I
There is no such thing as capitalism, say the conservatives. It is an
empty sound, a curse in the name of a false god, directed by the
revolutionaries against the world of things as they are, as they
always have been and always shall be. Capitalism is a reality, say the
radicals. It is the appropriate designation of the current system--a
vulgar, hideous system, a brute mechanism set in motion by the energy
of blind greed, a mechanism through which human values and human lives
are thrust, to emerge smudged and flat and dead. The soul of
capitalism? Pernicious paradox!
Capitalism is no less a reality than was feudalism. The capitalist
employer is the most prominent figure in the modern state, just as the
knight was the most prominent figure in the mediæval. But the order of
knights did not of itself constitute feudalism: equally characteristic
was the class of serfs. In a fundamental sense the system consisted in
the mutual relation between knight and serf. Capitalism, in like
manner, implies a class of employers and a reciprocal and conditioning
class of workers, but as a system it consists in the mutual relation
of these classes. The conscious existence of the members of both
classes is shaped, or at least colored, by the capitalistic relation.
Not in the same way, however; for capitalism induces one set of
reactions in the minds of the employing class, and another set of
reactions in the minds of the employed. But these diverse reactions
are equally the product of capitalism, its inevitable concomitants,
its psychical essence.
Capitalism is, to be sure, not the whole of modern life; nor was
feudalism the whole of the life of the Middle Ages. In the feudal
state there were classes that were not, strictly speaking, under
feudal law. Such were the clergy, the merchants and artisans of the
towns, the freemen of the villages. Moreover, there were individuals
who rose superior to the system, such as the great feudatories, who
often assumed a regal freedom from the narrow feudal rules. There were
also elements that proved incapable of assimilation, aliens, outlaws,
mendicants. But the popular mind, with its inveterate bent towards
order and uniformity, generalized the relation beyond the range of its
proper application. To the worldly bishop, even the Pope was a great
feudatory; to the beggar's apprentice, his master was a species of
knight. So at the present time there are numerous elements that are
incongruous with capitalism. The independent worker and the small
merchant, the professional classes, the artists and the politicians,
are not properly governed by capitalistic rules. The great magnates of
the industrial world have won for themselves a measure of
immunity from the laws that govern the conduct of the typical
capitalist-employer. But the predominance of the capitalistic system
is evidenced by the fact that all these non-assimilable forms are
being translated into capitalistic terms. A farm is no longer a
"holding," it is an "investment" or a "job." A political magnate is a
"boss" and his supporters are "workers"; the political machine itself
is "invested capital." The buildings of church or school are, with
increasing frequency, described as "plant." We are beginning to hear
of "efficiency control" of college curricula; of the "unit costs" of
saving souls. Our most exalted dignitary is "the people's hired man";
and the late King Humbert of Italy was wont to speak of assassination
as a "trade risk."
With due allowance for the whimsical quality of some of the instances
cited above, we must yet admit that they indicate a general tendency
to translate all current experience into capitalistic terms. Such
instances are but indications of the collective conviction that
capitalism is the most significant fact in modern life. Why then do
our conservatives insist upon rejecting the term, upon denying the
very content of the concept? Chiefly because those who have depicted
capitalism have sketched it in black crayon, instead of painting it in
the rosy hues of romance.
To speak of capitalism as endowed with a soul, is indeed a paradox.
But the conception of soul is itself paradoxical. The man of science
dispenses with it in so far as he can. All that compels us rationally
to posit the existence of soul, is its works, good and evil. The
hypothesis of a human soul has been forced upon us by the fact that
there is in the action of man an element that transcends the needs and
purposes of the body, an element that we often see growing into such
commanding importance that it reduces the body to the rank of mere
instrument. Capitalism, too, appears to subserve purposes that
transcend its proper ends. To what end, in profit-making, is the
destruction of personality, the corruption of the sentiment of
humanity, that the Socialists attribute to capitalism? To the
Socialists themselves capitalism appears endowed with a soul, to whose
purposes capital's immediate processes are merely instrumental. Only,
the soul is one of unmixed evil.