now come to the question of equality. Justice in its ordinary sense may
be regarded from one point of view as the first condition of the
efficiency of the social organ. In saying that a judge is just, we
imply that he is so far efficiently discharging his part in
society--the due application of the law--without reference to
irrelevant considerations. He is a machine which rightly parts the
sheep and goats--taking the legal definition of goats and
sheep--instead of putting some goats into the sheepfold, and _vice
versâ_. That is, he secures the accurate application of the purely
legal rule. Organic justice involves an application of the same
principle because it equally depends upon the exclusion of irrelevant
considerations. It implies such a distribution of functions and of
maintenance as may secure the greatest possible efficiency of society
towards some end in itself good. Society of course may be organised
with great efficiency for bad or doubtful ends. A purely military
organisation, however admirable for its purpose, may imply a sacrifice
of the highest welfare of the nation. Assuming, however, the goodness
of the end, the greatest efficiency is of course desirable. We may, for
our purposes, assume that the efficiency of a nation regarded as a
society for the production of wealth is a desirable end. There are, of
course, many other purposes which must not be sacrificed to the
production of wealth. But power of producing wealth, meaning roughly
whatever contributes to the physical support and comfort of the nation,
is undoubtedly a necessary condition of all other happiness. If we all
starve we can have neither art nor science nor morality. What I mean,
therefore, is that a nation is so far better as it is able to raise all
necessary supplies with the least expenditure of labour, leaving aside
the question how far the superfluous forces should be devoted to
raising comparative luxuries or to some purely religious or moral or
intellectual purposes. The perfect industrial organisation is, I shall
assume, compatible with or rather a condition of a perfect organisation
of other kinds. In the most general terms we have to consider what are
the principles of social organisation, which of course implies a
certain balance between the various organs and a thorough nutrition of
all, while yet we may for a moment confine our attention to the purely
industrial or economic part of the question. How, if at all, does the
principle of equality or of social justice enter the problem?
We may assume, in the first place, from this point of view, that one
most obvious condition is the absence of all purely useless structures,
whether of the kind which we call "survivals" or such as may be called
parasitic growths. The organ which has ceased to discharge
corresponding functions is simply a drag upon the vital forces. When a
class, such as the old French aristocracy, ceases to perform duties
while retaining privileges, it will be removed,--too probably, as in
that case, it will be removed by violent and mischievous methods,--if
the society is to grow in vigour. The individuals, as I have said, may
or may not deserve punishment, for they are not personally responsible
for the general order of things; but they are not unlikely to incur
severe penalties, and what we should really hope is that they may be in
some way absorbed by judicious medical treatment, instead of extirpated
by the knife. At the other end of the scale, we have the parasitic
class of the beggars or thieves. They, too, are not personally
responsible for the conditions into which they are born. But they are
not only to be pitied individually, but to be regarded, in the mass, as
involving social disease and danger. More words upon that topic are
quite superfluous, but I may just recall the truth that the two evils
are directly connected. We hear it often said, and often denied, that
the rich are growing richer and the poor poorer. So far, however, as it
is true, it is one version of the very obvious fact that where there
are many careless rich people, there will be the best chance for the
beggars. The thoughtless expenditure of the rich without due
responsibilities, provides the steady stream of so-called charity,--the
charity which, as Shakespeare (or somebody else) observes, is twice
cursed, which curses him that gives and him that receives; which is to
the rich man as a mere drug to still his conscience and offer a
spurious receipt in full for his neglect of social duties, and to the
poor man an encouragement to live without self-respect, without
providence, a mere hanger-on and dead-weight upon society, and a
standing injury and source of temptation to his honest neighbours.
Briefly, a wholesome social condition implies that every social organ
discharges a useful function; it renders some service to the community
which is equivalent to the support which it derives; brain and stomach
each get their due share of supply; and there is a thorough reciprocity
between all the different members of the body. But what kind of
equality should be desired in order to secure this desirable organic
balance? We have to do, I may remark, with the case of a homogeneous
race. By this I mean not only that there is no reason to suppose that
there is any difference between the innate qualities of rich and poor,
but that there is the strongest reason for believing in an equality;
that is to say, more definitely, that if you took a thousand poor
babies and a thousand rich babies, and subjected them to the same
conditions, they would show great individual differences, but no
difference traceable to the mere difference of class origin. I
therefore may leave aside such problems as might arise in the Southern
States of America, or even in British India, where two different races
are in presence; or, again, the case of the sexes, where we cannot
assume as self-evident, that the organic differences are irrelevant to
political or social ends. So far as we are concerned, we may take it
for granted that the differences which emerge are not due to any causes
antecedent to and overriding the differences due to different social
positions. If we can say justly (as has been said) that a poor man is
generally more charitable in proportion to his means, or, again, that
he is, as a rule, a greater liar or a greater drunkard than the rich
man, the difference is not due to a difference of breed, but to the
education (in the widest sense) which each has received. So long as
that difference remains, we must take account of it for purposes of
obtaining the maximum efficiency. We must not make the poor man a
professor of mathematics, or even manager of a railway, because he has
talents which, if trained, would have qualified him for the post; but
we may and must assume that an equal training would do as much for the
poor man as for the rich; and the question is, how far it is desirable
or possible to secure such equality.
Now, from the point of view of securing a maximum efficiency, it seems
to be a clearly desirable end that the only qualities which should
indisputably help to determine a man's position in life, should also be
those which determine his fitness for working in it efficiently. In
Utopia, it should be the rule that each man shall do what he can do
best. If one man is a gamekeeper and another a prime minister, it
should be because one has the gifts of a gamekeeper and the other the
gifts of a prime minister: whereas, in the actual state, as we all
know, the gamekeeper often becomes the prime minister, while the
potential prime minister is limited to looking after poachers. But I
also urge that we must take into account the actual and not the
potential qualities at any given moment. The inequality may be obviated
by raising the grade of culture in all classes; but we must not assume
that there is an actual equality where, in fact, there is the widest
possible difference. In short, I assert that it is our duty to try to
make men equal; though I deny that we are clearly justified in assuming
an equality. By making them equal, I do not, of course, mean that we
should try to make them all alike. I recognise, with Mill and every
sensible writer on the subject, that such a consummation represents
rather a danger than an advantage. I wish to see individuality
strengthened, not crushed, to encourage men to develop the widest
possible diversity of tastes, talents, and pursuits, and to attain
unity of opinion, not by a calm assumption that this or that creed is
true, but by encouraging the sharpest and freest collision of opinions.
The equality of which I speak is that which would result, if the
distinction into organs were not of such a nature as to make one class
more favourable than another to the full development of whatever
character and talents a man may possess. In other words, the
distribution into classes would correspond purely and simply to the
telling off of each man to the duties which he is best fitted to
discharge. The position into which he is born, the class surroundings
which determine his development, must not carry with them any
disqualification for his acquiring the necessary aptitude for any other
position. It was, I think, Fourier who argued that a man ought to be
paid more highly for being a chimney-sweep than for being a prime
minister, because the duties of a sweep are the more disagreeable,--a
position which some prime ministers may, perhaps, see reason to doubt.
My suggestion is, that in Utopia every human being would be so placed
as to be capable of preparing himself for any other position, and
should then go to the work for which he is best fitted. The equality as
thus defined would, I submit, leave no room for a sense of injustice,
because the qualities which determine a man's position would be the
qualities for which he deserves the position, desert in this sense
being measurable by fitness. Discontent with class distinctions must
arise so long as a man feels that his position in a class limits and
cramps his capacities below the level of happier fortunes. Discontent
is not altogether a bad thing, for it is often an _alias_ for
hope; remove all discontent and you remove all guarantee for
improvement. But discontent is of the malignant variety when it is
allied with a sense of injustice; that is, of restrictions imposed upon
one class for no assignable reason. The only sufficient reason for
classes is the efficient discharge of social functions. The differences
between the positions of men in social strata, supply some of the most
effective motives for the struggle of life; and the effort of men to
rise into the wealthy or the powerful class is not likely to cease so
long as men are men; but they take an unworthy form so long as the
ambition is simply to attain privileges unconnected with or
disproportioned to the duties involved, and which therefore generate
hatred to the social structure. If a class could be simply an organ for
the discharge of certain functions, and each man in the whole body
politic able to fit himself for that class, the injustice, and
therefore the malignant variety of discontent, would disappear. Of
course, I am speaking only of justice. I do not attempt to define the
proper ends of society, or regard justice in itself as a sufficient
guarantee for all desirable results. Such justice may exist even in a
savage tribe or a low social type. There may be a just distribution of
food among a shipwrecked crew, but the attainment of such justice would
not satisfy all their wants. The abolition of misery, the elevation of
a degraded class to a higher stage is a good thing in itself, unless it
can be shown to involve some counterbalancing evil. I only argue that
the ideal society would have this, among other attributes, and,
therefore, that to secure such equality is a legitimate object of
aspiration.
I am speaking of "Utopia". The time is indefinitely distant when a man
will choose to be a sweep or a prime minister according to his
aptitudes, and be equally able to learn his trade whether he is the son
of a prime minister or a sweep. I only try to indicate the goal to
which our efforts should be directed. But the goal thus defined implies
methods different from that of some advocates of equality. They propose
at once to assume the non-existence of a disagreeable difficulty, and
to take men as equal in a sense in which they are not, in fact, equal.
To me the problem appears to be, not the instant introduction of a new
system, but a necessarily long and very gradual process of education
directed towards the distant goal of making men equal in the desirable
sense; and that problem, I add, is in the main a moral problem. It is
idle to make institutions without making the qualities by which they
must be worked. I do not say--far from it--that we are not to propose
what may roughly be called external changes: new regulations and new
forms of association, and so forth. On the contrary, I believe, as I
have intimated, that this method corresponds to the normal order of
development. The new institution protects and stimulates the germs of
the moral instincts by which it must be worked. But I also hold that no
mere rearrangement does any permanent good unless it calls forth a
corresponding moral change, and, moreover, that the moral change,
however slow and imperceptible, does incomparably more than any
external change.
If we assume our present institutions to be permanent, a slight
improvement in moral qualities, a growth of sobriety, of chastity, of
prudence and intellectual culture, would make an almost indefinite
improvement in the condition of the masses. If, for example, Englishmen
ceased to drink, every English home might be made reasonably
comfortable. The two kinds of change imply each other; but it is the
most characteristic error of the designers of Utopias to suppose a mere
change of regulations without sufficiently attending to the moral
implication. To attain equality, as I have tried to define the word,
would imply vast moral changes, and therefore a long and difficult
elaboration. We have not simply to make men happy, as they now count
happiness, but to alter their views of happiness. The good old
copy-books tell us that happiness is as common in poor men's huts as in
rich men's palaces. We are apt to reply that the statement is a mockery
and a lie. But it points to the consummation which in some simple
social states has been partly realised, and which in some distant
future may come to be an expression of facts. It is conceivable surely
that rich men may some day find that there are modes of occupation
which are more interesting as well as more useful than accumulation of
luxuries or the keeping of horses for the turf; that, in place of
propitiating fate by supporting the institution of beggary, there is an
indefinite field for public-spirited energy in the way not of throwing
crumbs to Lazarus, but of promoting national culture of mind, of
spirit, and of body; that benevolence does not mean simple
self-sacrifice, except to the selfish, but the pursuit of a noble and
most interesting career; that men's duty to their children is not to
enable them to lead idle lives, but to fit them for playing a manly
part in the great game of life; and that their relation to those whom
they employ is not that of persons exploiting the energies of inferior
animals, but of leaders of industry with a common interest in the
prosperity of their occupation. People, no doubt, will hardly pursue
business from motives of pure benevolence to others, and I do not think
it desirable that they should. But the recognition that the pursuit of
an honourable business is useful to others may, nevertheless, guide
their energies, make the mere scramble for wealth disreputable, and
induce them to labour for solid and permanent advantages. Such moral
changes are, I conceive, necessary conditions of the equality of which
I have spoken; they must be brought about to some extent if the
industrial organism is to free itself from the injustice necessarily
implied in a mere blind struggle for personal comfort.
Moreover, however distant the final consummation may be, there are, I
think, many indications of an approximation. Nothing is more
characteristic of modern society than the enormous development of the
power of association for particular purposes. In former days a society
had to form an independent organ, a corporation, a college, and so
forth, to discharge any particular function, and the resulting organ
was so distinct as to absorb the whole life of its members. The work of
the fellow was absorbed in the corporate life of his corporation, and
he had no distinct personal interests. Now we are all members of
societies by the dozen, and society is constantly acquiring the art of
forming associations for any purpose, temporary or permanent, which
imply no deep structural division, and unite people of all classes and
positions. As the profounder lines are obliterated, the tendency to
form separate castes, defended by personal privileges, and holding
themselves apart from other classes, rapidly diminishes; and the
corresponding prejudices are in process of diminution. But I can only
hint at this principle.
A correlative moral change in the poor is, of course, equally
essential. America is described by Mr. Lowell in the noblest panegyric
ever made upon his own country, as "She that lifts up the manhood of
the poor". She has taken some rather queer methods of securing that
object lately; yet, however imperfect the result, every American
traveller will, I believe, sympathise with what Mr. Bryce has recently
said in his great book. America is still the land of hope--the land
where the poor man's horizon is not bounded by a vista of inevitable
dependence on charity; where--in spite of some superficially grotesque
results--every man can speak to every other without the oppressive
sense of condescension; where a civil word from a poor man is not
always a covert request for a gratuity and a tacit confession of
dependence. "Alas," says Wordsworth, in one of his pregnant phrases,
"the gratitude of men has oftener left me mourning" than their
cold-heartedness; because, I presume, it is a painful proof of the
rarity of kindness. When one man can only receive a gift and another
can only bestow it as a payment on account of a long accumulation of
the arrears of class injustice, the relations hardly admit of genuine
gratitude on either side. What grates most painfully upon me, and, I
suppose, upon most of us, is the "servility" of man; the acceptance of
a beggar's code of morals as natural and proper for any one in a shabby
coat. The more prominent evil just now, according to conservatives and
pessimists, is the correlative one of the beggar on horseback; of the
man who has found out that he can squeeze more out of his masters, and
uses his power even without considering whether it is wise to drain
your milch cow too exhaustively.
A hope of better things is encouraged by schemes for arbitration and
conciliation between employers and employed. But we require a moral
change if arbitration is to imply something more than a truce between
natural enemies, and conciliation to be something different from that
employed by Hood's butcher when, after hauling a sheep by main force
into the slaughter-house, he exclaimed, "There, I've conciliated
_him_!" The only principle on which arbitration can proceed is
that the profits should be divided in such a way as to be a sufficient
inducement to all persons concerned to give their money or their
labour, mental or physical, to promote the prosperity of the business
at large. But the reconciliation can only be complete when the
capitalist is capable of employing his riches with enough public spirit
and generosity to disarm mere envy by his obvious utility, and the poor
man justifies his increased wages by his desire to secure permanent
benefits and a better standard of life. In Utopia, the question will
still be, what plan shall be a sufficient inducement to the men who
co-operate as employers or labourers, but the inducement will appeal to
better motives, and the positions be so far equalised that each will be
most tolerable to the man best fitted for it.
Here a vast series of problems opens about which I can only suggest the
briefest hint. The principle I now urge is the old one, namely, that
the usual mark of a quack remedy is the neglect of the moral aspect of
a question. We want a state of opinion in which the poor are not
objects to be slobbered over, but men to help in a manly struggle for
moral as well as material elevation. A great deal is said, for example,
about the evils of competition. It is remarkable indeed that few
proposals for improvement even, so far as I can discover, tend to get
rid of competition. Co-operation, as tradesmen will tell us, is not an
abolition of competition, but a competition of groups instead of units.
"Profit-sharing" is simply a plan by which workmen may take a direct
share in the competition carried on by their masters. I do not mention
this as any objection to such schemes, for I do not think that
competition is an evil. I do not doubt the vast utility of schemes
which tend to increase the intelligence and prudence of workmen, and
give them an insight into the conditions of successful business.
Competition is no doubt bad so far as it means cheating or gambling.
But competition is, it seems to me, inevitable so long as we are forced
to apply the experimental method in practical life, and I fail to see
what other method is available. Competition means that thousands of
people all over the world are trying to find out how they can supply
more economically and efficiently the wants of other people, and that
is a state of things to which I do not altogether object. Equality in
my sense implies that every one should be allowed to compete for every
place that he can fill. The cry is merely, as it seems to me, an
evasion of the fundamental difficulty. That difficulty is not that
people compete, but that there are too many competitors; not that a
man's seat at the table has to be decided by fair trial of his
abilities, but that there is not room enough to seat everybody. Malthus
brought to the front the great stumbling-block in the way of Utopian
optimism. His theory was stated too absolutely, and his view of the
remedy was undoubtedly crude. But he hit the real difficulty; and every
sensible observer of social evils admits that the great obstacle to
social improvement is that social residuum, the parasitic class, which
multiplies so as to keep down the standard of living, and turns to bad
purposes the increased power of man over nature. We have abolished
pestilence and famine in their grimmest shape; if we have not abolished
war, it no longer involves usurpation or slavery or the permanent
desolation of the conquered; but one result is just this, that great
masses can be regularly kept alive at the lowest stage of existence
without being periodically swept away by a "black death" or a horde of
brutal invaders. If we choose to turn our advantages to account in this
way, no nostrums will put an end to poverty; and the evil can only be
met--as I venture to assume--by an elevation of the moral level,
involving all that is implied in spreading civilisation downward.