GLADSTONIAN GHOSTS,
By CECIL CHESTERTON.
GLADSTONIAN GHOSTS.
BY
CECIL CHESTERTON.
PRINTED BY THE LANTHORN
PRESS, AND PUBLISHED IN
LONDON BY S. C. BROWN
LANGHAM & CO., LTD.
CONTENTS.
DEDICATION 7
I. LIBERALISM AND THE ZEITGEIST 20
II. “WHAT PORTION HAVE WE IN DAVID?” 34
III. NATIONAL PENRHYNISM 51
IV. “MILITARISM AND AGGRESSION” 70
V. THE FETISH OF FREE TRADE 92
VI. TOWARDS ANARCHISM 114
VII. OUR BRITISH MOSLEMS 142
VIII. “RETRENCHMENT AND REFORM” 159
IX. SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION 180
X. SOME MATERIALS AND A POSSIBILITY 211
DEDICATION
TO
EDGAR JEPSON.
DEDICATION.
My dear Jepson,
If (with your permission) I dedicate this essay in political criticism
to you, it is because I know that, though you parade it less, your
interest in the science of politics is fully as keen as my own. In
point of fact there is no-one whose judgment in these matters I
would trust more readily than yours. You are a philosopher; and the
philosopher’s outlook in politics is always clear, practical and
realistic as contrasted with the thoroughly romantic illusions of
the typical party man. That, by the way, is why Mr. Balfour, the
philosopher, has in the domain of parliamentary and electoral strategy
hopelessly outwitted Mr. Chamberlain, the “man of business and busy
man”--to quote his own characteristically poetic phrase.
As a philosopher you are able to see what no “practical statesman” on
either side of the House seems likely to perceive--that social and
economic politics are the only kind of politics that really matter,
and that the “chicken-in-the-pot” ideal of Henri Quatre is after all
the primary aim of all statesmanship. Three centuries of anarchic
commercialism have left us a legacy of pauperism, disease, famine,
physical degeneracy and spiritual demoralization, which in another
century will infallibly destroy us altogether if we cannot in the mean
time destroy them. And I think you share my impatience when our Radical
friends insist on discussing Irish Home Rule, Church Disestablishment
and the abolition of the House of Lords, as if such frivolities could
really satisfy the human conscience faced with the appalling realities
of the slums.
When therefore I speak of your interest in politics I am not thinking
of that rather exciting parlour game which they play at Westminster
during the spring months. In this you probably take less interest than
I; for I must confess (not altogether without shame) that the sporting
aspect of politics has always fascinated me. You, on the other hand,
have _Bridge_ to amuse you; and, when you are brought to the bar of
the Nonconformist Conscience on this count, you may fairly plead that
any man who played _Bridge_ with the peculiar mixture of ignorance,
stupidity, criminal laziness and flagrant dishonesty with which the
Front Benches play the game of politics, would infallibly be turned out
of his club and probably cut by all his acquaintances.
It may seem surprising that, taking this view of contemporary party
warfare, I should have troubled to write a book in criticism of it.
To which I can only reply that the parliamentary bridge-players are
unfortunately staking on their pastime not their own money but my
country’s interests; so that the incidents of the game become important
despite the frivolity of the players, and it seems to me that we are
on the eve of a turn of luck which may prove not only important but
disastrous.
I suppose that we are not unlikely to have a General Election within
the forthcoming year; and many indications appear to point to the
probability of a sweeping Liberal victory. I want you to consider
carefully what a Liberal victory means for us and for all serious
reformers.
A Liberal victory means one of two things; either six years
of government by the Whigs or six years of government by the
Nonconformists. There is no third alternative, for neither the old
destructive Free-thinking Radicalism of the late Charles Bradlaugh
and the almost extinct Secular Society, nor the new sentimental High
Church Radicalism of my excellent friend C. F. G. Masterman and his
associates of the _Commonwealth_ has the slightest hold on any section
of the electorate that counts politically. If you doubt this, it is
because you did not follow Masterman’s campaign at Dulwich as closely
as I did. Vehement Catholic though he was, he was forced to accept
all the political shibboleths of Nonconformity on pain of certain
annihilation; yet, even after he had gone to the very verge of what
his conscience would permit to conciliate his sectarian masters, this
did not save him from a crushing defeat. An excellent candidate, an
eloquent and effective speaker with real civic enthusiasm, he met the
same fate which overtook Bernard Shaw at St. Pancras, when he stood for
the L.C.C. And that fate will continue to overtake all who rely on
Radical support without first making their full submission--political,
theological and moral--to the Vatican of Dissent.
The Radical wing of the Liberal Party has degenerated into a political
committee of the Free Church Councils; even the Liberal League cannot
get on without making some acknowledgement of Nonconformist authority.
But the “Imperialist” section is of course less absolutely under the
control of Salem Chapel than its rival; is it fundamentally any more
progressive?
It is pathetic in the light of subsequent events to read again the
admirable article (to which by the way I am indebted for the title of
this book) contributed by Mr. Webb to the _Nineteenth Century_ three
years ago. Mr. Webb was so simple-minded as to suppose that Lord
Rosebery’s talk about “national efficiency” really meant something,
and that “Liberal Imperialism” was a genuine attempt to form a
party of progress free of Gladstonian tradition. Sancta simplicitas!
We can see now clearly enough that the Liberal Imperialists were
for the most part mere squeezable opportunists with all the effete
prejudices of the Pro-Boers minus their sturdiness of conviction,
men who wished to snatch a share in the popularity of the South
African War, but had not the slightest intention of abandoning a
single Mid-Victorian nostrum, which could still be used to catch a
few votes. On the Education Bills, Tariff Reform and Licensing, they
have Gladstonised, Miallised, Cobdenised and Wilfred-Lawsonised with
the best. And now that the Fiscal Question seems likely to drive back
into the ranks of the Liberal “Right” such men as Lord Goschen and the
Duke of Devonshire--the very men who were frightened to death of Mr.
Chamberlain’s “Socialism” as far back as 1885--all hope of reform from
that quarter is at an end. A “Liberal Imperialist” government means
Lord Rosebery orating nobly about nothing in particular, Lord Goschen
and the Duke of Devonshire acting up to their self-constituted function
of “drags upon the wheel,” and Sir Henry Fowler once more sitting
heavily on all enlightened municipal enterprise in the interests of
piratical monopolists. I see that the Whigs are already crying out for
“Free Trade concentration,” which will I imagine prove an excellent
excuse for doing nothing for the next half decade.
And yet, I fear, we shall have to accept the Whigs as the lesser of
two evils. At least their offences will in the main be negative, while
the victory of the Nonconformists means a period of legislation so
disastrous that you and I and all advanced reformers will be obliged
to cling to the House of Lords as our only bulwark against the
appalling flood of reaction. For some time the Nonconformists have
been clamouring for the repeal of the admirable Education Acts of
1902-3. They have now begun to clamour for the repeal of the Licensing
Act as well. Now, quite apart from the merits of these measures, it
is as clear as daylight that all progress will be impossible if every
government devotes its time and energies to repealing the measures of
its predecessor. This disastrous precedent will be but the first-fruit
of a Dissent-driven ministry. Meanwhile our refreshments, our
amusements, even our religious observances will be subjected to silly
sectarian taboos. Social reform will be hopelessly neglected, while we
may have to face a revival of the foolish agitation in favour of Church
Disestablishment which even Mr. Chamberlain’s marvellous genius for
electioneering could not persuade the country to take very seriously in
the eighties.
“The Whigs are a class with all the selfish prejudices and all the
vices of a class; the Radicals are a sect with all the grinding tyranny
and all the debasing fanaticism of a sect.” Those words are as true
to-day as they were when Lord Randolph Churchill spoke them nearly
twenty years ago. Indeed all that has happened since has tended to
make the Whigs more selfishly “class-conscious” and the Radicals more
debasingly sectarian.
It may be retorted that the Tories are no better equipped for the
art of statesmanship. I assent; but I say that on the whole they are
less positively dangerous. For one thing the very cloudiness of their
political outlook renders them to a great extent amenable to skilful
and systematic pressure from genuine reformers. It is often possible
to get them to pass good measures without knowing it, as Mr. Webb and
Mr. Morant are supposed to have induced them to pass an Education
Bill which would have been rejected with unanimity by the Cabinet,
the Conservative Party, the House of Lords and all three Houses of
Convocation, had its real excellence been perceived by those bodies.
Also the Tories have not always in their pockets that dilapidated
bundle of red herrings (the Church, the Lords, etc), which the Radicals
produce periodically whenever the electorate has to be deluded. But,
when all has been said, it must be confessed that there is little to
be hoped from the Tories just now. They had their chance in 1895, when
they came into power on the cry of “Social Reform.” Had they fulfilled
their pledges then, we should never have had to face the terror of
a Gladstonian resurrection. But they failed; and the great Tory
revival which Randolph Churchill inaugurated has ended in a pageant of
fashionable incompetence above, and frivolous Jingoism (inexpressibly
disquieting to serious Imperialists) below, the wires being pulled
vigorously meanwhile by the unclean hands of Hebrew Finance--a sight
that would have made Churchill sick at heart.
There remains the Labour Party which I discuss fully elsewhere. Here
I will only say that, while I believe that the only hope for England
and the Empire is in Socialism, I confess that, if I am to trust to
Socialists as I see them at present (outside our own Fabian Society) I
feel the hope to be a slender one.
To conclude: if you and I vote (as I expect we shall) for Tory
candidates at the next election, it will not be from any admiration
for the present government, rather it will be from a very natural fear
lest a worse thing befall us. I have written this book for the same
reason; it may be taken among other things as a word of advise to my
fellow-citizens to weigh carefully, before recording their verdict on
their present rulers, the respective merits of the frying pan and the
fire.
The warning, I think you at least will agree with me, is by no means
superfluous.
Yours sincerely,
CECIL CHESTERTON.
LIBERALISM AND THE ZEITGEIST.
It was the custom of Macaulay and other representative writers of the
Dark Ages to speak of the mediæval era in Europe as one of savage and
unenlightened barbarism. There is something particularly amusing to the
twentieth century observer in the patronizing tone adopted by men, who
lived in what could hardly be called a community at all, in writing of
the splendid civilization which flourished under Frederick II. and St.
Louis. For it is becoming obvious to us all now that the great movement
of the world from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century was not a
movement towards civilization but a movement away from it. Civilization
does not imply a collection of mechanical contrivances brought to a
high state of perfection--it may or may not possess such contrivances.
But it does imply a _Civitas_, a commonwealth, a conscious organization
of society for certain ends. This the age of St. Louis had, and the
age of Cobden had not. The great movement which we roughly call
“Liberalism” may therefore be very properly described as a reaction
against civilization.
I do not say it was wrong. Let none suppose that I have any share in
the factitious dreams of the “Young England” enthusiasts or their
contemporary imitators. I know that Feudalism died in the fifteenth
century of its own rottenness, and that its revival is as hopeless and
undesirable as the revival of Druidism (much favoured I believe in
some literary quarters just now) would be. I recognise that Liberalism
in getting rid of its obsolete relics did good and necessary work
and cleared the way for better. I merely state the case historically
because it is impossible to understand the present position and
prospects of Liberalism without realizing that Liberalism is in its
essence destructive and in the strict sense of the word anti-social.
Look at the track of Liberalism across English history. It begins
practically with the Reformation and the Great Pillage, wherein it
showed its true character very vividly in the combination of a strictly
individualistic religion with the conversion of communal property into
private property for the benefit of the new “Reforming” oligarchs.
Then it appears in the Civil War, which we are beginning to understand
better than the Whig historians of the late century understood it. On
its economic side Puritanism was the seventeenth century counterpart
of Cobdenism--a middle-class movement striking at once at the old
aristocracy, whose lands it confiscated and divided, and at the
proletariat, whom it robbed of what was left of their common heritage
and to whom it denied their traditional holidays, avowedly on religious
grounds but practically in the interests of the employing class. One
could continue the story further if it were necessary. But all that
need be said is that in the middle of the nineteenth century we find
Liberalism everywhere dominant and victorious with the result that
Englishmen had practically ceased to form a community at all.
It is a common taunt in the mouths of Tariff Reformers just now that
Cobden and Bright opposed the Factory Acts; and Liberals, driven
into a corner on the subject, generally affect to regard this as an
unfortunate and unaccountable lapse from grace on the part of the two
Free Trade Apostles. Of course it was nothing of the sort: it was
the only possible line for them to take as honest men and consistent
political thinkers. The matter of the Factory Acts does not stand
alone: state education, when first proposed was met with Radical
opposition of a very similar kind. If anyone will look through the
speeches of the opponents of the early Factory Bills he will find that
they were attacked, just as the present government’s Education Bill
was attacked, not as revolutionary but as reactionary measures. They
were constantly compared to the Sumptuary Laws and to the statutes
regulating the position of apprentices which figure in mediæval
legislation. And the comparison is a perfectly fair one. Cobden and
Bright were fundamentally _right_ in their contention that Factory
Acts were contrary to the first principles of Liberalism. Such acts
were only passed, because the application of Liberal principles to
the questions involved had resulted in a welter of brutality, child
torture and racial deterioration, so horrible that no decently humane
man, no reasonable enlightened citizen could think of Lancashire and
its cotton trade without a shudder. When the Sovereign gave her assent
to the first effective Factory Bill she passed a prophetic sentence of
death on Liberalism and the Liberal Party.
Doubtless the execution of the sentence has been long deferred and
may yet be deferred longer. But the backbone had been taken out of
Liberalism as soon as that concession had been made. It could not claim
any longer to have a coherent or intelligible political philosophy.
For the arguments used by the Manchester School against import duties
were precisely the same as those used against factory legislation.
The two propositions were based upon the same axioms and postulates;
if one was wrong, why not the other? And if the worship of “doing as
one likes” were unsound in the region of economics what reason was
there for supposing it to be sound in the region of politics? If Free
Contract were an untenable foundation for society, what became of Free
Trade? And, if Free Trade were to go, might not the demand for a Free
Church have to follow? The fortress of Liberalism still looked imposing
enough, but the foundations were sapped and there were ominous cracks
and fissures in the walls.
Indeed the passing of the great Factory Acts marks the turning of
the tide. It was the public confession of the English nation that
Cobden’s and Bastiat’s Utopia of ‘economic harmonies’ was a foolish and
impossible one, based on bad economics and worse history. It was the
beginning of the reaction in favour of what I have called civilization,
that is of the conscious and deliberate regulation and control of
commerce in the public interest. Everything that has been done since
in the way of industrial reform--Housing Acts, Public Health Acts,
compulsory and free education, municipal ownership and municipal
trading--has proceeded in this direction. We are working towards what
Herbert Spencer called “The New Toryism,” that is back to civilization.
It is no matter for surprise that most of the measures mentioned above
have been the work of Tory governments. Doubtless the Tories are stupid
and ineffectual enough, doubtless they are too much controlled by
landed interests and capitalist rings, to deal with social evils very
courageously. But at least they have this great advantage over their
enemies, that they are not obliged to reconcile everything they do
with the exploded economic dogmas of Benthamism, so that the insight
and progressive instincts of their abler leaders have been able to
force them farther along the path of progress than the sheer pressure
of political necessity has been able to force the equally reluctant
Liberals. So long as social reform remains a matter of pickings, we
shall get the best pickings from the Tories.
But if, as I have suggested all meaning has long ago gone out of
Liberalism, how does it come about that Liberalism insists on
surviving? Are we not all expecting a big Liberal majority at the next
General Election, and would not such a majority prove that Liberalism
was very much alive? My answer is that it would not. Doubtless the
Liberals will win at the polls next year; probably they will get a good
majority. But this will prove nothing as to the spiritual vitality of
the thing they represent. It will prove that the people of this country
are annoyed with the present government and want a change. It will not
prove that they are in any real sense of the word Liberals; still less
that Liberalism has anything vital or valuable to say in relation to
current problems.
The fact is that a party which has parted with its convictions may
continue to exist for a long time by living on its prejudices. This
is the ordinary history of movements, whether political, social or
religious, during the period of their decadence, and it is briefly the
history of Liberalism during the last fifty years.
The Factory Acts, by their obvious necessity and their equally obvious
indefensibility from the Liberal standpoint, knocked the bottom out
of Liberalism and made a consistent Liberal philosophy impossible for
the future. But only new and growing movements require a philosophy.
When a movement has been going long enough to accumulate a fair number
of catch-words and a collection of common likes and dislikes, it can
make enormous use of these and even win great electoral triumphs on the
strength of them long after they have become completely separated from
the doctrines from which they originally sprang, and indeed long after
these doctrines have become so obsolete as to be universally incredible.
An almost exact parallel may be drawn between the recent history
of Liberalism and the recent history of Nonconformity. English
Nonconformity was founded on the doctrines of Calvin as English
Liberalism was on those of Lock and Adam Smith. Where are the doctrines
of Calvin now? I do not suppose there is one chapel in London--perhaps
in England--where the doctrine of Reprobation is taught in all its
infamous completeness. The ordinary London Nonconformist minister
at any rate is the mildest and vaguest of theologians, and talks
like the member of an Ethical Society about little but “Truth and
Righteousness.” So far from preaching Calvinism with its iron and
inflexible logic and its uncompromising cry of “Come out and be ye
separate!” he is the first to tell you that the age of dogma is gone by
and that modern religion must be “undenominational.” Yet, in spite of
the complete disappearance of its intellectual basis, Dissent remains
powerful enough to thwart the execution of great reforms and wreck
the careers of great statesmen. And if you ask what (if not a common
theology) holds the Nonconformists together and makes them so potent
a force, the answer will be a common stock of prejudices--a prejudice
against Catholic ritual, a prejudice against horse-racing, a prejudice
against established churches, a prejudice against public houses and
music halls, a prejudice in favour of Sunday observance. All these
(except in the case of church establishment where the prejudice is the
result of a political accident erected into a religious dogma) are
natural consequences of the Calvinist theology, but in that theology
the modern Dissenter does not believe. Nevertheless, the foundation
gone, the prejudice remains, and may be found strong enough among
other things to destroy the value of one of the most beneficent reforms
which the last thirty years have seen.
Now what has happened in the case of Nonconformity has happened also
in the case of Liberalism. The philosophy of Bastiat has followed
the philosophy of Calvin into the shades of incredibility. Yet the
prejudices born of that philosophy remain and can still be played
upon with considerable effect. They may briefly be summarized as
follows:--A prejudice against peers (though not against capitalists), a
prejudice against religious establishments, a prejudice against state
interference with _foreign_ trade (the case of home industry having
been conceded), a prejudice against Imperialism, a prejudice against
what is vaguely called “militarism”--that is to say against provision
for national defence. Add prejudices borrowed from the Nonconformists
against publicans and priests and you have the sum total of modern
Liberalism.
Now I regard all these prejudices as mere hindrances to progress. I
wish to show in the pages which are to follow that they are not, as
the enthusiastic Radical imagines, the very latest manifestations of
“progressive thought,” but that on the contrary they are the refuse
of a dead epoch and an exploded theory of politics, that considered
as a message for our age they are barren and impossible, that a party
dominated by them is unfitted for public trust, and that, unless newer
and more promising movements can emancipate themselves from their
influence, they are likely to share the same ultimate fate.
Peel is said to have caught the Whigs bathing and stolen their clothes.
But the present apparel of the Liberals is not such as to tempt any
self-respecting party to theft.
“WHAT PORTION HAVE WE IN DAVID?”
The ordinary man conceives of a Socialist as a kind of very extreme
Liberal or Radical, a man who pushes Radical doctrines further than
most Radicals dare push them. Indeed many Socialists conceive so of
themselves. Yet it is obvious that, if there is any truth at all
in what I have just written, this must be regarded as a complete
misconception.
Socialism and Collectivism are names which we give to the extreme
development of that tendency in political thought which has proved so
fatal to Liberalism, which is indeed a reaction against Liberalism.
Karl Marx himself, revolutionary though he was, admitted that the
English Factory Acts were the first political expression of Socialism;
we have already seen that they were the death warrant of consistent
and philosophic Liberalism. Every piece of Socialistic legislation is
in its nature anti-Liberal. There is no getting away from the truth of
Herbert Spencer’s taunt when he called Socialism “The New Toryism.”
Epigrammatically expressed, that is an excellent and most complimentary
description of it. Socialism is an attempt to adapt the old Tory
conceptions of national unity, solidarity and order to new conditions.
Our case against Toryism is that its economic and political synthesis
is no longer possible for us. But we can have no kind of sympathy with
Liberalism which is the negation of all synthesis, the proclamation of
universal disruption.
It is therefore particularly disheartening to find that “Liberal
principles” are apparently as sacrosanct in the eyes of many Socialists
as in those of the Liberals themselves. That Socialists also denounce
the idea of a State Church, that Socialists also rail at Imperialism
and condemn “bloated armaments,” that Socialists also proclaim the
universal holiness and perfection of Free Trade--this is the really
extraordinary and disturbing fact.
This, though none seems to see it, is the real root of the difficulties
which beset every attempt to form an independent Socialist or Labour
Party. You cannot have an independent party with any real backbone in
it without independent thinking. And, omitting pious platitudes about
“the socialization of all the means of production, distribution and
exchange” there does not seem to me any perceptible difference between
the way in which the Independent Labour Party (for example) thinks
about current problems and the way in which the Liberals think about
them. They may think differently about economic abstractions, but
they do not think differently when it comes to practical politics.
Consequently whenever a question divides the Liberals and the Tories,
the I.L.P. always dashes into the Liberal camp at the firing of the
first shot without apparently waiting to consider for one moment
whether perhaps Socialism may not have an answer of its own to give
which will in the nature of things be neither the Liberal nor the
Tory answer. And then the I.L.P. and their allies of the Labour
Representation Committee boast proudly of their “independence” because
they are not allowed to speak on Liberal platforms. Of what avail is
that prohibition if the platform on which they themselves stand is in
its essence a Liberal platform.
A little while ago the leaders of the I.L.P. were extremely indignant
because three L.R.C. representatives were said to have spoken at a
by-election in support of Liberal candidates. The defence was that
the three leaders in question spoke, not in support of the Liberal
candidate, but in opposition to the Licensing Bill and other measures
of the Conservative Government. Now it seems to me that this puts the
whole question of Socialist and Labour independence in a nutshell. If
Socialists and other champions of labour have really nothing to say
on the Licensing Bill, Education, Tariff Reform, Chinese Labour and
other topics of the hour other than what all the Liberals are saying it
seems very difficult to understand why it is so very wicked of them to
support Liberal candidates. If on every question which is really before
the country they agree with the said Liberal candidates it would seem
the obvious thing to do. At any rate I feel quite certain that they
will go on doing it, directly or indirectly, in spite of all the waste
paper pledges and resolutions in the world, until they get a political
philosophy of their own, when they will realize that the Socialist (or
if you prefer it the “Labour”) view of the licensing question, the
fiscal question and the South African labour question is and must be
fundamentally different from the Liberal and Radical view.
And indeed for want of such realisation the rush of the Labour men
into the Liberal camp becomes more headlong every day. It began with
Radical Trade Unionists newly converted to the idea of independent
labour representation. But the Socialist wing has not shown itself a
whit steadier in its allegiance to the doctrine of real independence.
If you doubt this charge, turn to an article contributed by Mr. J.
Ramsay MacDonald to the _Speaker_ on the subject of the International
Socialist Congress at Amsterdam. The _Speaker_ if one of the ablest
is one of the most thoroughly obscurantist of Liberal papers, holding
fast and without shame by the traditions of Cobden and Gladstone. Mr.
MacDonald has been in the past one of the most uncompromising of the
leaders of the I.L.P. and is at this moment Secretary of the Labour
Representation Committee. He seems to claim, in the passage I am going
to quote, to speak for his party, and, as far as I am aware, none of
the leaders of that party have ventured to repudiate him.
This is what he says:--
“If, for instance, in the next Liberal Cabinet the Rosebery faction
were strongly represented, and if no satisfactory pledges were given
upon the Government’s intentions regarding Trade Union legislation,
the Labour Party would be perfectly justified in supporting a vote of
censure--or what would amount to that--on the first King’s Speech; but
on the other hand, if the Cabinet were anti-Imperialist, and were sound
on Trade Union legislation, the Labour Party would be justified in
giving it general support and in protecting it from defeat.”
It is hardly necessary to point out that here Mr. MacDonald gives the
whole I.L.P. case hopelessly away. None reading the above passage
could suppose for a moment that it was written by a Socialist.
Observe that the writer does not ask for a single item of socialist
or semi-socialist legislation. He is silent about Old Age Pensions,
about an Eight Hours Day or a Minimum Wage, about a Graduated Income
Tax, about Housing or Factory legislation--in a word about everything
that could by any possibility be called Socialistic. For what does he
ask? Firstly for anti-Imperialism? Now is anti-Imperialism the same as
Socialism? Is there any reason for supposing that the anti-Imperialist
wing of the Liberal party will do more for labour than the Imperialist
wing? Is Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman a Socialist or a Labourite? Is
Mr. John Morley, who for years has absolutely blocked the way in
regard to social reform, a Socialist or a Labourite? Why should the
Labour Party support the hopelessly outmoded rump of Little-England
Radicalism without at any rate making a very stringent bargain with
them? As to trade union legislation, every Socialist would doubtless
support it, but it is not in itself a Socialist measure; it is merely
what everyone supposed that the Unions had obtained thirty years ago
with the assent of Liberals and Tories alike. It therefore comes to
this--that Mr. MacDonald has declared himself as regards practical
issues not a Socialist at all, but an anti-Imperialist Radical who is
in favour of improving the legal position of trades unions. Then why,
in the name of heaven form an independent party at all? He and those
who follow him are clearly in their right place as an insignificant
section of the Radical “tail.” And that is how both Tories and Radicals
will in future regard them.
But there is one Socialist sect in England from which we might at
least expect freedom from Liberal tradition. The Social Democratic
Federation is never tired of boasting of its independence, its
“class-consciousness,” its stern Marxian inflexibility of purpose.
Yet, when it comes to practice, it is only a trifle less enslaved by
Liberal ideas than the I.L.P. itself. During the South African War the
S.D.F. went one better than the Liberals in its narrow pro-Boerism.
Its members rallied to the support of the late Mr. Kruger (surely the
strangest leader that Social Democracy ever boasted!) and backed up the
Radical Krugerites without apparently asking any questions as to their
policy on labour matters. Later, on the education question, they again
rallied to the Radical standard (the standard of 1870!) and, like so
many Liberal Nonconformists, broke into ecstatic worship of the “ad
hoc” principle, denouncing as “undemocratic” the socialistic policy
of municipalized education which the Tory government had borrowed from
the Fabian Society. Moreover, glancing at the S.D.F. programme I find
among the “palliatives” disestablishment of the church and abolition
of hereditary monarchy. How the economic condition of the people is
going to be “palliated” by these measures I do not profess to know; I
will only remark that the “palliation” does not seem very visible in
the United States at the present time. But what I want to insist upon
is the utter futility of playing thus into the hands of the champions
of capitalism by helping to impress workmen with the idea that their
misfortunes are wholly or in part due to those purely constitutional
causes concerning which Radicals and Conservatives are at war, while
all the time we at least know that they are due to the economic
structure of society which Radicals and Conservatives alike support.
I agree with the S.D.F. in thinking that a Labour party must have
some sort of doctrinal basis. An old party can live for a long while
on catchwords and prejudices, but you cannot build a new party up
without some definite political ideas. But these doctrines and ideas
must not be a mere re-hash of exploded Liberal doctrines and ideas
plus a theoretic belief in “the socialization of all the means,
etc.” The new party need not call itself Socialist,--perhaps had
better not do so,--but its attitude towards practical matters must
be effectively socialistic. It must stand for the rights of the
community as emphatically as the older Liberalism stood for the
rights of the individual. It must work for the state control and
regulation of industry as Liberalism worked for its liberation from
state interference. In a word, it must be Protectionist in a more
far-reaching sense than that in which the word is applicable to Mr.
Chamberlain or Mr. Chaplin. So that its political philosophy will be
emphatically anti-Liberal and may sometimes (though but accidentally)
have to be pro-Tory.
Moreover, even if a Labour party could be a Labour party and nothing
more, there would always be a tactical as well as a philosophic
reason for clearing our movement of all complicity with the ideas
of Liberalism. During the first half of the nineteenth century it
was always supposed that the working classes of this country were
generally, if not exclusively Radical. Possibly at that time they were,
but since their enfranchisement in 1867 they have proved themselves
overwhelmingly and unrepentantly Tory. The history of the decades
which have intervened since then has been the history of the gradual
capture by the Tories of all the great industrial districts where the
working-class vote is most powerful. Politicians of the ’forties spoke
of the “Conservative Working Man” as incredulously as men would speak
of a white negro. Yet events have proved not only that such a person
exists, but that he can by his vote control the politics of nearly
every great manufacturing town in England.
Now the Conservative working man has no fundamental objection to
Socialism. The word no doubt displeases him, partly because of its
foreign origin, partly from its vaguely revolutionary associations,
but on the practical application of Socialism he looks with very
decided favour. In fact it is not improbable that the conversion of
the labouring classes to Toryism was in part at least due to the fact
that during the sixties and seventies the Tories had for a leader Mr.
Disraeli, whose quick Hebraic imagination and insight made him perceive
the significance of the social problem, while the Liberals were led
by Mr. Gladstone, who regarded all social reform from the first with
supreme indifference which in his later days deepened into a hostility
so intense and deep-rooted that he was ready to shatter his party
and his own career over Home Rule, if by so doing he could stave off
economic questions. But to return to the Tory workman. I have said he
has no objection to applied Socialism. It would be a comparatively easy
matter to secure his support for a programme of advanced industrial
reform, were he not required to swallow first a number of Liberal
doctrines which have no relation to his class interests and to which
he really has a strong objection--anti-Imperialism, the reduction of
armaments, doctrinaire republicanism and Irish Home Rule. Once cut the
Labour party free from these things and the increase of its electoral
power will be enormous.
Before proceeding to a more detailed examination of the Liberal
attitude towards current problems and its relation to the genuinely
progressive attitude, let me sum up the conclusions already reached.
There is no philosophic ground for identifying Socialism with extreme
Liberalism or Radicalism. The philosophies of Liberalism and Socialism
are not merely different but directly antagonistic.
There is no historical ground for regarding the Liberal party as the
friend of the working classes. The Liberal party is historically an
essentially capitalist party; as a matter of fact the Tory party has
carried more drastic and valuable social reforms than its rival.
There is no tactical advantage to be gained by committing the new-born
Labour party to the specific doctrines of Liberalism. The working
classes of this country have no enthusiasm for any of these doctrines
and have a marked dislike for some of them.
Therefore the Labour party or Socialist party or whatever the new
movement cares to call itself must if it is to succeed fling all its
Liberal lumber overboard and start afresh. It is not enough that it
should be independent of Liberal money and Liberal organisation. All
this matters little. What is essential is that it should be independent
of Liberal ideas.
NATIONAL PENRHYNISM.
As I have already suggested the subservience of Socialists and
Labourites to the traditions of Liberalism, so far from showing any
signs of abating gets worse every day. It has been getting markedly
worse since the beginning of the new century. It was the South African
War more than anything else which captured the English Socialists and
swept them into the most reactionary wing of the broken forces of
Liberalism. Since then the Radicals have always been able by raising
the cry of “No Imperialism!” to bend the Socialists to their will.
Hence Mr. MacDonald’s amazing indiscretion quoted in my last chapter.
I think it was Mr. Ben Tillet who alluded to the owner of the Bethesda
Slate Quarries as “Kruger-Penrhyn.” I am not sure that Mr. Tillet or
indeed anyone else realised the full accuracy of this description. For
not only was there a very striking resemblance between the virtues
and faults of Mr. Kruger and those of Lord Penrhyn but there was an
even more remarkable analogy between the claims which the two men put
forward and the arguments by which those claims were attacked and
upheld.
The friends of the Welsh quarrymen said in effect to Lord
Penrhyn:--“You are conducting your business improperly; your narrow
obstinacy is dangerous to the community and an obstacle to progress;
your conduct towards your employees is unfair and oppressive. We demand
that you either mend your ways or go.” Similarly the British government
said in effect to Mr. Kruger “You are conducting the government of your
country badly; your narrow obstinacy is an obstacle to progress and is
creating a situation dangerous to the peace of the world; your conduct
towards your subjects is unfair and oppressive. We demand that you
either mend your ways or go.”
And the answer is in each case the same “Shall I not do what I will
with my own?” “Are not the quarries _mine_?” asks Lord Penrhyn: “Is not
the Transvaal _ours_?” demanded Mr. Kruger. “If my workmen do not like
my management they can leave,” said Lord Penrhyn; “If the Outlanders do
not like my government they need not come,” said Mr. Kruger.
Now, granting the premises of these two eminent men their conclusions
certainly follow. Indeed the popular case against both was clearly
untenable. From the Liberal point of view Lord Penrhyn was as right
as Mr. Kruger; from the Conservative point of view Mr. Kruger was
as right as Lord Penrhyn. It is only by assailing the fundamental
assumptions of both that we can make out any fair case against either.
The only possible answer to the positions stated above is the Socialist
answer:--“No; the quarries do not really belong to Lord Penrhyn; the
Transvaal does not really belong to Mr. Kruger or to the Boers. Their
title depends on the use they make of them. Private property, whether
of individuals or of nations is subject ultimately to the claims of
public necessity.”
I have dwelt on this point at some length because, as I have already
said, it was unquestionably the South African War which more than
anything else rivetted on our Socialist and Labour parties the chains
of Liberalism. It is perfectly natural that Liberals should champion
the “rights of nationalities,” since they are the chosen champions of
the rights of property. But what have Socialists to do with either
except to challenge them whenever they conflict with the general
well-being? How can Socialists accept the claim of a handful of
settlers to set up a ring-fence round a certain portion of the earth’s
surface and declare it _their_ property any more than the claim of a
landlord to enclose commons?
Note that I am not by any means saying that no Socialist could
consistently oppose the South African War. There are many plausible
grounds upon which he could oppose it. He could oppose it for example
on the ground that the two Republics would in course of time have been
peaceably absorbed into the Empire, and that the attempt to hurry the
process by war was in every way a disastrous blunder. Or again he could
take the ground that the war dangerously strengthened the already too
powerful financial interests of the Rand and paved the way for such
reactionary measures as the introduction of Chinese labour. I will not
discuss here whether such arguments are sound or unsound. I only say
that the particular ground of debate chosen, the inalienable “right” of
a people to do what it likes with its own, is one that no Socialist can
take without self-stultification.
The manner in which the leaders of the English Labour movement with a
few exceptions flung themselves recklessly into the most unintelligent
sort of pro-Krugerism is one example and one very disastrous in its
consequences of the extent to which they have allowed themselves to be
saturated with the Liberal theory of wholly irresponsible Nationalism.
But it is by no means the only one. The parallel case of Ireland is in
many ways even more curious.
In considering the eternal Irish question from a Socialist standpoint
there are four dominant facts to be kept always in mind. The first
is that Nationalism in the Irish sense is not a Socialist ideal in
any sense, but is merely a kind of very narrow parochial Jingoism.
The second that the Irish Nationalist party is preeminently a _Parti
bourgeois_ drawing its main strength from the middle orders--small
tradesmen, tenant farmers and publicans, and that its political and
economic ideas are those generally characteristic of that class--rigid
individualism, peasant proprietorship and the like. The third that it
is a clericalist Party, representing not the enlightened Catholicism of
the Continent but the narrowest kind of political Ultramontanism.[1]
The fourth that Mr. Gladstone’s adoption of the Home Rule cause was a
deliberate move on his part intended to stave off economic reforms in
this country.
Now in these circumstances it would seem almost incredible that
Socialists should feel any kind of sympathy with Irish Nationalism. Yet
apparently they do feel such sympathy. Mr. Gladstone indeed builded
better than he knew. He doubtless believed that by espousing Home
Rule he could “dish” Mr. Chamberlain and draw the attention of young
Liberals and Radicals away from social questions in which they were
beginning to take a languid interest; but he could hardly have expected
to effect this in the case of the Socialists and Labour leaders
themselves. Yet to a great extent his policy has achieved this, and we
actually find Socialists clamouring for the retention of Home Rule in
the Liberal programme, though they must know perfectly well that its
retention means the indefinite postponement of industrial matters.
There is no kind of excuse for the Nationalist partialities of
Socialists because they know or ought to know that the theory that
England oppresses Ireland is a radically false and untenable one.
That Ireland is oppressed one need not deny; but it is not England
that oppresses her. It is capitalism and landlordism that oppress
Ireland as they oppress England. If the S.D.F. means anything at all
by its “recognition of the Class War” it ought to recognise this. And
recognising it, it ought to set its face like flint against a policy of
disunion and racial antagonism and teach the proletarians of Ireland
and England to “unite” (that is to be Unionists) according to the old
Socialist formula instead of encouraging the proletarians of Ireland to
regard those of England as aliens and tyrants.
To say the truth I am a little tired of the wrongs of Ireland. I am
quite willing to admit that she is an “oppressed nationality” with the
proviso that this phrase is equally applicable to England, France,
Germany, Italy and the United States. But one is tempted to point out
that concessions have been made to the Irish peasantry such as no one
dreams of making to the workers of Great Britain. How much “fixity of
tenure” has the English labourer in the wretched hole which his masters
provide for him? Do we sign away millions of British money and British
credit to save _him_ from the oppression of his landlord? Not at all.
But then he does not shoot from behind hedges; nor has he as yet had
even the wisdom to organize a strong and independent political party
whose support is to be obtained for value received.
In a word I contend that the association of English Socialism and
Labourism with the aspirations of Irish Chauvinists is theoretically
meaningless and practically suicidal. It is our business to meet the
old Gladstonian cry that everything else must wait because “Ireland
blocks the way” with a counter-cry, “It is Ireland’s turn to wait;
Labour blocks the way.”