Toleration and its counterpart, personal liberty, these are the first
constituents of the soul of capitalism. Capitalistic toleration, it is
true, originates in interest, and is limited by interest. If
capitalism admonishes me to tolerate atheism in my foreman, so long as
it does not interfere with his efficiency, it equally admonishes me to
extirpate excessive piety in his person, if, for example, intervals of
ecstatic contemplation divert his attention from my interests. Morally
such toleration is vastly inferior to that which is founded upon a
broad sentiment of humanity and a recognition of the presumption
involved in the prescribing of rules to one's fellow man. But ethical
toleration can find lodgment only in the breasts of the chosen few.
"Neither do I condemn thee." Of all the miracles, is not this
expression of toleration the greatest? Millions upon millions have
repeated the sentiment devoutly; but to how few has it become a rule
of life!
Capitalistic toleration, on the other hand, is a sentiment not too
refined for the most vulgar souls. Indeed, its appeal is probably
strongest to the very most vulgar; certainly, to the most selfish. A
high-minded employer may seek to bring up his working-folk in the way
they should go--that is, his own conception of the Way. It is the
greedy materialist who says: "What do I care how my workmen eat and
drink and play, what they read, how they vote, worship and marry? It's
all one to me, so they deliver the goods." Ethical toleration selects
for its votaries the few and the unselfish; capitalistic toleration
selects the many and the selfish. And it is for this reason that the
liberty based upon capitalistic toleration is the broadest and most
substantial of all. "City air makes free," says the proverb. Not
because the city is the abode of choice souls, but because the city is
capitalistic.
The struggle for religious liberty, it may be said, antedates
capitalism. This is not wholly true; the hot beds of religious
liberalism in early modern times were the cities, already becoming
capitalistic. The Independents and Quakers of England, the Huguenots
of France, the Calvinists of Holland, the Lutherans of Germany,
represented a germinating capitalism. If the spirit of capitalism was
not yet highly evolved, neither were the liberties sought broadly
conceived. The Charter and their own valiant spirits won for the
Puritans of Massachusetts Bay freedom to worship God. But there was no
freedom, in Massachusetts Bay, to go forth from the Puritan settlement
and dance around a maypole. Precapitalistic freedom meant only the
removal of specific oppressions, sometimes grave, sometimes trivial,
imposed by the constituted authorities. From the natural human
disposition to interfere in one another's affairs, to standardize
humanity, to excise variations above and below the normal, there never
was any freedom, except upon the lawless frontier, until capitalism
appeared upon the earth.
A class freedom! say the Socialists, and a hollow one! That the
Socialists are permitted to go up and down upon the earth, teaching
doctrines that they themselves proclaim to be subversive of the
interests of those whom they designate as the ruling class, is
sufficient evidence that the freedom is not properly described as
hollow. If Karl Marx had appeared in the days of Charles the Great to
teach doctrines equally subversive of the existing order, he would
have found short shrift indeed. That it is a class freedom is,
however, true, in a sense. The capitalist employer, who deals with
many men in the course of his business, must learn to tolerate many
personal idiosyncracies, and must in turn be met with toleration by
many. The forced repetition of acts of toleration tends to mold the
temperament of the capitalist employers as a class, and to establish
among them a large measure of personal freedom. This repetition is
lacking in the experience of the worker. Dealing with one employer
alone, or with only a few employers in infrequent succession, the
laborer is less likely to appreciate the significance of the
toleration he enjoys, or to learn from the business process itself the
need of toleration towards others.
Nevertheless, under capitalism the laborer does undoubtedly make gains
in personal liberty which he could not have made under earlier
systems. We know what the Spartans did with the Helots who varied
above the type of servile manhood. They assassinated them. We know
what the Romans did with slaves who thought too manfully. They
crucified them. In the long ages of serfdom in Western Europe, what
was the natural fate of the serf who held his head too high? The
commonplace facts of his torturings were seldom regarded worthy of
mention in the Chronicles. Within the last century, however, men have
been beaten to death in Europe for daring to maintain their
preferences in mating against the wishes of their lords.
Class liberty? Does it mean nothing to the Republican mechanic in
Birmingham, Alabama, that a Democratic employer would be universally
regarded as a fool for concerning himself with the politics of his
men? Does it mean nothing to the Roman Catholic workman that he may
live for years in a Protestant community without once encountering
discrimination against him on account of religion? Those who affirm
that the liberty of capitalism, even in its overflow to the working
class, is hollow and meaningless, can never have permitted their study
or their imagination to sound very thoroughly the depths of human
injury and wretchedness.
So much, however, must be granted: that the liberty afforded the
worker by capitalism has its offsets. If the employer no longer
regards himself as justified in ordering the private life of his
workman, neither does he feel responsible for protecting the workman
against the distress accompanying sickness or superannuation, or even
commercial disorder. The worker has paid for his freedom with
increased insecurity of his lot. But that the freedom has been bought
too dear, would be hard to maintain. Let us suppose that a landowner
organizes his possessions upon a feudal plan, and invites working
families to come and serve him, yielding implicit obedience to him in
all personal matters as well as in matters pertaining to the technique
of production. In return for their ungrudging services, let him
guarantee them a sufficiency of food, rough clothing, and rude
housing, together with rights to maintenance in disability and old
age. How many workers will make haste to attach themselves to him?
Where workers have tasted of capitalistic freedom, it is safe to say
that none would accept the offered privileges.