Thus the Future of which we spoke at the beginning has (in England at
least) always been the ally of tyranny. The ordinary Englishman has been
duped out of his old possessions, such as they were, and always in the
name of progress. The destroyers of the abbeys took away his bread and
gave him a stone, assuring him that it was a precious stone, the white
pebble of the Lord’s elect. They took away his maypole and his original
rural life and promised him instead the Golden Age of Peace and Commerce
inaugurated at the Crystal Palace. And now they are taking away the
little that remains of his dignity as a householder and the head of a
family, promising him instead Utopias which are called (appropriately
enough) “Anticipations” or “News from Nowhere.” We come back, in fact,
to the main feature which has already been mentioned. The past is
communal: the future must be individualist. In the past are all the
evils of democracy, variety and violence and doubt, but the future is
pure despotism, for the future is pure caprice. Yesterday, I know I was
a human fool, but to-morrow I can easily be the Superman.
The modern Englishman, however, is like a man who should be perpetually
kept out, for one reason after another, from the house in which he had
meant his married life to begin. This man (Jones let us call him) has
always desired the divinely ordinary things; he has married for love, he
has chosen or built a small house that fits like a coat; he is ready
to be a great grandfather and a local god. And just as he is moving
in, something goes wrong. Some tyranny, personal or political, suddenly
debars him from the home; and he has to take his meals in the front
garden. A passing philosopher (who is also, by a mere coincidence, the
man who turned him out) pauses, and leaning elegantly on the railings,
explains to him that he is now living that bold life upon the bounty of
nature which will be the life of the sublime future. He finds life in
the front garden more bold than bountiful, and has to move into mean
lodgings in the next spring. The philosopher (who turned him out),
happening to call at these lodgings, with the probable intention of
raising the rent, stops to explain to him that he is now in the real
life of mercantile endeavor; the economic struggle between him and the
landlady is the only thing out of which, in the sublime future, the
wealth of nations can come. He is defeated in the economic struggle, and
goes to the workhouse. The philosopher who turned him out (happening at
that very moment to be inspecting the workhouse) assures him that he is
now at last in that golden republic which is the goal of mankind; he is
in an equal, scientific, Socialistic commonwealth, owned by the State
and ruled by public officers; in fact, the commonwealth of the sublime
future.
Nevertheless, there are signs that the irrational Jones still dreams
at night of this old idea of having an ordinary home. He asked for so
little, and he has been offered so much. He has been offered bribes
of worlds and systems; he has been offered Eden and Utopia and the New
Jerusalem, and he only wanted a house; and that has been refused him.
Such an apologue is literally no exaggeration of the facts of English
history. The rich did literally turn the poor out of the old guest house
on to the road, briefly telling them that it was the road of
progress. They did literally force them into factories and the modern
wage-slavery, assuring them all the time that this was the only way to
wealth and civilization. Just as they had dragged the rustic from the
convent food and ale by saying that the streets of heaven were paved
with gold, so now they dragged him from the village food and ale by
telling him that the streets of London were paved with gold. As he
entered the gloomy porch of Puritanism, so he entered the gloomy porch
of Industrialism, being told that each of them was the gate of the
future. Hitherto he has only gone from prison to prison, nay, into
darkening prisons, for Calvinism opened one small window upon heaven.
And now he is asked, in the same educated and authoritative tones, to
enter another dark porch, at which he has to surrender, into unseen
hands, his children, his small possessions and all the habits of his
fathers.
Whether this last opening be in truth any more inviting than the old
openings of Puritanism and Industrialism can be discussed later. But
there can be little doubt, I think, that if some form of Collectivism is
imposed upon England it will be imposed, as everything else has been, by
an instructed political class upon a people partly apathetic and
partly hypnotized. The aristocracy will be as ready to “administer”
Collectivism as they were to administer Puritanism or Manchesterism; in
some ways such a centralized political power is necessarily attractive
to them. It will not be so hard as some innocent Socialists seem to
suppose to induce the Honorable Tomnoddy to take over the milk supply as
well as the stamp supply--at an increased salary. Mr. Bernard Shaw
has remarked that rich men are better than poor men on parish councils
because they are free from “financial timidity.” Now, the English ruling
class is quite free from financial timidity. The Duke of Sussex will be
quite ready to be Administrator of Sussex at the same screw. Sir William
Harcourt, that typical aristocrat, put it quite correctly. “We” (that
is, the aristocracy) “are all Socialists now.”
But this is not the essential note on which I desire to end. My main
contention is that, whether necessary or not, both Industrialism and
Collectivism have been accepted as necessities--not as naked ideals or
desires. Nobody liked the Manchester School; it was endured as the only
way of producing wealth. Nobody likes the Marxian school; it is endured
as the only way of preventing poverty. Nobody’s real heart is in the
idea of preventing a free man from owning his own farm, or an old woman
from cultivating her own garden, any more than anybody’s real heart was
in the heartless battle of the machines. The purpose of this chapter
is sufficiently served in indicating that this proposal also is a pis
aller, a desperate second best--like teetotalism. I do not propose to
prove here that Socialism is a poison; it is enough if I maintain that
it is a medicine and not a wine.
The idea of private property universal but private, the idea of families
free but still families, of domesticity democratic but still domestic,
of one man one house--this remains the real vision and magnet of
mankind. The world may accept something more official and general, less
human and intimate. But the world will be like a broken-hearted woman
who makes a humdrum marriage because she may not make a happy one;
Socialism may be the world’s deliverance, but it is not the world’s
desire.