question whether the socialistic reformer calculates with right ideas
about the human mind. There might, to be sure, be a little
psychological side-show not without a peculiar interest at the
entrance gate of socialism. We might turn the question, what is the
psychology of the socialist, so as to mean, not with what psychology
does the socialist operate, but what goes on in the socialist's mind.
No doubt the motives have gone through deep changes even in the mind
of the cultured leaders. When Karl Marx laid the foundations of
socialism, he was moved solely by the desire to recognize a necessary
development. It was the interest of the theorist. He showed that the
things which the socialist depicted simply had to come. He did not ask
whether they are good or bad. They were for him ultimately natural
events which were to be forestalled. The leaders to-day see it all in
a new light. The socialistic state is to them a goal to the attainment
of which all energies ought to be bent. Not their theoretical
knowledge, but their practical conscience, leads them to their
enthusiasm for a time without capitalism. In the minds of the masses,
however, who vote for the socialist here or abroad, the glory of moral
righteousness is somewhat clouded by motives less inspiring in
quality. The animosity against the men of wealth rushes into the
mental foreground, and if it is claimed that the puritans disliked the
bear baiting not because it gave pain to the bears, but because it
gave pleasure to the onlookers, it sometimes seems as if the
socialists, too, desire the change, not in order that the poor gain
more comfort, but in order that the rich be punished. And many cleaner
motives have mixed in, which resulted from the general change of
conditions. The labourer lives to-day in a cultural atmosphere which
was unknown to his grandfathers. He reads the same newspaper as his
employers, he thinks in the same catch phrases, and has essentially
the same foundation of education. Moreover the publicity of our life
in this era of print too easily teaches the workingman that his master
may be neither better nor wiser than he and his comrades. And finally,
the political and economic discussions of the last half century have
made it perfectly clear to him that the removing of the material
misery lies in the realm of practical possibility, and that even
without bombs a new economic order may be created almost as easily as
a new tariff law or an income tax or an equal suffrage. Hence it is
not surprising that all these motives combined turn the imagination of
millions to the new panaceas.
But if low motives are mixed with high ones in the mind of the
champions of socialism, they certainly have never stopped assuring us
that it is worse with their opponents. Marx himself declared
passionately that greed was the deepest spring, that "the most violent
and malignant passions of the human breast, the furies of private
interest" are whipping men into the battle against socialism. However
that may be, the discussions in the clubroom and in the political hall
perhaps oftener suggest a less malignant motive, a persistent
carelessness, which keep the friends of the capitalistic order from
making the effort really to find out at what the socialists are
aiming. The largest part of the private and public accusations of
socialism starts from the conviction that socialism means that all men
must have equal property, and in consideration of the fact that no
real socialist demands that, and that the socialists have always
insisted that this is not their intention, there indeed seems to be
some psychology necessary to understand why the antisocialists do not
take the trouble to find out first what socialism is.
But here we are not engaged in the mental analysis of those who fight
about socialism. We want rather to ask whether the human minds are
rightly understood by those who tell us that socialism is, or is not,
the solution of our social problems. And if we turn to this
fundamental question whether socialism ought to become the form of our
society, the chief thing will be to avoid a mistake in the discussion
which pervades the largest part of our present-day literature. The
problem is no longer, as it was in the childhood days of socialistic
debate, whether the historical necessities must bring socialism. We
know that socialism will come, if we like it, and that we can avoid
it, if we hate it, and that everything therefore depends upon the
decision of the community whether it wants to work for or against the
great economic revolution. It is thus not a question of facts, but of
preferences, of judgments, of ideals. We do not simply have to
exchange wise words as to that which will come anyhow, but we have to
make up our mind whether it appears to us desirable or not desirable,
and that means, whether it is in harmony with our purpose or not.
But this forces on us as the very first inquiry: what is the purpose
of our social economic system to be? Just here the mistake comes into
the debates. We hear eloquent orations about the merits or demerits of
socialism, without any effort being made to define clearly for what
end it is useful or useless. It is meaningless to claim that socialism
is good, if we do not know for what it is good, and the whole
flippancy of the discussion too often becomes apparent when we stop
and inquire what purposes the speaker wants to see fulfilled. We find
a wobbling between two very different possible human purposes, with
the convenient scheme of exchanging the one for the other, when the
defender gets into a tight place. These two great purposes are
economic development and human happiness. With the gesture of high
cultural inspiration the new scheme is praised to us as a way toward a
greater economic achievement by mankind, a fuller development of human
economic life. But as soon as doubts are cast on the value of the
scheme for this noble purpose, the argument slips into the other
groove and shows us that socialism is wonderful for removing human
misery and bringing sweet happiness to numberless men, women, and
children. According to the same scheme, of course, when we do not feel
convinced that socialism will be the remedy for unhappiness, the
scene is changed again, and we hear that it will be splendid for
economic progress.
No one would claim that the two ends have nothing to do with each
other. We might define the progress of economic life in such a way
that the increase of human happiness belongs within its compass. Or we
might show that widespread human happiness would be an advantageous
condition for the development of economic civilization. But in any
case the two are not the same, and even their intimate relation may
appear artificial. To discuss the value of a new scheme without
perfectly clearing up and sharply discriminating the possible ends for
which it may be valuable, can never be helpful toward the fundamental
solution of a problem. Nobody doubts that human progress is a worthy
aim, and no one denies that human happiness is a beautiful goal. Hence
we may evade the philosophical duty of proving through reasons that
they are justified ends. We take them for granted, and we only insist
that the one is not the other, and that it is utterly in vain to
measure the value of socialism with reference to these two ideals, as
long as we do not cleanly discriminate for which of the two socialism
can be valuable. In itself it may very well be that it is splendid
for human progress, but unfit for promoting human happiness, or that
it is powerless for the development of mankind, but most successful
for the increase of human joy.
Hence we ask at first only: how does the old or the new system serve
the progress of mankind? What this human progress means is clearly
interpreted by the history of five thousand years of civilization. It
is the history of the growing differentiation of human demands and
fulfilments. Every new stage in the culture of mankind developed new
desires and new longings from nature and from society, but it also
brought with it new means of satisfying the longings and fulfilling
the desires. The two belong most intimately together. The new means of
fulfilment stimulate new desires of intellect and emotion and will,
and the new desires lead to further means of their satisfaction. Thus
there is an incessant automatic enrichment, an endless differentiation,
a thousand new needs on the height of civilization where the primitive
race found a few elementary demands, and a thousand new schemes of
material technique and of social, institutional life where the lower
culture found all it needed with simple devices. It is an unfolding
not dissimilar to that which the plants and the animals have shown in
their organic life in the long periods of natural evolution. The
development from the infusors to the monkeys was such a steady
increase in the manifoldness of functions. The butterfly is as well
adjusted to its life conditions and as well off as the fish, and the
fish as well off as the elephant, and in the evolution of economic
civilization as in that of the kingdom of animals the advance does not
involve an increase of joy. Pain results from a lack of adjustment,
but not from a scarcity of functions. Hence if we strive for progress
alone, we are moved not by the hope for greater joy, but by an
enthusiastic belief in the value of progress and development itself.
Does a socialistic order secure a more forceful, a more spontaneous, a
more many-sided, or even a more harmonious growing of new demands and
of new means for fulfilment than the capitalistic system which holds
us all to-day?
The psychologist certainly has no right to ask to be heard first, when
this strictly economic aspect of the great social problem is
emphasized. Industrial specialists, administrators of labour,
politicians, and financiers stand nearest to the issue. But whatever
they testify, they ultimately have to point to mental facts, and the
psychologist is naturally anxious to emphasize them. He has nothing
new to contribute. It is the old story of the stimulating influence
of the spirit of competition. Healthy progress demands unusual
exertion. All psychological conditions for that maximum strain are
unfavourable in a socialistic state with its acknowledged need of
rigid regulation and bureaucracy. We see all around us the flabby
routine work, stale and uninspiring, wherever sharp rivalry has no
chance. It is the great opportunity for mediocrity, while the unusual
talent is made ineffective and wasted. Our present civilization shows
that in every country really decisive achievement is found only in
those fields which draw the strongest minds, and that they are drawn
only where the greatest premiums are tempting them. To-day even the
monopolist stands in the midst of such competition, as he can never
monopolize the money of the land. This spur which the leaders feel is
an incessant stimulus for all those whom they control, and, as soon as
that tension is released at the highest point, a perfunctory
performance with all its well-known side features, the waste and the
idleness, the lack of originality and the unwillingness to take risks,
must set in and deaden the work.
Nature runs gigantic risks all the time, and throws millions of
blossoms away so as to have its harvest of fruit, and at the same time
nature shows the strictest economy and most perfect adjustment to
ends in the single blossom which comes to fruit. Just this doubleness
is needed in the progressive economic life. The rampant luxuriousness
which is willing to throw away large means for a trial and for a fancy
which may lead to nothing, and yet a scrupulous economy which reaches
its ends with the smallest possible waste, must blend. But as long as
man's mind is not greatly changed, both will be the natural tendency
of the capitalist, and both are abhorred by the governmental worker.
He has no right to run risks, but does not feel it his duty to avoid
an unproductive luxuriousness. He wastes in the routine where he ought
to economize, and is pedantic in the great schemes in which his
imagination ought to be unbridled. The opponents of socialism have
often likened the future state to a gigantic prison, where every one
will be forced to do the work without a chance for a motive which
appeals to him as an individual. This is in one respect unfair, as the
socialists want to abolish private capital, but do not want to
equalize the premiums for work. Yet is their method not introducing
inequality up to the point where it has many of the bad features of
our present system, and abolishing it just at the point where it would
be stimulating and fertilizing to commerce and industry? We are to
allow great differences of personal possession. Even to-day the large
companies count with hundred-thousand-dollar salaries, and there is
nothing in the socialistic principle which would counteract this
tendency. The differences may even grow, if the economic callings are
to attract the great talents at all in such a future state. But just
the one decisive value of the possessions for the development of
industry and commerce--namely, the transforming of the material gain
into the capital which produces and works, would become impossible.
The national achievement would be dragged down. All the dangers which
threaten bureaucratic industrialism everywhere--political party
influences with their capricious zigzag courses, favouritism,
protection and graft, waste and indifference, small men with inflated
importance in great positions, and great men with crushed wings in
narrow places--all would naturally increase, and weaken the nation in
the rivalry of the world.
While such paralyzing influences were working from above, the changes
from below would interfere no less with vigorous achievement. Every
gateway would be wide open. Socialism would mean a policy opposite to
that of the trade unions to-day. They are energetically excluding the
unfit. Under the new order the fine day for the unfit would have
dawned. At present the socialists feel at home in the system of the
unions, because the firm organization of the workingmen through the
unions is helpful for their cause. But if that cause wins, the
barriers of every union must break down, and the industrial energies
of the nation will be scattered in the unimportant work in order to
give an equal chance to the unproductive.
Nobody doubts that socialism would overcome some of the obvious
weaknesses of the capitalistic era, and those weaknesses may be
acknowledged even if we are faithful to our plan and abstract from
mere human happiness. If only the objective achievement is our aim, we
cannot deny that the millionfold misery from sickness and old age,
from accidents at work, and from unemployment through a crisis in
trade, from starvation wages, and from losses through fraudulent
undertakings, is keeping us from the goal. But has the groaning of
this misery remained unheard in these times, when capitalism has been
reaching its height? The last two decades have shown that the system
of private ownership can be in deepest harmony with all those efforts
to alleviate its cruelties in order to strengthen the efficiency of
the nation at work. Certainly the socialists themselves deserve credit
for much in the great international movement toward the material
security of the workingman's social life. It is doubtful whether
without her social democrats, Germany, the pioneer in the social
insurance movement, would have given to the army of workingmen those
protective laws which became the model for England and other nations,
and which are beginning to be influential in American thinking, too.
The laws against child labour, the efforts for minimum wage rates,
and, most important, the worldwide tendency to secure a firm
supervision and regulation of the private companies by the state, are
characteristic features of the new period in which capitalism
triumphs, and yet is freeing itself from cancerous growths which
destroy its power for fullest achievement.
To work nine hours instead of ten, and eight instead of nine, was only
apparently an encroachment on the industrial work. The worldwide
experiment has proved that the shorter working hours allow an
intensity of strain and an improvement of the workmen which ultimately
heighten the value of the output. The safety devices burdened the
manufacturer with expenses, and yet the economist knows that no outlay
is more serviceable for the achievement of the factory. Unionism and
arbitration treaties are sincere and momentous efforts to help the
whole industrial nation. And all this may be only the beginning. The
time may really come when every healthy man will serve his year in the
industrial army. Man and woman and child may thus be more and more
protected against the destructive abuses of our economic scheme. Their
physical health and their mental energy may be kept in better and
better working order by social reforms, by state measures and strong
organization. The fear of the future, that greatest destroyer of the
labourer's working mood, may be more and more eliminated. Extremely
much still remains to be done, but the best of it can surely be done
without giving up the idea of private capital. In the framework of the
capitalistic order such reforms mean a national scientific management
in the interest of efficiency and success. If that framework is
destroyed, the vigour and the energy are lost, and no improvements in
the detail can patch up the ruinous weakness in the foundation. If the
goal is an increased achievement of the industrialized nation,
socialism is bound to be a failure as long as human minds and their
motives are what they are to-day and what they have been through the
last five thousand years.
No doubt such arguments have little weight with the larger number of
those who come to the defence of socialism. The purpose, they would
say, is not at all to squeeze more work out of the nerves and muscles
of the labourer, to fill still more the pocket of the corporations, to
produce still more of the infernal noise in the workshops of the
world. The real aim has nothing to do with the output and the muscle,
but with the joy and happiness of the industrial workers, who have
become slaves in the capitalistic era. It is quite true that if this
is the end, the arguments which speak against the efficiency of
socialism might well be disregarded. The mixing of the reasons can
bring only confusion, and such chaos is unavoidable indeed, as long as
the aims are not clearly discriminated. We may acknowledge frankly
that the socialistic order may be a hindrance to highest efficiency,
and yet should be welcomed because it would abolish the sources of
unhappiness. Yet is there really any hope for such a paradise? The
problem of achievement may stand nearer to the economist, but that of
happiness and misery is thoroughly a question of the mind, and it is
the duty of the psychologist to take a stand.
His issues, however, ought not to be confused by mixing in a side
problem which is always emphasized when the emotional appeal is made
and the misery of the workmen's fate is shown up. There is no
unhappier lot than that of those healthy men who can work and want to
work, and do not find a chance to work. But this tremendous problem of
the unemployed is not organically connected with the struggle about
socialism. As far as social organization and human foresight can ever
be able to overcome this disease of the industrial body, the remedies
can just as well be applied in the midst of full-fledged capitalism.
It is quite true that the misfortune of unemployment may never be
completely uprooted, but vast improvements can easily be conceived
without any economic revolution; and, above all, no scheme has been
proposed by the socialists which would offer more. As long as there is
a market with its ups and downs, as long as harvests vary and social
depressions occur, there will be those who have no chance for their
usual useful activity. If the community of the socialistic state
supports them, it will do no more than the capitalistic state will
surely do very soon, too. If we want to see clean issues, we ought to
rule out the problem of unemployment entirely.
The socialistic hope can be only that, through the abolition of
capital, the average workman will get a richer share from the fruits
of his industrial labour. In the programmes of the American socialists
it has taken the neat round figure that every workingman ought to
live on the standard of five thousand dollars yearly income. Of course
the five thousand dollars themselves are not an end, but only a means
to it. The end is happiness, and here alone begins the psychologist's
interest. He does not discuss whether the five-thousand-dollar
standard as minimum wage can really be expected. He asks himself only
whether the goal can be reached, whether such a socialistic society
would really secure a larger amount of human happiness. It is here
that he answers that this claim is a psychological illusion. If we
seek socialism for its external achievement we must recognize that it
is a failure; if we seek it for its internal result, joy and
happiness, it must be worse than a failure. The psychology of feeling
is still the least developed part of our modern science of
consciousness, but certain chief facts are acknowledged on all sides,
and in their centre stands the law of the relativity of feeling.
Satisfaction and dissatisfaction, content and discontent, happiness
and unhappiness, do not depend upon absolute, but upon relative,
conditions. We have no reason whatever to fancy that mankind served by
the wonderful technique twenty centuries after Christ is happier than
men were under the primitive conditions of twenty centuries before
Christ. The level has changed and has steadily been raised, but the
feelings are dependent, not upon the height of the level, but upon the
deviations from it. Each level brings its own demands in the human
heart; and if they are fulfilled, there is happiness; and if they are
not fulfilled, there is discontent. But the demands of which we know
nothing do not make us miserable if they remain unfulfilled. It is the
change, and not the possession, which has the emotional value. The up
and down, the forward and backward, are felt in the social world, just
as in the world of space the steady movement is not felt, but only the
retardation or the acceleration.
The psychologist knows the interesting psychophysical law according to
which the differences in the strength of our impressions are perceived
as equal, not when the differences of the stimuli are really equal,
but when the stimuli stand in the same relation. If we hear three
voices, the sound has a certain intensity; if a fourth voice is added,
the strength of the sound is swelling; we notice a difference. But if
there is a chorus of thirty voices and one voice is added, we do not
hear a difference at all. Even if five voices are added we do not
notice it. Ten new singers must be brought in for us to hear the sound
as really stronger. And if we have a mighty chorus of three hundred
singers, not even twenty or fifty or even eighty voices would help us
to feel a difference; we need a hundred additional ones. In other
words, the hundred singers which come to help the three hundred do not
make more impression on us than the ten which are added to the thirty,
or the one added to the three. Exactly this holds true for all our
perceptions, for light and taste and touch. The differences upon which
our pleasures and displeasures hang, obey this same law of
consciousness. If we have three pennies, one added gives us a
pleasure, one taken away gives us a displeasure, which is entirely
different from the pleasure or displeasure if one penny is added or
taken away from thirty or from three hundred pennies. In the
possession of thirty, it needs a loss or gain of ten, in the
possession of three hundred the addition or subtraction of a hundred,
to bring us the same emotional excitement. A hundred dollars added to
an income of five hundred gives us just as much joy as ten thousand
added to fifty thousand dollars. The objective gain or loss does not
mean anything; the relative increase or decrease decides human
happiness.
Do we not see it everywhere in our surroundings? If we lean over the
railing and watch the steerage in the crowded ship, is there really
less gayety among the fourth-class passengers than among the
first-class? Where are the gifts of life which bring happiness to
every one? I have friends to whom a cigar, a cocktail, and a game of
cards are delightful sources of pleasure, the missing of which would
mean to them a real deprivation. I have never played cards, I have
never touched a cocktail, and have never had a cigar between my lips;
and yet I have never missed them. On the other hand, I feel extremely
uncomfortable if a day passes in which I have not gone through three
or four newspapers, while I have friends who are most happy if they do
not have a printed sheet in hand for months. The socialists claim that
the possession of one's own house ought to be the minimum external
standard, and yet the number increases of those who are not happy
until they are rid of their own house and can live in a little
apartment. Of course it might be said that the individual desires vary
from man to man, but that an ample income allows every one to satisfy
his particular likes and to protect himself against his particular
dislikes. But the situation is not changed if we see it under this
more general aspect of the money as means for the satisfaction of all
possible wishes. The psychological law of the relativity of
consciousness negates no less this general claim. There is no limit to
the quantity of desires. On the level of expensive life the desires
become excessive, and only excessive means can satisfy them; on a
lower economic level, the desires are modest, but modest means are
therefore able to give complete satisfaction and happiness.