than Competition and Economic freedom, are to be the guiding principles.
That is, Ruskin is a Socialist. But he is no revolutionary nor divider
up of property. He desired all things to be gradual, and was too wise to
suppose that anything sweeping could be done at once, or indeed very
much of any kind for a long time. To his private correspondents in
_Fors_ the advice was always given to stay where they were, and do as
well as they could what they had in hand. Ruskin, again, is a Socialist
of the aristocratic variety. He believed in graded ranks, and in people
staying in the class they were born in. He did not say that everybody
was equal. He was also of the earnestly religious type of Socialist.
When I add that he considered that he and Carlyle were the only two
Conservatives left in England, and that he was a Tory of the type of
Scott and Homer, I may perhaps have succeeded in leaving my readers
fairly confused in mind: as every one who tries to classify Ruskin will
become.
As to Wealth, Ruskin proposes that there shall be a legislative upper
limit to a man’s property; and that those whose superfluity is skimmed
off by law should have titles instead and be employed in public service.
As noted again in the chapter on Usury later, there are various ways of
securing this: by steeply graduating the Income Tax and the Death Duties
at the upper end, or by limiting the legal right of bequest, either by
saying that you must not bequeath more than a certain sum to one person,
or that a person must not inherit more than a certain total sum from all
sources. These startling innovations would no doubt put an effective
check on accumulation, if the State succeeded in fighting the ingenuity
of the lawyers.
All interest on money he entirely forbids. This I deal with in Chapter
VII.
All land is to be bought by the State from the landlords, and the
aristocracy, living on the Government annuities thus created, are to
become the legislators and leaders of the people. I don’t know whether
he knew them very well. At any rate these annuities appear to me to be
of the nature of interest.
War is to be managed by personal encounters between some of the military
aristocrats and the aristocrats of the enemy, to save butchery of
peasants and much needless devastation. A kind of international Rugby
football match without referees might meet the case--where the honour of
England was really at stake. It is a simple suggestion; but soberly
Ruskin loathed war--particularly wars for conquest and all modern war by
machinery and for the benefit of capitalists. This is shown in Chapter
VIII.
Our factory system and the crowding into towns he detested; though he
gives us no practical suggestions towards ending it except that most
steam power should be abandoned--not quite all. There is a curious
prophecy too about electricity superseding steam and smoke. We are
beginning on hopeful lines here with Mond gas, central electrical power
stations, and Garden Cities--if only we could and would compel our
factories to stop making smoke, the greatest curse of the landscape.
This is treated more fully in Chapter IX.
Our Government must also take heed to all means of keeping our
population in the country.
Population Ruskin deals with fantastically by permitting marriages only
to young men and young women after passing a suitable examination in
business or domestic qualifications. He would provide them, on marriage,
with an income for seven years from the State. If they had a private
income beyond this minimum it must accumulate; so that all young couples
start life on the same standard of expenditure. This is the most drastic
of his regulations, and the most out of reach.[79]
Under land tenure from the State each person was to hold no more than he
could properly make use of--a system of permanent peasant proprietors,
that is, at a quit rent;--the land inalienable in title, and to descend
by primogeniture.
We have also the somewhat obscure remark[80] that bread, water, and the
roof over his head must be tax (i.e. rent) free to every man. Methods
of administration are to be left to settle themselves. Also, “every man
is to build his own house to his mind, and to have a mind to build it
to.”
As a system this leaves large gaps. What are to be the exact duties of
the aristocratic annuitant landowners, and who are they to be? There is
an echo of Plato’s “Guardians” in their position and duties: indeed they
seem very like in their functions to those hierarchical beings. It may
have been from Plato too that Ruskin learnt to emphasize the degradation
of continuous mechanical work, particularly that which is connected with
the mechanical use of fire.
The Church is, as we have seen in Chapter III, to be exactly on the
Quaker model. No one is to be paid for preaching. The preachers are to
earn their living like other men; and the distinction between clergy and
laity is to be absolutely done away. “Of clergymen’s usual work,
admonition, theological demonstration, and the like I shall want very
little done indeed, and that little done for nothing! for I will allow
no man to admonish anybody, until he has previously earned his own
dinner by more productive work than admonition.” The lesson on humility
to religious persons in _Time and Tide_ is very amusing.[81]
Turning to the business world, the deadliest war of Society would be
against occult stealing, by making bad goods, by adulteration, and
passing off sham articles. These practices would be guarded against by
the formation of trade guilds. Ruskin enumerates in Letter LXXXIX of
_Fors_ twenty-one trades. The men of each trade are to form themselves
into a guild, buy land and buildings, regulate prices and qualities, and
become, in fact, capitalist employers. Retail dealers are to be salaried
officers under the guild. Such is the proposal of _Fors_ of 1879, and
_Time and Tide_ of 1867. In _Unto This Last_ of 1860 the Government is
to have the workshops, not private guilds. Ruskin began to think his
later plan of private guilds more possible as years went on. Also, and
always, property is to be acquired by the guilds by honest payment and
voluntary bargains. It is very striking how prophetic these schemes are
of the proposals now known as Guild Socialism, treated in the next
chapter, at present the most popular form of socialistic reconstruction.
They are, indeed, a sketch of the very thing.
Competition, outside the guilds or Government shops, is always
allowed--“as a safety valve for outlet of irrepressible vice.” He
believed in the cutaneous and curable eruption of such, rather than in
forcing it into the system of the body politic--a wise and cautious
idea, in no way that of a blind optimist. Another reason for this
permission of outside competition was to provide scope for erratic
ingenuity and original genius, and to conserve individual initiative;
also to protect the rights of foreigners trading here. There is also
much other sensible elasticity of arrangement hinted at. Honesty,
truthfulness, freedom from oppression, some plan by which all the good
national elements could become availing instead of being neglected and
choked off, these are the objects of his trade guilds. The difficulty of
foreign competition at low prices he does not touch, except to
anticipate for a far future a similar international guild system.
One can easily see that increased facilities for combination are putting
it into the power of combines and trusts to fix qualities and prices in
a way the men of 1867 would never have expected. Is it beyond hope that
what combinations of capital and management can do, labour combinations
may do, for more public ends? Then indeed out of the eater will have
come forth meat. “The lion and the bear shall feed,” and the capitalist
shall dine like the labourer. “They shall not hurt nor destroy” in all
my holy workshops and markets.
One of the most startling, but at the same time, most thought-compelling
proposals for the ideal State are Mr. Ruskin’s Bishops. The έπίσκοπος of
the New Testament was an Overseer, a man who looked after the members of
the Early Church, the agent of their relief, and the supervisor of their
conduct. This order of men Ruskin proposes to declericalize and to
municipalize. The preaching, we shall remember, is to be separated from
pastoral care, and to be done gratuitously by unofficial ministers. This
leaves no link between the State and the family; even the action of the
Fatherland as a father, now afforded by the State clergy, being done
away with. Therefore, over every fifty or a hundred families there is to
be elected, for life, a Bishop, who is to be a friendly counsellor, and
to keep a record of all notable events--a much extended public
registrar. All exceptional treatment which special circumstances may
render desirable, any mitigation of ordinary law, is arranged through
him. Where law is to be so pervasive, some cushion for its impact would
certainly be necessary. He bears to the Government the relation which
the Charity Organisation Society bears to the Poor Law Guardians, or an
Inebriate Home to the Jail, or (in theory) Equity to Common Law. Thus
the terrible loneliness and neglect of the poor, and haunts of
undiscovered vice, would no longer be possible. The whole episcopal
action was to be elastic, the methods patient, gentle, not compulsory,
and not intrusive. The Bishops were to be paid officers, and they had to
report to a higher officer called a Duke (_Time and Tide_, XIII).
We now approach the question of national leadership. So great was
Ruskin’s distrust of the People, his hatred of Liberty and Equality,
that he fell back upon our Aristocracy, commonplace as he knew it to be,
for the power of governance. He is not so far out of our current
national habit. We know well that any good, hardworking peer, baronet or
landed magnate of good family, has at once a favourable hearing, and
possesses by birth an open door to the confidence of the people; and he
has only to show that he deserves it, to maintain it with ease. We
democrats love a lord. So the Home Office and police work, also the
Judgeships and the officering of the citizen army are to be the work of
the present landed gentry; the careful husbanding of the nation’s
resources in a glorified Board of Trade is to be the work of the present
kings of business. The Education Department and the now nonexistent
Artistic Department, the Board of Works, together with the few necessary
Doctors, and the Musicians, are the third department of upper-class
work, to be undertaken by the professional classes. It will be
remembered that there are to be no hired soldiers or clergy and very few
lawyers.
For the realization of this Utopia, no violence is to be used. As a
prophet with an ethical gospel he entirely distrusted methods of
physical force, as leaving you in reality just the men you were before,
only damaged by the conflict in mind and person and estate. Nor did he,
as a Conservative and a believer in continuity, look with favour or hope
on a general confiscation bill, abolishing rent and interest. The whole
thing had to be done by converting the upper classes, those classes
whose glory is in living in comfort and pride served by the labour of
others, and whose alienation from the multitude is graven deep into
their characters by every one of their cherished habits. We have seen
that the landlord would become an annuitant, the parson transformed, the
solicitor and the barrister nearly wiped out. Many merchants, most
bankers and stockbrokers and all shareholders in banks, if and when
interest is abolished, would find themselves without the profits on
which, it is to be feared, much of their happiness depends. Some of
these persons would become public officers, living on salaries and
earning them. Manufacturers would become profit sharers, and be invited
to join a Guild. Doubtless the liquor interest would find that it had a
stern master, though but little detailed allusion to it is made, and
prohibition is not intended.
If you have ever tried to convince a man by some highly abstruse, or at
any rate, long and intricate process of thought, of truths or proposals
which upset his whole career, blighted his interests, and wrote him down
a useless and pernicious person--if, for instance, you have explained
the wickedness and folly of Protection to a friend from Pennsylvania, or
the theoretical righteousness of Home Rule to a friend from Belfast, or
the innate errors of Vivisection to a physiologist, or discoursed on
Homœopathy to your own medical man, you will be able to foresee the
blank look of polite indifference with which Ruskin’s schemes would be
likely to be received by the Marquis of B. or by the distinguished
directors of your bank. Why am I not to make cotton look like silk? will
be asked by certain very excellent Lancashire firms. Is shoddy not to
continue its useful, if humble career? is the cry of certain parts of
the West Riding; and some of the metallic business of Birmingham would
be a cause of much searching of heart. And there is not a retired old
lady living in her bower of roses from the Lake District to Penzance
whose peace of mind and perhaps nourishment of body would not, if
interest were truly abolished, cease. I always notice that reformers who
would abolish interest do not explain what they would do with the large
class of ladies of all ages, and the smaller class of elderly men who,
after all, do constitute the greater part of the technically idle class,
and who are totally unable to earn a living; since neither the arts of
dress nor of graceful conversation have a market value.
It must be plain to us that any wholesale conversion and sudden
awakening of the social conscience in Ruskin’s direction is not to be
expected. Neither the intellectual conviction, nor the moral power to
carry it out if formed, will be produced except in a few instances, here
and there. The astonishment and delight with which we hear of the doings
of exceptional employers show how rare they are. Every year, of recent
years, has seemed darker and darker to some of us, in noting the
treatment of public affairs by the wealthy, and the extent to which
“Things are in the saddle, and ride mankind.”
Nor is it possible to an employer, even if intellectually convinced and
morally sound, to raise his wages much above the rate paid by his
competitors, to avoid drawing from the business wherewithal to pay
interest on capital, nor, generally, to improve quality, with or without
improving price.
We must fall back on legislation, on democratic conviction expressed by
the organ of the national will, to bring about any portion of this
scheme. We shall have to move all together, if we move at all. Take a
comparative trifle, trifling compared to these large proposals--the
weekly half-holiday. This can only be taken by all or none of a given
trade in a given town; or take the Bank Holidays, popular benefits only
to be won on the floor of the House of Commons, and which cost so much
effort that a certain worthy banker has been canonized for his labours
in obtaining St. Lubbock’s Day. Yet I am of Ruskin’s mind thus far--that
any growth of an enlightened moral sentiment will most easily permeate
the voting masses from individuals of the educated classes.
Ruskin cherished no delusions about it. He says: “You need not think
that even if you obtained a majority of representatives in the existing
Parliament, you could immediately compel any system of business, broadly
contrary to that now established by custom. If you could pass laws
to-morrow, wholly favourable to yourselves, as you might think, because
unfavourable to your masters, and to the upper classes of society, the
only result would be that the riches of the country would at once leave
it, and you would perish in riot and famine. Be assured that no great
change for the better can ever be easily accomplished, or quickly; nor
by impulsive ill-regulated effort, nor by bad men; nor even by good men,
without much suffering.”[82]
The scheme as a whole has never been systematized, nor worked out in
detailed proposals. Still less has it been hinged on to our present
social structure. It is a prophetic forecast, an inspiration of genius;
it is a bow of glorious hue set in the clouds. When Ruskin wrote his
economics the view was that by each man doing the best for himself the
general good was automatically best advanced--an unseen hand behind
human activities arranged the world’s welfare with nothing but
individual selfishness to do it with.
We no longer accept this as a complete account of the matter. We
recognize that that would be a wild-wood kind of a cosmic order; and
that under it human affairs would be left to the same kind of governance
as that of the forest and the jungle. The wolf pack and the wild bramble
are all very well in their scale and their place; but for humanity this
unrestrained individual luxuriance, with its terrible cost and waste, is
now felt by us to be only a first approximation to society. It is the
point whence we begin, not the goal we aim for. It is safe and stable as
a foundation; it cannot be upset or overthrown, for it is actually
itself the ground; and there is nothing to overthrow. Guilds,
Monopolies, Trusts, also Governments and Charities are built upon it to
regulate it; and they grow, and in time may decay and die, leaving the
jungle of free competition to overrun once more the painful clearings.
But out of the wilds men have in fact made their lawns and gardens,
their orchards and their fields of wheat; they have built them palaces
and cities which are permanent and stable enough, though not
everlasting. The higher law of civilization is successfully holding at
bay the wild tendencies. The millions of stray seeds, the storms of wind
and crackings of frost, if let alone, would in time reduce a watering
place like Scarborough to a green cliff side; still Scarborough exists
and will exist, and justify its existence. Similarly there are
limitations, orderly arrangements, which may be put upon the wild nature
of economic freedom; and we may make a better world thereby. We all know
how much is accepted already in the way of civilized restraint. When
Parliament is free to attend to home affairs almost every Act is a
regulation or limitation of individual freedom, or it is the taking up
by Government of what had been previously left to the individual. The
long list of municipal and imperial activities must be too familiar to
need repetition here. We are indeed rushing rapidly in that direction.
Can we go no further? Are we necessarily at the end just here?
I will try to outline in the following chapter a few ways in which we
may. That is, we will test Ruskin by the changes of the last half
century and those which are looming near; and see how much of his
teaching abides our question.
_CHAPTER VI_
_RUSKIN’S ECONOMICS TO-DAY_
It is well known that none of the proposals in the Preface to _Unto This
Last_, summarized above, nor all of them together, satisfy the ideas of
the most vigorous reformers of the moment. Nothing less than the
abolition of all production and distribution for individual profit is
believed by many earnest and experienced men to go to the root of our
social diseases. On the other hand, State Socialism has fallen into
discredit. The experience of Government officials in war time has taken
all the gas out of that particular experimental balloon.
Guild Socialism is now the favourite form. Under this the government of
the country is to be twofold, from top to bottom. Guilds of producers
are to own and run businesses, having eliminated the capitalist as such,
and are to be organized into local, county, and national guilds of the
workers in that business. Then all the national guilds unite in a
Parliament of producers, who govern wages, and, I presume, the import
and export trade. Over against this stand our present geographical
constituencies and our present Parliament, which is the nation organized
as consumers. The State, represented by the present geographically
elected Parliament, is to remain supreme, is to be the ultimate owner of
the property used by the Guilds, with the right to tax it, by a quit
rent. The Guilds are to be the taxable units.[83]
Rent, interest and profits are to be abolished. No provision for
compensation is part of the proposal; but no doubt that would depend
upon circumstances, and upon what could be arranged. It would also give
rise to much difference of opinion among the advocates of the new order.
And much would depend on whether it came gradually and peacefully, by
consent--or after a revolutionary general strike--or, again, after civil
war. One hears of an intention to respect life interests, but no more.
Clearly this issue will subject our people to a political test which
may be beyond their strength, and may, if we are not guided by justice
and mercy, lead to a generation of violence and the ruin of many hopes.
The ideals behind the movement are noble--to give the workman a
proprietary interest in his work, to break down the pernicious
distribution of wealth which economic freedom has brought about, to
bring up a healthy and well-bred race, not a well-bred class only, to
put public service in place of profit as the motive for labour; to
banish the wretched insecurity of unemployment, and take away the bored
life of the idle rich; to use the surplus wealth of industry for the
education of the whole people and for a full life for all. Nothing less
than this is the guerdon of success.
If the Guild is to guarantee a wage to all its workers, well and ill,
under good trade and bad, in defiance of changes in demand due to
fashion or invention, or to changes in weather or to foreign imports,
there will certainly have to be great powers in the Guild for the
transfer of labour from where it is not wanted to where it is. Also,
seeing that only a certain number of workers are wanted in the
pleasanter occupations, some authority in the guilds will have to
assign their duty to all labourers, instead of leaving the choice to
competition with the sharp tooth of hunger behind it.
The coercion of the idle workman will be quite a large task; for
slackness cannot be summarily dealt with as now by dismissal. It is such
rocks of human frailty that will be the danger to the navigation of any
ordered system. Are all childless women to be made to work for guild
wages? Are married and unmarried men to be paid alike? Is any saving to
be permitted? What machinery will determine prices, when demand and
supply are denied their free play? It is not the place of this book to
answer these questions or to pronounce a final opinion. It is enough to
see that opinion is strongly tending in this direction, and that it is
in the sequence of _Fors Clavigera_.
That this is, however, the direction of advance, one is led to believe,
from the existence of a halfway house. There is in every movement always
the moderate mass and the progressive vanguard, and they sometimes turn
their guns heartily upon one another. The moderate proposal, the rival
to Guild Socialism, is that of the Whitley Councils for bringing in the
present capitalist employers and their workmen as collaborators in the
conduct of businesses, and as joint constituents of a trade Parliament.