WHAT’S WRONG WITH THE WORLD?
My dear John,
While I think I have shown you that Socialism is not what it pretends
to be--a certain remedy for all the social evils of our day--and that
it is utterly impossible for Socialism to keep its promises by making
this world over into a veritable kingdom of God on earth, we must not
make the mistake of dismissing all the contentions of the Socialists as
so many exhibitions of mental aberration. There is madness in some of
their doctrines--it is a crazy kind of a future that they have planned
for us; but behind all their absurdities there is a well-justified
protest against a series of social and industrial abuses from which the
great body of humanity is suffering, as from so many hideous sores.
Mind you, John, I do not say that Socialists never exaggerate existing
conditions. We have already seen how prone they are to try to make us
put the most gloomy construction on the social outlook, and how ready
they are to twist statistics into all kinds of strange contortions to
make them fit their theories, in an endeavor to prove that the evils
which exist are ever so much more glaring than they really are.
But the evils exist. The worker does not get an adequate share of the
wealth which he contributes to produce. The problem of unemployment
cries for solution from one end of the world to the other. In every
State and country the evils of child labor demand a remedy. Everywhere
numbers of men and women work under conditions that are a disgrace
to our boasted civilization, and in all parts of the land workers
are compelled to live in an environment and under circumstances that
absolutely preclude the attainment of the ideals toward which humanity
is supposed to be tending.
In a word, we cannot deny that something is radically wrong with
the world. So far we may go hand in hand with the Socialist. To the
extent that he demands reform measures which shall give to the worker
greater opportunities for development and happiness, we must heartily
concur. But is the Socialist right when he asserts that these wrongs
are the inevitable result of the system which he calls “capitalism”?
Is it impossible, as he insists, that these wrongs may be righted
except by the overthrow of our present system and the substitution of
collective ownership of all means of production for our privately-owned
competitive method of managing things?
When the Socialist tells us that Individualism is responsible for
all these evils, he is right. When he tells us that these evils are
inherent in the system which permits individual ownership of productive
properties, he is wrong. It is not the competitive system that is
responsible for all our social and industrial abuses. These unjust
features of modern life are the direct result of the vicious practices
which selfish and cruel individuals have adopted in their relations to
their fellow-men, but which do not necessarily have any place in the
system itself.
If you were to study the development of political economy, you would
discover that the marked degradation of the workers, as well as much
of the callousness of the prosperous to the sufferings of the poor are
the direct result of the economic ideas promulgated by the Liberal
philosophers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. “Liberty,
fraternity and equality,” are terms to conjure with; but, once we apply
these principles to the practical affairs of life, we have started
society upon a downward course which can be checked only by a complete
reversal of such ideas.
The French Deists sought to remove all trammels from man that he might
follow nature without restraint. They, and the economists who followed
them--Adam Smith, Ricardo, Bentham, Mill, and others--saw no room for
morality, religion, or even ethics, in political economy. The natural
effect of such principles was to foster the selfish impulses of man
rather than enforce conformity to the standards of conduct which are
embodied in the eternal laws of justice. These principles taught men
that the matter of prime importance was self-interest; they encouraged
cruelty and greed; they opened the way for the practice of unregulated
competition and stultified the Christian ideals of self-renunciation
and human brotherhood.
A political economy without ethics, without a rule of right except as
set down in man-made law, can have none of the elements of justice
save, possibly, through sheer accident. Legal morality and the morality
for which Christianity has always stood are as opposed as the two
poles in many particulars. Where the principles of true morality
are recognized, there is no inherent antagonism between capital and
labor. They have interests that are mutual, and there is no excuse for
turning the industrial world into a battleground upon which strength
and cunning usurp the place of love and justice. The moment that the
higher ideals of life are subordinated to the passion of greed, the
degradation of the weaker and less cunning becomes inevitable.
History shows us that this is precisely what has happened. Instead of
becoming a means to progress, the competitive system, through lack of
control, has resulted in a form of unlicensed competition which, as J.
J. Welsh asserts (“Socialism, Individualism and Catholicism,” p. 19),
may be “rightly described as commercial cannibalism.... It delivers
up weak, unorganized labor into the hands of organized and omnipotent
capital.... Without regard for the skill of the worker, the value of
his labor, or the requirements of a decent human life, the competitive
principle justifies the capitalist in paying the workman the least,
which, in the circumstances, he can compel him to accept. The employer
shelters himself under the law of supply and demand, as though that
were the supreme regulator of the remuneration and conditions of labor.
There is no savor of morality in such a principle. It gives an unfair
advantage to the few rich, who control the instruments of production,
over the defenceless masses, and it makes a question of strict
justice--the remuneration and the actual subsistence of the toiler and
his family--depend upon a trial of strength between two contending
parties.”
There is no right-minded man who is not ready to join the Socialists in
their condemnation of the effects of the operations of this principle
of unrestrained competition. Were we compelled to believe that there
was no way by which this system could be changed, but that the human
sorrow and merciless injustice resulting from the exploitation of
the weak by the strong must continue unchecked until our system of
production and distribution has been completely overthrown, there
are comparatively few of us who would not go still further and urge
the adoption of the collective methods of industry. It is because we
believe that it is our unregulated competition, and not the principle
of individual ownership itself, which is destructive of right and
justice, that we do not and cannot join hands with the Socialists. As
we shall see, it is possible to bring about a correction of the abuses
from which countless thousands have suffered and are still suffering.
As we shall see, there are instruments within our reach with which we
may check the unbounded lust of greed which has made this generous
earth a vale of woe and mourning for the poor.
While we do not agree with socialistic principles, therefore, we
recognize the justice embodied in the Socialist protest; and, much as
we deplore the spirit which has exaggerated our evils with a view to
inciting class hatred and a revolution that can result only in violence
and bloodshed, we should be blind if we did not appreciate the fact
that it is this protesting sentiment that has been to a marked degree
responsible for the moral awakening that will eventually set things
right.
For example, there can be no doubt that there is justification for
the Socialist declaration regarding the unequal distribution of
wealth. The facts in the case are too notorious to permit of denial,
when multitudes are suffering all the woes of destitution, when many
are starving for lack of life’s bare necessities, and while the few
are able to waste in extravagance the means which would relieve
the sufferings of countless thousands if properly applied. “The
pestilential principle that each man has the right to dispose of his
wealth without regard to the common good is the cause of the widespread
mischief,” says Welsh.
This unjust principle is also responsible for the inadequate rate of
wage and the horrible conditions which exist so generally among the
miserable multitude. There are those who may deny that such conditions
prevail; but our own eyes and ears, to say nothing of the great mass of
statistical information which is within our reach, prove conclusively
that there are untold thousands of children who are born into the
world without a chance of life or happiness; that vast multitudes
of young women, unable to sustain life in the unequal struggle for
existence, are driven to the streets for the sustenance which they
find it impossible to earn by honest toil; that men and women, who are
entitled in strict justice to a wage that will support them and those
dependent on them, are deprived of all their natural rights through no
fault of their own. For them there is no such thing as decent food,
clothing and shelter possible, to say nothing of the hope of ever being
able to meet the higher but no less natural requirements of life.
Christianity has always held that it is the duty of each and all to
preserve life decently and that anything that tends to make this
impossible is a crime. “This idea of class duties and class comforts
is either explicitly or implicitly referred to as the final test in
every question of distribution or exchange,” says Ashley, who quoted
Langenstein in evidence of the fact that these principles of industrial
justice were recognized prior to the fourteenth century. “Everyone,”
says the latter, “can determine for himself the just price of the
wares he has to sell by simply reckoning what he needs in order to
support himself in his rank of life”; and those who have read the
writings of the Church Fathers do not need to be told that Christianity
has ever maintained the necessity of recognizing the right of the
worker to a living wage. These traditional teachings are embodied
in the Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII, who repudiates the principle
that competition alone determines the morality of the so-called free
contract.
“There is a dictate of nature more imperious and more ancient than
any bargain between man and man, that the remuneration must be enough
to support the wage-earner in reasonable and frugal comforts,” says
the Pope. “If, through necessity or fear of a worse evil, the workman
accepts harder conditions because an employer or contractor will give
him no better, he is the victim of force and injustice.”
The Socialists claim that the Marxian gospel affords the only possible
relief for the victims of this force and injustice. As I have already
asserted, if this were true, a great many more of us would be
Marxists. As it is, however, there is a remedy which we may adopt with
safety, and with every assurance that it may be applied successfully if
we but get together and work together in the right way.