THE PRACTICE OF FELLOWSHIP.
“We are members one of another.”—ST. PAUL.
“Forsooth, brothers, fellowship is heaven, and lack of fellowship is
hell; fellowship is life and lack of fellowship is death; and the
deeds that ye do on earth, it is for fellowship’s sake that ye do
them; and the life that is in it, that shall live on and on for
ever, and each one of you part of it, while many a man’s life upon
the earth from the earth shall wane.
“Therefore I bid you not to dwell in hell but in heaven; or while ye
must, upon earth, which is part of heaven, and forsooth no foul
part.”—WILLIAM MORRIS, _The Dream of John Ball_.”
“Sans d’égalité donc, point d’unité; sans liberté point d’égalité;
mais point de liberté non plus sans des devoirs mutuels
volontairement accomplis, c’est-a-dire accomplis par la volonté se
portant d’elle-même et sans contrainte a tout ce qui produit l’union
entre les êtres égaux; autrement chacun n’aurait d’autre règle que
son intérêt, sa passion. Et du conflit de tant de passions, de tant
d’intérêts opposés naîtraient aussitôt, avec la guerre, la servitude
et la tyrannie. Or, l’obéissance libre au devoir est une obéissance
d’amour; liberté lorsque l’amour s’affaiblit, la liberté décline
même proportion. A la place de l’union volontaire et morale, dont il
est le principle, la force, loi des brutes, opére une union purement
matérielle.”—LAMENNAIS, _Affaires de Rome_.
IT is usually assumed that the distinctively social end of life begins
“after business hours.” There is, we say, “no room for sentiment in
business,”—which is part of the intolerable price we pay for our
subjection to the economic motive. In business the presumption is that
we are all competitors; when business is over we are prepared to be
friends. The formality and the insincerity of much social intercourse in
our time—not to speak of its utter fruitlessness for any healthy human
good—has its origins largely in the banishment of fellowship from the
“business end” of life. This is not to say that there is not a great
deal of wholesome human intercourse in modern life or that there are not
genuine friendships between business competitors and between principals
and subordinates in industry; but it is generally true that we conceive
of commerce and industry as admitting of no extensive exercise of the
humanities; and for this habit of mind we are punished by a deep
impoverishment of life.
There is a sense in which the struggle for liberty may be regarded as
being essentially a struggle to broaden the basis of human fellowship;
and it is undoubtedly true that forms of privilege are the most prolific
causes of social schism. No community possesses the conditions of real
fellowship while it is (as modern communities are) divided into topdogs
and underdogs, whether the topdogs be aristocrats or plutocrats, and the
underdogs be serfs or wage-slaves. For the poison of privilege is apt to
permeate the whole body; and an exploited class may itself be composed
of exploiters. In our day the quest and the possession of pecuniary
advantage has so grievously muddied the springs of fellowship that we
live in a chronic temper of mutual suspicion and distrust. We do not
constitute living societies; we are but collections of individuals who
live together because we must, and come no nearer to each other than is
necessary for the indispensable common operations of life. Lord Morley
has pointed out that the business of the Irish Land League lay as much
in adjusting feuds among its own members as in carrying on their common
feud against the landlords. Within small circles there is, of course,
much genuine friendly exchange and co-operation; there are holiday
occasions when good temper and good fellowship rule; but for the rest,
we chiefly live under jungle law.
It is essential to the creation of a living society that we should
recognise that the principle of fellowship is a condition of the highest
fruitfulness of human effort in every part of life. But fellowship in
this connection means something more than the casual and superficial
_camaraderie_ of one’s leisure hours. It must be translated into
concrete policies and into organised and sustained co-operation. In this
sense its application to industry is one of the first conditions of its
restoration in other regions and in other senses. Indeed, it may be
regarded as the natural complement of that change in the worker’s status
which we have seen to be impending. Free men will flow into fellowship
as the cistern to the river; and the “democratic control” of industry is
the name we give to the practice of fellowship in industry which is the
clear sequel to the doctrine of partnership.
Mr. Sidney Webb, as we have seen, advocates the grant of a
“constitution” to industry; but this proposal suffers from the inherent
defect of the well-meaning experiments in co-partnership and
profit-sharing of which there have been not a few in recent years. This
defect is that all alike preserve the line of privilege. The benefits
are granted as concessions from above; and generally as incentives to
greater assiduity. There can be no objection to the granting of
concessions from above so long as those who are above come down and
stand on the same footing as those below. But so long as a vestige of
the old differentiation of superior and inferior, of master and servant
remains, not all the nominal co-partnership and profit-sharing in the
world can satisfy the conditions of real partnership. While for instance
the administrative and executive branches of an industry remain out of
the sphere of co-partnership, the partnership is a polite fiction; and
it is only by the passing of all the departments of an industry,
administrative as well as operative, into the control of all who carry
them on, that democratic conditions can be established. The theory of
partnership implies an actual interest in and an actual control over all
the divisions of an industry; and, while this does not imply that
direction and leadership and the powers of discipline will not still be
vested in individuals, these individuals will owe their position not to
any antecedent privilege but to the will and consent of the workers as a
whole.
On the surface there seems to be a danger lest such an arrangement may
lead to an exclusive and particular fellowship within separate
industries and therefore may militate against the larger fellowship of
the community, a fellowship, that is, of producers against consumers.
But it is not contemplated that the control of the workers—whether
operative or administrative—shall be absolute over their industry. That
will in turn be subject to the will of the commonwealth as a whole—this
superior authority being made effective by such devices as the control
of raw material. This particular danger may, however, be very easily
exaggerated. After all, every producer is a consumer; and the
co-operative societies have shown that it is possible to create a very
fruitful fellowship of consumer and producer. Moreover, this is a danger
which we imagine largely because we argue from existing conditions. It
will be greatly diminished as the economic motive ceases to exercise its
withering influence upon men.
But it stands to reason that men will do better and more faithful work
under conditions which give them a direct interest in and control over
their work. Both the quantity and quality of work suffer to-day because
nothing is left to the worker’s sense of honour and responsibility. It
is only a more or less irksome necessity to which the worker goes
apathetically and from which he turns with relief. But convert it into a
social task in which fellowship may be actually realised in a genuine
participation in control, where management is an affair of common
counsel and not of autocratic fiats, where the ideal of public service
has superseded the purpose of private gain, and you set free
potentialities both of quality and quantity of workmanship of which
under the present demoralising conditions it is not possible to form a
conception.
Clearly the reality of fellowship in industry must be validated by
making every position of greater responsibility open to every worker;
and appointment to such positions should be by choice of the workers.
That the workers may be trusted to make good appointments is
demonstrated by the sagacity which has generally been manifested in the
selection of their Union leaders; and this is a far more certain
guarantee of effective management than the present system which often
assigns incompetent men to important positions on grounds of kinship or
“influence.” It further goes without saying that a genuine partnership
implies the right of withdrawal. A man must be free to choose his work
and the place where he works. Freedom is of the very essence of
fellowship. Anything of the nature of coercion or conscription would be
deadly to the spirit which it is desired to create.
II
Naturally a living society will require a living fellowship in the
ordering of its public affairs; and it is true that the arrest and
corruption of democracy—wheresoever those ills have befallen it—are due
more to the ignorance and the indifference of the mass of the people in
respect of their common affairs than to any other single cause. This is
ever the opportunity of the demagogue and the spoilsman. Where there is
no vision, said the ancient scribe, the people perish; but the people
perish no less certainly where there is no common thought. The mental
indolence and inertia of the public and the incompetency of public
criticism is the danger of the statesman, and the very life of the
carpet-bagging politician. The extent of this ignorance and
apathy—beyond the narrow limits where our pockets are concerned—is
appalling. Especially in regard to the external relationships of their
respective states, the common people have lived in the past in great
darkness, and as the war has shown, in the shadow of death. If the
masses of the European peoples had been in 1914, as well-informed
concerning their neighbours as they are to-day (and this does not say
very much), the war might well have never happened; and it is well that
we should remember that the democratic control of foreign policy, of
which we justly hope much, will prove a vain thing without systematic
education of the people in the matters which are gathered up in the
expression “foreign policy.”
And, indeed, the main root of indifference is ignorance; for we are
vitally interested in nothing of which we do not know something. It is
to education that we must look for our main remedy. Some gleams of light
have indeed already begun to pierce our darkness. We have commenced to
educate school children in the rudiments of civic obligation; and there
is no reason why history and geography should not be taught, not as at
present to stimulate national pride or commercial efficiency, but to
generate a sympathetic and comprehensive outlook upon human
relationships. To this subject we shall need to turn in more detail
presently; here all we need is to premise that the stimulation and
mobilisation of common thought requires an education which shall equip
the citizen with a system of knowledge and ideas which will enable him
to respond to the challenge of the problems of common life and approach
them with intelligence and sympathy. No one who is familiar with the
proceedings of parliaments and congresses will require proof of the
existence of this need.
But this is no more than a beginning. To education must be added the
opportunity of free and unfettered discussion. Every manner of embargo
or restraint on thought must be removed. When a Cambridge don once said
that morning chapel should be compulsory on the ground that if there
were no compulsory religion there would be no religion at all,
Thirlwall, afterwards Bishop of St. David’s, replied that the
distinction was too subtle for his apprehension. No less does restraint
upon thought lead to the destruction of thought. Yet thought, just
because it is free, requires some method of test and correction; and
this is supplied by discussion. In this region especially is fellowship
the necessary co-efficient of freedom. At present the comparative
paucity of opportunities of systematic discussion, outside small circles
and coteries, has led to that lack of mental independence to which the
modern press owes its ordinate power. The pathetic, not to say tragic,
readiness of the multitude to follow any demagogue in the press who
shouts loudly enough is a manifest sign of dangerous mental
incompetency. The Northcliffes and the Hearsts owe their influence to
the incapacity of the multitude to think for itself; and no multitude
will ever be able to think which does not acquire the habit of thinking
together.
It is impossible to estimate the value of the New England Town Meeting
as an organ of discipline in common thought; and some such focus of
public discussion there should be in every community. Nowadays the
community elects a board or a council and relegates the function of
discussion to this body, and so far as its local affairs are concerned
goes to sleep until the next election, except perhaps for a small
minority chiefly composed of hostile critics. This elected body rarely
reaches a plane of initiative and leadership in thought even within the
narrow province committed to its care. Its discussions chiefly gather
around minor points of administration; rarely do they reveal any degree
of constructive originality. Yet the public spirit which is the life of
a community needs continual stimulus; and this stimulus is dependent on
discussion. It is a frequent, almost a constant complaint against
municipal bodies that they are composed of persons who have axes of
their own to grind, or who, though they are not personally corrupt, are
promoting the advantage of particular interests. There is no way out of
this difficulty save by the creation of community centres for regular
and free public discussion. Those who are charged with the conduct of
public affairs—whether local or national—should be open to continuous
and reasoned popular criticism for which an election allows no
opportunity.
The rapid extension of the public Forum in America takes to some extent
the place once filled by the Town Meeting; but its outlook is too
general and its constitution too casual to enable it to discharge the
functions of the latter. Yet it has a very important office to fill; and
in many respects it is the most promising object in the outlook for
democracy in America. As yet it is too dependent upon the platform; and
questions do not form an adequate alternative to reasoned discussion.
These are, however, defects which will be remedied as the movement
develops. It is not at all improbable that the churches may find a way
of recovering their social usefulness by the promotion of the Forum
method. Dr. Kirsopp Lake has a theory that just as the sacramental stage
of religion has passed, so now the “sermon” stage is passing, and we are
entering upon the “discussion” stage. It may be so. Certainly no human
concern so stands in need of vigorous and radical discussion as does
religion; and now that it becomes increasingly evident that the day is
wholly gone when religion could be cultivated as an isolated interest
unrelated to the secular concerns of life, it will be of untold
advantage to the church and to society, in the interests of truth and
right thinking, that the free discussion of religion and public affairs
in the closest possible relation to one another should be seriously
fostered. Neither religion nor any view of the world which does not
touch life at every point is likely to survive in an age which is slowly
learning the unity of all life. In modern England, the Trade Union
branches have in many cases proved to be educational centres of the
utmost value; but even more than the Trade Unions has the Socialist
propaganda, with its challenge to discussion, proved a fruitful organ of
common thought on public affairs.
When we pass from the plane of local to that of national interests we
find a state of things which provokes wonder that any shred of democracy
has survived it. The system of political parties has its roots in human
nature; and we are never likely to outlive it. The quip that we are all
born either little Liberals or little Conservatives has beneath it the
fact of a profound and perhaps permanent difference of temperament.
There are those—and probably will always be—who take less kindly to
change than others; and in this difference there will always be ample
room and occasion for discussion and criticism. It is also well to
remember that the conflict of sincerely held opinion is one of the most
fruitful forms of co-operation in the search for truth. But there are
few existing lines of party division which reflect a genuine cleavage of
conviction. The present opposition of Republican and Democrat in America
seems to have only a distant connection with that profound division of
opinion in which the opposition first originated. In Great Britain,
Liberal and Conservative have stood ideally for the two necessary
principles of freedom and order, progress and stability; but the party
conflict has raged chiefly in recent times around the question of power.
It has been a duel of the “ins” and “outs.” There are, of course,
Liberals like Lord Morley, and Conservatives like Lord Hugh Cecil, whose
political attachments rest upon deep and reasoned conviction; but
reasoned conviction is not the main subject of interest in the Whips’
offices. The final judgment upon the nature of the party struggle is to
be sought in the practical business of electioneering. Direct corruption
is on the whole rare in democratic countries; but the organisation of
the party vote—whether in England or America—is a wholly scandalous and
deplorable business. The practice of canvassing for votes, attended
frequently with intimidation and generally with a good deal of insincere
cajoling, the easily made and easily forgotten electioneering promises,
the frantic shepherding of sluggish voters to the polling booth,—these
things show how little substance of conviction and thought there is in
the modern political game. Canvassing is sometimes defended as a method
of political education; occasionally in competent hands it no doubt is
so; but anyone who is acquainted with electioneering methods knows that
the education is merely incidental to securing the promise of a vote.
Canvassing would conceivably serve a useful purpose if the attempt to
extract the promise of a vote were declared to be in fact what it is in
spirit—a violation of the Ballot Act. It is questionable, however, how
long the practice of canvassing would survive this curtailment. And in
addition to this, all inducements to drag unwilling and indifferent
citizens to the poll should be made illegal. Democracy is not
necessarily government by the mob. It is rather government by the
intelligent and the interested; and the remedy for popular apathy here,
as elsewhere, is proper education.
The two-party system of Great Britain, and in the United States, may in
time be replaced by the group system as it prevails on the continent of
Europe.[31] The group system is subject to the evils and the
disadvantages attending the two-party system; but it has the distinct
advantage of making possible a larger range and variety of criticism.
Nevertheless, whether under the two-party or group conditions, it is
doubtful whether the present territorial arrangement of representation
can ever secure a truly democratic government. The territorial
arrangement is derived from a period which long antedates the railroad;
and improved means of communication have created national groups with
specialised but ultra-local interests, and for the purposes of
democratic government the Labour Union (for instance) is as important a
unit as the county. It is absurd that the only way in which the specific
interests of organised labour can be represented in the House of Commons
is by putting Labour candidates in competition with Liberals and
Conservatives in mixed constituencies. Some alleviation of this anomaly
may be found in the plan of proportional representation; but this does
not fully provide for the necessity of securing direct and adequate
representation of functional and cultural associations in the councils
of the nation. It is an anachronism that to-day the mind of the nation
should be gathered solely on a geographical basis, when the actual
living mind of the nation increasingly resides in the various groups
into which men form themselves on the basis of interests that are no
longer determined by local considerations. The representation of
non-territorial constituencies in the councils of the nation raises the
question of the nature of the state which must be considered separately.
Footnote 31:
The results of the last General Election in England seem to bear out
this anticipation.
Freedom and fulness of discussion is the very breath of life to popular
institutions, and wheresoever any problem or range of problems is
withdrawn from public discussion, there is a virtual denial of the
democratic principle. When, for instance, and in particular, foreign
policy is conducted behind closed doors, a control over the destinies of
the people is vested in individuals or in a class of individuals which
is as real and as monstrous as that of an autocrat; and democracy is
denied in its most sensitive and critical part. It is true that the
practice of secret diplomacy has survived because nations have been too
little concerned about their external affairs; and no plausible
arguments about “delicate situations” and the like could resist for a
moment the insistence of an intelligent democracy upon the management of
its own affairs. If democracy is to survive at all, it must make up its
mind speedily that the principle of its inner life shall not be denied
in its outer. But if democracy is to have a mind at all, it must learn
to use the mind it has; and the chief stimulus to this end would be the
multiplication of centres of discussion. This would be materially helped
if government departments were required to produce not only ponderous
blue-books which only bewilder the common man, and official documents
intelligible only to the expert, but popular accounts, published
regularly, of their proceedings. The press should be used far more
extensively for this purpose; and even the children of the public
schools should be provided with appropriate graded summaries of the acts
of the national government. Then on the basis of this material for
discussion, the social debating society, the reading circle, the Forum
and all such groups would become the living and increasing springs of
democracy.
In speaking of education we are far too apt to confine the word to the
education of children; but what may be done in the education of adults
and at the same time in the stimulation of fellowship in thought, is
well shown by the achievement of the Workers’ Educational Association in
England. The education of the working class is an idea which dates back
to the social and political ferment of the early nineteenth century—the
earliest expression being the Mechanics’ Institute movement. This was
followed by the Working Men’s College movement under Frederick Denison
Maurice and his friends. Then came the educational experiments, first of
the Rochdale Pioneers in 1840, and then of the Co-operative Societies,
out of which grew ultimately the University Extension movement. The
existing Worker’s Educational Association originated in an alliance of
the educational activities of the Co-operative, Trade Union and
University Extension movements. It was based upon “the vital principle
that there could be no complete education of working people unless it
was a result of the combination of working men and women and scholars,
respectively experts in demand and supply.” It is certain—and the war
has provided many instances of it—that this alliance of worker and
scholar has done much to break down the partition wall of class
prejudice; and the “tutorial class” has in particular been a very
fruitful agent of fellowship and education. “The days of the W.E.A.” (as
it is called) says Mr. Alfred Mansbridge, its devoted and able
secretary, “have been few so far; but it has already demonstrated the
soundness of its theories—to take one instance alone—by the development
of the University Tutorial Class movement which conforms in method to
that of Plato so far as question and answer developed in discussion are
concerned. In England alone over eight thousand men and women have
passed through these courses which are organised in connection with
every University and University College. If it were not for the clear
demonstration of experience, it would seem fatuous to expect that men
and women who have undergone no educational training other than that
provided in the few years of attendance at the elementary school would
be willing to attend classes for three years, and in some cases for as
many as seven or eight years. It must be remembered that the discipline
of the class though self-imposed is severe. No absence is allowed for
other than unavoidable causes. Moreover, their purpose is the
acquisition of knowledge as assisting the fulfilment of an educational
ideal which is conceived not in the interests of the individual but in
the interests of citizenship. The level of intellectual achievement
testified to by many eminent educationists is such as to warrant the
Board of Education in making a regulation to the effect that ‘the
instruction must aim at reaching within the limits of the subject
covered, the standard of University work in honours.’”[32] While the
emphasis in this account is laid chiefly upon the educational aspects of
the movement those who are acquainted with its working lay much stress
upon the part which the practice and realisation of fellowship play in
it.[33] The sense of common quest is at once a source and a result of
the movement: and it is not open to any question that the W.E.A. is one
of the most powerful organs of the new democracy now existing. Alongside
the W.E.A. in Great Britain is also the Adult School movement, which
chiefly under the auspices of the Society of Friends is doing much
similar, though not so severe work. It gathers together every Sunday
morning in all parts of the country thousands of working men and women
in its many hundred schools to study not only “the principles of the
life and teaching of Jesus, but the manifold and perplexing problems of
national and international life.” In such fruitful activities as these
will the mind and the temper of the coming democracy be created. These
men and women are learning the practice of freedom and fellowship in
thought, which is the fundamental democratic method.
Footnote 32:
_Contemporary Review_, June, 1918.
Footnote 33:
An interesting sign of where the members of the W.E.A. themselves feel
the essence of the movement to lie is seen in the inscription on a
memorial cross erected in the Parish Church of Lambeth, London, in
memory of three tutors of the W.E.A.:
“In memory of
Philip Anthony Brown, 1886-1915.
Alfred Edward Bland, 1881-1916.
Arthur Charleswood Turner, 1881-1918.
Tutors of the Workers’ Educational Association. They lived for
Fellowship in England and died for it in France.”
_The Challenge_, July 19th, 1918.
III
Now that we have come to acknowledge not only that Jack’s vote is as
good as his master’s, but that Jill’s vote is as good as Jack’s, we have
laid the train of a further change in the relations of men and women.
For just as surely as the worker has discovered that political equality
does not of necessity remove economic disability, and is now beginning
to demand economic emancipation, so also women will pass on from the
acquisition of political equality to a demand for economic equality.
Indeed, the demand is already being made. The war has served to reveal
the arbitrary and illusory character of the assumptions which closed
certain occupations to women. We know that the number of occupations for
which women are temperamentally or physically unfitted is comparatively
small. There are obvious reasons for believing that some few trades will
remain permanently undesirable for women; but the immediate fact that
confronts us is that the traditional line of demarcation has been swept
away under the stress of war needs; and that we shall have to work out
in the school of experience a new classification of occupations more
consonant with the new facts.
Some years ago there was much discussion in England concerning a high
legal decision that a woman was not a “person” within the meaning of a
certain Act of Parliament. This was symptomatic of a general survival of
the view which assigned women to a slightly sub-human class; and the
vitality of this view is still more considerable than many hopeful minds
are willing to think. Yet it is only when we have educated ourselves
into the conception of woman which attributes to her a distinct
personality of her own, with an end in and for herself, and with all the
rights and privileges, the freedom and the independence appertaining to
it, that we shall approach the problem of the relations of men and women
from a genuinely democratic standpoint. Woman is commonly regarded as
having a function rather than an individual end. It is her part to
preserve the race. Her peculiar vocation is child-bearing. It cannot,
however, be affirmed with too much emphasis that the perpetuation of the
race is no more the task of woman than of man. The heavier end of the
physical burden of race-preservation certainly falls upon the woman; but
this fact does not indicate that this is the purpose for which she
exists. Her traditional assignment to this role, and the consequent
limitation of her circle of experience and interest, the virtual
incarceration of the great majority of women to the “home,” and the
denial to them of any real participation in the larger concerns of the
common life, must cease if social existence is to achieve the balance
necessary to stable and healthy progress.
The preservation of the race can be left to look after itself.
Race-suicide only becomes a peril when the relations of men and women
become perverted and unnatural as they commonly do in our present social
order. When at one end of society, the bringing up of families entails
an economic burden too heavy to be borne, and at the other, the hedonism
which accompanies excessive wealth tends to a sensuality which refuses
to accept the natural risks and to pay the natural price of the
sex-relation, a poisonous arrest is unavoidably laid upon the normal
operation of the sex-instincts. The most easily perverted endowment of
human nature is sex, and it cannot retain a balanced and healthy
functioning under disordered conditions of life. The incessant
discussion of marriage and divorce misses the point largely because it
ignores the background of the problem. While we regard the physical
distinction of sex as the primary fact to be considered in relation to
woman, and still cling to the obsession so dear to bourgeois
respectability that her business is motherhood and “her place is the
home,” so long, that is, as we regard her life and its purpose as
dependent upon man, so long will judgment be deflected from its true
pole at its very source. Wholesome and free men and women will continue
to fall in love with one another and will want to have children of each
other, where to-day because their relations are unwholesome and unequal,
they tend only to seek possession of one another, without any
disposition (not to speak of eagerness) to welcome the fruit of their
union; and too often with the deliberate intention of preventing the
fruitage. For the disorder which leads to this confusion of the
sex-relation, the first remedy is to establish the independence of the
woman.
The problem of marriage will remain acute—and, indeed, ultimately
insoluble—until the contracting parties enter it upon the basis of an
equal partnership. The conception of marriage as a “career” for women
has done much to destroy the only conditions under which marriage can
ever be successful. The freedom and spontaneity of the relation between
men and women is made impossible by those calculations of position and
wealth which the career theory of marriage requires. While it is
nominally the case that no woman is compelled to marry, it is actually
the fact that many women—in the _bourgeois_ classes, most women—are so
brought up that marriage becomes their only escape from indigence. The
fact of woman’s independence should be made concrete and real by
requiring that every woman shall be self-supporting, that is to say,
that she shall share in the necessary industrial processes of the
community or do some work of acknowledged social worth. Naturally the
latter category includes the bearing and upbringing of children; for
than this there is no work more fundamental or of greater social worth.
This requires the economic independence of the mother; and since the
social reconstruction postulated in these pages, involves in some form
or other the establishment of an universal minimum standard, the mother
will not only be economically independent but will also be released from
the harassing task of bringing up a growing family upon a stationary
income.
It will be argued against such proposals as these that they endanger the
sanctity of the family. But this criticism possesses neither grace nor
force in a generation which has permitted industrial conditions to
prevail which have virtually destroyed the home-life of the
working-classes. The only assumption on which it is safe to proceed in
dealing with this question is that anything entitled to be called a
“home life” is quite exceptional among large masses of the population.
Both the physical setting of the home—the house—and the economic
condition of its members rob the home of that quality of sanctuary and
base which is of the essence of a genuine _home_. Our problem is to
recreate the home, the setting of that social group of man, woman and
child, which we call the family, and which is the natural nucleus of the
commonwealth, and the moral gymnasium where the young should best learn
the arts of fellowship. The housing question has its own importance in
the problem; but of infinitely more importance to the recovery of home
life is the establishment of the economic independence of the woman. So
long as custom and necessity place her in a position of dependence on
the man, so long will she be denied the freedom which is essential to
perfect comradeship. Her present status denies the equality which is
necessary to fellowship; and much of the unhappiness of modern marriage
is due to the intelligible chafing of women against the conditions which
dependence and inferiority of status impose upon her. That many married
people succeed in overcoming this initial handicap is true; but that is
due to certain qualities in themselves and does not in the least alter
the fact that where marital relations go awry the evil is largely in the
conditions which govern those relations in our present social order.
The relaxing of marriage ties is no remedy; it is only a relief to
persons of incompatible tempers. Both the advocates and the opponents of
greater facilities for divorce seem to argue their case out of all
relation to the existing social environment of marriage. The evils for
which a remedy is sought in easier divorce are not to be found in the
nature of the marriage relation but in the conventional and legal status
of women.[34] While the social and economic sources of the trouble are
left untouched, no amount of Catholic emphasis upon the sacramental
character of marriage is going to stay the demand for the greater
dissolubility of a tie which existing conditions do much to make
difficult and frequently intolerable. Even under the best conditions,
the mutual adjustments of the man and woman in married life are not
easy; but when one party enters the relation in a position of more or
less explicitly acknowledged dependence and inferiority, there are seeds
of ineradicable trouble.
Footnote 34:
This does not imply that the present writer does not recognise the
need of some extension of the grounds of divorce in Great Britain. It
simply means that he thinks that the problem cannot be rightly
approached until the economic independence of women has been
established.
It is not for a moment argued that the establishment of the economic
independence of woman is a cure for all the ills that afflict the
family. But this is fundamental; and we shall simply be beating the air
so long as we do not accept this principle. For it is the only method
which holds a promise of restoring the life of the home. At the same
time, it is no less necessary that the woman being by reason of her
motherhood economically independent should not be regarded as the
economic handmaid of the state. If the endowment of motherhood is only a
provision for increasing the economic and military human material of the
community, then we are better without it. For the poison which vitiates
our life will return to it at its most delicate and sensitive point. To
regard the marriage relation simply as the means of supplying a constant
stream of military and economic units for the state is to deny the
spiritual nature of man at its very source, and to reimpose on ourselves
the deadly incubus of materialism. This is the danger which the Eugenics
movement threatens us with. To introduce the principle of selective
breeding into human relations may result in a community of persons,
healthy, vigorous and efficient for economic and military purposes; but
we are learning how little physical heredity has to do with the ultimate
purpose of life. In so far as Eugenics will lead to greater precautions
against the propagation of diseased and mentally and physically
degenerate persons, and quickens a greater vigilance and a more
insistent demand for sound minds and sound bodies in those about to give
themselves in marriage, it brings a necessary and valuable reinforcement
to the influences that make for human welfare. But when it goes beyond
this point, it becomes a danger to the spiritual conception of life and
society. What we must insist upon is that marriage shall be a
partnership, deliberately entered into by two equal persons,
economically independent of each other, attracted to each other by that
physical and temperamental affinity which we call love; and that we
shall import into the relationship no extraneous notions of
state-service or of race-preservation which may interfere with the
freedom and spontaneity of the relation thus established. The bearing of
children may be a service to the nation; but no child is well-born who
is not born simply of the joyful mutual selfgiving of man and woman.
Yet it may be held that the partnership is an affair so momentous that
none should be permitted to enter it so precipitately as the marriage
laws of the United States allow. Some degree of deliberation should be
insisted upon before legal recognition of the union is granted. The
demand for greater facilities for divorce is probably not unconnected
with the extreme facility with which persons can enter upon the marriage
relationship.
But the establishment of right relations between the sexes must begin
before the period when men and women have reached the condition of
personal independence. It should be plain that the sense of
sex-difference which emerges in adolescence should not be allowed to
develop in the unregulated and capricious manner in which our false
modesty compels it to develop to-day. The processes of initiation into
the mysteries of sex should begin sufficiently early to avert so far as
possible the danger of its being discoloured and perverted by the undue
obtrusion of its sense-accompaniments. There is no real reason why the
frank comradeship of boys and girls should not be maintained through
adolescence into youth, but the criminal negligence which we have shown
concerning the means by which sex-knowledge is communicated to growing
children has succeeded in creating a gulf between men and women which
persists more or less permanently and constitutes the most obstinate
difficulty in the way of perfect freedom of fellowship between men and
women. It is no exaggeration to say that the attitude of most men to
women is poisoned—perhaps beyond perfect recovery at any time—by the
conditions under which as boys they received their first intimations of
the nature of the sex-relation. A good deal has already been done to
pave the way of change in this matter; and an increasing number of
parents are assuming the responsibility of communicating this knowledge
to their children. But there is still unfortunately a great mass of
unhealthy prudery to be overcome before rational dealing with this
problem becomes anything like universal.
The problem of the fellowship of men and women, however, extends beyond
the institution of marriage. Now that the enfranchisement of women is
opening up the question of their availability and qualification for
national legislatures, we are confronted with a very large possibility
of change in the tone and temper of government. Much nonsense is talked
about the psychological differences between men and women; and of this
nonsense, the emptiest is that which assumes that women are dominated by
sentiment and emotion, while men are guided by reason. An unprejudiced
observer, watching deliberative gatherings of men over any space of time
would certainly arrive at the conclusion that the occasions on which
they acted upon purely rational grounds were rare and exceptional; and
it has been the experience of the present writer that in deliberative
groups of men and women the women are on the whole more likely to
display a dispassionate rationality in arriving at their judgments than
the men. It is a region in which broad generalisations are bound to be
unsound; and the progress of the higher education of women is
undoubtedly obliterating any patent difference of mental operation
between men and women. At the same time, there are certain differences
which are embedded in the physical structure of sex and which may be
therefore permanent; but so far from disqualifying women from a share in
government, those very differences entitle them to it. Quite apart from
the fact that the problems of food and clothing in their incidence on
the home are of peculiar importance to women, and that the woman’s point
of view should always be represented in discussion of the large-scale
problems of production and distribution, the mind of woman brings a
check and balance to the operations of the male mind which they very
acutely need. There can, for instance, be no question that the male mind
tends to an inordinate faith in force and coercive processes; and while
it would hardly be correct to say that the female mind possesses an
antithetic bias of a reasoned kind, it does normally display a certain
hesitancy to apply the closure of compulsion which the too ready
_real-politik_ of a purely male assembly is prone to adopt when it sets
out to translate its emotions into enactments. The truth of the matter,
in fine, is this—that because humanity is bi-sexual, its affairs cannot
be reasonably and fruitfully determined save through the common counsels
of men and women. We have already made a beginning in the admission of
women to the councils of the community. A woman has sat in the Congress
of the United States; women have long been at home in British municipal
bodies, and their right to a place in Parliament has been acknowledged.
It is only a matter of time when the logic of the enfranchisement of
women will reach its inevitable conclusion in their admission to all
public deliberative bodies on equal terms with men. They have a
contribution to bring to the corporate direction of affairs without
which the nations can no longer do; and the fact that as a class they
may take some time to become habituated to the mechanics of legislation
is an argument for hastening their complete admission to it.
There were those who in the “militant” stage of the “Votes for Women”
campaign foretold that the economic class-war would presently be
superseded or complicated by a sex-war; and some women there were whose
utterances undoubtedly pointed in that direction. For the time, however,
this danger has dropped over the horizon. The war has evoked a community
of suffering in which men and women alike have shared too deeply, and in
which their mutual need has been too overwhelming to make the notion of
a sex-war even thinkable to-day. But we should be rejoicing prematurely
if we supposed that all possible sources of sex-antagonism have
disappeared. The political enfranchisement of women certainly removes
one source; but the new industrial complications caused by the entry of
women into occupations which have hitherto been a male monopoly, and in
which their employment has been fully justified by the character of
their workmanship may, when the transition to peaceful life is being
made, breed grievances and troubles in which the line of cleavage will
be determined by the sex-factor. But if we assume the establishment of
the “national minimum,” applicable to men and women alike, and therefore
securing the economic independence of women, we shall have robbed this
prospective danger of much of its substance. For the rest, there seems
to be no reason why women should not be freely permitted to engage in
occupations for which they are competent, on equal terms with men; and
the comradeship of men and women in the control and the operation of
industrial processes would do much to fix the now dominant sex-interest
in its proper place in life. The primacy of the sex-interest in
determining the relations of men and women works definitely toward the
retention of women in a subordinate, parasitic and exploited position,
and while this lasts, we shall still have with us the seeds of
sex-antagonism. All this does not overlook the fact that there are kinds
of work for which women are physically unsuited, and that there are
times in the life of the married woman when she should be exempted from
all manual work save of the lightest sort. But these problems are in
essence present even in the working conditions of men. All men are not
suited for all classes of work; and there are few men whose work is not
occasionally interrupted by sickness. What is needed in the case of
women is simply a further application of those principles of selection
and accommodation which already operate in every industry. Unless some
such position as this is frankly accepted, we may be presently
confronted with a new militancy and a new sabotage at the hands of women
who have tasted the experience of economic independence and are
unwilling to surrender it to a convention of inequality which they claim
their own war-time performance has permanently discredited.
IV
Difficult as the realisation of a perfect fellowship between men and
women may be, it presents a problem comparatively easy of solution by
the side of that entailed in the division of a community by a
colour-line. In itself the colour-line is not insuperable; its
difficulty lies in its symbolical character as representing a difference
and an inferiority of tradition and history. The chief difficulty in the
United States arises out of the memory of the former slavery of the
negro population; and the consequent persistence of a prejudice against
according equal treatment to a class regarded as, if not sub-human, at
least permanently inferior in capacity. It is useless to press the
assumption that a necessary physical aversion must always separate the
white from the black, in the face of the existence of a vast number of
palpably cross-bred persons in the community. This does not, of course,
mean that mixed marriages should be encouraged or regarded as normal.
The problems raised by miscegenation are much too difficult to permit us
to remove the colour-line by the off-hand method of race-fusion. The
fusion of two races separated from one another not only by the memory of
two centuries of slavery but by unnumbered centuries of widely different
culture, would probably create more problems than it solved. The
colour-line would be superseded by a multiplicity of shade-lines; and
confusion would be worse confounded. It is probable that the level of
the more advanced race would be depressed more than that of the more
backward race would be raised. Houston Chamberlain is probably right (in
spite of his capacity for being so frequently and so colossally wrong)
in holding that the finest racial types are produced by the fusion of
two peoples not too widely separated in physical and historical
character, followed by close inbreeding. The gulf between black and
white in America and South Africa is far too deep, as yet at least, to
make the removal of the colour-line by fusion a subject of hopeful
discussion.
But equally the solution is not to be found in segregation—certainly so
far as these two countries are concerned. The admixture of the black and
the white elements in the population has gone much too far to make
segregation a practical proposition. It would, moreover, have the
distinct disadvantage of stereotyping two different types of cultural
development within the same commonwealth and of consequently endangering
its unity by setting up the possibility of rivalry and antagonism. In
any two-race community the ideal must be to secure so far as may be
possible a substantial identity of outlook and culture; and this is to
be done not by segregation, but by contact.
But it is just this “contact” that is denied to the negro race both in
America and South Africa. The races are really segregated as effectually
as though they lived in separate reservations; they live in quite
different cultural “climates.” The negro though no longer a
chattel-slave yet constitutes a servile class; the duties assigned to
him in the community are essentially of a menial kind. It is
characteristic of his position in America that the higher ranks of
military command are closed to him; and while a woman has made her way
to Congress, there is as yet no negro congressman; the idea is still
barely thinkable. Yet no community has thrived permanently which
permitted a helot class to exist within itself; and the position of the
negro—now that education is quickening his mind to the sense of
class-disinheritance and race-consciousness—may become a grave menace to
the inner harmony of the Republic.
The logic of Lincoln’s proclamation has yet to be worked out in the
minds of white Americans. To abolish slavery is not indeed to make a
black man white; nor does it at once equip him for the responsibilities
of freedom. But it does confer citizenship upon him; and the gift of
citizenship should be validated by two things; first, by a frank and
generous recognition of equality of standing, and second, by a
thorough-going policy of education. Perhaps the former was more than
could be justly expected. Just as the slave was ill-equipped for
freedom, so the white man could hardly rise at once to the plane of
regarding the negro as his free and equal brother. But it is a fair
criticism of the public treatment of the negro that he has not been
supplied with the opportunity of rising to his white brother’s plane of
culture. There have been voluntary philanthropic efforts in this
direction, but this work should not have been left to the precarious
chances of charity. Just because negro emancipation was a public act,
the full cultural education of the negro was a public responsibility.
By reason of this failure on the part of the white man, the negro has
not advanced to such a point as two generations of liberty would
seemingly entitle us to expert. He has inevitably retained much of the
mentality and many of the habits of his servitude; and these are
effectual bars to that type of social contact which the negro’s growth
requires. That there is no inherent impossibility in educating the negro
up to the average plane of the Anglo-Saxon has been proved in a
multitude of instances; and people who are devoid of race-prejudice find
no difficulty in establishing frank and fruitful fellowship with
educated coloured persons.
America and Great Britain in her dominions and dependencies have to face
the logic of their democratic ideals by a sustained resolution to
provide the opportunity to their coloured fellow-citizens to reach their
own plane of culture. As things are they deny their democratic
professions by permitting their race prejudices to consign their
coloured fellow-citizens to a condition of permanent social inferiority.
If they wish to be democratic in fact and not merely in name, they will
need to be true to the implications of their democracy through
everything, even through the physical repugnances which the personal
habits of backward races are apt to evoke. The colour problem was
created for this generation by its forbears—by those who sold and owned
slaves and those who established colonies in distant countries. But
though the problem is not of our making, we cannot absolve ourselves
from the moral responsibility which it lays upon us; and it is only by
means of an inveterate good-will that we shall discharge this
responsibility. Such a good-will must rest upon the truth—however
unpalatable to our prejudices it may be—that the black man whether in
New York or in Cape Town is equally with ourselves endowed with the
human _differentia_ of personality, and that he is morally entitled to
all the rights of life and light and liberty that we claim for
personality. With this truth must be accepted the task imposed upon us
by our superior advantages (which like our responsibilities we owe to
our fathers), to raise the more backward races with whom we live to a
plane on which there can be free and enriching fellowship between them
and ourselves. We cannot hopefully go on to make the world safe for a
principle of common life which our present habits show that we do not
believe in at home.
V
However complete and well-organised the provision may be against
destitution in any society, it can never prevent the distress which
ensues upon the accidents of life, sickness and sorrow, loneliness and
old age—these we shall not wholly escape even in our earthly paradise.
We may indeed lessen the occasions of sickness and of premature death by
a wiser and more scientific ordering of the physical setting of life and
of personal habit; but no ingenuity or skill can overcome the inevitable
brokenness of life in a world of time. But this very circumstance
provides fellowship with the opportunity to do its most perfect work.
And real fellowship will be possible for the simple reason that
“charity” will be superfluous. In modern life, the material destitution
of large numbers of people has necessitated the organisation of relief
on a large scale, both public and private; and while the charitable
impulse is intrinsically admirable, the conditions under which it has
come to be exercised have in effect widened the gulf between the rich
and the poor. On the one hand the rich have contracted the habit of
condescending patronage; and the poor have fallen into a habit of
cunning obsequiousness. In self-defence the rich have built up a
machinery of investigation and distribution which has had three
disastrous results: _first_, it has set up the monstrous and unfair test
of deservingness,—“the deserving poor” is a phrase in which the
well-to-do have forever crystallised their pharisaism; _second_, it has
set a premium upon the petty tactics of evasion and deceit among the
poor, and upon a corresponding cunning and astuteness in those entrusted
with the business of investigation; and _third_, it has eliminated from
charity the one element which could make it tolerable and preserve the
grace which should properly go with it—namely, friendly contact. For the
most part, the relief of destitution through charitable organisations,
has—because it eliminates the direct personal touch between need and
supply—produced and aggravated a deep and deplorable social schism.
Nor is the case any better with the public organisation of poor relief.
The English poor-law has been so completely discredited and is so near
dissolution that it is hardly necessary to discuss it here. It is more
impersonal in its operations than a charity organisation society; but
its most evil consequence is that it has so worked as to attach a stigma
to honest poverty—for the person who has received poor-relief is denied
the rights of citizenship. Old age has fortunately been provided for in
Great Britain in the only worthy way, by a grant of state-pensions,
though the actual amount of the pension is pitifully inadequate. Yet the
fact of the provision indicates a distinct advance in the sense of
public justice. But we shall not make much more progress until we
realise that the pauper like the plutocrat is a social product; and that
such destitution as prevails to-day is due less to personal perversity
than to a vicious social order. No one is so foolishly hopeful as to
suppose that even the most radical social change will eliminate the
prodigal and the spendthrift and the sensualist. Nevertheless, it is no
longer open to question that a revolution in economic conditions would
do much to remove the auxiliary causes of pauperising excess.
But the chief evil which attends our method of dealing with poverty is
that it has tended to perpetuate a pauper class. Whether in the relief
work of religious and charitable societies, or in the administration of
public relief, we have been chiefly governed by the fact of an immediate
need. We have lived in the fond hope that if the present corner could be
turned, something might transpire to save the recipient of relief from
another crisis; and not even the obvious fact that the crisis is chronic
in the case of multitudes has shaken us out of our preoccupation with
symptoms into an investigation of causes. In one of the supplementary
reports of the British Poor-Law Commission, it was stated that the
investigation of the cases of applicants to whom “out-door” relief was
denied (the alternative being to go into the “house”), showed that only
in one instance where such persons had been helped by religious
organisations was there any attempt to place the person concerned on an
independent economic footing. This is symptomatic of the ineptitude of
our common thought about the poor. We appear to accept the fact of their
dependence as chronic and incurable; and by the process of “doles” we
aggravate this dependence and turn it into what we suppose it to be.
This same ineptitude has pursued society in its dealings with another
class—the criminal. Criminologists do not nowadays assume the existence
of a natural criminal class; but our way of treating criminals has
created such a class. Both for the pauper and the criminal we require a
new diagnosis. Instead of treating the pauper as an incurable social
parasite we should regard him as a personal inefficient; and rather than
put a premium upon his inefficiency by a continual gratuitous relief of
his necessities, we should impose some discipline which may lead to
personal efficiency and an ordered habit of life. As for the criminal,
he is a social inefficient; and his treatment should include some
provision for his training in the sense and arts of social
responsibility. It is a practical recognition of this need that
constitutes the contribution which men like Messrs. Thomas Mott Osborne
and Homer Lane are making to the solution of a difficult problem. That
some plan of temporary segregation is necessary in the treatment of the
inefficient—whether personal or social—is not open to question; but the
poorhouse and the prison, as we know them, only aggravate the evil which
they are intended to cure.
Our increasing attention to the problem of the social misfit at an
earlier stage—through the new study and treatment of mentally deficient
children—will considerably reduce the proportions both of pauperism and
crime. We are a long way from Samuel Butler’s vision of the time when
the liar will be sent to hospital and the sick person to jail;
nevertheless, the point of Butler’s _extravaganza_ is becoming
recognised in the double fact that a good deal of disease is due to
preventable causes, the disregard of which is already treated as a legal
offence; and that much of the delinquency that prevails originates in
pathological conditions rather than in moral depravity. Especially are
we on hopeful lines when we take the mentally deficient child and regard
him as the subject of medical rather than of legal treatment. And we
shall go yet farther when we realise that though we cannot and dare not
eliminate the factor of personal responsibility, yet our social misfits
are the products of our social disorder, and it is seen that while
justice requires that a man shall pay the penalty of his sins, yet the
same justice requires that the society which produced the sinner shall
feel a corporate responsibility for his restoration. And restoration is
indeed the very centre of our problem in dealing with the social misfit.
For our task with the pauper and the criminal is that of making each
capable of entering freely and vitally into the fellowship of free men.
Yet when we have dealt with the social misfit there will remain, life
being what it is, a number of people in every community for whom the
burden of life has proved too heavy or whose lives are clouded by
sickness or loneliness or death. “The poor,” said Jesus, “ye have always
with you.” He did not mean that we need always have physically destitute
people with us; He knew better, as we know better. But the smoking flax
and the bruised reed we shall ever have with us; and no society can
afford to despise a ministry of comfort. Indeed, fellowship will lack
its native grace if it fails to produce an unfailing stream of sympathy
and consolation to the distressed. Here will be the test of the vitality
of our fellowship. For our ideal of fellowship may become hardened in
organisation; and personal spontaneity may be lost in a routine habit of
life. And to whatever else we may be able to give an organised and
official form, it is at least sure that when the ministry of comfort and
help loses the touch of personal directness and spontaneity, it is from
henceforth a dead and useless thing.
VII
Up to this point we have considered the more general problems of
fellowship in the community as a whole; we have still to consider some
of the questions raised by the more particular associations which form
themselves within the community, and in which by far the largest measure
of the community’s vitality resides. F. W. Maitland, in an interesting
passage, reviews the endless variety of social forms in which men group
themselves together. He speaks of “churches, and even the mediæval
church, one and catholic, religious houses and mendicant orders,
nonconforming bodies, a presbyterian system, universities, old and new,
the village community, which Germanists have revealed to us, the manor
in its growth and decay, the township, the New England town, the
counties and hundreds, the chartered boroughs, the guild in all its
manifold varieties, the Inns of Court, the merchant adventurers, the
militant “companies” of English _condottieri_ who, returning home, help
to make the word “company” popular among us: the trading companies, the
companies that became colonies, the companies that make war, the
friendly societies, the Trade Unions, the clubs, the group that meets at
Lloyd’s Coffee House, the group that becomes the Stock Exchange, and so
on even to the one man company, the Standard Oil Trust, and the South
Australian statutes for communistic villages.” The prevailing political
philosophy of our time has stated its problem almost wholly in terms of
an abstract state over against an abstract individual; and one of the
most heartening signs of the invasion of political thought and practice
by a more healthy humanism is the growing recognition of these
many-coloured nucleations of life. There are important and difficult
questions bearing upon their political and legal status, but these are
only to be answered by a frank acknowledgment that groupings of this
kind come into being because they meet a real need and answer to certain
facts of life and human nature. No political philosophy is likely to
stand the racket of historical experience which does not stand upon the
assumption that these associations have a real and inherent right to
form themselves, to exist, to thrive and to multiply; for it is in
groups that are voluntarily formed around a living interest that the
most significant and important part of our life is lived. To the more
direct political implications of this type of association we shall turn
at a later point; here we are concerned only to emphasise the need and
the right of such bodies to live, and their importance for the
preservation of the balance of life, and therefore, of stable social
progress. Their real importance may be seen from the circumstance that
the struggle for religious liberty in England, which has historically
been the spring of civil and political liberty, was a struggle not for
the liberty of the individual but of the small voluntarily associated
group.
These voluntarily associated groups will form themselves around any
interest of sufficient importance; and, as we have seen, they are of the
most various character and raise the most various questions concerning
their relation to the commonwealth.[35] This is a subject still in the
earlier stages of exploration and likely to be of increasing importance
for our political and social philosophies, especially as it comes to be
recognised that for the most part the groups which are here spoken of
represent interests and needs more vital to human nature than the
accidental aggregations represented by political states. It may,
moreover, be held that the multiplication of such groups within the
commonwealth, insomuch as they bear upon real interests of life, is much
to be encouraged; and the commonwealth which knows what is good for its
people will impose no restrictions upon their power and readiness to
form themselves into combinations of this kind. And indeed, however
absolute the authority of the state, it cannot prevent the formation of
voluntary associations. If it be not permitted to form these
associations openly, they will be formed secretly; and the secret
society is the undoing of commonwealths.
Footnote 35:
The commonest and the oldest type of freely associated group within
the commonwealth is of course the Church, and on this point the reader
may be referred to the present writer’s book _The Church in the
Commonwealth_.
As a matter of fact, the state has always been apprehensive and
suspicious of combinations of any kind within its own bounds and has
endeavoured either to repress them or to establish the principle that
they exist only on sufferance. But no attempts at repression when they
are directed at associations that represent real human concerns have
been permanently successful. The repeal in 1824 of the British Acts
against combination, intended chiefly to frustrate industrial unions,
whether of employers or of workers, is typical of the fate of such
legislation. These Acts went against the actual facts of the human
situation and naturally proved disastrous. It is in this region of
industrial combinations that we have the best modern illustration of the
spontaneity and inevitability of voluntary human association. In the
Guild period it was broadly true that Capital and Labour being in the
same hands had interests which were identical; but when power-driven
machinery separated Capital from Labour and lodged them in different
hands, and as the rift widened through the operation of _laissez-faire_,
and the interests of Capital and Labour became antagonistic, it was
natural that the capitalists and the workers should severally combine in
defence of their interests. The state prayed a plague on both their
houses at that time, being equally afraid of both; later, the state
became more complaisant to the powerful owning classes; and looked
askance only at the workers’ unions—an attitude which led to a very
material strengthening of the latter. This schism of Capital and Labour
dominates the present social situation, and it is at this time, even
more than the state, the gravest hindrance to the natural activities of
social energy. Its disintegrating and antisocial effect is plain far
outside the region where the immediate issue lies, and it is
questionable whether an organic social life is possible until the
antagonism is overcome. Something has been done to mitigate the worst
asperities of this unsatisfactory position by welfare work,
copartnership, profit-sharing; and still more will be done by the
introduction of measures of joint control of the conditions of industry.
But the fact still remains that this antithesis and separation of
capital and labour is artificial and unnatural, as it is also
essentially undemocratic. For power goes with ownership under the
conditions imposed by the current doctrine of property; and concessions
and benefits which are granted as from the voluntary bounty of the
employer (however worldly wise they actually are in their intention)
involve an assumption of patronage which the present temper of the
workers makes entirely unreal and obsolete. The danger of social
disruption lies in this quarter; and so long as the present tension
remains, it tends to retard the free and varied expressions of
fellowship in which a living society should abound. Society divided into
two camps, with interests radically divergent, is condemned to a state
of tension which is hostile to the free ferment of association natural
to men; and this despite all well-meaning efforts to reconcile the
conflicting interests by compromises which leave the framework of the
schism untouched. So that we have come to this—that it is not only the
traditional attitude of the state which is hostile to the free
efflorescence of social groups but the actual condition of society under
the present industrial system. A state of war, even of suppressed war,
makes for a forced fellowship of partisans, and not for the free
fellowship of partners. It is in the interests of the genuine
socialisation of life that it is demanded that this social schism of
capital and labour should be overcome; and there is but one way of
overcoming it, namely the logical democratic way of putting the capital
and the power it wields in the hands of those who labour. Towards this
goal the first step has been taken in the movement toward democratic
control in industry; and from this it is inevitable that the worker
should proceed to demand control not only of production, but, as Mr.
Cole says, also of the product, its sale and exchange; and, finally of
investments. The free variegated expression and embodiment of the
natural society-forming instincts of mankind are not possible in a
community where one class is in a position to impose its will upon
another. A state of conflict tends inevitably to a kind of flattening
regimentation within the conflicting bodies; and regimentation whether
deliberate or unconscious is an obstruction to the free flow of life.
There is all the difference in the world between an organised society
and a society that is essentially organic. An organised society makes
for uniformity; an organic society will express itself in an endless
number and variety of social forms.
If the state only knew it, its security lies in the encouragement of
voluntary associations of all types; and even if it finds it difficult
to rise to the plane of encouragement, it should at least achieve an
attitude of toleration. For it is the only safeguard against the
inevitable conflict of loyalties which is bound to arise when the state
attempts to legislate for individuals in matters which touch the
question of moral obligation. Indeed, during the war, we have seen the
state in a somewhat lame and half-hearted way endeavouring to escape
some of the consequences of its own legislation by having recourse to a
recognition of the small group. It was bound by the sheer nature of the
falls to acknowledge the existence of conscientious objection to war;
and it proposed to acknowledge the genuineness of an individual
conscientious objection to war if the person in question was a member of
a religious society, the doctrines of which contained a testimony
against war. It was assumed that if a man belonged to the Society of
Friends, it constituted respectable evidence that his objection to
participation in war was sincere. In this particular case, the test
proved hopelessly inadequate; but it does at least indicate the
condition under which the unity of the state can best be preserved. It
is plainly impossible for the state to avoid conflict with the
individual conscience so long as it lacks the means of determining
whether a conscientious scruple is merely a personal idiosyncrasy or
arises from a reasoned and socially authenticated view of life. By
recognising the right of the members of a small group which has
demonstrated its social worth to live their life out in their own way,
it saves itself from a dangerous conflict with the individual
conscience; while, on the other hand, as the individual conscience is
safe-guarded from an anarchic eccentricity by the discipline of a freely
chosen social environment, the state has the assurance that it is
dealing with a genuine manifestation of moral life which must at all
costs be respected. The small voluntary associated group is the saving
middle term between the state and the individual. It is not likely, of
course, that it will prove efficacious without exception in solving the
problems involved in the relations of the individual and the state; but
it would do much to mitigate the dangerous possibilities of the present
practice.[36]
Footnote 36:
This chapter pretends to do no more than discuss at large those
questions of fellowship which directly abut upon the public affairs of
democracies. The promotion of fellowship in general opens up a large
range of subjects which would not fall easily within the scope of this
book.
No discussion of the practice of fellowship can, for instance, be
complete which does not take account of the actual and potential
social ministry of play and recreation. But this matter involves
questions with which the present writer is without competency to deal.
It would require an extended treatment of the social reactions of
sport, amateur and professional, the revival of folk-dancing and the
maypole, the multiplication of play-centres for children and of open
spaces; of the drama and the public provision of music—and of other
matters. The subject is large and important enough for systematic
discussion in a separate volume by someone capable of handling it.
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