each other for the
future performance of certain services, and have punished, or allowed
to be punished, the breach of such contracts. Here as in the case
of debts, our growing respect for personal liberty has made the law
look jealously on all onerous agreements made either by the citizen
himself or for him by others. In fact, as Professor Sidgwick points
out: “In England hardly any engagement to render personal service gives
the promisee a legal claim to more than pecuniary damages--to put it
otherwise, almost all such contracts, if unfulfilled, turn into mere
debts of money so far as their legal force goes.”[72] The marriage
contract forms the principal exception to this rule; but even in this
case there seems to be a tendency in most European countries to relax
the rigidity of the law.
On the other hand the direct claims of the State to the services of its
citizens shew at present no signs of diminishing. Compulsory military
service and compulsory attendance at school already take up a not
inconsiderable share of the life of every male inhabitant of France
and Germany. So far in England the compulsion of grown men to serve
in any capacity has been condemned for a century past, because it is
considered wasteful and oppressive as compared with the free contract
system of the open market. Most English Socialists seem inclined to
believe that all work for the State should be voluntarily engaged and
paid for out of the produce of common industry.
In considering how far the State has a claim upon the services of its
members, we come upon the much larger question--How far are we working
for Socialism; and how far for Communism? Under pure Socialism, to use
the word in its narrowest sense, the State would offer no advantage at
all to any citizen except at a price sufficient to pay all the expenses
of producing it. In this sense the Post Office, for example, is now a
purely Socialistic institution. Under such conditions the State would
have no claim at all on the services of its members; and compulsion to
work would be produced by the fact that if a man chose not to work he
would be in danger of starvation. Under pure Communism, on the other
hand, as defined by Louis Blanc’s dictum: “From every man according
to his powers; to every man according to his wants,” the State would
satisfy without stint and without price all the reasonable wants
of any citizen. Our present drinking fountains are examples of the
numerous cases of pure communism which surround us. But since nothing
can be made without labor, the commodities provided by the State must
be produced by the services, voluntary or forced, of the citizens.
Under pure communism, if any compulsion to work were needed, it would
have to be direct. Some communistic institutions we must have; and
as a matter of fact there is an increasing number of them already in
England. Indeed, if the whole or any part of that Rent Fund which is
due to the difference between the best and worst materials of industry
in use be taken for the State, by taxation or otherwise, it, or rather
the advantages produced by its expenditure, can hardly be distributed
otherwise than communistically. For, as men are now, saturated with
immoral principles by our commercial system, the State would have to be
exceedingly careful in deciding what wants could be freely satisfied
without making direct compulsion to labor necessary. It would cost
by no means an impossible sum to supply a tolerable shelter with a
bed, and a sufficient daily portion of porridge, or bread and cheese,
or even of gin and water, to each citizen; but no sane man would
propose to do so in the existing state of public morals. For more than
a century the proletarians of Europe have been challenged by their
masters to do as little work as they can. They have been taught by
the practical economists of the Trades Unions, and have learnt for
themselves by bitter experience, that every time any of them in a
moment of ambition or goodwill does one stroke of work not in his bond,
he is increasing the future unpaid labor not only of himself but of his
fellows. At the same time every circumstance of monotony, ugliness, and
anxiety has made the work as wearisome and disgusting as possible. All,
almost without exception, now look upon the working day as a period of
slavery, and find such happiness as they can get only in a few hours
or minutes that intervene between work and sleep. For a few, that
happiness consists in added toil of thought and speech in the cause
of themselves and their comrades. The rest care only for such rough
pleasures as are possible to men both poor and over-worked. There would
be plenty of excuse if under these circumstances they dreamt, as they
are accused of dreaming, of some universal division of the good things
of the earth--of some means of being utterly at leisure, if only for a
week or two.
But there are products of labor which the workmen in their time of
triumph might freely offer each other without causing the weakest
brother to forego any form of useful social work. Among such products
are those ideas which we have brought under the dominion of private
property by means of copyright and patent right. Luckily for us the
dominion is neither complete nor permanent. If the Whig landlords who
are responsible for most of the details of our glorious constitution
had been also authors and inventors for profit, we should probably
have had the strictest rights of perpetual property or even of entail
in ideas; and there would now have been a Duke of Shakspere to whom
we should all have had to pay two or three pounds for the privilege
of reading his ancestor’s works, provided that we return the copy
uninjured at the end of a fortnight. But even for the years during
which copyright and patents now last, the system which allows an author
or inventor a monopoly in his ideas is a stupid and ineffective way
either of paying for his work or of satisfying the public wants. In
each case the author or inventor obtains a maximum nett return by
leaving unsatisfied the wants, certainly of many, probably of most of
those who desire to read his book or use his invention. We all know
that the public got a very good bargain when it paid the owners of
Waterloo Bridge more than they could possibly have made by any scheme
of tolls. In the same way it is certain that any government which aimed
at the greatest happiness of the greatest number could afford to pay a
capable artist or author possibly even more than he gets from the rich
men who are his present patrons, and certainly more than he could get
by himself selling or exhibiting his productions in a society where
few possessed wealth for which they had not worked. Although the State
could thus afford to pay an extravagantly large reward for certain
forms of intellectual labor, it does not therefore follow that it would
be obliged to do so in the absence of any other important bidder.
There would always remain the sick, the infirm, and the school
children, whose wants could be satisfied from the general stock without
asking them to bear any part of the general burden. In particular, it
would be well to teach the children by actual experience the economy
and happiness which arise in the case of those who are fitly trained
from association applied to the direct satisfaction of wants, as well
as from association in the manufacture of material wealth. If we
wish to wean the children from the selfish isolation of the English
family, from the worse than savage habits produced by four generations
of capitalism, from that longing for excitement, and incapacity for
reasonable enjoyment, which are the natural results of workdays spent
in English factories, and English Sundays spent in English streets,
then we must give freely and generously to our schools. If this
generation were wise it would spend on education not only more than any
other generation has ever spent before, but more than any generation
would ever need to spend again. It would fill the school buildings
with the means not only of comfort, but even of the higher luxury;
it would serve the associated meals on tables spread with flowers,
in halls surrounded with beautiful pictures, or even, as John Milton
proposed, filled with the sounds of music; it would seriously propose
to itself the ideal of Ibsen, that every child should be brought up as
a nobleman. Unfortunately, this generation is not wise.
In considering the degree in which common owning of property would be
possible among a people just at that stage of industrial and moral
development at which we now find ourselves, it is expedient to dwell,
as I have dwelt, rather upon the necessary difficulties and limitations
of Socialism, than upon its hopes of future development. But we must
always remember that the problems which Socialism attempts to solve,
deal with conditions which themselves are constantly changing. Just as
anything like what we call Socialism would be impossible in a nation
of individualist savages like the Australian blacks, and could not,
perhaps, be introduced except by external authority among a people like
the peasants of Brittany, for whom the prospect of absolute property
in any portion of land, however small, is at once their strongest
pleasure and their only sufficient incentive to industry; so among a
people further advanced, socially and industrially, than ourselves, a
social condition would be possible which we do not now dare to work
for or even try to realise. The tentative and limited Social-Democracy
which I have sketched is the necessary and certain step to that better
life which we hope for. The interests which each man has in common with
his fellows tend more and more to outweigh those which are peculiar
to himself. We see the process even now beginning. Already, as soon
as a public library is started, the workman finds how poor a means
for the production of happiness are the few books on his own shelf,
compared with the share he has in the public collection, though that
share may have cost even less to produce. In the same way the score or
two of pounds which a workman may possess are becoming daily of less
and less advantage in production; so that the man who a few years ago
would have worked by himself as a small capitalist, goes now to work
for wages in some great business, and treats his little savings as a
fund to provide for a few months of sickness or years of old age. He
will soon see how poor a means for the production of food is his own
fire when compared with the public kitchen; and he will perhaps at
last not only get his clothes from the public store, but the delight
of his eyes from the public galleries and theatres, the delight of his
ears from the public opera, and it may be, when our present anarchy
of opinion be overpast, the refreshment of his mind from the publicly
chosen teacher. Then at last such a life will be possible for all as
not even the richest and most powerful can live to-day. The system of
property holding which we call Socialism is not in itself such a life
any more than a good system of drainage is health, or the invention
of printing is knowledge. Nor indeed is Socialism the only condition
necessary to produce complete human happiness. Under the justest
possible social system we might still have to face all those vices and
diseases which are not the direct result of poverty and over-work; we
might still suffer all the mental anguish and bewilderment which are
caused, some say by religious belief, others by religious doubt; we
might still witness outbursts of national hatred and the degradation
and extinction of weaker peoples; we might still make earth a hell for
every species except our own. But in the households of the five men out
of six in England who live by weekly wage, Socialism would indeed be
a new birth of happiness. The long hours of work done as in a convict
prison, without interest and without hope; the dreary squalor of their
homes; above all that grievous uncertainty, that constant apprehension
of undeserved misfortune which is the peculiar result of capitalist
production: all this would be gone; and education, refinement, leisure,
the very thought of which now maddens them, would be part of their
daily life. Socialism hangs above them as the crown hung in Bunyan’s
story above the man raking the muck heap--ready for them if they will
but lift their eyes. And even to the few who seem to escape and even
profit by the misery of our century, Socialism offers a new and nobler
life, when full sympathy with those about them, springing from full
knowledge of their condition, shall be a source of happiness, and not,
as now, of constant sorrow--when it shall no longer seem either folly
or hypocrisy for a man to work openly for his highest ideal. To them
belongs the privilege that for each one of them the revolution may
begin as soon as he is ready to pay the price. They can live as simply
as the equal rights of their fellows require: they can justify their
lives by work in the noblest of all causes. For their reward, if they
desire any, they, like the rest, must wait.
FOOTNOTES:
[70] Lectures on Jurisprudence. Lecture XLVIII.
[71] Happily, the ordinary anxieties as to the fate of children left
without property, especially weaklings or women unlikely to attract
husbands, may be left out of account in speculations concerning
socialised communities.
[72] “Principles of Political Economy,” p. 435.
INDUSTRY UNDER SOCIALISM.
BY ANNIE BESANT.
There are two ways in which a scheme for a future organisation of
industry may be constructed. Of these, by far the easier and less
useful is the sketching of Utopia, an intellectual gymnastic in which
a power of coherent and vivid imagination is the one desideratum. The
Utopist needs no knowledge of facts; indeed such a knowledge is a
hindrance: for him the laws of social evolution do not exist. He is a
law unto himself; and his men and women are not the wayward, spasmodic,
irregular organisms of daily life, but automata, obeying the strings
he pulls. In a word, he creates, he does not construct: he makes alike
his materials and the laws within which they work, adapting them all
to an ideal end. In describing a new Jerusalem, the only limits to its
perfection are the limits of the writer’s imagination.
The second way is less attractive, less easy, but more useful. Starting
from the present state of society, it seeks to discover the tendencies
underlying it; to trace those tendencies to their natural outworking
in institutions; and so to forecast, not the far-off future, but the
next social stage. It fixes its gaze on the vast changes wrought by
evolution, not the petty variations made by catastrophes; on the
Revolutions which transform society, not the transient riots which
merely upset thrones and behead kings. This second way I elect to
follow; and this paper on industry under Socialism therefore starts
from William Clarke’s exposition of the industrial evolution which
has been in progress during the last hundred and fifty years. In thus
building forward--in thus forecasting the transitions through which
society will probably pass, I shall scarcely touch on the ideal Social
State that will one day exist; and my sketch must lay itself open to
all the criticisms which may be levelled against a society not ideally
perfect. It is therefore necessary to bear in mind that I am only
trying to work out changes practicable among men and women as we know
them; always seeking to lay down, not what is ideally best, but what is
possible; always choosing among the possible changes that which is on
the line towards the ideal, and will render further approach easier. In
fact this paper is an attempt to answer the “How?” so often heard when
Socialism is discussed. Large numbers of people accept, wholly or in
part, the Socialist theory: they are intellectually convinced of its
soundness or emotionally attracted by its beauty; but they hesitate to
join in its propaganda, because they “don’t see where you are going to
begin,” or “don’t see where you are going to stop.” Both difficulties
are disposed of by the fact that we are not “going to begin.” There
will never be a point at which a society crosses from Individualism to
Socialism. The change is ever going forward; and our society is well on
the way to Socialism. All we can do is to consciously co-operate with
the forces at work, and thus render the transition more rapid than it
would otherwise be.