ill used person or persons of whom you know nothing except that they
are ill used, your generous indignation attributes all sorts of virtues
to them, and all sorts of vices to those who oppress them. But the
blunt truth is that ill used people are worse than well used people:
indeed this is at bottom the only good reason why we should not allow
anyone to be ill used. If I thought you would be made a better woman by
ill treatment I should do my best to have you ill treated. We should
refuse to tolerate poverty as a social institution not because the poor
are the salt of the earth, but because “the poor in a lump are bad”.
And the poor know this better than anyone else. When the Socialist
movement in London took its tone from lovers of art and literature who
had read George Borrow until they had come to regard tramps as saints,
and passionate High Church clergymen (Anglo-Catholics) who adored
supertramps like St Francis, it was apt to assume that all that was
needed was to teach Socialism to the masses (vaguely imagined as a huge
crowd of tramplike saints) and leave the rest to the natural effect
of sowing the good seed in kindly virgin soil. But the proletarian
soil was neither virgin nor exceptionally kindly. The masses are not
in the least like tramps; and they have no romantic illusions about
oneanother, whatever illusions each of them may cherish about herself.
When John Stuart Mill was a Parliamentary candidate in Westminster, his
opponents tried to defeat him by recalling an occasion on which he had
said flatly that the British workman was neither entirely truthful,
entirely sober, entirely honest, nor imbued with a proper sense of
the wickedness of gambling: in short, that he was by no means the
paragon he was always assumed to be by parliamentary candidates when
they addressed his class as “Gentlemen”, and begged for his vote. Mill
probably owed his success on that occasion to the fact that instead of
denying his opinion he uncompromisingly reaffirmed it. The wage workers
are as fond of flattery as other people, and will swallow any quantity
of it from candidates provided it be thoroughly understood that it is
only flattery, and that the candidates know better; but they have no
use for gushingly idealistic ladies and gentlemen who are fools enough
to think that the poor are cruelly misunderstood angels.
In the eighteen-eighties the Socialists found out their mistake. The
Fabian Society got rid of its Anarchists and Borrovians, and presented
Socialism in the form of a series of parliamentary measures, thus
making it possible for an ordinary respectable religious citizen
to profess Socialism and belong to a Socialist Society without any
suspicion of lawlessness, exactly as he might profess himself a
Conservative and belong to an ordinary constitutional club. A leader
of the society, Mr Sidney Webb, married Miss Beatrice Potter, who had
made a study at first hand of working-class life and organization,
and had published a book on Co-operation. They wrote the first really
scientific history of Trade Unionism, and thereby not only made the
wage-workers conscious of the dignity of their own political history (a
very important step in the Marxian class-consciousness) but shewed the
middle-class Socialists what the public work of the wage-working world
was really like, and convinced them of the absurdity of supposing that
Socialists could loftily ignore the organization the people had already
accomplished spontaneously in their own way. Only by grafting Socialism
on this existing organization could it be made a really powerful
proletarian movement.
The Liberals, still believing themselves to be the party of progress,
assumed that all progressive movements would be grafted on the
Liberal Party as a matter of course, to be patronized and adopted
by the Liberal leaders in Parliament as far as they approved. They
were disagreeably surprised when the first effect of the adoption of
constitutional parliamentarism by the Fabian Society was an attack on
the Liberal Government of that day, published in one of the leading
reviews, for being more reactionary and hostile to the wage-workers
than the Conservatives. The Liberals were so astonished and scandalized
that they could only suggest that the Fabian Society had been bribed
by the Conservatives to commit what seemed to all Liberals to be
an act of barefaced political treachery. They soon had their eyes
opened much more widely. The Fabian Society followed up its attack by
a proposal for the establishment of a Labor Party in Parliament to
oppose both Conservatives and Liberals impartially. A working-class
leader, Keir Hardie, formerly a miner, founded a Society called the
Independent Labor Party to put this proposal into practice. Among the
members of the Fabian Society who became a leader in this new Society
was Mr Ramsay MacDonald, who, by his education and knowledge of the
world outside the wage-working class, was better qualified than Keir
Hardie for successful leadership in Parliament. From the Independent
Labor Party sprang The Labor Party, a political federation, much more
powerful, of Trade Unions and of Socialist Societies, whose delegates
sat on its executive committee. As all the persons who were members of
Trade Unions at that time could, by subscribing a penny a week each,
have provided a political fund of over £325,000 (there are three times
as many now), this combination with the Trade Unionists was decisive.
At the election of 1906 enough Labor members were elected to form an
independent party in Parliament. By 1923 they had encroached so much
that neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives had a majority in the
House; and Mr Ramsay MacDonald was challenged to form a Government and
shew whether Labor could govern or not. He accepted the challenge, and
became British Prime Minister with a Cabinet of Socialists and Trade
Unionists. It was a more competent government than the Conservative
Government that preceded it, partly because its members, having risen
from poverty or obscurity to eminence by their personal ability, were
unhampered by nonentities, and partly because it knew what the world
is like today, and was not dreaming, as even the cleverest of the
Conservative leaders still were, of the Victorian mixture of growing
cotton lordship and decaying feudal lordship in the capitalist class,
with starved helpless ignorance and submissive servitude in the
proletariat, which had not even lasted out Queen Victoria’s lifetime.
In fact, the Labor leaders were to an extraordinary degree better
educated and more experienced than their opponents, who infatuatedly
took it for granted that rich men must be superior in education because
they graduate in the two aristocratic universities instead of in the
school of economically organic life.
The Liberals and Conservatives, disgusted with this result, and
ruefully sorry that by derisively giving Labor a chance to prove its
relative incompetence it had proved the opposite, combined to throw
Mr MacDonald out of office in 1924. Although he had as yet no real
chance of a majority in the country, he had so scared the plutocrats in
Parliament by his comparative success as Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs, which they had regarded as the department in which Labor was
certain to break down ridiculously, that they overdid their attack
by persuading the country that he was connected with the Communist
Government of Russia. The panic which followed, lasting until the
election was over, wiped out at the polls, not the Labor Party, which
just managed to hold its own, but the innocent Liberal Party.
The danger of stampeding a general election is that all sorts of
political lunatics, whom no one would dream of taking seriously in
quiet times, get elected by screaming that the country is in danger,
whilst sober candidates are defeated ignominiously. In 1906, when a
general election was stampeded by an alarm of Chinese labor, third
rate Liberal candidates ousted first rate Conservative ones by the
score. In 1924 the Red Russian scare enabled third rate Conservatives
to oust first rate Liberals. In both cases the result was a grave
falling-off in the quality of the victorious party. When the Sirdar,
our representative in Egypt, was unluckily assassinated just after
the election, the Conservatives, drunk with their victory, could not
be restrained by the Prime Minister, Mr Baldwin, from hurling at the
assassins an insane threat to cut off the water supply of Egypt. This
extravagance, which startled all Europe, was felt to be just the
sort of thing that Mr MacDonald would not have done. The Government
had to climb down rather abjectly when it discovered that it could
neither carry out its threat nor expect anything but reprobation
from all sides, both at home and abroad, for having been so absurd
as to make it; for though a forceful wickedness is, I am sorry to
say, rather popular than otherwise when our Governments indulge
in it at the expense of foreigners, we expect it to be successful.
A climb-down is unpopular in proportion to the arrogance of the
climb-up. Consequently the Government lost on the Egyptian fiasco
the support won by the Russian scare; but it lost its head again at
a crazy threat of a general strike by the Trade Unions. The Russians
sent us a very handsome subscription to the strike funds; and the
Government, frightened and infuriated, and quite incapable of measuring
the danger (which need not have alarmed a mouse) brought in a futile
but provocative Bill to make Trade Unionism illegal, and broke off
diplomatic relations with Russia after raiding the offices of the
Russian Government in London. Meanwhile, Labor in Parliament, having
recovered from the shock of the election, settled into its place as the
official Opposition.
To sum up the story to the point it has now reached (1927), the
Proletariat, having begun its defensive operations in the Class War
by organizing its battalions into Trade Unions, only to discover
that it could not retain its winnings without passing them into law,
organized itself politically as a Labor Party, and returned enough
members to Parliament to change the House of Commons from a chamber
in which two capitalist parties, calling themselves Conservative and
Liberal, contended for the spoils of office and the honor and glory of
governing, to an arena in which the Proletariat and the Proprietariat
face each other on a series of questions which are all parts of two
main questions: first, whether the national land and capital and
industry shall be held and controlled by the nation for the nation, or
left in the hands of a small body of private men to do as they please
with; second, whilst the capitalist system lasts, which shall be top
dog, the provider of capital or the provider of labor. The first is
a Socialist question, because until land and capital and the control
of industry are in the hands of the Government it cannot equalize the
distribution either of the product or of the labor of producing it.
The second is a Trade Unionist question. The Labor Party consists not
only of Socialists aiming at equality of income, but of Trade Unionists
who have no objection to the continuance of the capitalist method in
industry provided that Labor gets the lion’s share. It should be easier
to maintain the capitalist system with the proletarians taking the
lion’s share, and the landlords, capitalists, and employers reduced to
comparative penury, than to maintain it as at present; for the laborers
and mechanics and their wives and daughters form about nine-tenths of
the nation; and on all accounts it should be safer and steadier to have
only one discontented person to every nine contented ones than nine
discontented persons to every one contented one. To put it another
way, it should be easier for a government supported by nine-tenths
of the voters to collect income tax and supertax from landlords and
capitalists until they had to sell their country houses and motor
cars to their tenants and employees, and live in the gardener’s
cottage themselves, than it is for a landlord to collect his rents or
a capitalist to find investments on which he can live in luxury. An
engineer designing a Forth Bridge, or an architect a cathedral or a
palace, can quite easily be reduced to accept less money for his work
than the riveters and fitters and masons and bricklayers and painters
who carry out the designs. It is true that labor could no more do
without them than they could do without labor; but labor would have
the advantage in bargaining, because the talented worker, sooner than
waste his talent, would rather exercise it for a low wage than fix
rivets or pile bricks for a high one. At his own job he will work on
any terms for the pleasure of working, and loathe any other job; whilst
the reluctant laborer will do nothing for nothing and very little for a
halfpenny.
Thus a Trade Unionist Government, with the mass of the people at its
back, could, by ruthless taxation of unearned incomes, by Factory Acts,
by Wages Boards fixing wages, by Commissions fixing prices, by using
the income tax to subsidize trades in which wages were low (all of
these devices are already established in parliamentary practice) could
redistribute the national income in such a way that the present rich
would become the poor, and the laborer would be cock of the walk. What
is more, that arrangement would be much more stable than the present
state of affairs in which the many are poor and the few rich. The
only threat to its permanence would come from the owners of property
refusing to go on collecting rent and interest merely to have it nearly
all seized by the tax collector. If you have a thousand a year and a
turn for business, you must sometimes feel that you are really only
collecting money for the Government at a commission of seventy per cent
or thereabouts. Suppose the commission were reduced to twenty-five per
cent, what could you do but pay £750 out of your thousand as helplessly
as you now pay £250? Just as the owners of property, when they
controlled Parliament, used their power to extort the utmost farthing
from Labor, Labor can and probably will use its power to extort the
utmost farthing from Property unless equal distribution for all is made
a fundamental constitutional dogma. At present the propertied classes
are looking to capitalist Trade Unions to save them from Socialism. The
time is coming when they will clamor for Socialism to save them from
capitalist Trade Unionism: that is, from Capitalized Labor. Already in
America Trade Unionism is combining with Big Business to squeeze the
sleeping partner. More of that later on.
51
DOMESTIC CAPITAL
After talking so long about Capitalism in the lump, let us take a few
chapters off to examine it as it affects you personally if you happen
to be a lady with a little capital of your own: one who, after living
in the style customary in her class, still has some money to spare to
use as capital so as to increase her income. I will begin by the simple
case of a woman earning money, not as an employer, but by her own work.
Let us assume that her work involves doing sums (she is an accountant),
or writing (she is an author or scrivener), or visiting clients instead
of waiting in an office to receive them (she is a doctor). It is
evident that if she can spare money enough to buy an adding-machine
which will enable her to do the work of three ordinary bookkeepers, or
a sewing-machine, or a typewriter, or a bicycle, or a motor car, as
the case may be, the machine will enable her to get through so much
more work every day that she will be able to earn more money with them
than without them. The machine will be carelessly called her capital
(most people muddle themselves with that mistake when they discuss
economics); but the capital was the money saved to pay for the machine,
and as it was eaten up by the workers who made the machine, it no
longer exists. What does exist is the machine, which is continually
wearing out, and can never be sold secondhand for its price when new.
Its value falls from year to year until it falls to nothing but the
value of the old iron of which it is made.
Now suppose she marries, thus changing her profession for that of wife,
mother, housekeeper, and so forth! Or suppose that the introduction of
an electric tram service, and the appearance of plenty of taxis in the
streets, enable her to do all the travelling she wants as well and more
cheaply than her private car! What is she to do with her adding-machine
or sewing-machine, her typewriter or her car? She cannot eat them or
wear them on her back. The adding-machine will not iron shirt fronts:
the sewing-machine will not fry eggs: the typewriter will not dust the
furniture: the motor car, for all its marvels, will not wash the baby.
If you shew what I have just written to the sort of male who calls
himself a practical business man, he will at once say that I am
childishly wrong: that you _can_ eat an adding-or sewing-machine; dust
the furniture with a typewriter; and wash a hundred babies with a motor
car. All you have to do is to sell the sewing-machine and buy food with
the price you get for it; sell the typewriter and buy a vacuum cleaner;
sell the motor car and hire a few nurses after buying a bath and soap
and towels. And he will be so far right that you certainly can do all
these things _provided too many other people are not trying to do them
at the same time_. It is because the practical business man always
forgets this proviso that he is such a hopeless idiot politically. When
you have sold the sewing-machine and bought food with the price, you
have not really turned the sewing-machine into food. The sewing-machine
remains as uneatable as ever: not even an ostrich could get a tooth
into it or digest it afterwards. What has happened is that you,
finding yourself with a sewing-machine which you no longer want, and
being in want of food, find some other woman who has some spare food
which she does not want, but who wants a sewing-machine. You have a
sewing-machine for which you have no use, and an unsatisfied appetite.
She has food for which she has no appetite, and wants a sewing-machine.
So you two make an exchange: and there you are! Nothing could be
simpler.
But please remark that it takes two to make the bargain, and that the
two must want opposite things. If they both want the same thing, or
want to get rid of the same thing, there will be no deal. Now suppose
the Chancellor of the Exchequer took it into his head as a practical
business man to raise money by a tax on capital instead of on income.
Suppose he were to say that as thousands of women have capital in the
form of sewing-machines which they can sell for, say, £5 apiece, they
can each afford to pay a tax of £3. Suppose he actually induced the
House of Commons to impose such a tax under the title of a Capital Levy
or some such practical business nonsense, and that every woman had to
sell her sewing-machine to pay the tax! What would be the result? Each
woman trying to sell her machine would find all the other women trying
to sell their machines too, and nobody wanting to buy them. She could
sell it as old iron for a shilling perhaps, but that would not enable
her to pay the tax. The tax collector, not being paid, would distrain
on her goods: that is, he would seize the sewing-machine. But as he
also could not sell it, he would have to hand it over unsold to the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, who would find himself heaped up with
thousands of unsellable sewing-machines instead of the thousands of
pounds he was looking forward to. He would have no money; and the women
would have no sewing-machines: all because the practical business men
told him that sewing-machines could be turned into bread.
If you consider this a little you will see that the difference between
private affairs and State affairs is that private affairs are what
people can do by themselves, one at a time and once in a way, whereas
State affairs are what we are all made to do by law at the same moment.
At home you are a private woman dealing with your own private affairs;
but if you go into Parliament and perhaps into the Cabinet, you become
a stateswoman. As a private woman all you have to consider is, “Suppose
I were to do this or that”. But as a stateswoman you must consider
“Suppose everybody had to do this or that”. This is called the Kantian
test.
For instance, if you become Chancellor of the Exchequer, your common
sense as a private woman will save you from such a folly as supposing
that a sewing-machine in the house is the same as £5 in the house. But
that very same private common sense of yours may persuade you that an
income of £5 a year is the same as £100 ready money, because you know
that if you want £100 your stockbroker can get it for you in exchange
for £5 a year of your income. You might therefore be tempted to lay a
tax of £30 on everyone with £5 a year, and imagine that you would not
only get the £30, but that the taxpayer would have £70 left to go on
with. Let me therefore explain the nature of this business of £5 a year
being worth £100 cash to you privately, and worth just £5 a year to the
Chancellor publicly and not a rap more.
When we were dealing with the impossibility of saving I pointed out
that there are certain everyday transactions that are like saving and
that are called saving, very much as selling a sewing-machine and
buying food with the price may be called eating the sewing-machine.
Do not bother to try to remember this now: it is easier to go over
it again. Suppose you have £100 and you wish to save it: that is, to
consume it at some future time instead of immediately! The objection is
that as the things the money represents will rot unless they are used
at once, what you want to do is impossible. But suppose there is in
the next street a woman who has been left by the death of her parents
with nothing but an income of £5 a year. Evidently she cannot live on
that. But if she had £100 in ready money she could emigrate, or set
up a typewriting office, or stock a little shop, or take lessons in
some moneymaking art, or buy some smart clothes to improve her chances
of getting respectable employment, or any of the things that poor
women imagine they could do if only they had a little ready money. Now
nothing is easier than for you to make an exchange with this woman. She
gives you her right to take £5 every year fresh-and-fresh out of each
year’s harvest as it comes; and you give her your hundred pounds to
spend at once. Your stockbroker or banker will bring you together. You
go to him and say that you want him to invest your £100 for you at five
per cent; and she goes to him and says that she wants to sell her £5
a year for ready money. He effects the change for a small commission.
But the transaction is disguised under such fantastic names (like the
water and breadcrumb in doctors’ prescriptions) that neither you nor
the other woman understands what has really happened. You are said to
have invested £100, and to be “worth” £100, and to have added £100 to
the capital of the country: and she is said to have “realized her
capital”. But all that has actually occurred is that your £100 has
been handed over to be spent and done for by the other woman, and
that you are left with the right to take £5 out of the income of the
country without working for it year after year for ever, or until you
in your turn sell that right for £100 down if you should unhappily find
yourself in the same predicament as the other lady was in when you
bought it.
Now suppose you brought in your tax of £30 on every £5 a year in the
country! Or suppose a Conservative Government, led by the nose by
practical business men who know by experience that people who have £5
a year can sell it for £100 whenever they want to, were to do it! Or
suppose a Labor Government, misled by the desire to take capital out
of private hands and vest it in the State, were to do it! They would
call it a levy of thirty per cent on capital; and most of them would
vote for it without understanding what it really meant. Its opponents
would vote against it in equal ignorance of its nature; so that their
arguments would convince nobody. What would happen? Evidently no woman
could pay £30 out of £5 a year. She would have to sell the £5 a year
for £100, and then reinvest the odd £70. But she would not get the
£100 because, as the tax would not fall on her alone, but on all the
other capitalists as well, her stockbroker would find everybody asking
him to sell future incomes for ready money and nobody offering ready
money for future incomes. It would be the story of the sewing-machines
over again. She would have to tell the tax collector that she
could not pay the tax, and that he might sell her furniture and be
damned (intelligent women use recklessly strong language under such
circumstances). But the tax collector would reply that her furniture
was no good to him; for as he was selling up all the other capitalists’
furniture at the same time, and as only those who were too poor to have
any capital to be taxed were buying it, Chippendale chairs were down to
a shilling a dozen and dining room tables to five shillings; so that
it would cost him more to take her furniture away and sell it or store
it than it would fetch. He would have to go away empty handed; and all
the Government could do would be to take her £5 a year from her for six
years and four months, the odd months being for the interest to pay for
waiting. In other words it would find that her income was real, and
her capital imaginary.