THE FUNDAMENTAL DOCTRINES OF SOCIALISM
In describing the doctrines of Socialism I do not mean to state in
detail the whole of the Socialistic theories. Such a statement would
fill a volume, it would be excessively tedious to most readers, and it
is for all practical purposes quite unnecessary. A statement of the
leading doctrines on which the activity of the Socialists is
based--the doctrines which are constantly asserted and which are the
fundamental dogmas of the Socialist faith--will enable us to obtain a
clear view of the foundations upon which the theoretic fabric of
Socialism is built, and to judge whether that foundation is scientific
and sound, or unscientific and unsound.
The basic doctrine of Socialism, upon which the great edifice of
Socialistic theory has been reared, may be summed up in the phrase
"LABOUR IS THE ONLY SOURCE OF WEALTH"
Therefore we read in the celebrated pamphlet "Facts for Socialists,"
of which some important extracts were given in the preceding chapter:
"Commodities are produced solely by the 'efforts and sacrifices'
(Cairns), whether of muscle or of brain, of the working portion of the
community, employed upon the gifts of Nature. Adam Smith 'showed that
labour is the only source of wealth.... It is to labour, therefore,
and to labour only, that man owes everything possessed of
exchangeable value (McCulloch's 'Principles of Political Economy,'
Part II., section 1). 'No wealth whatever can be produced without
labour' (Professor Henry Fawcett (Cambridge), 'Manual of Political
Economy,' p. 13),"[151]
This statement is scarcely honest, for it quotes opinions of Adam
Smith and others which are erroneous, as will be seen in the
following, and which have been generally abandoned. This statement may
impose upon the simple by its show of learning, but it is somewhat
vague, for it only suggests, but does not distinctly assert, that
manual labour is the only source of wealth. However, in most--one
might say in nearly all--Socialist books, pamphlets, and declarations
of policy we find the basic doctrine of Socialism asserted in a form
which leaves no doubt that according to the Socialist theories the
manual labour of the labourer is the only source of wealth.
The founder of modern Socialism declared, "Labour is the only source
of wealth,"[152] and his disciples--at least his British
disciples--support that declaration. "All wealth is due to labour;
therefore, to the labourers all wealth is due."[153] "Labour applied
to natural objects is the source of all wealth."[154] The Socialist
Party of Great Britain declares: "Wealth is natural material converted
by labour-power to man's use, and as such is consequently produced by
the working class alone."[155] The Independent Labour party asserts:
"No man or class of men made the first kind of wealth, such as land,
minerals, and water. Therefore no man or class of men should be
allowed to call these things their own, or to prevent others from
using them (except on certain conditions), as the landowners and
mine-owners do now. The only class of human beings who make the
second kind of wealth are the workers. Working men and women produce
and prepare for us all those things which we use or consume, such as
food, clothing, houses, furniture, instruments and implements, trams,
railways, pictures, books, gas, drains, and many other things. They
produce all the wealth obtained by toil from the land."[156]
Those who maintain that labour, or, as some Socialists assert, the
labourer's labour, is the only source of wealth, look merely at the
mechanical factor, but omit the force which directs and controls it.
The Socialistic argument "We can run the mills without the
capitalists, but they cannot run them without us"[157] is misleading.
Labour is certainly an indispensable ingredient in production, but it
is no more indispensable than is direction, invention, and thrift.
Hence it is as absurd to assert "All wealth is due to labour" as to
say "All wealth is due to invention," or "All wealth is due to
thrift." As the brain is more important than the hand, at least in a
highly organised state of production, so invention, organisation,
management, and thrift are more important than manual labour, because
invention, organisation, management, and thrift alone enable manual
labour, working with modern machinery, to be highly productive. In
fact, it may be asserted that wealth is created not so much by labour
as by the saving of labour. A factory-owner who is dissatisfied with
the profits of his factory or with its products does not get better
workers, but gets a better manager or better machinery, keeping his
workers. This fact proves that labour is the least important factor in
modern production. The doctrine "Labour is the only source of wealth"
is untenable and absurd.
Another fundamental doctrine of Socialism is that of
"THE IRON LAW OF WAGES"
According to that law, "wages under competition can never be higher
than that which will just support the labourer and enable him to renew
his kind."[158] In the words of Lassalle, the inventor of the Iron Law
of Wages, "the wages of the labourer are limited to the exact amount
necessary to keep him alive."[159]
The British Socialist writers tell us: "The average price of
wage-labour is the minimum wage--_i.e._ that quantum of the means of
subsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the labourer in bare
existence."[160] "The labourer cannot as a rule command more than his
cost of subsistence in return for his labour. This principle, that the
return to labour is determined by the cost of subsistence of the
labourer, is generally known as 'The Iron Law of Wages.' But has not
this law been discarded even by some Socialists? There have been
attempts in some quarters to demonstrate that this law does not
actually operate with the rigidity at first claimed for it; but in
truth, it stands as firmly to-day as when insisted upon by
Lassalle."[161] "Capitalism always keeps the wages down to the lowest
standard of subsistence which the people will accept,"[162] for "the
basis of wages is the cost of subsistence of the labourer. This is
called the 'Iron Law of Wages.'"[163] "By the Iron Law of Wages the
recompense of the workers always tends to the minimum on which they
are willing to subsist. If they are content with water to drink and
cabbage to eat, they may be sure that the means of buying whisky or
roast beef will very soon be taken from them. Messrs. Rentmonger,
Interestmonger, and Profitmonger will speedily scent additional swag,
and they will have it, too."[164] "The 'Iron Law of Wages' reduces the
wages to as near the level of the means of subsistence as local
circumstances will admit of."[165] If these arguments were correct it
would follow that the workers could cause their wages to rise by
drinking wine instead of whisky, and by smoking Havana cigars instead
of pipe-tobacco.
This theory of wages is called the "Iron Law of Wages" because of its
absolute and pitiless rigidity. For instance, the Iron Law of Wages
will prevent lower prices of food benefiting the workman in any way.
"If the working class is enabled to buy cheap bread, the operation of
the 'Iron Law of Wages' will secure all the advantage for the
capitalists, as it did in the days of the saintly Bright, when the
corn laws were repealed. Capital is always the same in its effect on
the working-class, whether manipulated by an individual capitalist,
joint-stock enterprise, municipality, or government, and with each
step in concentration the working-class gets relatively less and the
master class gets richer, more corrupt, and more bestial, as recent
events in Berlin and elsewhere show."[166] The "Iron Law of Wages" is
irrefutable and irresistible. "Economists have come to talk about the
'Iron Law of Wages' with as much assurance as if it were an
irreversible law of Nature."[167]
The Iron Law of Wages exists chiefly in the imagination of British
Socialists. The general wage of British workmen living in towns ranges
from, say _18s._ to more than _2l._ per week, and its amount does not
depend on the cost of subsistence, but on the working skill and
various other factors. If the Iron Law of Wages were correct, wages
would be almost uniform. The Iron Law of Wages can possibly apply only
to one small class of workers, the lowest and least skilled labourers,
provided that unemployment is so great among them that they abandon
collective bargaining and underbid one another down to the level of
subsistence. When workers are organised, the Iron Law of Wages does
not apply. The level of wages depends, broadly speaking, on supply and
demand. Wages rise when two employers run after one workman; wages
fall when two workmen run after one employer. An employer who engages
a workman does not ask, "How much do you eat?" but "What can you do?"
and he proportions the worker's remuneration not to his appetite, but
to his ability and his value as a producer. The wages paid to married
men and to unmarried men are identical in the same trade. If there was
an "Iron Law of Wages," the wages of married men should be about twice
as large as those of unmarried men.
The Iron Law of Wages is manifestly absurd. It has therefore been
officially abandoned by the German Socialists at the Halle Congress of
1890 "as being scientifically untenable."[168] "German Social
Democracy no longer recognises the Iron Law of Wages."[169] The
British Socialists have not abandoned it, probably not because they
believe it to be scientifically correct--no one can believe that--but
because it is a plausible and effective means of poisoning the minds
of the people.
As regards the factors which determine wages, one of the foremost
Socialist authorities says: "Thoughtful workmen in the staple trades
have become convinced by their own experience, no less than by the
repeated arguments of the economists, that a rising standard of wages
and other conditions of employment must depend ultimately on the
productivity of labour, and therefore upon the most efficient and
economical use of credit, capital, and capacity."[170] In other words,
productivity and profit determine wages, and it is ridiculous that
Socialists argue: "Over 90 per cent. of our women do not drink, back
horses, smoke, attend football or cricket matches, they do not stop
off their work to watch England and Australia play at cricket, and the
result is they are paid less wages than men in our factories for doing
the same work."[171] Does Councillor Glyde really believe that women's
wages would rise as soon as they took to smoking and drinking?
THE LAW OF INCREASING MISERY
According to this law the improvements in machinery, the increase of
capital and increase of production do not benefit the worker. They
only lead to a decline in wages and thus increase the workers' misery.
"In proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour
increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases
whether by prolongation of the working hours, by increase of the work
exacted in a given time, or by increased speed of the machinery,
&c."[172] "The faster productive capital increases, the more does the
division of labour and the employment of machinery extend. The more
the division of labour and the employment of machinery extend, so much
the more does competition increase among the labourers and so much the
more do their average wages dwindle. And thus the forest of arms
outstretched by those who are entreating for work becomes ever denser
and the arms themselves grow ever leaner."[173] "The more the worker
labours the less reward he receives for it; and that for this simple
reason, that he competes against his fellow-workmen and thus compels
them to compete against him and to offer their labour on as wretched
conditions as he does, and that he thus, in the last result, competes
against himself as a member of the working-class."[174] "The worker in
the factory gets, as a worker, absolutely no advantage from the
machinery which causes the product of his labour to be multiplied a
hundredfold."[175] "John Stuart Mill, it will be remembered,
questioned whether mechanical invention had lightened the labours of a
single human being."[176] "With increasing powers of production, the
worker's share, and therefore his purchasing power, grows less."[177]
"Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the
labourers."[178] "The iron law of competition means, and must mean,
continued degradation for the workers, even though their physical
condition in youth may be improved."[179] "The worker in the factory
is now seen to work no shorter hours or gain no higher wages merely
because the product of his labour is multiplied a hundredfold by
machinery which he does not own. 'The remuneration of labour as such,'
wrote Cairnes in 1874, 'skilled or unskilled, can never rise much
above its present level.'"[180]
The celebrated "Doctrine of Increasing Misery" stands in diametrical
opposition to those facts with which nowadays every child is
acquainted. During the time when our Socialists have been preaching
the "Doctrine of Increasing Misery" working hours have been very
greatly diminished and wages have not been reduced, but have risen by
about 100 per cent. During the same time working hours in Germany have
also been reduced and wages have risen up to 400 per cent.[181] The
German Socialists have been honest enough to abandon the Doctrine of
Increasing Misery under the guidance of Bernstein; the French have
dropped it under the guidance of Sorel; the Dutch have seen its
absurdity, guided by Vandervelde, their foremost leader. The British
Socialists, on the other hand, have not abandoned it, though they must
see its absurdity, probably because, though palpably and ridiculously
false, the Doctrine of Increasing Misery is considered to be a useful
and effective part of the Socialist agitator's stock-in-trade.
The next doctrine to be considered is
THE SURPLUS-VALUE DOCTRINE
The Socialists argue that the position of the worker cannot improve
because the capitalist, possessing the monopoly of property, pockets
all that the worker produces except the mere cost of his subsistence,
which, owing to the "Iron Law of Wages," is given to the workman in
the form of wages. "The amount of wealth which the labourer produces
in the time for which he has sold his labour-force is out of all
proportion to what it costs to produce and maintain his labour-force
for that time. This, the difference between what he produces and his
own cost of production, is surplus-value, and is taken and divided up
by the capitalist into rent, interest, profit. This surplus-value,
then, this profit, is so much robbery effected by taking advantage of
the necessity of the proletarian--the naked propertyless
labourer."[182] "All that the worker produces beyond what is
absolutely necessary to keep himself and his offspring in life, this
surplus beyond subsistence--this difference between the recompense of
labour and its products--this unrighteous subtrahend, this swag, is
the booty alike of slavelord, serflord, and drudgelord, or
capitalist."[183] The question now arises: "How does the capitalist
secure this surplus-value of labour without paying for it? If the
workman is free, why cannot he insist on receiving, not the mere
exchange-value of his commodity--'labour-power'--but the full value of
the labour he expends for the capitalist? The capitalist obtains this
surplus-value owing to his monopoly of the means of production. The
labourer cannot, as a rule, command more than his cost of subsistence
in return for his labour--although his wages, like the prices of all
commodities, sometimes rise above this and sometimes fall
below--because, although apparently free, he is really not free. He
must sell his labour-power in order to live; he has no other commodity
to dispose of. Consequently he must accept the terms that the
purchaser will offer, subject only to two conditions--his own cost of
subsistence and the fluctuations of the market."[184] "Owing to the
monopoly of the means of production in the past, industrial inventions
and the transformation of surplus income into capital have mainly
enriched the proprietary class, the worker being now dependent on that
class for leave to earn a living."[185]
The Surplus-Value Doctrine, like the preceding doctrines, is founded
rather upon imagination than upon fact. In the first place, it is
absurd to speak of a "capitalist class" which, having a "monopoly of
the means of production," exploits "the naked and propertyless
labourer." This picture is a fancy picture. In the second place,
"class" is not synonymous with "caste." The population is not divided
into two rigidly defined and limited castes of capitalists and
wage-earners. There is neither a monopoly of capital nor a monopoly of
labour. Capital is founded by thrift. Most respectable workmen are
capitalists to a greater or lesser extent. Every day workmen become
capitalists. It should not be forgotten that many of the wealthiest
men, such as Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Krupp, the first
Rothschild, Sir Thomas Lipton, Passmore Edwards, and many others, have
risen from the ranks and were working men--and every day capitalists
lose their money and become workmen. Workmen may become capitalists by
thrift. Co-operating workmen in England, France, Germany, and other
countries own vast industrial undertakings, banks, &c. In those
districts where thrift and co-operation are general (France,
Switzerland, Holland) the "naked and propertyless labourers"
disappear, whilst in equally prosperous districts where improvidence
is general, they are many. The prosperity of the working classes in
France, Switzerland, Holland, and other countries disproves the
assertion that the workman is condemned to everlasting poverty because
of the Surplus-Value Doctrine.
Assertions in support of the "Surplus-Value Doctrine" such as
"Carnegie and other millionaires have wrung their wealth literally out
of the bodies of the underfed"[186] are as malicious as they are
untrue. Men like Carnegie and Krupp have not "wrung their wealth out
of the bodies of the underfed," but out of Nature. They have created
vast industries in barren places, and the industries which they have
created nourish now tens of thousands of working men. Men like Krupp
and Carnegie have diminished misery, not increased it. Their capital,
created by their brains with the assistance of labour out of Nature,
has rather enriched labour than that labour has enriched Carnegie and
Krupp. Their wealth is not dead wealth; it produces wages and articles
of use. The "Surplus-Value Doctrine" is a grotesque distortion of, and
an unjustified protest against, the fact that manufacturers and other
organisers and directors of labour will not work for nothing.
We have seen in the foregoing that, according to the fundamental
Socialist doctrines, "labour is the only source of wealth." We have
also seen that, according to the "Iron Law of Wages" and the "Law of
Increasing Misery," the workmen are condemned to great, permanent, and
constantly increasing misery. Further, we have learned that, according
to the "Surplus-Value Doctrine," all the fruit of their labour, minus
the cost of their bare subsistence, is taken from the workers by the
capitalists. Hence it is only natural and logical that the assertion
of the fundamental doctrines, namely--
1. Labour is the only source of wealth,
2. Wages maintains mere animal existence,
3. The misery of the workers is constantly increasing,
4. The position of the worker is hopeless,
has led to this fifth doctrine:
THE LABOURER IS ENTITLED TO THE ENTIRE PRODUCT OF HIS LABOUR
This doctrine is put forth by practically all British Socialists, not
only as a doctrine but also as a demand. For instance "the New School
of Trades-Unionists declare themselves in open and uncompromising
revolt against the established relations between capital and labour;
and they expound a new political economy which says that nothing less
than the full fruits of industry shall be reckoned the fair reward of
the producing class. They want the whole four-fourths of their
earnings, instead of the one-fourth at present doled back in
wages."[187] This demand must have precedence over all other measures
whatsoever, for "until you have settled the material question as to
how the producers of wealth are to get for themselves the full value
of what they produce by their labour, it is impossible to settle
anything else."[188]
According to many Socialists, Socialism would immediately abolish
their grievances and give to the worker the entire produce of his
labour. "At present the frugal workman only gets about one-third of
his earnings. Under Socialism he would get all his earnings."[189]
"Under the new order all will be productive workers, receiving an
equivalent for what they produce--not merely one-half of it as now
under the wage-system--in some form."[190] Under the heading "Basis of
the Fabian Society," the Fabian Society publishes a statement of the
fundamental principles of that Society in which we read: "If these
measures" (confiscation of all private property) "be carried out,
without compensation (though not without such relief to expropriated
individuals as may seem fit to the community), rent and interest will
be added to the reward of labour, the idle class now living on the
labour of others will necessarily disappear, and practical equality of
opportunity will be maintained by the spontaneous action of economic
forces with much less interference with personal liberty than the
present system entails."
The absurdity of the demand for "the entire product of labour," which
is raised by Socialists on behalf of the labourer is clear even to the
most superficial thinker. The majority of Socialists know quite well
that writing off, repairs, renewals, the replacing of machinery, the
enlargement of factories, &c., cannot be done gratis, that the
distribution of the whole produce of labour to the workers can be
effected only by neglecting and destroying the means of production.
The impossibility of giving to the worker the "whole product of his
labour" by abolishing the private capitalist is clearly recognised and
honestly admitted by the German Socialists. Kautsky, for instance,
writes: "If the income of the capitalists were added to that of the
workers, the wages of each would be doubled. Unfortunately, however,
the matter will not be settled so simply. If we expropriate
capitalism, we must at the same time take over its social
functions--among these the important one of capitalist accumulation.
The capitalists do not consume all their income; a portion of it they
put away for the extension of production. A proletarian _regime_ would
also have to do the same in order to extend production. It would not
therefore be able to transfer, even in the event of a radical
confiscation of capital, the whole of the former income to the working
class. Besides, a portion of the surplus value which the capitalists
now pocket, they must hand over to the State in the shape of taxes.
For these reasons our Socialists are guilty of wilful deception if
they tell the workers that under a Socialist _regime_ their wages
would be doubled and trebled."[191] Nevertheless, the doctrine and the
demand that "the labourer is entitled to the entire product of his
labour" is not abandoned by British Socialists, apparently because it
is extremely useful for arousing the passions of the workers against
the capitalists in accordance with Gronlund's advice,[192] and for
bringing new adherents to the Socialist camp.
Only the Fabian Society, the more scientific section of the English
Socialists, has mildly protested against this absurd doctrine and
demand, but that protest has not been heeded. In a little-read
pamphlet of that Society, the following statement may be found: "The
Fabian Society steadfastly discountenances all schemes for securing
to any person or any group of persons the entire product of their
labour. It recognises that wealth is social in its origin and must be
social in its distribution" (which means in plain English, must be
preserved by the thrifty few, official or non-official, for the use of
the unthrifty many), "since the evolution of industry has made it
impossible to distinguish the particular contribution that each person
makes to the common product, or to ascertain the value."[193]
Notwithstanding these emphatic statements, the Fabian Society
preserves with characteristic duplicity[194] the statement in its
programme that "rent and interest, will be added to the reward of
labour."
Most British Socialist writers are not aware, or rather pretend not to
be aware, of the necessity of preserving and increasing the national
capital. In "Land, Labour, and Liberty," we read: "Whilst in 1845 the
total wealth of this country was estimated at _4,000,000,000l._, it is
now estimated at over _12,000,000,000l._ The monopolist classes,
without denying themselves anything, and whilst producing
comparatively nothing, have piled up an additional eight thousand
millions. The superfluous handful of mere possessors remain the
flowers and foliage of society; the three-quarters of the nation of
indispensable producers remain the manure."[195] This writer, like
most Socialists, though acknowledging the enormous growth of the
national capital of Great Britain, pretends that the "monopolist
classes" have not denied themselves anything. If that were true, the
national capital would still amount to only _4,000,000,000l._ as in
1845. Great Britain would have few factories, no new machinery, no
steamships, and but a very few miles of railway. But for the
self-denial, the thrift of the "superfluous handful of mere
possessors," Englishmen would still live in the Hungry Forties and
Great Britain would be able to nourish only about 20,000,000 people as
she did in 1845. National capital and the comforts and conveniences
which it supplies to all are at least as much the result of thrift,
inventiveness, enterprise, and wise direction as of manual labour.
The foregoing shows that, to say the least, the grievances of the
Socialists are greatly--one might almost say grotesquely--exaggerated,
and that they are largely founded on a perversion of facts; a
perversion which can be easily explained by the desire of the
Socialist leaders to arouse the blind passions of the discontented
wage-earners in accordance with Gronlund's advice, quoted on page 10.
The next doctrine which should be considered may be summed up in the
words:
"THE EXISTING MISERY CAN BE ABOLISHED, NOT BY INCREASING PRODUCTION,
BUT BY ALTERING THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE WEALTH PRODUCED"
"The Socialist emphatically denies the assertion that the poor must
always be with us. The productive capacity of society is now so great
that none need want, and all are able to earn their livelihood, and
more, except where they are prevented from doing so by sickness,
infirmity, or by the existence of laws and customs which the individual
cannot himself, acting alone, remove."[196] "There is a demand for the
labour of every man under any well-ordered social system. If there is a
waste of men now, it is the fault of the wage system."[197] "Sufficient
wealth is produced in this country to-day which would, under a
well-ordered state of society, enable every man, woman, and child to
have a sufficiency of all things essential to a healthy human life.
To-day the people produce this wealth, and, after they have produced
it, quite two-thirds of it is taken from them by a very small section
of the people. Consequently we have a very few rich, and many that are
poor."[198] "We may claim to have solved the problem of how to produce
enough, and the question which confronts us is how to bring
distribution into line with the productive capacity of our
people."[199] "The old argument that there is not enough work to do
cannot be seriously listened to by anyone who has walked through a
London or Manchester slum. There is work in the world for all, just as
there is wealth in the world for all, and every man has a right to
work, just as he has a right to wealth."[200] "The chief problem is not
the production of more wealth, but its equitable distribution."[201]
The increase of production and therefore of reproductive capital in
the form of machinery, mines, railways, ships, &c., in which most of
the "Surplus-Value" is invested, is explained to be a matter of
secondary consideration and importance, and it is stated that the
world suffers rather from over-production than from under-production.
"The tendency of the conditions of employment under present
circumstances, under the capitalist system, always is for production
to outstrip consumption."[202] "Our power to produce has always, since
the beginnings of capitalism, shown a tendency to grow more rapidly
than our power to consume."[203] "Then because there is a plethora of
goods and a dearth of purchasers, the workshops are closed and Hunger
lashes the working population with his thousand-thonged whip. The
workers, stupefied by the dogma of work, do not understand that the
cause of their present misery is the overwork that they have inflicted
on themselves during the time of sham prosperity."[204] "For some
insane reason the capitalist has thought of nothing but
production."[205] "If, by a fiat from heaven, the wealth of the world
were doubled to-morrow and the present system of capitalistic monopoly
and commercial competition were allowed to continue, the social misery
would, in a very short time, reappear in a form even still more
accentuated, were that possible. Individualism, commercialism,
capitalism--call it what we may--has demonstrably produced the
evil."[206]
THE EXISTING CAPITALIST SYSTEM IS RESPONSIBLE FOR POVERTY, WANT, AND
UNEMPLOYMENT
Unemployment is largely caused by commercial crises, commercial crises
are caused by over-production, over-production is caused by the fact
that the national industries are divided and the industrial output is
regulated not by the nation in accordance with the national demand but
by irresponsible private individuals whose aim is profit, not the
fulfilment of a national demand. "The causes of commercial depression
lie in the non-consumption of the incomes of our millionaires."[207]
Another Socialist writer asserts: "Our era is cursed with crises
occurring far more frequently than plagues and causing as much misery.
Economists say that these crises are caused by over-production.
Private enterprise compels every producer to produce for himself, to
sell for himself, to keep all his transactions to himself, without
regard to anybody else in the wide world. Merchants have got no
measure at hand by which they can, even approximately, either
estimate the effective demand of their customers or ascertain the
producing capacity of their rivals. Production by all these
manufacturers is, and must necessarily be, absolutely planless. This
planless production must end in the market being overstocked with
commodities of one kind or another; that is, that it must end in
'over-production.' In the trade which has been thus overdone, prices
fall and wages come down; or a great manufacturer fails and a smaller
or greater number of workmen are discharged. Crises are therefore the
direct result of private enterprise."[208] "Why are men--men that is
who are able and willing, nay, eager and anxious, to work--unemployed?
Because, it is said, there is nothing for them to do. Nothing for them
to do? Is all the necessary work of the world, then, already finished,
so that there is nothing more remaining for anyone to do? No; it is
not because all the necessary and useful work is done that men are
unemployed, it is because all the means of production--all the
machines, tools, and implements of labour and all the raw
material--are owned by a class, and may only be used by permission of
that class, and when that class can make a profit out of their
use."[209] "It is indisputable that modern poverty is artificial. It
is neither the result of divine anger nor the niggardliness of Nature.
It is the product of the private ownership of land and capital by
which men are prevented from earning their living unless the
proprietary class can make profit from their labour. The inevitable
result of this system is that in all industries and at all times there
are more men seeking employment than there is employment for.[210]"
"Your system of private ownership, in conferring the possession and
control of the nation's storehouse of wealth and of the instruments by
which all further wealth must be obtained from it, upon your
capitalist class, has reduced the nation at large into nothing more
nor less than an elaborate machine which your capitalists use for
extracting wealth from the earth for their own benefit.... It is not
well that by a foolish and wicked system of government, one small
class of the community should be enabled to organise its production in
such a manner that the full stream of wealth is diverted into their
own possession whilst the mass of the nation by whose labour it is
obtained are defrauded of it, and brought into a state of subtle
slavery worse both in kind and degree than could be possible under any
system of direct and open slavery."[211] "Unemployment is an
inevitable feature of capitalism, and is impossible of removal without
at the same time abolishing the capitalist system that produces it.
That is a fact known to any Socialist with the most elementary
knowledge of the economics of capitalism. Unemployment is caused by
the exactions of the capitalist class. The prime cause of unemployment
is the robbery of the workers by which the capitalist class
appropriate the whole of the wealth produced by the workers, returning
to them just as much on the average as will keep them physically fit
to continue working. The difference between the quantities produced
and consumed by the working class (a difference continually increasing
with every increase in the productivity of labour) represents a
surplus which all the waste and all the luxury of its owners cannot
absorb, with the result that the markets are glutted with an excess of
commodities. Thus the 'over-production,' the crisis, and the
slackening of production involving an increase of unemployment."[212]
Employers of labour profit directly from unemployment, and will
therefore presumably do all they can to bring it about. "Employers and
other well-to-do people have no interest in finding work for the
workless. They benefit from the unemployment of the poor."[213] The
foregoing statement is as malicious as it is absurd. Employers do not
desire unemployment, partly from humanitarian reasons, partly because
it is a loss to them. The father of English Socialism taught: "The
labourer perishes if capital does not employ him. Capital perishes if
it does not exploit labour."[214] In other words, unemployed labour
means unemployed capital; besides, those business men who do not
actually dismiss their workers suffer also through unemployment,
because the unemployed are supported by the rates.
The doctrines that "the existing misery can be abolished, not by
increased production but by altering the distribution of the wealth
produced," and that the "capitalist system is responsible for want,
poverty, and unemployment," are manifestly unsound. A larger
consumption of food, clothing, &c., can be effected only by a larger
production. Gluts and crises, with consequent unemployment, occur, not
through general over-production, which would benefit all, but by
ill-balanced production, as the following example will prove: Imagine
an island off the African coast on which there are two villages, the
inhabitants of which require only two commodities, loin-cloths and
mealies. One village manufactures loin-cloths, the other raises
mealies, and these are exchanged against each other. These villages
fulfil the Socialistic ideal. There are no capitalists and no
middlemen, and production is only "for use," not "for profit."
Balanced over-production will result in this, that every native will
have a superabundance of loin-cloths and food. But supposing that the
agriculturists go in for loin-cloth making, finding that occupation
more congenial, and that they abandon much agriculture; or supposing
that inclement weather, or a plague of grasshoppers, should seriously
curtail the harvest, then there will soon be a glut of loin-cloths and
a crisis. The cry of over-production will arise among the loin-cloth
makers, but that cry will be unjustified and absurd. The more the
people make the more they will have, provided production is properly
balanced. The doctrine that we suffer from over-production and that
the capitalist system is at fault, that altered distribution rather
than increased production will abolish misery, and that Socialism can
prevent want and unemployment by a scientific organisation of
production, is wrong.
Socialists may, of course, argue, "In the Socialist State production
would be organised, and controlled, and properly balanced and
harmonised," an argument which is irrelevant with regard to the
over-production doctrine, and which besides is unsound, although it
may be found in most Socialistic writings. As production is
world-wide, the Socialists' control of production would also have to
be world-wide. It would involve not only the control of all human
energy throughout the world, but also the control of the seasons, of
the weather, of insect plagues, of fashions, of appetite, &c.
The foregoing proves that "men can never become richer till the
produce of their labour increases. The more they produce the richer
they will be, provided there be a demand for the produce of their
labour. If a shoemaker makes four pairs of shoes in a day he will be
twice richer than he would be if he made only two pairs in a day,
provided that an increased demand is co-existing. The question,
therefore, 'How can we become richer?' is reduced to this one, 'How
can we increase the produce of labour and at the same time maintain an
equivalent demand for that produce?'"[215] The doctrines that want and
unemployment are due to over-production and to the capitalist system
are wrong.
We now come to the
DOCTRINE OF THE CLASS WAR
Having, by the fundamental doctrines enumerated in the foregoing,
proved that all misery of the working masses is caused by the
existence of a capitalist class which has enslaved the workers, the
Socialists conclude that there is a natural antagonism between capital
and labour; that social life is dominated by the Class War.
"The Socialists say that the present form of property-holding divides
society into two great classes."[216] "Capitalist society is divided
into two classes: owners of property and owners of no property."[217]
"Society is to-day divided into two classes with opposing interests,
one class owning the means of life, and the other nothing but their
power to work. Never in the history of society was the working-class
so free from all traces of property as to-day."[218] "There are in
reality but two classes, those who live by labour and those who live
upon those who labour, the two classes of exploiter and
exploited."[219] "Society has been divided mainly into two economic
classes, a relatively small class of capitalists who own tools in the
form of great machines they did not make and cannot use, and a great
body of many millions of workers who did make these tools and who do
use them, and whose very lives depend upon them, yet who do not own
them."[220]
It is usually said that society has three classes, but Socialists
maintain that there are in reality only two classes. William Morris
still divided society into three groups, which, however, at closer
inspection will be found to form but two classes. According to Morris,
"Civilised States consist of (1) the class of rich people doing no
work, who consume a great deal while they produce nothing. Therefore,
clearly they have to be kept at the expense of those who do work, just
as paupers have, and are a mere burden on the community. (2) The
middle class, including the trading, manufacturing, and professional
people of our society. It is their ambition and the end of their whole
lives to gain, if not for themselves, yet at least for their children,
the proud position of being obvious burdens on the community. Here
then is another class, this time very numerous and all-powerful, which
produces very little and consumes enormously, and is therefore
supported, as paupers are, by the real producers. (3) The class that
remains to be considered produces all that is produced and supports
both itself and the other classes, though it is placed in a position
of inferiority to them, real inferiority, mind you, involving a
degradation both of mind and body. To sum up, then, civilised States
are composed of three classes--a class which does not even pretend to
work, a class which pretends to work but which produces nothing, and a
class which works."[221] In other words, William Morris divided
society into two classes: propertied non-producers and non-propertied
toilers.
According to practically all living English Socialists, there are but
two classes in society. "Modern society is divided into two
classes--the possessors of property and the non-possessors: the
dominant class and the subject class; the class which rules and the
class which has to obey. He who possesses sufficient wealth to
exercise control over the labour of others, to exploit that labour for
his own profit, belongs to the one class; he who possesses nothing but
the power to labour contained in his own body, and who is therefore
compelled to sell that labour power in order to live, belongs to the
other. It is this struggle and conflict between these two classes
that Socialists call the class war, a recognition of which is
essential to a clear conception of what the Socialist movement
involves."[222] "Society is divided into two opposite classes, one,
the capitalists and their sleeping partners the landlords and
loanmongers, holding in their hands the means of production,
distribution, and exchange, and being therefore able to command the
labour of others; the other, the working class, the wage-earners, the
proletariat, possessing nothing but their labour power, and being
consequently forced by necessity to work for the former."[223] "In
society there is an antagonism of interests, manifesting itself as a
class struggle between those who possess but do not produce, and those
who produce but do not possess."[224] "The people of this unfortunate
country have been aptly divided by Mr. Gladstone into the 'masses' and
the 'classes'--that is to say, into those who live by their own labour
and those who live on the labour of others. Among the latter tribe of
non-producers are included all manner of thieves, pick-pockets,
burglars, sharpers, prostitutes, Peers of Parliament, their families
and menials, all, or nearly all, the 'six hundred and odd scoundrels
of the House of Commons,' the twenty thousand State parsons, who every
Sunday shamelessly travesty the Christian religion in the interest of
the 'classes.'"[225]
The theory of dividing society into two classes, capitalists and
workers, or as others put it, "exploiters and exploited," is
manifestly absurd, and its absurdity has been pointed out by a few
Socialists. "It is not true that there are only two great economic
classes in the community. The Communist Manifesto, even in its day,
admitted as much, but made no place for the fact in its theories.
There is an economic antagonism between landlords and capitalists as
well as between capitalists and workmen."[226] Besides, most
capitalists are workers, and probably the great majority of English
workers are capitalists to a larger or smaller extent.
Now let us study the Socialists' description of the hostile forces
which are engaged in the Class War.
According to the Socialist teaching, the property-owners as a class
are useless idlers who impoverish the workers and who shamelessly
spend their whole income on demoralising luxuries. "The idlers and
non-workers produce no wealth and take the greater share. They live on
the labour of those who work. Nothing is produced by idleness; work
must be done to obtain a thimble, a pin, and even a potato for dinner.
The non-workers get the greater share of the wealth, and the greater
part of this share is wasted. Therefore it is not good to have any
people in the land who do not work. Only those who are old or sick
should be kept by the toil of the rest."[227] Taking their figures
from the pamphlet "Facts for Socialists," of which details have been
given on pp. 41-48, the Independent Labour party states under the
heading of "Wealth Makers and Wealth Takers": "The total incomes of
persons in the United Kingdom amount in round figures to
_1,800,000,000l._ How is this wealth distributed? 250,000 persons
actually receive a total of _585,000,000l._--that is, one-thirtieth of
the population receive one-third of the national income. Nearly the
whole of these large incomes are unearned--_i.e._ they are made up of
rents, interest, dividends, &c. This small class of rent and interest
receivers perform no useful function. We may describe these people as
social parasites, absolutely useless, yet levying toll to the extent
of _6s. 8d._ in every _20s._ value of wealth created."[228] "At
present more than _600,000,000l._ of the national income goes in the
form of unearned rent and interest to support an idle class who spend
it mainly on profitless and demoralising luxuries."[229]
The foregoing extracts make it clear that, in the eyes of Socialists,
practically all citizens, manual labourers excepted, are "drones and
parasites." Directors, managers, doctors, chemists, ships' captains,
teachers, &c., and even workmen of exceptional ability also, rob the
general body of workers of half their wages and subsist only owing to
the monopoly of property-holders who control the distribution of
wealth. Upon these curious premisses are based the conclusions: "The
profits and salaries of the class who share in the advantages of the
monopoly of the instruments of production, or are endowed by Nature
with any exceptional ability of high marketable value, amount
according to the best estimate that can be formed, to about
_460,000,000l._ annually, while out of a national income of some
_1,800,000,000l._ a year the workers in the manual labour
class--four-fifths of the whole population--obtain in wages not more
than _690,000,000l._ It may be safely said that the workers from top
to bottom of society pay a fine of one-half the wealth they produce to
a parasitic class before providing for the maintenance of themselves
and their proper dependents."[230] "It is this robbery and waste on
the part of the minority which keeps the majority poor."[231] "So long
as the instruments of production are in unrestrained private
ownership, so long must the tribute of the workers to the drones
continue, so long will the toiler's reward inevitably be reduced by
their exactions."[232]
"Socialism regards the capitalist proper not as a useful captain of
industry, but as a mere share-holding, dividend-drawing parasite upon
labour, and the Socialist party presses forward to his elimination
from the field of production."[233] "The workers who have produced all
this wealth only get a part--the smallest part at that--of the wealth
they produce. Now we Socialists say that this wealth produced by the
labour of the workers should belong to them, and not to the
capitalists who produce nothing. Seeing that the interest of the
worker is to get as much of this wealth, and on the other hand the
capitalist wants as much of this wealth, as he can get, therefore we
say that the interests of the workers and of the capitalists are not
identical, but opposite."[234] "The interest of the working class can
only be served even in the smallest degree by the curtailment of the
power of the master class; that every material advance is useless
except in so far as it helps to effect other achievements, and that
the realisation of Labour politics, the well-being of the working
class, can only be accomplished by its complete emancipation from
capitalism."[235] In other words, the Socialist writers quoted agree
in this: that the lot of the wage-earners can be improved only by
taking the wealth from the rich. In order to introduce Socialism the
present social order must be overturned. With this object in view they
have addressed declarations of war to the owners of property.
We owe to Marx not only the Class War doctrine, but also a declaration
of war to the propertied class: "The Communists everywhere support
every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political
order of things. In all these movements they bring to the front, as
the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what
its degree of development at the time. Finally they labour everywhere
for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all
countries. The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims.
They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the
forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling
classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have
nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working
men of all countries, unite!"[236]
Marx's disciples have issued similar declarations. For instance, in
the official programme of the Social Democratic Federation we read:
"The Social Democratic Federation is a militant Socialist organisation
whose members, men and women, belong almost entirely to the working
class. Its object is the realisation of Socialism, the emancipation of
the working class from its present subjection to the capitalist class.
To this end the Social Democratic Federation proclaims and preaches
the Class War."[237] "There is no way in which the Class War can be
avoided. You cannot have the reward of your labour and the idler have
it too. There is just so much wealth produced every day. It may be
more, it may be less; but there is always just so much, and the more
the capitalist gets the less you will get, and _vice versa_. We preach
the gospel of hatred, because in the circumstances it seems the only
righteous thing we can preach. The talk about the 'Gospel of Love' is
simply solemn rubbish. It is right to hate stealing, right to hate
lying, it is right to hate meanness and uncleanness, right to hate
hypocrisy, greed, and tyranny. Those who talk of the Gospel of Love
with landlordism and capitalism for its objects want us to make our
peace with iniquity."[238] "The Class War is inevitable under the
present form of property-holding, and for it there can be neither
truce, quarter, nor ending, save by the extinction of the class
system itself. The identity of interests between capitalism and
labour is a shibboleth that can only be given any sane meaning at all
in the cynical sense that the interests of the wolf and the lamb are
also 'identical' when the wolf has got the lamb inside him."[239]
The doctrine of the Class War is a holy faith, the expropriation of
property-owners is a divine task. "Unless we hate the system which
prevents us from being what we otherwise might have been, we will not
be able to strive against it with the patient, never-flagging zeal
which our work, to be well done, requires. And to keep alive and
undimmed this flame of hatred, divine not diabolical, we require to
not only look around us, but especially to look back upon the world as
it has been and to the example of those who have fought the good
fight. To Socrates, to Savonarola, to John Ball, Wat the Tyler, and
Jack Cade, in our land the first forerunners of Socialism; to Bruno
and Vanini, to Cromwell, Milton, Hampden, and Pym, to John Eliot,
Harry Vane; to Defoe, Mure, and Thomas Spence; to Ernest Jones,
Bronterre O'Brien, and Robert Owen; to Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet; to
Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien; to Vera Sassoulitch, Marie Spiridonova,
Sophia Perovsky; to Karl Marx."[240] The company of reformers and
revolutionists seems somewhat mixed.
The doctrine that the interests of employers and employees are
irreconcilably opposed, not identical, is false, Socialist rhetoric to
the contrary notwithstanding. As soon as a calamity threatens
capital--for instance, a rise in raw cotton or a cotton
famine--masters and men are seen to be in the same boat and devise
combined measures for meeting the difficulty. The doctrine of the
Class War is opposed to common experience and to common-sense.
Let us now take note of the doctrine
PRIVATE PROPERTY IS IMMORAL AND PRIVATE WEALTH IS A CRIME
In the Class War right is, according to the Socialists, on the side of
the propertyless. Not only are the owners of property objectionable in
their persons, being "drones and parasites" who squander the earnings
of the poor on riotous living, as we have learned in the foregoing
pages, but private property as an institution is immoral in itself and
ought to be abolished. No man has a right to be rich; no man can
become rich honestly. Hence it follows that all rich men are robbers,
thieves, and swindlers. "The poor owe no duty to the rich, unless it
be the duty which an honest man owes to the thief who has robbed him.
The rich have no right to any of their possessions, for there is but
one right, and that is the right of the labourer to the fruits of his
labour, and the rich do not labour. No man has any right to be rich.
No man ever yet became rich by fair means. No man ever became rich by
his own industry."[241] "No man or class of men made the first kind of
wealth, such as land, minerals, and water. Therefore no man or class
of men should be allowed to call these things their own."[242] As
private property is immoral in itself, it is doubly immoral to lend
out such property and to charge rent or interest for the use of it.
Mr. G.J. Wardle, M.P., said, in a recent speech at Glasgow, that rent
"was social immorality, and the State or society which allowed crimes
of that kind to go on unpunished could never be a moral society. The
same thing applied to interest on money. From the moral standpoint
interest is unearned by the man who gets it, and it does not matter
how that is cloaked over, that is the fact. Nowadays it was counted
the greatest virtue to lend at so much per cent. That was a socially
immoral proceeding, and because it was socially immoral it ate like a
canker into the heart of society. As Socialists they objected to
profit."[243]
There are Socialists who preach the same doctrine of immorality and
criminality of private property in more decided terms. They assert
that it is criminal and immoral to make a profit as a compensation for
the work of directing and taking heavy capital risks in productive
business because such profits are opposed to the principle, "The
labourer is entitled to the whole product of his labour" (see page
61). "A man has a 'right' to that which he has produced by the unaided
exercise of his own faculties; but he has not a right to that which is
not produced by his own unaided faculties; nor to the whole of that
which has been produced by his faculties aided by the faculties of
another man."[244] "Everyone who pockets gains without rendering an
equivalent to society is a criminal. Every millionaire is a criminal.
Every company-chairman with nominal duties, though his salary be but
_400l._, is a criminal. Everyone who lends his neighbour _5l._ and
exacts _5l. 5s. 0d._ in return, is a criminal."[245] "When Proudhon
advanced the somewhat startling proposition, 'Property is theft,' he
merely stated positively what good, orthodox Adam Smith, in his
'Wealth of Nations' set forth more urbanely when he wrote, 'The
produce of labour (it is clear from the context that he meant the
whole produce), is the natural recompense or wages of labour.'"[246]
"'Property' is theft, said Proudhon, and surely private property in
the means of production is not only theft, but the means of more
theft."[247]
Starting from the premiss that profit is immoral, the philosopher of
British Socialism logically concludes: "The cheapest way of obtaining
goods is not to pay for them, and if a buyer can avoid payment for the
goods he obtains, he has quite as much right to do so as the seller
has to receive for them double or treble their cost price and call it
profit."[248]
Private property being, according to the Socialist doctrines, immoral
and criminal, it follows that
"PRIVATE PROPERTY OUGHT TO BE ABOLISHED"
Let us take note of an utterance in support of that doctrine: "If the
life of men and women were a thing apart from that of their
neighbours, there would be no need for a Socialist party nor any call
for social reform. But man is not an entity; he is only part of a
mighty social organism. Every act of his has a bearing upon the like
of his fellow. It is difficult, if not impossible, to determine the
moral title to private property in anything. Private property exists
entirely on sufferance. Private property therefore cannot be justly
allowed when it interferes with the law of our social life or
intercepts the progress of social development."[249]
Let us now consider the doctrine
"COMPETITION SHOULD BE REPLACED BY CO-OPERATION"
Socialists teach: "Under Socialism you would have all the people
working together for the good of all. Under non-Socialism you have all
the persons working separately (and mostly against each other), each
for the good of himself. So we find Socialism means co-operation and
non-Socialism means competition."[250] "Socialism is constructive as
well as revolutionary, and Socialists propose to replace competition
by co-operation."[251]
The question now arises: "On what ground do capitalists defend the
principle of competition? A. On the ground that it brings into play a
man's best qualities.--Q. Does it effect this? A. This is occasionally
its result, but it also brings out his worst qualities by stimulating
him to struggle with his fellows for the relative improvement of his
own position rather than for the absolute advancement of the interests
of all."[252]
"Apart altogether from its injustice, competitive capitalism, regarded
as a system of serving the community, is a business bungle. What the
party of the Fourth Estate objects to in the existing commercial and
industrial system is, not merely the stealages which go on under the
guise of rent, profit, and interest, but the enormous waste arising
from lack of consolidation and co-operation in the processes of
production and distribution."[253] "During the last half-century we
have lost more by our 'business principle' of dividing up our national
work into competing one-man and one-company speculations, and
insisting on every separate speculation paying its own separate way,
than by all the tariffs and blockades that have been set up against
us."[254] "In our age there is, as we have seen, throughout our whole
economic sphere, no social order at all. There is absolute social
anarchy. Against this anarchy Socialism is a protest."[255] "There is
only one remedy for both the waste and the stealages, and that is the
substitution of public enterprise with organisation for private
enterprise with competition."[256] "Socialism means the socialising of
the means and instruments of production, distribution, and exchange.
For the individual capitalist it would substitute, as the director and
controller of production and distribution, the community in its
organised capacity. The commercial and industrial chaos and waste
which are the outcome of monopolistic competition would give place to
the orderliness of associated effort, and under Socialism society
would for the first time in history behave like an organism."[257]
Private capitalism and consequent competition are responsible not only
for waste and muddle, but also for the adulteration of food and other
necessaries of life. "Every man who knows anything of trade knows how
general is the knavish practice of adulteration. Now all adulteration
is directly due to competition. Did not Mr. John Bright once say that
adulteration is only another form of competition?"[258]
There is much truth in the contention of the Socialists that
co-operation is mightier, and often better, than free competition.
However, that is no new discovery, and the introduction of Socialism
is not needed to bring about co-operation. In Germany, Switzerland,
and Denmark national and private co-operation are far more developed
than in Great Britain, and waste, muddle, and stealages are rare in
those countries, although none of these is ruled by a Socialist
Government. Co-operation, national as well as private, is developing
also in Great Britain, and it will continue to develop as its value
becomes more and more understood. It is a curious fact that
Socialists, though they recommend co-operation in the abstract, oppose
it in the concrete for similar reasons. They fear that satisfied and
prosperous co-operators will oppose Socialism.[259]
The assertion that adulteration is due to competition is not founded
upon fact. Adulteration springs from many causes, and would continue
to flourish even under the Socialistic _regime_. If all cowkeepers
were salaried officials of the Socialist State or municipality, they
might nevertheless mix water with the milk to obtain milk for their
own consumption and that of their families, and to diminish the labour
of milking. Adulteration may be abolished by efficient supervision and
well-devised and rigorously enforced sanitary laws.
Let us now glance at the doctrine
"THE SOCIALIST STATE WILL ARISE BY NATURAL DEVELOPMENT, AND IT WILL
HANDLE BUSINESS MORE EFFICIENTLY THAN DO PRIVATE INDIVIDUALS"
"The State now registers, inspects, and controls nearly all the
industrial functions which it has not yet absorbed. The inspection is
often detailed and rigidly enforced. The State, in most of the larger
industrial operations, prescribes the age of the worker, the hours of
work, the amount of air, light, cubic space, heat, lavatory
accommodation, holidays, and meal-times; where, when, and how wages
shall be paid; how machinery, staircases, lift-holes, mines, and
quarries are to be fenced and guarded; how and when the plant shall be
cleaned, repaired, and worked."[260] "Step by step political power and
political organisation have been used for industrial ends, until a
Minister of the Crown is the largest employer of labour in the
country, and at least 200,000 men, not counting the army and navy, are
directly in the service of the community, without the intervention of
the profit of any middleman."[261]
From the fact that the State inspects many things and carries on some
business, it does not by any means follow that the State should
inspect all things and could efficiently carry on all business.
Questions such as "If the State can build battleships and make
swords, why not also trading ships and ploughshares,"[262] are
ridiculous. One might as well ask, "If Messrs. Whiteley or Marshall
Field can supply furniture, houses, dresses, and funerals, being
universal providers, why not also battleships, armies, and colonies?"
It is also not true that the State or municipal corporations have more
business ability than private business men. As an example of
successful business management Socialists are fond of pointing to the
Post Office, and of asserting that no private company could work as
efficiently and as cheaply. These statements are erroneous. The
success of the British Post Office, as of every post office, is due
not to ability but to monopoly, as the following example will prove.
Private individuals in Germany discovered some years ago a flaw in the
legislation regarding the Post Office which enabled them to compete
with the Imperial Post Office, not in postal business between
different towns, but in local delivery. Private post offices sprang up
in many towns and began to deliver letters at the rate of two pfennigs
(one farthing) each. Although the German Post Office is the most
efficient Post Office in Europe, it could not compete with these
private post offices, and, after lengthy competition, steps had to be
taken to extend the postal monopoly to town deliveries. The British
Post Office, like most public offices, is a most conservative
institution. Every progress and every reform had to be forced upon it
by outside agitation. Services such as money delivery at private
residences, cash on delivery parcels, &c., which other countries have
enjoyed during several decades, are stubbornly denied to England.
Private competition would probably have furnished these conveniences
long ago. In London the Messenger Boy Company competes with the Post
Office in the carrying of express letters, and various private
carriers compete with it in delivering parcels, and in both instances
the private trader supplies a better and cheaper service than the
Government Post Office. A comparison of the Post Office telephone in
England and the private telephone in America shows the great
superiority of the latter. The slow and ultra-conservative British
Post Office supplies no proof that the Government would handle
production and distribution better than private enterprise. On the
contrary.
British Socialists claim unanimously that their theories and demands
are founded upon science. "The Socialist doctrine systematises the
industrial changes. It lays down a law of capitalist evolution. It
describes the natural history of society. It is not, therefore, only a
popular creed for the market-place, but a scientific inquiry for the
study. Like every theory in Sociology, it has a political bearing, but
it can be studied as much detached from politics as is Darwinism."[263]
Do the fundamental doctrines of British Socialism bear out the claims
of its champions? The foregoing pages prove that the scientific basis
of Socialism, or rather of British Socialism, consists of a number of
doctrines which cannot stand examination and which are disproved by
daily experience and by common-sense.
The question now suggests itself: "How is it that the British
Socialists base their demands on pseudo-scientific doctrines of
obvious absurdity?"
British Socialism has been imported from Germany. Marx, Engels,
Lassalle, Rodbertus, and various other Germans are the fathers of
modern scientific Socialism. "To German scholars is largely due the
development of Socialism from the Utopian stage to the scientific.
Universality is its distinguishing feature."[264] "Karl Marx and
Frederick Engels in 1847 laid, through the 'Communist Manifesto,' the
scientific foundation of modern Socialism."[265] "And 'Capital,' Karl
Marx's great work, has become the loadstar of modern economic
science."[266] Karl Marx's "Manifesto" appeared in 1847; the first
volume of his "Capital" was published in 1867. Since the appearance of
the former sixty years, and since the publication of the latter forty
years, have passed by. Much has changed in the world, but the Marxian
doctrines have remained unchanged.
The worst about speculative doctrines is that time is apt to disprove
them.
Whilst the German Socialists have thinkers in their ranks who have
adapted the older Communist theories to present conditions, leaving
out those theories which are palpably false, English Socialists have
stood still and are satisfied to repeat those ancient doctrines which
the Germans have abandoned long ago. English Socialists try to impose
upon an uncritical public by parading the worn-out stage properties of
the forties. Marx is to the vast majority of British Socialists still
an oracle and the fountain head of all wisdom. "Marx is the Darwin of
modern sociology."[267] "All over the world his brain is put on pretty
much the same level as Aristotle's."[268] "Modern Socialism is based,
nationally and internationally, theoretically and to a large extent
practically, on the writings of Karl Marx. These writings have been
expounded, and where necessary applied, extended, and amplified, to
meet conditions which have developed since his death nearly a quarter
of a century ago, in every civilised country. It is safe to say that
no one who does not understand and accept in the main the views set
forth by Marx, comprehends the real position of capitalist Society,
nor, what is even more important, can fully master the problems of
the coming time."[269] "The Social-Democratic Federation, which is by
far the oldest and still the most active Socialist organisation in
this country, bases its teaching to-day, as it has always done, upon
the words of Karl Marx."[270]
Most active Socialists in Great Britain think Marx and Lassalle
infallible. It is true that the Fabian Society has pointed out "the
necessity of maintaining as critical an attitude towards Marx and
Lassalle, some of whose views must by this time be discarded as
erroneous or obsolete,"[271] but that protest appears to have been
left unheeded by most British Socialists. In fact, the abandonment of
revolutionary Marxianism has caused the Fabians to be treated with
open hostility by the other Socialist sections. The reasons for that
hostility are obvious. The doctrines of Marx and Lassalle, though they
are, to say the least, erroneous and obsolete, are admirably fitted to
inflame the passions of the masses. Their doctrines may not be true,
but they are useful to professional agitators. Independent Socialists
in all countries have not disguised their opinion of Marx's "Capital,"
which, in the words of an English Socialist, "is not a treatise on
Socialism; it is a jeremiad against the bourgeoisie, supported by such
a mass of evidence and such a relentless Jewish genius for
denunciation as had never been brought to bear before."[272]
British Socialism is neither scientific nor sincere. Its leaders know
that the Iron Law of Wages (see p. 53), the Law of Increasing Misery
(see p. 56), and other doctrines, which are exceedingly useful to the
agitator who wishes to poison the mind of the masses, have been thrown
into the lumber room in Germany and most other countries (see the
writings of Bernstein, Jaures, and others), but they do not abandon
them. Apparently it is their policy rather to create strife and
confusion than to alleviate existing misery. That attitude must have
covered English Socialists with ignominy in the eyes of foreign
Socialists. The very humiliating treatment which the English
Socialists received at the International Socialist Congress in
Stuttgart of 1907 from their Continental comrades suggests that the
curious attitude and the not very estimable tactics of British
Socialists have not found the approval of their Continental
colleagues.
The doctrines of the English Socialists with regard to property are
identical with those of most Anarchists (see Eltzbacher, "Der
Anarchismus"). For instance, Proudhon taught: "We rob (1) by murder on
the highway; (2) alone, or in a band; (3) by breaking into buildings,
or scaling walls; (4) by abstraction; (5) by fraudulent bankruptcy;
(6) by forgery of the handwriting of public officials, or private
individuals; (7) by manufacture of counterfeit money; (8) by cheating;
(9) by swindling; (10) by abuse of trust; (11) by games and lotteries;
(12) by usury; (13) by farm rent, house rent, and leases of all kinds;
(14) by commerce, when the profit of the merchant exceeds his
legitimate salary; (15) by making profit on our product, by accepting
sinecures, and by exacting exorbitant wages."[273] "What is property?
It is robbery."[274] "Property, after having robbed the labourer by
usury, murders him slowly by starvation."[275] Practically the
identical doctrines are propounded by British Socialists. Further
instances of the resemblance between Socialism and Anarchism will be
found in Chapter XXX, "Socialism and Anarchism."
Society is at present based upon individualism. In their anxiety to
prove the failure of modern civilisation British Socialists deny that
the world has progressed under individualism. "Not by individual
selfishness, or national selfishness, has the progress of the human
race been advanced."[276] And they boldly declare that all history,
having been written by men of the dominant class, is a deception. "Are
we then to understand that the whole of history, so far, has been
written from the point of view of the dominant class of every age?
Most assuredly so; and this applies to well-nigh the whole of the
sources of past history."[277]
The foregoing should suffice to make it clear that the Socialist
agitation is not based on irrefutable scientific doctrines, as
Socialists pretend, but on deception. It may be said that no agitation
is free from deception, that the end justifies the means, that
Socialism means for the best. We have been told "Socialism is a
religion of humanity. Socialism is the only hope of the race.
Socialism is the remedy--the only remedy--which Lord Salisbury could
not find."[278] We must look into the practical proposals of British
Socialism in order to be able to judge its character.
FOOTNOTES:
[151] _Facts for Socialists_, p. 3.
[152] Hazell, _Summary of Marx's "Capital,"_ p. 1; Macdonald,
_Socialism_, p. 54.
[153] _Socialism made Plain_, p. 8.
[154] Hobart, _Social-Democracy_, p. 7.
[155] _Manifesto_, Socialist Party of Great Britain, p. 8.
[156] _What Socialism Means_: Independent Labour Party Leaflet, No. 8,
p. 3.
[157] Debs, _Industrial Unionism_, p. 20.
[158] Bliss, _Encyclopedia of Social Reform_, 1368.
[159] _Ibid._ 807.
[160] _Manifesto of the Communist Party_, p. 17.
[161] Bax and Quelch, _A New Catechism of Socialism_, p. 15.
[162] Blatchford, _Merrie England_, p. 163.
[163] Quelch, _Economics of Labour_, p. 13.
[164] Davidson, _The Old Order and the New_, p. 107.
[165] Bax, _Outlooks from the New Standpoint_, p. 99.
[166] _Socialist Standard_, December 1907.
[167] Davidson, _The Old Order and the New_, p. 32.
[168] Stegman und Hugo, _Handbuch_, p. 473.
[169] _Christliche Arbeiterpflichten_, p. 15.
[170] Webb, _Industrial Democracy_, p. 548.
[171] Councillor Glyde, _A Peep behind the Scenes on a Board of
Guardians_, p. 5.
[172] Marx and Engels, _Manifesto of the Communist Party_, p. 12.
[173] Marx, _Wage, Labour, and Capital_, pp. 23, 24.
[174] Marx, _Wage, Labour, and Capital_, p. 22.
[175] _English Progress towards Social-Democracy_, p. 12.
[176] Keir Hardie, _From Serfdom to Socialism_, p. 99.
[177] Marx and Engels, _Manifesto of the Communist Party_, p. 8.
[178] _Ibid._ p. 16.
[179] Hyndman, _Socialism and Slavery_, p. 12.
[180] Sidney Webb, _The Difficulties of Individualism_, p. 9.
[181] Ellis Barker, _Modern Germany_, p. 528.
[182] Quelch, _Economics of Labour_, p. 18.
[183] Davidson, _The Old Order and the New_, p. 3.
[184] Bax and Quelch, _A New Catechism_, p. 15.
[185] Sidney Webb, _The Difficulties of Individualism_, p. 19.
[186] _Clarion_, November 29, 1907.
[187] Hall, _The Old and New Unionism_, p. 5.
[188] _Socialism and the Single Tax_, p. 6.
[189] Blatchford, _Merrie England_, p. 189.
[190] Gronlund, _Co-operative Commonwealth_, p. 86.
[191] Kautsky, _The Social Revolution_, pp. 7, 8.
[192] See _ante_ p. 10.
[193] _Report on Fabian Policy_, p. 8.
[194] See Chapter XXXIII.
[195] Hall, _Land, Labour, and Liberty_, p. 5.
[196] Jowett, _The Socialist and the City_, p. 66.
[197] Gronlund, _Co-operative Commonwealth_, p. 86.
[198] _Rich and Poor_, Introd.
[199] Martyn, _Co-operation_, p. 3.
[200] Lister, _Riches and Poverty_, p. 12.
[201] Fisher, _The Babies' Tribute_, p. 16.
[202] _Socialism and the Single Tax_, p. 7.
[203] Kessack, _The Capitalist Wilderness and the Way Out_, p. 9.
[204] Lafargue, _Right to Leisure_, p. 11.
[205] Tillett, _Trades Unionism and Socialism_, p. 14.
[206] Fisher, _The Babies' Tribute_, p. 16.
[207] Davidson, _The Old Order and the New_, p. 67.
[208] Gronlund, _Co-operative Commonwealth_, pp. 32, 33.
[209] Social-Democratic Federation, _The Unemployed_, leaflet.
[210] Smart, _The Right to Work_, p. 3.
[211] Washington, _A Corner in Flesh and Blood_, p. 12.
[212] _The Socialist Standard_, December 1907.
[213] _Why Labour Men should be on Town Councils_, p. 2.
[214] Marx, _Wage-Labour and Capital_, p. 12.
[215] L'Auton, _The Nationalisation of Society_, p. 4.
[216] Jaures, _Studies in Socialism_, p. 1.
[217] _Handbuch fuer Sozialdemokratische Waehler_, 1903, p. 233.
[218] _Manifesto of the Socialist Party of Great Britain_, p. 7.
[219] _The Socialist Standard_, December 1907.
[220] Debs, _Industrial Unionism_, p. 4.
[221] Morris, _Useful Work_ versus _Useless Toil_, pp. 22, 25.
[222] _The Class War_, p. 1.
[223] _Programme and Rules, Social-Democratic Federation._
[224] _Socialist Standard_, October 1, 1907.
[225] Davidson, _The New Book of Kings_, p. 115.
[226] Macdonald, _Socialism and Society_, pp. 111, 112.
[227] _What Socialism Means_, p. 3.
[228] _Wealth Makers and Wealth Takers_, p. 2.
[229] _After Bread, Education_, p. 12.
[230] _Capital and Land_, p. 13.
[231] Morris, _Useful Work versus Useless Toil_, p. 26.
[232] Sidney Webb, _The Difficulties of Individualism_, p. 8.
[233] Leatham, _Was Jesus a Socialist?_ p. 4.
[234] _The Socialist_, October 1907.
[235] _The Socialist Annual_, 1907, p. 42.
[236] Marx and Engels, _Manifesto_, pp. 30, 31.
[237] Quelch, _The Social-Democratic Federation_, p. 1.
[238] Leatham, _The Class War_, p. 10.
[239] Hall, _The Old and the New Unionism_, p. 4.
[240] Leatham, _The Class War_, p. 11.
[241] Blatchford, _The Pope's Socialism_, p. 2.
[242] _What Socialism Means_, p. 3.
[243] _Forward_, November 23, 1907.
[244] Blatchford, _Merrie England_, p. 58.
[245] Gronlund, _Co-operative Commonwealth_, p. 166.
[246] Davidson, _The Old Order and the New_, p. 4.
[247] McClure, _Socialism_, p. 16.
[248] Bax, _Outlooks from the New Standpoint_, p. 98.
[249] Williams, _The Difficulties of Socialism_, pp. 3, 4.
[250] Blatchford, _Real Socialism_, p. 11.
[251] Hyndman, _Social-Democracy_, p. 24.
[252] Joynes, _The Socialists' Catechism_, p. 13.
[253] Leatham, _The Evolution of the Fourth Estate_, p. 3.
[254] _Fabianism and the Fiscal Question_, p. 19.
[255] Gronlund, _Co-operative Commonwealth_, p. 41.
[256] Leatham, _The Evolution of the Fourth Estate_, p. 3.
[257] Leatham, _Was Jesus a Socialist?_ p. 4.
[258] Blatchford, _Competition_, p. 15.
[259] See Chapters VII & XXIII.
[260] _English Progress towards Social-Democracy_, p. 14.
[261] _Ibid._ p. 13.
[262] Keir Hardie, _From Serfdom to Socialism_, p. 15.
[263] Macdonald, _Socialism_, p. 3.
[264] McClure, _Socialism_, p. 13.
[265] Kautsky, _The Class Struggle_, p. 24.
[266] Kautsky, _The Socialist Republic_, p. 21.
[267] Hyndman, _Historic Basis of Socialism_, p. 435.
[268] _Justice_, October 12, 1907.
[269] _Justice_, October 12, 1907.
[270] _The Social Democrat_, November 1907, p. 676.
[271] _Report on Fabian Policy_, 1896, p. 6.
[272] G.B. Shaw, quoted in Jackson, _Bernard Shaw_, p. 100.
[273] Proudhon, _What is Property?_ pp. 252-256.
[274] _Ibid._ p. 37.
[275] _Ibid._ p. 184.
[276] Snowden, _The Christ that is to be_, p. 6.
[277] Bax and Quelch, _A New Catechism of Socialism_, p. 32.
[278] Blatchford, _What is this Socialism?_ p. 11.