SOCIALISM AND AGRICULTURE
In one of his books Mr. Blatchford gives prominence to the following
statement contained in Prince Kropotkin's book, "Fields, Factories,
and Workshops": "If the soil of the United Kingdom were cultivated
only as it was thirty-five years ago, 24,000,000 people could live on
home-grown food. If the cultivable soil of the United Kingdom were
cultivated as the soil is cultivated on the average in Belgium, the
United Kingdom would have food for at least 37,000,000 inhabitants. If
the population of this country came to be doubled, all that would be
required for producing food for 80,000,000 inhabitants would be to
cultivate the soil as it is now cultivated in the best farms of this
country, in Lombardy, and in Flanders."
Commenting on this statement Mr. Blatchford says: "Why, indeed, should
we not be able to raise 29,000,000 quarters of wheat? We have plenty
of land. Other European countries can produce, and do produce, their
own food. Take the example of Belgium. In Belgium the people produce
their own food. Yet their soil is no better than ours, and their
country is more densely populated, the figures being: Great Britain
per square mile, 378 persons; Belgium per square mile, 544 persons.
Suppose wheat will cost us _2s._ a quarter more to grow it than to buy
it. On the 23,000,000 quarters we now import we should be saving
_2,000,000l._ a year. Is that a very high price to pay for security
against defeat by starvation in time of war?"[713]
Many Socialists very wisely demand that everything possible should be
done to bring about a revival of our agriculture. They point to the
agricultural prosperity of Belgium, France, and Germany, and they
would be quite ready to sanction the re-introduction of Protection, as
will be seen in Chapter XXI. Nevertheless they absolutely and
unconditionally oppose the creation of a class of peasant proprietors,
although the intensive agriculture of France, Belgium, and Germany is
founded upon the system of peasant proprietorship, and although
general experience, both in Europe and on other continents, has proved
the great superiority of peasant proprietors over large farmers in
intensive culture. "No Socialist desires to see the land of the
country divided among small peasant freeholders, though this is still
the ideal professed by many statesmen of 'advanced' views."[714]
"Socialism is hostile to small properties."[715]
Socialists pretend to be opposed to the creation of peasant
proprietors either on scientific grounds or for ethical reasons. "As a
matter of economic evolution, small properties will have to go. But
viewed from an ethical standpoint, surely nothing has been more
conducive to the development of the worst side of human nature--of
'hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness' than the system of small
properties."[716] "If England were cut up into small allotments, the
general state would be harder and leaner than before."[717] "Would
Socialists take away the land from the landlords and let it out in
little plots? No. Because that would make a lot of little proprietors
as selfish as the landlords."[718] "Divide the land into small
allotments and very soon the cunning and rapacious would 'acquire' the
estates of other men, and so we should come back to the present state
of chaos. In fact, the parcelling out of the land means putting back
the clock of civilisation about one thousand years."[719]
The real reason which prompts Socialists to oppose by all means the
creation of peasant proprietors is to be found neither in the realm of
political economy nor in that of abstract ethics, but in that of party
politics. The peasant proprietor, like every sensible owner of
property, is hostile to Socialism. "The peasant has nothing else in
the world but his farm, and that is one of the reasons why it is so
very difficult to win him over to our cause. He is, indeed, one of the
last bulwarks of private property."[720] The philosopher of British
Socialism frankly confesses: "On the Continent the peasant proprietor,
who may now be reckoned as part of the _petite bourgeoisie_, just as
the large landlord with us may be reckoned as part of the big
capitalist class, is a potent factor in retarding the process of
Socialisation."[721]
The experience of Socialists in Germany, Austria-Hungary, France,
Belgium, Holland, Denmark, and Switzerland shows that Socialism finds
practically no adherents among the land-owning peasants. At the German
Reichstag elections of 1903, for instance, the Social-Democrats
received almost 60 per cent. of the votes in the large towns as
compared with less than 20 per cent. of the votes in the country. Of
the latter, the vast majority was given by artisans and landless rural
labourers. The peasant, like every property-owner, is an enemy of
fantastic schemes of confiscation and of general plunder lavishly
embellished with promises of Utopia. Therefore Social-Democrats will
rather see the countryside of Great Britain turned into a wilderness
than see it peopled by peasants.
Desperately anxious lest the Government of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman
should create a British peasantry, the Socialist press opposed the
creation of a British peasantry as unscientific and certain to lead to
disaster. The people were told in countless articles that peasant
proprietorship had proved a failure everywhere. Under the heading "The
Small-Holding Fraud" the "Social-Democrat" showed the true motive of
the Socialist agitation by expressing the hope that "The Government
will assuredly fail in their attempt to erect a peasant proprietary
barrier against the rising proletariat"[722]--Has the Socialist outcry
against creating peasant proprietors influenced Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman's Government in its land-settlement policy? Did Sir
Henry Campbell-Bannerman wish to satisfy the Socialists by rather
creating small leaseholders than small freehold farmers?
The positive proposals of Socialists for bringing about a revival of
agriculture are frankly Utopian. Their proposals can of course not be
practical, because they object to the present agricultural
arrangements of Great Britain and to those prevailing on the continent
of Europe. Many Socialists desire the towns to control and resettle
the country. "The towns should claim the right of dictating to England
the way in which the land should be put to profit. The great majority
of the classes nearest the land, squires and farmers and parsons, are
disqualified respectively by self-interest, by religious prejudice
that scruples at anything that may lead to the mental enfranchisement
of the poor, and by sheer sluggishness of intellect joined to a blind
selfishness without parallel in any class of English society. The
land and the labourer have hitherto been left to them. And we want a
change of management."[723]
Socialists want a "change of management" in agriculture, replacing the
expert by the amateur in accordance with their general policy of
turning everything upside down. Their ideal would seem to be that the
owners of land should be dispossessed and driven into the towns, and
be replaced by Socialistic town officials who would exploit the
country in the interest of the town.
The tenants whom the Socialists would like to create would, rightly
considered, be merely wage-earners in the pay of the Socialistic
administration, who, living from hand to mouth, would not be able to
put anything by. With that object in view, rents would apparently be
adjusted by Socialist administrations. "Tenancies would be granted for
seven years or for twenty-one years revisable at periods of seven
years, so that the tenant might not be able to appropriate the
unearned increment of the land; but it should also be clearly
understood that a satisfactory tenant would not be arbitrarily
disturbed in his holding. At the same time no mercy would be extended
to a bad cultivator; and when a tenant left his holding, either by the
efflux of time or for any other reason, he would have no tenant-right
to dispose of, but would only be entitled to compensation for
unexhausted improvements and to a fair settlement of accounts as
between himself and the committee. Rents would be fixed and disputes
settled by the independent agricultural court, which would also
continue the regulation of agricultural wages. Exploitation of the
economically weak must not be permitted, even to a communal authority.
It would be within the power of the committee to rent farms to
co-operative associations of labourers if satisfied as to their
industrial and financial capacity. Arrangements might also be made
whereby a town could run its own dairy-farm or farms, since this is
probably the only way in which a municipality can be sure of an
uncontaminated supply of milk."[724]
Many Socialists would like to resettle the country with colonies of town
unemployed, but these proposals are opposed by some as impractical. "To
imagine that any such colony could be self-supporting, that the land
which no capitalist will now till with expert farm labourers at ten
shillings a week would yield trade-union rates of wages to a mixed crowd
of unemployed townsmen, that such a heterogeneous collection of waifs
and strays, without a common acquaintanceship, a common faith, or a
common tradition, could be safely trusted for a single day to manage the
nation's land and capital; finally, to suppose that such a fortuitous
agglomeration of undisciplined human atoms offers 'the most suitable and
hopeful way of ushering in a Socialist State'--all this argues such a
complete misconception of the actual facts of industrial and social
life, such an entire misunderstanding of the process by which a
democratic society passes from one stage of its development to another,
that I feel warranted in quoting it as an extreme instance of
Utopia-founding."[725]
Whilst the various Socialist schools propound different Utopian
schemes for the resettlement of the land in the future, their
immediate aim is of course not so much to benefit agriculture, as they
profess, but to gain adherents among the rural labourers. With this
object in view they are urged to agitate for, and are promised to be
given by the Socialists, better wages, safe and healthy homes, more
powers for the parish councils, which are to be used for the
restoration of common lands, real free schools and better ones, cheap
and good allotments, pensions for the old people, reform of taxation,
&c. The rural labourers are urged to form trade unions, and they are
told, "All these things you can get for yourself by your trade union
and your vote if you and all the other labourers in the district will
join the union and will agree to vote only for those who will promise
to help to get them for you."[726]
In other pamphlets specially addressed to the rural labourers they are
told how to get allotments, how to force the district councils to
build good cottages for them, &c.[727]
Many Socialists propound the doctrine that the first and the principal
object in re-creating the rural industries must be the bettering of
the wages of rural labourers, and that the State should secure them
better wages by arbitrarily reducing rents. The object, it need hardly
be mentioned, is rather to destroy private capital in accordance with
the Socialists' tenets than to benefit the labourers. The Fabian
Society, for instance, claims, "It is necessary for the State to
interfere, partly to secure the better utilisation of our national
resources, partly to increase our agricultural population. The class
most needing protection, the labourers, must be dealt with first in
order to raise them to a decent level of comfort. A living wage must
be secured to them, and, as a consequence, the farmers' rents must be
fixed at a fair level. An agricultural court must be set up in each
county to regulate wages and fix rents. Continental success in
agriculture depends on co-operation, and that in turn is associated
with the peasant-proprietor system. That system for sundry reasons
cannot be adopted here, but its advantages can be obtained through
security of tenure. The small farm system should, therefore, form the
basis of our reconstruction, free play being left for a graded system
of farms where possible. In each county an agricultural committee
should have compulsory power to acquire land and let it out to
tenants, chiefly smallholders. It should have power to advance capital
to individuals on the collective guarantee of its tenants, and it
should be its duty to organise the collection of farm produce and its
disposal in the market."[728]
FOOTNOTES:
[713] Blatchford, _Britain for the British_, pp. 111, 112.
[714] _Socialism True and False_, p. 18.
[715] _Some Objections to Socialism Considered._
[716] _Ibid._
[717] Blatchford, _The Pope's Socialism_, p. 8.
[718] Hazell, _The Red Catechism_, p. 11.
[719] Blatchford, _The Pope's Socialism_, p. 9.
[720] Kautsky, _The Social Revolution_, p. 30.
[721] Bax, _Essays in Socialism_, p. 41.
[722] _Social-Democrat_, November 1907.
[723] Pedder, _The Secret of Rural Depopulation_, p. 18.
[724] _The Revival of Agriculture_, p. 17.
[725] Sidney Webb, _Socialism True and False_, p. 12.
[726] _What the Farm Labourer Wants_, p. 4.
[727] _Allotments and How to get Them_; _Parish Council Cottages and
How to get Them._
[728] _The Revival of Agriculture_, p. 22.