THIRD DAY
(_Debate on Point 2 of the Agenda, continued_)
JOHANN STORM (_Right_): I think that the lack of any analogy between the
frequent attempts to save society undertaken by small capitalists or
communists and the institutions of Freeland has been made sufficiently
clear. I think also that we are convinced that the exceptional external
advantages, which may have at any rate favoured and assisted the success of
Freeland, are not of a kind to suggest a fear that our proposed work will
fail for the want of such advantages. But we do not yet know whether the
success of social reform is exposed to danger from any conditions inherent
in human nature, and therefore universally to be met with. We have, in our
discussion upon the first point of the agenda, established the fact that,
thanks to the control which has been acquired over the forces of nature,
exploitation has become an obstacle to civilisation, and its removal a
necessity of civilisation. But severe criticism cannot be satisfied with
this. For is everything which is necessary to the progress of civilisation
consequently also possible? What if economic justice, though an
extraordinary vehicle of civilisation, were for some reason unfortunately
impracticable? What if that marvellous prosperity, which astonishes us so
much in Freeland, were only a transient phenomenon, and carried in itself
the germ of decay, despite, nay, because of, its fabulous magnitude? In a
word, what if mankind could not permanently, and as a whole, participate in
that progress the necessary condition of which is economic justice?
The evidence to the contrary, already advanced, culminates in the
proposition that the exploitation of man by man was necessary only so long
as the produce of human labour did not suffice to provide abundance and
leisure for all. But what if other influences made exploitation and
servitude necessary, influences the operation of which could not be stayed
by the increased productiveness of labour, perhaps could never be stayed?
The most powerful hindrance to the permanent establishment of a condition
of economic justice, with its consequences of happiness and wealth, is
recognised by the anxious student of the future in the danger of
over-population. But as this is a special point in the agenda, I, like my
colleagues who have already spoken, will postpone what occurs to my mind
upon the subject. There are, however, other and not less important
difficulties. Can a society, which lacks the stimulus of self-interest,
permanently exist and make progress, and succeed in making public spirit
and rational enlightenment take the place thoroughly, and with equal
effectiveness, of self-interest? Does not the same apply to private
property? Self-interest and private property are not altogether set aside
by the institutions of Freeland. I readily admit this, but they are
materially restricted. Even under the rule of economic justice the
individual is himself responsible for the greater or less degree of his
prosperity--the connection between what he himself does and what he gets is
not altogether dissolved; but as the commonwealth unconditionally protects
every man in all cases against want, therefore against the ultimate
consequences of his own mistakes or omissions, the stimulating influence of
self-responsibility is very materially diminished. Just so we see private
property abolished, though not entirely, yet in its most important
elements. The earth and all the natural forces inherent in it are declared
ownerless; the means of production are common property; will that, can
that, remain so everywhere, and for all time, without disastrous
consequences? Will public spirit permanently fill the office of that
affectionate far-seeking care which the owner bestows upon the property for
which he alone is responsible? Will not the gladsome absence of care, which
has certainly hitherto been brilliantly conspicuous in Freeland, eventually
degenerate into frivolity and neglect of that for which no one in
particular is responsible? The fact that this has not yet happened may
perhaps be due--for it is not yet a generation since this commonwealth was
founded--to the dominant enthusiasm that marked the beginning. New brooms,
it is said, sweep clean. The Freelander sees the eyes of the whole world
fixed upon him and his doings; he feels that he is still the pioneer of new
institutions; he is proud of those institutions, every worker here to the
last man holds himself responsible for the way and manner in which he
fulfils the apostolate of universal freedom to which he is called. Will
this continue permanently: in particular, will the whole human race feel
and act thus? I doubt it; at least, I am not fully convinced that it must
necessarily be so. And what if it is not so? What if, we will not say all,
but many nations show themselves to be unable to dispense with the stimulus
of want-inspired self-interest, the lure of unconditioned private property,
without sinking into mental stagnation and physical indolence? These are
questions to which we now require answers.
RICHARD HELD (_Centre_): The previous speaker finds that self-interest and
private property are such powerful spurs to activity that, without their
full and unrestricted influence, permanent human progress is scarcely
conceivable, and that it is extremely uncertain whether public spirit would
be an effective substitute for them. I go much farther. I assert that
without these two means of activity no commonwealth can be expected to
thrive, unless human nature is radically changed, or labour ceases to
require effort. Every attempt in the domain of economics to substitute
public spirit or any other ethical motive for self-interest must
immediately, and not merely in its ultimate issue, prove an ignominious
fiasco. I think it quite unnecessary to give special proof of this; but for
the very reason that self-interest and its correlative, private property,
are the best incitements to labour, and can be effectively replaced by no
surrogate--for this very reason, I contend, are the institutions of
economic justice immensely superior in this respect to those of the
exploiting system of industry. For they alone really give full play to
self-interest and the right of private ownership: the exploiting system
only falsely pretends to do this.
For servitude is, in truth, the negation of self-interest. Self-interest
assumes that the worker serves his 'own' interest by the trouble he takes;
does this apply to the _régime_ of exploitation: does the servant work for
his _own_ profit? With reference to the question of self-interest, anyone
who would show that economic justice was less advantageous than servitude
would have to assert that labour was the most productive and profitable
when the worker produced, not for his own, but for some one else's profit.
But it will perhaps be objected that the employer produces for his own
profit. Right. But, apart from the fact that this, strictly speaking, has
nothing to do with the stimulating effect of self-interest upon labour--for
here it is not the profit of his own but of some one else's labour that
comes in question--it is clear that a system which secures to only a
minority the profit of work must be infinitely less influential than the
one we are now considering, which secures the profit to every worker. In
reality the exploiting world, with very few exceptions, knows only men who
labour without getting the profit themselves, and men who do not labour
themselves yet get profit from labour; in the exploiting world to labour
for one's own profit is quite an accidental occurrence. With what right,
then, does exploitation dare to plume itself upon making use of
_self_-interest as a motive to labour? _Some one else's_ interest is the
right description of the motive to labour that comes into play under
exploitation; and that this should prove itself to be more effective than
the self-interest which economic justice has to introduce into the modern
world as a novelty it would be somewhat difficult to demonstrate.
It is nearly the same with private property. What boundless presumption it
is to claim for a system which robs ninety-nine per cent. of mankind of all
and every certainty of possessing property, and leaves to them nothing that
they can call their own but the air they breathe--what presumption it is to
claim for such a system that it makes use of private property as a stimulus
to human activity, and to urge this claim as against another system which
converts all men without exception into owners of property, and in fact
secures to them unconditionally, and without diminution, all that they are
able in any way to produce! Or does, perhaps, the superiority of the
'private property' of the exploiting system lie in the fact that it extends
to things which the owner has _not_ himself produced? Unquestionably the
adherents of the old system have no clear conception of what is _mine_ and
what is _thine_. What properly belongs to _me_? 'Everything you can take
from anyone, 'would be their only answer, if they were but to speak
honestly. Because this appropriation of the property of others has, in the
course of thousands of years, been formulated into certain established
rules, consecrated by cruel necessity, the adherents of the old system have
completely lost the natural conception of private property, the conception
which is inherent in the nature of things. It passes their comprehension
that, though force can possess and make use of whom it pleases, yet the
free and untrammelled use of one's own powers is the inalienable property
of everyone, and that consequently any political or social system which
overrides this inalienable personal right of every man is based, not upon
property, but upon robbery. This robbery may be necessary, nay, useful--we
have seen that for thousands of years it actually was useful--but
'property' it never will be, and whoever thinks it is has forgotten what
property is.
After what has been said, it seems to me scarcely necessary to spend many
words in dispelling the fear that frivolity or carelessness in the
treatment of the means of production will result from a modified form of
property. As to frivolity, it will suffice to ask whether hopeless misery
has proved itself to be such a superior stimulus to economic prudence as to
make it dangerous to supersede it by a personal responsibility which,
though it lacks the spur of misery, is of a thoroughly comprehensive
character. And as to the fear lest carelessness in the treatment of the
means of production should prevail, this fear could have been justified
only if in the former system the workers were owners of the means of
production. Private property in these will, it is true, not be given to
them by the new system, but instead of it the undiminished enjoyment of the
produce of those means; and he whose admiration of the beauties of the
existing system does not go so far as to consider the master's rod a more
effective stimulus to foresight than the profit of the workers may rest
satisfied that even in this respect things will be better and not worse.
CHARLES PHUD (_Right_): I do not at all understand how the previous speaker
can dispute the fact that in the former system self-interest is that which
conditions the quantity of work. No one denies that the workers must give
up a part of the profit of their labour; but another part remains theirs,
hence they labour for their own profit, though not exclusively so. At any
rate they must labour if they do not wish to starve, and one would think
that this stimulus is the most effectual one possible. So much as to the
denial that self-interest is the moving spring of so-called exploited
labour. As to the attack upon the conception of property advanced by those
of us who defend, not exactly the existing evil condition of things, but a
rational and consistent reform of it, I would with all modesty venture to
remark that our sense of justice was satisfied because no one compelled the
worker to share with the employer. He made a contract as a free man with
the employer.... [General laughter.] You may laugh, but it is so. In
countries that are politically free nothing prevents the worker from
labouring on his own account alone; it is, therefore, at any rate incorrect
to call the portion which he surrenders to the employer robbery.
BÉLA SZÉKELY (_Centre_): It seems to me to be merely a dispute about a word
which the previous speaker has attempted to settle. He calls wages a part
of the profit of production. It may be that here and there the workers
really receive a part of the profit as wages, or as an addition to the
wages. With us, and, if I am rightly informed, in the country of the
speaker also, this was not generally customary. We rather paid the workers,
who were quite unconcerned about the profits of their work, an amount
sufficient to maintain them; profits--and losses when there were any--fell
exclusively to the lot of the production, the employers. He could have said
with nearly as much justice that his oxen or his horses participated in the
profits of production. When I say 'nearly,' I mean that this could as a
rule be said _more_ justly of oxen and horses, for, while those useful
creatures are for the most part better fed when their labour has enriched
their master, this happens very rarely in the case of our two-logged
rational beasts of labour.
Then the previous speaker made hunger absolutely identical with
self-interest. The masses _must_ labour or starve. Certainly. But the slave
must labour or be whipped: thus this strange logic would make it appear
that the slave is also stimulated to labour by self-interest. Or will the
arguer fall back upon the assertion that self-interest refers merely to the
acquisition of material goods? That would be false; self-interest does not
after all either more or less prompt men to avoid the whip than to appease
hunger. But I will not argue about such trifles: we will drop the rod and
the whip as symbols of activity stimulated by self-interest. But how does
it stand with those slave-holders who--probably in the interest of the
'freedom of labour'--do not whip their lazy slaves, but allow them to
starve? Is it not evident that the previous speaker would, under their
_régime_, set self-interest upon the throne as the inciter to work? That
hunger is a very effectual means of _compulsion_, a more effectual one than
the whip, no one will deny; hence it has everywhere superseded the latter,
and very much to the advantage of the employer. But self-interest? The very
word itself implies that the profit of the labour is the worker's own. So
much as to hunger.
And now as to the security against the injustice of exploitation; for my
own part I do not understand this at all. The workers were 'free,' nothing
compelled them to produce for other men's advantage? Yes, certainly,
nothing but the trifle--hunger. They could leave it alone, if they wished
to starve! Just the 'freedom' which the slave has. If he does not mind
being whipped, there is nothing to compel him to work for his master. The
bonds in which the 'free' masses of the exploiting society languish are
tighter and more painful than the chains of the slave. The word 'robbery'
does not please the previous speaker? It is, indeed, a hard and hateful
word; but the 'robber' is not the individual exploiter, but the exploiting
society, and this was formerly, in the bitter need of the struggle for
existence, compelled to practise this robbery. Is the slaughter in battle
any the less homicide because it is done at the command, not of the
individual, but of the State, which is frequently acting under compulsion?
It will be said that this kind of killing is not forbidden by the penal
law, nay, that it is enjoined by our duty to our country, and that only
forbidden kinds of killing can be called 'homicide.' _Juridically_ that is
quite correct; and if it occurred to anyone to bring a charge of killing in
battle before a court of justice he would certainly be laughed at. But he
would make himself quite as ludicrous who, because killing in war is
allowed, would deny that such killing was homicide if the point under
consideration was, not whether the act was juridically penal, but how to
define homicide as a mode of violently putting a man to death. So
exploitation is no robbery in the eye of the penal law; but if every
appropriation to one's self of the property of another can be called
robbery--and this is all that the present case is concerned with--then is
robbery and nothing else the basis of every exploiting society, of the
modern 'free' society no less than of the ancient or mediaeval
slave-holding or serf-keeping societies. [Long-continued applause, in which
Messrs. Johann Storm and Charles Prud both joined.]
JAMES BROWN (_Right_): Our colleague from Hungary has so pithily described
the true characteristics of self-interest and property in the exploiting
society, that nothing more is to be said upon that subject. But even if it
is correct that these two motive springs of labour can be placed in their
right position only by economic justice, it still remains to be asked
whether the only way of doing this--namely, the organisation of free,
self-controlling, unexploited labour--will prove to be everywhere and
without exception practicable. Little would be gained by the solemn
proclamation of the principle that every worker is his own master, and the
complete concession to all workers of a right of disposal of the means of
production, if those workers were to prove incapable of making an adequate
use of such rights. The final and decisive question, therefore, is whether
the workers of the future will always and everywhere exhibit that
discipline, that moderation, that wisdom, which are indispensable to the
organisation of truly profitable and progressive production? The exploiting
industry has a routine which has taken many thousands of years for its
development. The accumulated experience of untold generations teaches the
employer under the old system how to proceed in order to control a crowd of
servants compelled dumbly to obey. He, nevertheless, frequently fails, and
only too often are his plans wrecked by the insubordination of those under
him. The leaders of the workers' associations of the future have as good as
no experience to guide them in the choice of modes of association; they
will have as masters those whom they should command, and yet we are told
that success is certain, nay, success must be certain if the associated
free society is not to be convulsed to its very foundations. For whilst the
exploiting society confines the responsibility for the fate of the separate
undertakings to those undertakings themselves, the so-often-mentioned
solidarity of interests in the free society most indissolubly connects the
weal and the woe of the community with that of every separate undertaking.
I shall be glad to be taught better; but until I am, I cannot help seeing
in what has just been said grounds for fear which the experience of
Freeland until now is by no means calculated to dissipate. The workers of
Freeland have understood how to organise and discipline themselves: does it
follow from this that the workers everywhere will be equally intelligent?
MIGUEL SPADA (_Left_): I will confine myself to a brief answer to the
question with which the previous speaker closed. It certainly does not
follow that the attempt to organise and discipline labour without
capitalist employers must necessarily succeed among _all_ nations simply
because it has succeeded among the Freelanders, and will unquestionably
succeed among numerous other peoples. It is possible, nay, probable, that
some nations may show themselves incapable of making use of this highest
kind of spontaneous activity; so much the worse for them. But I hope that
no one will conclude from this that those peoples who are not thus
incapable--even if they should find themselves in the minority--ought to
refrain from such activity. The more capable will then become the
instructors of the less capable. Should the latter, however, show
themselves to be, not merely temporarily incapable, but permanently
intractable, then will they disappear from the face of the earth, just as
intractable cannibals must disappear when they come into contact with
civilised nations. The delegate who proposed the question may rest assured
that the nation to which he belongs will not be numbered among the
incapable ones.
VLADIMUR TONOF (_Freeland_): The honourable member from England (Brown) has
formed an erroneous conception of the difficulties of the organisation and
discipline now under consideration, as well as of the importance of any
miscarriage of individual enterprises in a free community. As to the former
matter, I wish to show that in the organisation of associated capital,
which is well known to have been carried out for centuries, there is an
instructive and by no means to be despised foreshadowing of associated
labour, so far as relates to the modes of management and superintendence to
be adopted in such cases. Of course there are profound distinctions which
have to be taken into consideration; but it has been proved, and it is in
the nature of things, that the differences are all in favour of associated
labour. In this latter, for instance, there will not be found the chief
sins of associations of capitalists--namely, lack of technical knowledge
and indifference to the objects of the undertaking on the part of the
shareholders; and therefore it is possible completely to dispense with
those useless and crippling kinds of control-apparatus with which the
statutes of the companies of capitalists are ballasted. As a rule, the
single shareholder understands nothing of the business of his company, and
quite as seldom dreams of interfering in the affairs of the company
otherwise than by receiving his dividends. Notwithstanding, _he_ is the
master of the undertaking, and in the last resort it is his vote that
decides the fate of it; what provisions are therefore necessary in order to
protect this shareholder from the possible consequences of his own
ignorance, credulity, and negligence! The associated workers, on the
contrary, are fully acquainted with the nature of their undertaking, the
success of which is their chief material interest, and is, without
exception, recognised as such by them. This is a decisive advantage. Or
does anyone see a special difficulty in the fact that the workers are
placed under the direction of persons whose appointment depends upon the
votes of the men who are to be directed? On the same ground might the
authority of all elective political and other posts be questioned. The
directors have no means of _compelling_ obedience? A mistake; they lack
only the right of arbitrarily dismissing the insubordinate. But this right
is not possessed by many other bodies dependent upon the discipline and the
reasonable co-operation of their members; nevertheless, or rather on this
very account, such bodies preserve better discipline than those
confederations in which obedience is maintained by the severest forcible
measures. It is true that where there is no forcible compulsion discipline
cannot so easily pass over into tyranny; but this is, in truth, no evil.
Moreover, the directors of free associations of workers can put into force
a means of compulsion, the power of which is more unqualified and absolute
than that of the most unmitigated tyranny: the all-embracing reciprocal
control of the associates, whose influence even the most obstinate cannot
permanently withstand. It is certainly indispensable that the workers as a
whole, or a large majority of them, should be reasonable men whose
intelligence is sufficient to enable them to understand their own
interests. But this is the first and foremost _conditio sine quâ non_ of
the establishment of economic justice. That economic justice--up to the
present the highest outcome of the evolution of mankind--is suitable only
to men who have raised themselves out of the lowest stage of brutality, is
in no respect open to question. Hence it follows that nations and
individuals who have not yet reached this stage of development must be
educated up to it; and this educational work is not difficult if it be but
undertaken with a will. We doubt that it could altogether fail anywhere, if
undertaken seriously and in the right way.
And now let us look at the second side of the question which has been
thrown out. Is it correct that, in consequence of the solidarity of
interests which exists in the free community, the weal and woe of the whole
are indissolubly bound up with the success of any individual undertaking?
If it be meant by this that in such a community everyone is interested in
the weal of everyone else, and consequently in the success of every
undertaking, then it fully expresses what is the fact; but--and this was
evidently the meaning of the speaker--if it is meant that the weal of such
a community is dependent upon the success of every single undertaking of
its members, then it is utterly groundless. If an undertaking does not
thrive, its members leave it and turn to one that is more prosperous--that
is all. On the other hand, this mobility of labour, bound up with the
solidarity of interests, protects the free community from the worse
consequences of actual miscarriage. If there should be an ill-advised
choice of directors, the unqualified officials can do but relatively little
mischief; they see themselves--that is, the undertaking under their
control--promptly forsaken by the workers, and the losses are insignificant
because confined within a small area. In fact, this mobility proves itself
to be in the last resort the most effectual corrective of all kinds of
mistakes, the agency by which all the defective forms of organisation and
the less capable minds are thrust aside and automatically superseded by
better. For the undertakings which, from any cause whatever, fail to thrive
are always in a comparatively short time absorbed by better, without
involving in ruin--as happens under the exploiting system of society--those
who were engaged in the former undertakings. Hence it is not necessary that
these free organisations should in all cases strike the highest note at the
very beginning in order eventually to attain to perfect order and
excellence; for in the friendly competition what is defective rapidly
vanishes from sight, being merged in what is proved to be superior, which
then alone holds the field.
JOHN KILMEAN (_Right_): Let us grant, then, that the associations of free
labour are organised as well as, or better than, the capitalists'
associations of the old exploiting world. Is there, nevertheless, no ground
to fear that they will exhibit serious defects in comparison with
undertakings conducted by individual employers? That self-interest, so far
as concerns the workers themselves, can for the first time have full play
in stimulating activity is true; but with respect to the management the
reverse is the fact. At least one would think that the interest of the
individual undertaker in the success of the business belonging to him alone
must be a keener one than that of directors, who are nothing more than
elected functionaries whose industrial existence is in no way indissolubly
connected with the undertaking. The advantages which the private
undertaking conducted by the individual proprietor has hitherto exhibited
over the joint-stock company, it must, in the nature of things, also have
over the free associations.
THEODOR YPSILANTI (_Freeland_): Let us assume, for the present, that this
is so. But are the advantages of the individual undertaker over the
joint-stock company really so great? It is not necessary to theorise for
and against, since practice has long ago pronounced its verdict. And what
is this? Simply that the joint-stock undertaking has gradually surpassed,
nay, in the most important and the most extensive branches of business
totally superseded, the much-lauded private undertaking. It can be
confidently assorted that in every kind of undertaking which is large
enough to support the--certainly somewhat costly--apparatus of a
joint-stock company, the joint-stock company is undisputed master of the
field, so that there remains to the private undertaking, as its domain,
nothing more than the dwarf concerns with which our free society does not
meddle. It cannot be said that this is due to the larger money power of the
combined capital, for even relatively small undertakings, whose total
capital is many times less than that of a great many private millionaires,
prefer, I may say choose exclusively, the joint-stock form. It is quite as
great a mistake to ascribe this fact to the reluctance of private
capitalists to run the risk involved in certain undertakings, and to their
consequent preference for joint-stock undertakings; for, in the first
place, it is generally the least risky branches of business in which the
joint-stock form most exclusively prevails; and in the second place, we see
only too often that individual capitalists place enormous sums in single
companies, and even found undertakings in a joint-stock form with their own
capital. But a decisive proof of the superiority of the joint-stock company
is the universal fact that the great capitalists are everywhere entrusting
the control of their property to joint-stock companies. If the
account-books of the wealthy in every civilised exploiting country were to
be examined, it would unquestionably be found that at least nine-tenths of
the capitalists had employed the greatest part of their capital which was
not invested in land in the purchase of shares. This, however, simply shows
that the rich prefer not to manage their wealth themselves, but to allow it
to be managed by joint stock companies.
The orthodox theory, spun out of the flimsiest fictions, is not able to do
anything with this fact; it therefore ignores it, or seeks to explain it by
a number of fresh fictions, such as the fable of divided risk, or some
other similar subterfuge. The truth is that the self-interest of the
employer has very little to do with the real direction of the businesses
belonging to him--so far as concerns great undertakings--for not the
employer, but specially appointed wage-earners, are, as a rule, the actual
directors; the alleged advantage of the private undertaking, therefore,
does not exist at all. On the other hand, the undertaking of the private
capitalist is at a very heavy disadvantage in competition with that of the
joint-stock company, inasmuch as the latter almost always attracts by far
the greater amount of intelligence. The capitalist, even the largest, is on
the average no cleverer than other men--that is, generally speaking, he is
_not_ particularly clever. It may, perhaps, be objected that he would
scarcely have attained to great wealth had he not possessed superior
abilities; but apart from the fact that it has yet to be established
whether in the modern exploiting society it is really special mental gifts,
and not rather other things, that lead to the accumulation of great wealth,
most large fortunes are no longer in the hands of the original acquirers,
but in those of their heirs. Consequently, in private undertakings, if not
the actual direction, yet certainly the highest authority, and particularly
the final decision as to the choice of the actual directors, lies in the
hands of men who, shall we say, half of them, possess less than the
average, nine-tenths of the rest about the average, and only one-twentieth
of them more than the average of human intelligence. Naturally
nineteen-twentieths of the undertakings thought out and established by such
men will be either indifferent or bad. It will be further objected that it
is in the main the same men to whom a similar _rôle_ falls in the creation
and officering of joint-stock companies. Very true. But here it is usual
for the few able men among the wealthy to take the _rôle_ of leaders; the
stupid or the moderately gifted are changed from autocratic despots into a
herd of common docile cattle, who, led by the instinct of self-interest,
blindly follow the abler men. And even when it is otherwise, when the
incapable rich man stubbornly insists upon thrusting forward his empty
pate, he finds himself compelled to give reasons for what he does, to
engage in the game of question and answer with his fellow shareholders, and
ordinarily he is thus preserved from the gross follies which he would be
sure to commit if the whole responsibility rested upon himself. In a word,
capitalists acting together as joint-stock companies as a rule exhibit more
ability than capitalists acting independently. But even if it were not so,
the selections which they make--as shareholders--in appointing the chief
managers of their business are infinitely better than those made by private
capitalists, because a whole category of intelligences, and that of the
highest and best kind, stands at the disposal of the joint-stock company,
but not of the private undertaker. Many persons who offer themselves as
directors, members of council of administration, presidents, of joint-stock
companies, would never condescend to enter into the service of an
individual. The general effect of all this is, that joint-stock companies
in the greater number of cases possess far abler, more intelligent managers
than private undertakings--a circumstance which no one will overlook who is
but even moderately well acquainted with the facts of the case.
The alleged superiority of the private undertaking, supposed to be due to
the personal care and oversight of the owner, is therefore nothing more
than one of the many fables in which the exploiting world believes in spite
of the most obvious lack of truth. But even the trifling advantages which
the private undertaking really has over the joint-stock company cannot be
claimed as against freely associated labour. Colleague Tonof has already
pointed out that ignorance and indifference, those most dangerous
characteristics of most shareholders, are not to be feared in those who
take part in labour associations. Here it can never happen that an
unscrupulous minority will obtain control of the management and exploit the
undertaking for the benefit of some private interest; here it is natural
that the whole body of members, who are interested in the successful
conduct of the business, should incessantly and attentively watch the
behaviour of the officials they have elected; and in view of the perfect
transparency of all the business transactions in the free community, secret
practices and crooked ways--those inevitable expedients of dishonour--are
not to be thought of. In a word, the form of labour organisation
corresponding to the higher stage of civilisation proves itself to be
infinitely superior in every respect to the form of organisation prevalent
in the past--a fact which, strictly speaking, is a matter of course.
It does not follow that this form of organisation is the most suitable for
every kind of labour; there are branches of production--I mention merely
the artistic or the scientific--in which the individual must stand by
himself; but we do not apply the principle of association to these
branches. For no one would forcibly impose this principle, and the
individual freedom that is nowhere interfered with is able of itself to
take care that what is done is everywhere done in the way that has been
found to be most consistent with nature, and best.
MIGUEL DIEGO (_Right_): We know now that the new system unites in itself
all the natural requisites of success; it has been shown before that its
introduction was demanded by the progress of civilisation. How comes it
that, in spite of all, the new system enters the world, not as the product
of the co-operation of elementary automatically occurring historical
events, but rather as a kind of art-product, as an artificially produced
outcome of the efforts of certain individuals? What if the International
Free Society had not been formed, or if its appeal had been without
response, its work crushed in the germ, or in some other way made to
miscarry? It will be admitted that these are conceivable contingencies.
What would have become of economic justice if any one of these
possibilities had occurred? If social reform is in truth an inevitable
necessity, it must ultimately be realised in spite of the opposition of the
whole world; it must show itself to be indissolubly bound up with forces
which will give it the victory over prejudice, ill-will, and adverse
accident. Thus alone would proof be given that the work in which we are
engaged is something more than the ephemeral fruit of fallible human
ingenuity--that rather those men who gave it the initial impulse and
watched over its development were acting simply as the instruments of the
universal force which, if _they_ had not done the work, would have found
other instruments and other ways to attain the inevitable end.
HENRI NEY (_Freeland_): If the existence of economic justice as an
established fact depended upon the action of the founders of Freeland,
little could have been said, not merely as to its necessary character, but
also as to the certainty of its continuance. For what individual men
attempt, other men can frustrate. It is true that, as far as outward
appearances go, all historical events are human work: but the great
necessary events of history are distinguished from merely accidental
occurrences by the fact that in them all the actors are clearly seen to be
simply the instruments of destiny, instruments which the genius of mankind
calls into being when it is in need of them. We do not know who invented
language, the first tool, writing; but whoever it was, we know that he was
a mere instrument of progress, in the sense that, with the same certainty
with which we express any other natural law, we can venture to assert that
language, the tool, writing, would have been invented even if their
respective accidental inventors had never seen the light. The same holds
good of economic freedom: it would have been realised, even if none of us
who actually realised it for the first time had existed. Only in such a
case the form of its entrance into the world of historical fact would
probably have been a different, perhaps a more pacific, a more joyous one
still than that of which we are the witnesses; but perhaps it might have
been a violent and horrible one.
In order to show this in a manner that excludes all doubt, it must first be
demonstrated that the continuance of modern society as it has been evolved
in the course of the last century is in the very nature of things an
impossibility. For this purpose you must allow me to carry you back some
distance.
In the original society of barbarism, when the productiveness of labour was
so small that the weaker could not be exploited by the stronger, and one's
own prosperity depended upon the suppression and annihilation of
competitors, a thirst for blood, cruelty, cunning, were not merely
necessary to the self-preservation of the individual, but they were
obviously serviceable to the society to which the individual belonged. They
were, therefore, not only universally prevalent, but were reckoned as
virtues. The most successful and most merciless slayer of men was the most
honourable member of his tribe, and was lauded in speech and song as an
example worthy of imitation.
When the productiveness of labour increased, these 'virtues' lost much of
their original importance; but they were not converted into vices until
slavery was invented, and it became possible to utilise the labour instead
of the flesh of the conquered. Then bloodthirsty cruelty, which hitherto
had been profitable, became injurious, since, for the sake of a transient
enjoyment--that of eating human flesh--it deprived the victorious
individual, as well as the society to which he belonged, of the permanent
advantage of augmented prosperity and increased power. Consequently, the
bestial thirst for blood gradually disappeared in the new form of the
struggle for existence, and from a cherished virtue it passed into a
characteristic which met with increasing disapproval--that is, it became a
vice. It necessarily became a vice, for only those tribes which were the
subjects of this process of moral transformation could enjoy all the
advantages of the new forms of labour and of the new social institution,
slavery, and could therefore increase in civilisation and power, and make
use of their augmented power to extirpate or to bring into subjection the
tribes that persisted in their old cannibal customs. In this way, in the
course of thousands of years, there grew up among men a new ethics which,
in its essential features, has been preserved until our days--the ethics of
exploitation.
But to call this ethics 'philanthropy' is the strangest of mistakes. It is
true that the savage bloodthirsty hatred between man and man had given
place to milder sentiments; but it is a long way from those sentiments to
genuine philanthropy, by which we understand the recognition of our
fellow-man as our equal, and not merely that chilly benevolence which we
entertain towards even dumb animals. Real philanthropy is as inconsistent
with exploitation as with cannibalism. For though the new form of the
struggle for existence abhors the death of the vanquished, it substitutes
for it the oppression and subjugation of man by man as an imperative
requirement of social prosperity. And it should be clearly understood that
real and unselfish philanthropy is not merely not demanded by the kind of
struggle for existence which is carried on by the exploiting society, but
is known to be distinctly injurious, and is quite impracticable as a
universally operative race-instinct. Individuals may love their fellow-men
as themselves; but as long as exploitation is in force, such men must
remain rare, and by no means generally esteemed, exceptions. Only hypocrisy
or gross self-deception will question this. Certainly the so-called
civilised nations of the West have for more than a thousand years written
upon their banners the words 'Love thy neighbour as thyself,' and have not
shrunk from asserting that they lived up to those words, or that at least
they endeavoured to do so. But in truth they loved their fellow-man, in the
best of cases, as a useful domestic animal, have without the slightest
scruple profited by his painful toil, by his torture, and have not been
prevented by any sentiment of horror from slaughtering him in cold blood
when such a course was or seemed to be profitable to them. And such were
not the sentiments and feelings of a few particularly hard-hearted
individuals, but of the whole body of society; they were not condemned but
imperatively demanded by public opinion, lauded as virtues under all sorts
of high-sounding names, and, so far as deeds and not empty phrases were in
question, their antithesis, the genuine philanthropy, passed at best as
pitiable folly, or more generally as a crime worthy of death. He who
uttered the words quoted above, and to Whom prayers were offered in the
churches, would have been repeatedly crucified, burnt, broken on the wheel,
hanged by them all, in the most recent past perhaps imprisoned, had He
again ventured, as He did nineteen centuries ago, to preach in the
market-place, in burning living words that could not be misunderstood, that
which men's purblind eyes and their minds clouded by a thousand years of
ancient self-deception read, but did not understand, in the writings of His
disciples.
But the decisive point is, that in the epoch of exploitation mankind could
not have thought or felt, not to say acted, otherwise. They were compelled
to practise exploitation so long as this was a necessity of civilisation;
they were therefore unable either to feel or exercise philanthropy, for
that was as little in harmony with exploitation as repugnance to homicide
was with cannibalism. Just as in the first barbaric epoch of mankind that
which the exploiting period called 'humanity' would have been detrimental
to success in the struggle for existence, so, later, that which _we_ call
humanity, the genuine philanthropy, would have placed any nation that had
practised it at a disadvantage. To eat or to be eaten--that was the
alternative in the epoch of cannibalism; to oppress or to be oppressed, in
the epoch of exploitation.
A change in the form and productiveness of labour has recently been
effected; neither social institutions nor moral sensibilities can escape
the influence of that change. But--and here I come to the last decisive
point--there are certainly several alternatives conceivable. The first is
that with which we have hitherto been exclusively occupied: the social
institutions accommodate themselves to the change in the form of labour,
and the modification of the struggle for existence thus brought about leads
to a corresponding revolution in moral sentiments; friendly competition and
perfect solidarity of interests supersede the reciprocal struggle for
advantage, and the highest philanthropy supersedes the exploitation of man.
If we would once for all remove the last doubt as to the unqualified
necessity of this phase of evolution, let us suppose that the contrary has
happened, that the adaptation of the social institutions to the modified
form of labour is not effected. At any rate the mind can imagine such a
possibility; and I hold it to be superfluous, at this point in the
demonstration, to discuss the probability or the improbability of such a
supposition--we simply assume the case. But it would be absurd likewise to
assume that this persistence of the old form of the social institutions
could occur without being necessarily accompanied by very material
reactions both upon the forms of labour and upon the moral instincts of
mankind. Those over-orthodox but not less thoughtless social politicians
who accept the above assumption, hold it to be possible for a cause of such
enormous and far-reaching importance as is an increased productiveness of
labour, that makes it possible for all men to enjoy abundance and leisure,
to remain without the slightest influence upon the course of human
evolution. They overlook the fact that the struggle for existence in human
society must in any case be changed under the influence of this factor,
whether the social institutions undergo a corresponding adaptation or not,
and that consequently the inquiry must in any case be made what reaction
this changed form of the struggle for existence can or must exercise upon
the totality of human institutions?
And in what consists the change in the struggle for existence, in such a
case as that indicated above? _Simply in a partial reversion to the form of
struggle of the first, the cannibal, epoch of mankind!_
We have seen that exploitation transformed the earlier struggle, that aimed
at annihilating the competitor, into one directed towards his subjugation.
But now, when the productiveness of labour is so great that the
consumption, kept down by exploitation, is no longer able to follow it, the
suppression, the--if not the physical, yet the industrial--annihilation of
the competitor is once more a necessary condition of everyone's prosperity,
and the struggle for existence assumes at once the forms of subjugation and
annihilation. In the domain of industry it now profits little to have
arbitrary authority over any number of human subjects of exploitation; if
the exploiter is not able to drive his co-exploiter from the market, he
must succumb in the struggle for existence. And the exploited now have not
merely to defend themselves from the harsh treatment of their masters: they
must, if they would ward off hunger, fight with tooth and claw for the only
too few places at the food-crib in the 'labour market.' Is it conceivable
that such a terrible alteration in the fundamental conditions of the
struggle for existence can remain without influence upon human ethics?
Cause and effect _must_ correspond--the ethics of the cannibal epoch _must_
triumphantly return. In consequence of the altered character of the
conflict of annihilation, the former cruel and malicious instincts will
undergo a modification, but the fundamental sentiment, the unqualified
animosity against one's fellow-man, must return. During the thousands of
years when the struggle was directed towards the making use of one's
neighbour, and especially when the exploited had become accustomed to
reverence in the exploiter a higher being, there was possible between
master and servant at least that degree of attachment which exists between
a man and his beast. Neither masters nor servants had any necessary
occasion to hate each other. Mutual consideration, magnanimity, kindness,
gratitude, could in such a condition become--certainly very
sparingly--substitutes for philanthropy. But now, when exploitation and
suppression are at one and the same time the watchwords of the struggle,
the above-mentioned virtues must more and more assume the character of
obstacles to a successful struggle for existence, and must consequently
disappear in order to make room for mercilessness, cunning, cruelty,
malice. And all these disgraceful characteristics must not merely become
universally prevalent: they must also become universally esteemed, and be
raised from the category of the most shameful kinds of baseness to that of
'virtues.' As little as it is possible to conceive of a 'humane' cannibal
or of an exploiter under the influence of real philanthropy, so little is
it possible to think of a magnanimous and--in the former sense--virtuous
exploiter permanently under the colossal burden of over-production; and as
certainly as the cannibal society was compelled to recognise the thirst for
murder as the most praiseworthy of all virtues, so certainly must the
exploiting society, cursed by over-production, learn to reverence the most
cunning deceiver as its ideal of virtue. But it will be objected that,
logically unassailable as this position may be, it is contradicted by
facts. Over-production, the disproportion between the productivity of
labour and the capacity for consumption as conditioned by the existing
social institutions, has practically existed for generations; and yet it
would be a gross exaggeration to assert that the moral sensibilities of
civilised humanity had undergone such a terrible degeneration as is
indicated above. It is certainly true that, in consequence of the
increasingly reckless industrial competitive struggle, many kinds of
valueless articles are produced in larger and larger quantities--nay, that
there is beginning to prevail a certain confusion in public opinion, which
is no longer able clearly to distinguish between honest services and
successful roguery; but it is equally true, on the other hand, that never
before was humanity in all its forms so highly esteemed and so widely
diffused as it is in the present. These undeniable facts, however, do not
show that over-production can ultimately lead to any other than the
above-indicated results--which would be logical nonsense; they only show,
on the one hand, that this dreadful morbid phenomenon in the industrial
domain of mankind has not yet been long enough in existence to have fully
matured its fruit, and that, on the other hand, the moral instinct of
mankind felt a presentiment of the right way out of the economic dilemma
long before that right way had become practicable. It is only a few
generations since the disproportion between productivity and consumption
became unmistakably evident: and what are a few generations in the life of
mankind? The ethics of exploitation needed many centuries in order to
subvert that of cannibalism: why should the relapse into the ethics of
cannibalism proceed so much more rapidly? But the instinctive presentiment
that growing civilisation will be connected, not with social stagnation and
moral retrogression, but with both social and moral progress--this yearning
for liberty, equality, and fraternity ineradicably implanted in the Western
mind, despite all the follies and the horrors to which it for a time gave
rise--it was just this 'drop of foreign blood in the European family of
nations,' this Semitic-Christian leaven, which, when the time of servitude
was past, preserved that Western mind from falling even temporarily into a
servile and barbarous decay. Things will _not_ follow the last indicated
course of evolution--exploitation will _not_ persist alongside of increased
productivity; and that is the reason why the indicated moral consequences
will not ensue. If, however, it be assumed that material progress and
exploitation combined are the future lot of mankind, this cannot logically
be conceived otherwise than as accompanied by a complete moral relapse. Yet
a third form of evolution may be assumed as conceivable: in the antagonism
between the productivity of labour and the current social rights, the
former--the new form of labour--might succumb; in the face of the
impossibility of making full use of the acquired industrial capacity,
mankind might lose this capacity again. In such a case, the concord between
productivity and consumption, labour and right, would have recovered the
old basis, and as a consequence the ethics of mankind might also remain in
the same track. Progress towards genuine philanthropy would necessarily be
suspended, for the struggle for existence would, as before, be based upon
the subjugation of one's fellow-men, but the necessity for the struggle of
annihilation would be avoided. The presentiment of the possibility of such
a development was not foreign to the Western mind; there have not been
wanting, particularly during the last generations, attempts, partly
conscious and partly unconscious, to load men's minds in this direction.
Alarmed and driven nearly to distraction by the strangling embrace of
over-production, whole nations have at times attacked the fundamental
sources of production, sought to choke the springs of the fruitfulness of
labour, and persecuted with violent hatred the progress of civilisation,
whose fruits were for the time so bitter. These attacks upon popular
culture, upon the different kinds of division of labour, upon machinery,
cannot be understood except in connection with the occasional attempts to
end the discord between production and distribution by diminishing the
former. It is impossible not to see that in this way morality also would be
preserved from a degeneracy the real cause of which this sort of reformers
certainly did not understand, but which hovered before their mind's eye as
an indistinct presentiment. And now, having noticed _seriatim_ the three
conceivable forms of evolution--namely, (1) the adaptation of social rights
to the new and higher forms of labour and the corresponding evolution of a
new and higher morality; (2) the permanent antagonism between the form of
labour and social rights, and the corresponding degeneracy of morality; (3)
the adaptation of the form of labour to the hitherto existing social rights
by the sacrifice of the higher productivity, and the corresponding
permanence of the hitherto existing morality--we now ask ourselves whether
in the struggle between these three tendencies any but the first can come
off as conqueror. They all three are conceivable; but is it conceivable
that material or moral decay can assert itself by the side of both moral
and material progress, or will ultimately triumph over these? It is
possible, we will say even probable, that but for our successful
undertaking begun twenty-five years ago, mankind would for the most part
still longer have continued to traverse the path of moral degeneracy on the
one hand, and of antagonism to progress on the other; yet there would never
therefore have been altogether wanting attempts in the direction of social
deliverance, and the ultimate triumph of such attempts could be only a
question of time. No; mankind owes us nothing which it would not have
obtained without us: if we claim to have rendered any service, it is merely
that of having brought about more speedily, and perhaps with less
bloodshed, that which must have come. [Vehement and long-continued applause
and enthusiastic cheers from all sides. The leaders of the opposition one
after another shook the hands of the speaker and assured him of their
support.]
(_End of Third Day's Debate_)