with an apology in advance if the warning is unnecessary. English
people, especially English ladies, are so individualistically brought
up that the moment they are convinced that anything is right they are
apt to announce that they are going to begin practising it at once, and
to order their children and servants to do the same. I have known women
of exceptional natural intelligence and energy who believed firmly
that the world can be made good by independent displays of coercive
personal righteousness. When they became convinced of the righteousness
of equality, they proceeded to do ridiculous things like commanding
their servants to take their meals with the family (forgetting that the
servants had not bargained for their intimacy and might strongly object
to it), with Heaven knows what other foolishness, until the servants
gave notice, and their husbands threatened to run away, and sometimes
even did.
It is perhaps natural that ignorant poor women should imagine that
inequality is the fault of the rich women. What is more surprising is
that many rich women, though they ought to know better than anybody
that a woman can no more help being born rich than born poor, feel
guilty and ashamed of their wealth, and plunge into almsgiving to
relieve their sickly consciences. They often conceive Socialism as a
charitable enterprise for the benefit of the poor. Nothing could be
further from the truth. Socialism abhors poverty, and would abolish
the poor. A hearty dislike and disapproval of poor people as such is
the first qualification of a good Equalizer. Under Socialism people
would be prosecuted for being poor as they are now for being naked.
Socialism loathes almsgiving, not only sentimentally because it fills
the paupers with humiliation, the patrons with evil pride, and both
with hatred, but because in a country justly and providently managed
there could be neither excuse for it on the pauper’s part nor occasion
for it on the patron’s. Those who like playing the good Samaritan
should remember that you cannot have good Samaritans without thieves.
Saviors and rescuers may be splendid figures in hagiography and
romance; but as they could not exist without sinners and victims they
are bad symptoms.
The virtues that feed on suffering are very questionable virtues.
There are people who positively wallow in hospitals and charitable
societies and Relief Funds and the like, yet who, if the need for their
charitable exercises were removed, could spend their energy to great
advantage in improving their own manners and learning to mind their
own business. There will always be plenty of need in the world for
kindness; but it should not be wasted on preventible starvation and
disease. Keeping such horrors in existence for the sake of exercising
our sympathies is like setting our houses on fire to exercise the vigor
and daring of our fire brigades. It is the people who hate poverty, not
those who sympathize with it, who will put an end to it. Almsgiving,
though it cannot be stopped at present, as without it we should have
hunger riots, and possibly revolution, is an evil. At present we give
the unemployed a dole to support them, not for love of them, but
because if we left them to starve they would begin by breaking our
windows and end by looting our shops and burning our houses.
It is true that a third of the money has come directly out of their
own pockets; but the way in which it is repaid to them is none the
less demoralizing. They find out that whether they contribute or not,
the rich will pay ransom all the same. In ancient Rome the unemployed
demanded not only bread to feed them but gladiator shows to keep them
amused (_panem et circenses_); and the result was that Rome became
crowded with playboys who would not work at all, and were fed and
amused with money taken from the provinces. That was the beginning
of the end of ancient Rome. We may come to bread and football (or
prize-fights) yet: indeed the dole has brought us to the bread already.
There is not even the blessing of kindness on it; for we all grudge the
dole (it comes out of all our pockets) and would stop it tomorrow if
we dared.
Equalization of Income will be brought about, not by every woman making
it her private business, but by every woman making it her public
business: that is, by law. And it will not be by a single law, but a
long series of laws. These laws will not be commandments saying thou
shalt or thou shalt not. The Ten Commandments gave the Israelites a
set of precepts which none of their laws were to violate; but the
commandments were politically useless until an elaborate set of laws
and institutions had been provided to give effect to them. The first
and last commandment of Socialism is “Thou shalt not have a greater or
less income than thy neighbor”; but before such a commandment can be
even approximately obeyed we shall have not only to pass hundreds of
new Acts of Parliament and repeal hundreds of old ones, but to invent
and organize new Government departments; train and employ no end of
women and men as public servants; educate children to look at their
country’s affairs in a new way; and struggle at every step with the
opposition of ignorance, stupidity, custom, prejudice, and the vested
interests of the rich.
Imagine a Socialist Government elected by an overwhelming majority
of people who have read the preceding chapters of this book and been
convinced by them, but not otherwise prepared for any change. Imagine
it confronted with a starving woman. The woman says “I want work, not
charity”. The Government, not having any work for her, replies “Read
Shaw; and you will understand all about it”. The woman will say “I am
too hungry to read Shaw, even if I considered him an edifying author.
Will you please give me some food, and a job to enable me to pay for it
honestly?” What could the Government do but confess that it had no job
to give her, and offer her a dole, just as at present.
Until the Government has acquired all the powers of employment that the
private employers now possess, it can give nothing to starving women,
but outdoor relief with money taken by taxation from the employers and
their landlords and financiers, which is just what any unsocialist
government does. To acquire those powers it must itself become the
national landlord, the national financier, and the national employer.
In other words, it cannot distribute the national income equally
until it, instead of the private owners, has the national income to
distribute. Until it has done so you cannot practise Socialism even
if you want to: you may even be severely punished for trying. You may
agitate and vote for all the steps by which equalization of income will
be reached; but in your private life you cannot do otherwise than you
have to do at present: that is, keep your social rank (know your place,
as it is called), paying or receiving the usual wages, investing your
money to the best advantage, and so forth.
You see, it is one thing to understand the aim of Socialism, and
quite another to carry it into practice, or even to see how it can
or ever could be carried into practice. Jesus tells you to take no
thought for the morrow’s dinner or dress. Matthew Arnold tells you
to choose equality. But these are commandments without laws. How can
you possibly obey them at present? To take no thought for the morrow
as we now are is to become a tramp; and nobody can persuade a really
intelligent woman that the problems of civilization can be solved by
tramps. As to choosing equality, let us choose it by all means; but
how? A woman cannot go into the streets to rifle the pockets of those
who have more money than she has, and give money away to those who
have less: the police would soon stop that, and pass her on from the
prison cell to the lunatic asylum. She knows that there are things that
the Government may do by law that no private person could be allowed
to do. The Government may say to Mrs Jobson “If you murder Mrs Dobson
(or anyone else) you will be hanged”. But if Mrs Dobson’s husband said
to Mrs Jobson “If you murder my wife I will strangle you” he would be
threatening to commit a crime, and could be severely punished for it,
no matter how odious and dangerous Mrs Jobson might be. In America,
crowds sometimes take criminals out of the hands of the law and lynch
them. If they attempted to do that in England they would be dispersed
by the police, or shot down by the soldiers, no matter how wicked the
criminal and how natural their indignation at the crime.
The first thing civilized people have to learn politically is that they
must not take the law into their own hands. Socialism is from beginning
to end a matter of law. It will have to make idlers work; but it must
not allow private persons to take this obligation on themselves. For
instance, an Intelligent Woman, having to deal with a lazy slut, might
feel strongly tempted to take up the nearest broomstick and say “If you
dont get on with your work and do your fair share of it I will lambaste
you with this stick until you are black and blue”. That occasionally
happens at present. But such a threat, and much more its execution, is
a worse crime than idleness, however richly the slattern may deserve
the thrashing. The remedy must be a legal remedy. If the slattern is to
be whacked it must be done by order of a court of law, by an officer of
the law, after a fair trial by law. Otherwise life would be unbearable;
for if we were all allowed to take the law into our own hands as we
pleased, no woman could walk down the street without risk of having her
hat torn off and stamped on by some æsthete who happened to think it
unbecoming, or her silk stockings tarred by some fanatic who considers
women’s legs indecent, not to mention mobs of such people.
Besides, the Intelligent Woman might not be stronger than the lazy one;
and in that case the lazy one might take the broomstick and whack the
intelligent one for working too hard and thereby causing more to be
expected from the lazy ones. That, also, has often been done by too
zealous Trade Unionists.
I need not labor this point any more. Should you become a convert to
Socialism you will not be committed to any change in your private
life, nor indeed will you find yourself able to make any change that
would be of the smallest use in that direction. The discussions in the
papers as to whether a Socialist Prime Minister should keep a motor
car, or a Socialist playwright receive fees for allowing his plays to
be performed, or Socialist landlords and capitalists charge rent for
their land or interest on their capital, or a Socialist of any sort
refrain from selling all that she has and giving it to the poor (quite
the most mischievous thing she could possibly do with it), are all
disgraceful displays of ignorance not only of Socialism, but of common
civilization.
28
CAPITALISM
Nobody who does not understand Capitalism can change it into Socialism,
or have clear notions of how Socialism will work. Therefore we shall
have to study Capitalism as carefully as Socialism. To begin with,
the word Capitalism is misleading. The proper name of our system
is Proletarianism. When practically every disinterested person who
understands our system wants to put an end to it because it wastes
capital so monstrously that most of us are as poor as church mice, it
darkens counsel to call it Capitalism. It sets people thinking that
Socialists want to destroy capital, and believe that they could do
without it: in short, that they are worse fools than their neighbors.
Unfortunately that is exactly what the owners of the newspapers want
you to think about Socialists, whilst at the same time they would
persuade you that the British people are a free and independent race
who would scorn to be proletarians (except a few drunken rascals and
Russians and professional agitators): therefore they carefully avoid
the obnoxious word Proletarianism and stick to the flattering title
of Capitalism, which suggests that the capitalists are defending that
necessary thing, Capital.
However, I must take names as I find them; and so must you. Let it be
understood between us, then, that when we say Capitalism we mean the
system by which the land of the country is in the hands, not of the
nation, but of private persons called landlords, who can prevent anyone
from living on it or using it except on their own terms. Lawyers tell
you that there is no such thing as private property in land because
all the land belongs to the King, and can legally be “resumed” by him
at any moment. But as the King never resumes it nowadays, and the
freeholder can keep you off it, private property in land is a fact in
spite of the law.
The main advantage claimed for this arrangement is that it makes the
landholders rich enough to accumulate a fund of spare money called
capital. This fund is also private property. Consequently the entire
industry of the country, which could not exist without land and
capital, is private property. But as industry cannot exist without
labor, the owners must for their own sakes give employment to those
who are not owners (called proletarians), and must pay them enough
wages to keep them alive and enable them to marry and reproduce
themselves, though not enough to enable them ever to stop working
regularly.
In this way, provided the owners make it their duty to be selfish, and
always hire labor at the lowest possible wage, the industry of the
country will be kept going, and the people provided with a continuous
livelihood, yet kept under a continuous necessity to go on working
until they are worn out and fit only for the workhouse. It is fully
admitted, by those who understand this system, that it produces
enormous inequality of income, and that the cheapening of labor which
comes from increase of population must end in an appalling spread
of discontent, misery, crime, and disease, culminating in violent
rebellion, unless the population is checked at the point up to which
the owners can find employment for it; but the argument is that this
must be faced because human nature is so essentially selfish, and
so inaccessible to any motive except pecuniary gain, that no other
practicable way of building up a great modern civilization stands open
to us.
This doctrine used to be called the doctrine of The Manchester School.
But as the name became unpopular, it is now described generally as
Capitalism. Capitalism therefore means that the only duty of the
Government is to maintain private property in land and capital, and
to keep on foot an efficient police force and magistracy to enforce
all private contracts made by individuals in pursuance of their own
interests, besides, of course, keeping civil order and providing for
naval and military defence or adventure.
In opposition to Capitalism, Socialism insists that the first duty of
the Government is to maintain equality of income, and absolutely denies
any private right of property whatever. It would treat every contract
as one to which the nation is a party, with the nation’s welfare as
the predominant consideration, and would not for a moment tolerate
any contract the effect of which would be that one woman should work
herself to death prematurely in degrading poverty in order that another
should live idly and extravagantly on her labor. Thus it is quite true
that Socialism will abolish private property and freedom of contract:
indeed it has done so already to a much greater extent than people
realize; for the political struggle between Capitalism and Socialism
has been going on for a century past, during which Capitalism has been
yielding bit by bit to the public indignation roused by its worst
results, and accepting instalments of Socialism to palliate them.
Do not, by the way, let yourself be confused by the common use of
the term private property to denote personal possession. The law
distinguished between Real Property (lordship) and Personal Property
until the effort to make a distinction between property in land and
property in capital produced such a muddle that it was dropped in 1926.
Socialism, far from absurdly objecting to personal possessions, knows
them to be indispensable, and looks forward to a great increase of
them. But it is incompatible with real property.
To make the distinction clear let me illustrate. You call your umbrella
your private property, and your dinner your private property. But they
are not so: you hold them on public conditions. You may not do as you
please with them. You may not hit me on the head with your umbrella;
and you may not put rat poison into your dinner and kill me with it, or
even kill yourself; for suicide is a crime in British law. Your right
to the use and enjoyment of your umbrella and dinner is a personal
right, rigidly limited by public considerations. But if you own an
English or Scottish county you may drive the inhabitants off it into
the sea if they have nowhere else to go. You may drag a sick woman with
a newly born baby in her arms out of her house and dump her in the snow
on the public road for no better reason than that you can make more
money out of sheep and deer than out of women and men. You may prevent
a waterside village from building a steamboat pier for the convenience
of its trade because you think the pier would spoil the view from your
bedroom window, even though you never spend more than a fortnight a
year in that bedroom, and often do not come there for years together.
These are not fancy examples: they are things that have been done again
and again. They are much worse crimes than hitting me over the head
with your umbrella. And if you ask why landowners are allowed to do
with their land what you are not allowed to do with your umbrella, the
reply is that the land is private property, or, as the lawyers used
to say, real property, whilst the umbrella is only personal property.
So you will not be surprised to hear Socialists say that the sooner
private property is done away with the better.
Both Capitalism and Socialism claim that their object is the attainment
of the utmost possible welfare for mankind. It is in their practical
postulates for good government, their commandments if you like to call
them so, that they differ. These are, for Capitalism, the upholding
of private property in land and capital, the enforcement of private
contracts, and no other State interference with industry or business
except to keep civil order; and, for Socialism, the equalization of
income, which involves the complete substitution of personal for
private property and of publicly regulated contract for private
contract, with police interference whenever equality is threatened, and
complete regulation and control of industry and its products by the
State.
As far as political theory is concerned you could hardly have a flatter
contradiction and opposition than this; and when you look at our
Parliament you do in fact see two opposed parties, the Conservative
and the Labor, representing roughly Capitalism and Socialism. But
as members of Parliament are not required to have had any political
education, or indeed any education at all, only a very few of them,
who happen to have made a special study, such as you are making, of
social and political questions, understand the principles their parties
represent. Many of the Labor members are not Socialists. Many of the
Conservatives are feudal aristocrats, called Tories, who are as keen
on State interference with everything and everybody as the Socialists.
All of them are muddling along from one difficulty to another, settling
as best they can when they can put it off no longer, rather than on
any principle or system. The most you can say is that, as far as the
Conservative Party has a policy at all, it is a Capitalistic policy,
and as far as the Labor Party has a policy at all it is a Socialist
policy; so that if you wish to vote against Socialism you should vote
Conservative; and if you wish to vote against Capitalism you should
vote Labor. I put it in this way because it is not easy to induce
people to take the trouble to vote. We go to the polling station mostly
to vote against something instead of for anything.
We can now settle down to our examination of Capitalism as it comes to
our own doors. And, as we proceed, you must excuse the disadvantage I
am at in not knowing your private affairs. You may be a capitalist.
You may be a proletarian. You may be betwixt-and-between in the sense
of having an independent income sufficient to keep you, but not
sufficient to enable you to save any more capital. I shall have to
treat you sometimes as if you were so poor that the difference of a few
shillings a ton in the price of coal is a matter of serious importance
in your housekeeping, and sometimes as if you were so rich that your
chief anxiety is how to invest the thousands you have not been able to
spend.
There is no need for you to remain equally in the dark about me; and
you had better know whom you are dealing with. I am a landlord and
capitalist, rich enough to be supertaxed; and in addition I have a
special sort of property called literary property, for the use of which
I charge people exactly as a landlord charges rent for his land. I
object to inequality of income not as a man with a small income, but as
one with a middling big one. But I know what it is to be a proletarian,
and a poor one at that. I have worked in an office; and I have pulled
through years of professional unemployment, some of the hardest of them
at the expense of my mother. I have known the extremes of failure and
of success. The class in which I was born was that most unlucky of all
classes: the class that claims gentility and is expected to keep up its
appearances without more than the barest scrap and remnant of property
to do it on. I intrude these confidences on you because it is as well
that you be able to allow for my personal bias. The rich often write
about the poor, and the poor about the rich, without really knowing
what they are writing about. I know the whole gamut from personal
experience, short of actual hunger and homelessness, which should never
be experienced by anybody. If I cry sour grapes, you need not suspect
that they are only out of my reach: they are all in my hand at their
ripest and best.
So now let us come down to tin tacks.
29
YOUR SHOPPING
Ask yourself this question: “Where does unequal distribution of the
national income hit me in my everyday life?”
The answer is equally plain and practical. When you go out to do your
marketing it hits you in every purchase you make. For every head of
cabbage you buy, every loaf of bread, every shoulder of mutton, every
bottle of beer, every ton of coals, every bus or tram fare, every
theatre ticket, every visit from your doctor or charwoman, every word
of advice from your lawyer, you have to pay not only what they cost,
but an additional charge which is handed over finally to people who
have done nothing whatever for you.
Now though every intelligent woman knows that she cannot expect to have
goods or services for less than they cost in education, materials,
labor, management, distribution, and so on, no intelligent woman will
consent, if she knows about it and can help it, to pay over and above
this inevitable cost for the luxuries and extravagances of idlers,
especially if she finds great difficulty in making both ends meet by
working pretty hard herself.
To rid her of this overcharge, Socialists propose to secure goods for
everyone at cost price by nationalizing the industries which produce
them. This terrifies the idlers and their dependents so much that they
do their best to persuade the Intelligent Woman in their newspapers
and speeches and sermons that nationalization is an unnatural crime
which must utterly ruin the country. That is all nonsense. We have
plenty of nationalization at present; and nobody is any the worse for
it. The army and navy, the civil service, the posts and telegraphs and
telephones, the roads and bridges, the lighthouses and royal dockyards
and arsenals, are all nationalized services; and anyone declaring
that they were unnatural crimes and were ruining the country would be
transferred to the county lunatic asylum, also a national institution.
And we have much more nationalization than this in the form called
municipalization, the only difference being that instead of the central
Westminster Parliament owning and conducting the industry for the
nation, as it does the Post Office, the industry is owned and conducted
by City Corporations or County Councils for the local ratepayers. Thus
we get publicly owned electric light works, gas works, water works,
trams, baths and washhouses, public health services, libraries, picture
galleries, museums, lavatories, parks and piers with pavilions and
bands and stages, besides many other public services which concern the
maintenance of the Empire, and of which the public knows nothing.