ON THE ASCENDENCY OF A CAPITALIST CLASS
THE CAPITALIST CLASS—ITS LACK OF CASTE SENTIMENT—IN WHAT SENSE
“THE FITTEST”—MORAL TRAITS—HOW FAR BASED ON SERVICE—AUTOCRATIC
AND DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLES IN THE CONTROL OF INDUSTRY—REASONS FOR
EXPECTING AN INCREASE OF THE DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLE—SOCIAL POWER
IN GENERAL—ORGANIZING CAPACITY—NATURE AND SOURCES OF CAPITALIST
POWER—POWER OVER THE PRESS AND OVER PUBLIC SENTIMENT—UPPER-CLASS
ATMOSPHERE.
Since in our age commerce and industry absorb most of the practical
energy of the people, the men that are foremost in these activities
have a certain ascendency, similar to that of warriors in a military
age.
Although this sort of men is not sharply marked off, it is well enough
indicated by the term capitalist or capitalist-manager class; the large
owner of capital being usually more or less of a manager also, while
the large salaries and other gains of successful managers soon make
them capitalists.
It is not quite accurate to speak of the group in question as the
rich, because, at a given time, a large part of its most vigorous
membership is as yet without wealth—though in a way to get it—and, on
the other hand, many of the actual possessors of wealth are personally
idle or ineffective. The essential thing is a social tendency or
system of ideas generated in the accumulation of wealth and having for
its nucleus the more active and successful leaders of commerce and
industry.
That these are a very small class in proportion to their power is
apparent, but not, perhaps, in itself, so fatal a defect in the system
that permits it as many imagine. In so far as concentration of control
means that wealth is in the hands of those who understand how to use
it for the common good, and do in fact so use it, much may be said in
its favor. We are all eager to entrust our property to those who will
make it profitable to us; and society, under any system that could be
devised, must probably do the same. But we may well ask whether there
is not some more adequate means than we now have of getting this trust
faithfully executed.
For better or for worse, concentration is probably inevitable in any
society that has a vast, mobile wealth subject to competition; and the
actual inequality is perhaps not much greater than that of political
power, which is supposed to be equally distributed by general suffrage.
The truth is that equality of power or influence, in any sphere of
life, is inconsistent with the free working of human forces, which is
ever creating differences, some of which are useful to society and some
harmful. A true freedom, a reasonable equality, aims to conserve the
former and abolish or limit the latter.
The sentiment of the class is not aristocratic in the ordinary sense.
Although its members endeavor to secure their possessions to their
children, there is little of the spirit of hereditary caste, which,
indeed, is uncongenial to commerce. Freedom of opportunity is the ideal
in this as in other parts of American society, and educational or
other opportunities designed to maintain or increase it are sincerely
approved and supported. There is, in fact, an almost inevitable dualism
which makes it natural that a man should strive to aggrandize himself,
his family and his class even though he truly wishes for greater
equality of privilege. He floats on two currents, and as a man and a
brother may be glad of restraints upon his own class which are in the
interest of justice.
The ideal of freedom prevalent in the managing class is, however,
somewhat narrow and hardly hospitable to the group self-assertion of
the less privileged classes. The labor movement has made its way by its
energy and reasonableness in the face of a rather general mistrust and
opposition—sometimes justified by its aberrations—on the part of the
masters of industry. Yet even in this regard, as it comes to be seen
that organization is an element of fair play, and as experience shows
that union may become an instrument of stability, a broader sentiment
makes headway.
Like everything else that has power in human life, the money-strong
represent, in some sense, the survival of the fittest—not necessarily
of the best. That is, their success, certainly no guaranty of
righteousness, does prove a certain adaptation to conditions, those who
get rich being in general the ablest, for this purpose, of the many who
devote their energies to it with about the same opportunities. They are
not necessarily the ablest in other regards, since only certain kinds
of ability count in making money; other kinds, and those often the
highest, such as devotion to intellectual or moral ideals, being even a
hindrance. Men of genius will seldom shine in this way, because, as a
rule, only a somewhat commonplace mind will give itself whole-heartedly
to the commercial ideal.
There is much likeness in the persons and methods by which, in all
ages, the cruder sort of power is acquired. When the military system is
ascendent over the industrial it is acquired in one way, when property
is secure from force in another, but this makes less difference than
might be supposed. In either case it is not mere personal prowess, with
the sword or with the tool, that gains large success, but power in
organization. Aggressiveness, single-minded devotion to the end and,
above all, organizing faculty—these were the methods of Clovis and
Pepin and William of Normandy, as they are of our rulers of finance.
And now, as formerly, much of the power that is alive in such men falls
by inheritance into weaker hands.
As to righteousness, in the sense of good intention, they probably
do not, on the whole, differ much from the average. Some may be
found of the highest character, some of gross unscrupulousness. The
majority are doubtless without moral distinction and take the color
of their associates. The view sometimes set forth on behalf of men of
wealth that riches go with virtue, and the view, more popular among
non-possessors, that it comes by wickedness, are equally untrustworthy.
The great mass of wealth is accumulated by solid qualities—energy,
tenacity, shrewdness and the like—which may coexist with great moral
refinement or with the opposite.
As a group, however, they are liable to moral deficiencies analogous
to those of the conquerors and organizers of states just referred
to. There is, especially, a certain moral irresponsibility which is
natural to those who have broken away from customary limitations and
restraints and are coursing almost at will over an unfenced territory.
I mean that business enterprise, like military enterprise, deals
largely with relations as to which there are no settled rules of
morality, no constraining law or public opinion. Such conditions breed
in the ordinary actor a Macchiavellian opportunism. Since it is hard
to say what _is_ just and honest in the vast and abstract operations
of finance, human nature is apt to cease looking for a standard and
to seize booty wherever and however it safely can. Hence the truly
piratical character of many of our great transactions. And in smaller
matters also, as in escaping taxation, it is often fatally easy for the
rich to steal.
It must be allowed that such ascendency as the capitalist class has
rests, in part at least, upon service. That is to say, its members
have had an important function to perform, and in performing that
function have found themselves in a position to grasp wealth. The great
work of the time has been, or has seemed to be, the extension and
reconstruction of industry. In this work leadership and organization
have been needed on a great scale, and our captains of industry have
nobly met this demand. That their somewhat autocratic control of
production was called for by the situation seems to be shown by the
rather general failure of coöperative enterprises intended to dispense
with it. Why is it that America abounds in opportunity, and that every
sort of industrial capacity is eagerly sought out and rewarded? Of
course natural advantages play a great part, but much must also be
ascribed to the energy and imaginative daring of our entrepreneurs,
many of whom have spent great faculty and tireless zeal upon business,
in a spirit of adventure and achievement rather than of gain. Where the
general is aggressive the soldier will be kept busy.
I have no sympathy with the general abuse of commercialism, but hold
with Montesquieu that “The spirit of commerce is naturally attended
with that of frugality, economy, moderation, labor, prudence,
tranquillity, order and rule. So long as this spirit subsists
the riches it produces have no ill effect. The mischief is when
excessive wealth destroys the spirit of commerce; then it is that the
inconveniences of inequality begin to be felt.”[119]
The conception of keen adaptation of means to ends, of exact social
workmanship, inculcated by “business” is of untold value to our
civilization and capable of very general application. It is a very
proper demand that government, education and philanthropy should, in
this sense, be conducted on business principles.
At the same time it is plain that a large part of the accumulation
of wealth—hard unfortunately to distinguish from other parts—is
accomplished not by social service but, as just intimated, by something
akin to piracy. This is not so much the peculiar wickedness of a
predatory class as a tendency in all of us to abuse power when not
under definite legal or moral control. The vast transactions associated
with modern industry have come very little under such control, and
offer a field for freebooting such as the world has never seen.
Nor need we affirm that even the gains of the great organizers are
in the highest sense right, only that they are natural and do not
necessarily involve conscious wrong-doing.
The question of the rather arbitrary control of industry by the
capitalist-manager, which now prevails, and of the possibility of
this control being diminished or modified in the future, calls for
some analysis of underlying forces. Evidently there is a conflict of
principles here—the democratic or popular and the autocratic. The
latter, now ascendant, has the advantages of concentration, secrecy
and promptness—the same which give it superiority in war. On the other
hand, the democratic principle should have the same merit in industry
and commerce that it has in politics; namely that of enlisting the
pride and ambition of the individual and so getting him to put himself
into his work. Other things being equal, a free system is a more vital
and energetic organism than one in which the initiative and choice come
from a central authority.
And it is apparent that the working of the autocratic system in our
economic life shows just the strength and weakness that would naturally
be expected. The prompt undertaking and execution of vast schemes at
a favorable moment, and the equally prompt recession when conditions
alter; the investment of great resources in enterprises which yield
no immediate return; the decision and secrecy important in overcoming
competitors; the unhesitating sacrifice of workmen and their families
when the market calls for a shut-down of production—such traits as
these are of the utmost importance to commercial success, and belong
to arbitrary control rather than to anything of a more popular sort.
On the other hand, it would be easy to show at any length desired that
such control is accompanied by a widespread disaffection of spirit on
the part of the working classes, which, expressed in unwilling labor,
strikes and agitation, is a commercial disadvantage, and a social
problem so urgent as to unsettle the whole economic system.
The autocratic system has evidently a special advantage in a time of
rapid and confused development, when conditions are little understood
or regulated, and the state of things is one of somewhat blind and
ruthless warfare; but it is quite possible that as the new industries
become established and comparatively stable, there will be a commercial
as well as a social demand for a system that shall invite and utilize
more of the good-will and self-activity of the workman. “The system
which comes nearest to calling out all the self-interests and using all
the faculties and sharing all the benefits will outcompete any system
that strikes a lower level of motive faculty and profit.”[120] And the
penetrating thinker who wrote this sentence believed that the function
of the autocratic “captain of industry” was essentially that of an
explorer and conqueror of new domains destined to come later under the
rule of a commonwealth. Indeed the rise, on purely commercial grounds,
of a more humane and individualizing tendency, aiming in one way or
another to propitiate the self-feeling of the workman and get him to
identify himself with his work, is well ascertained. Among the familiar
phases of this are the notable growth of coöperative production
and exchange in Belgium, Russia and other European countries, the
increasing respect for labor unions and the development by large
concerns of devices for insurance, for pensions, for profit-sharing and
for the material and social comfort of their employees. “As a better
government has come up from the people than came down from the kings,
so a better industry appears to be coming up from the people than came
down from the capitalists.”[121]
In some form or other the democratic principle is sure to make its way
into the economic system. Coöperation, labor unions, public regulation,
public ownership and the informal control of opinion will no doubt all
have a part; the general outcome being that the citizen becomes a more
vital agent in the life of the whole.
Before discussing further the power of the capitalist-manager class,
we ought to think out clearly just what we mean by social power, since
nowhere are we more likely to go astray than in vagueness regarding
such notions.
Evidently the essence of it is control over the human spirit, and the
most direct phases of power are immediately spiritual, such as one
mind exercises over another by virtue of what it is, without any means
but the ordinary symbols of communication. This is live, human power,
and those who have it in great degree are the prime movers of society,
whether they gain any more formal or conventional sort or not. Such,
for instance, are the poets, prophets, philosophers, inventors and men
of science of all ages, the great political, military and religious
organizers, and even the real captains of industry and commerce. All
power involves in its origin mental or spiritual force of some sort;
and so far as it attaches to passive attributes, like hereditary social
position, offices, bank-accounts, and the like, it does so through the
aid of conventions and habits which regard these things as repositories
of spiritual force and allow them to exercise its function.
In its immediate spiritual phase power is at a maximum of vitality
and a minimum of establishment. Only a few can recognize it. Its
possessors, then, strive to establish and organize it, to give it
social expression and efficacy, to gain position, reputation or
wealth. Since power is not apparent to the common mind until it takes
on these forms, they are, to superficial observation and in all the
conventional business of life, the only valid evidence of it. And yet
by the time these symbols appear, the spiritual basis has often passed
away. Primary power goes for the most part unseen, much of it taking
on no palpable form until late in life, much yielding only posthumous
reputation, and much, and that perhaps the finest sort, having never
any vulgar recognition whatever.
Regarding money-value we may say, in general, that it is one expression
of the conventional or institutional phase of society, and exhibits
all that mixture of grandeur and confusion with which nature usually
presents herself to our understanding. I mean that its appraisal of
men and things is partly expressive of great principles, and partly,
so far as we can see, unjust, trivial or accidental. Some gains are
vital or organic, springing from the very nature of life and justified
as we come to understand that life; some are fanciful, springing from
the tastes or whims of the rich, like the value of diamonds or first
editions, and some parasitical, like those of the legally-protected
swindler. In general the values of the market are those of the habitual
world in all its grossness; spiritual values, except those that have
become conventional, being little felt in it. These appeal to the
future. The detailed working of market value has no ascertainable
connection with moral worth, and we must not expect it to have. If a
man’s work is moral, in the higher sense, it is in its nature an attack
upon the habitual world which the latter is more likely to resent than
reward. One can only take up that useful work that seems best suited to
him, trying to be content if its value is small, and, if large, to feel
that the power over money it gives him is rightly his only in so far as
he uses it for the general good.
The more tangible kind of social power—so far as it is intrinsic to the
man and not adventitious like inherited wealth—depends chiefly upon
organizing capacity, which may be described as the ability to build and
operate human machinery. It has its roots in tact and skill in dealing
with men, in tenacity, and in a certain instinct for construction. One
who possesses it sees a new person as social material, and is likely to
know what can be made of him better than he knows himself.[122]
Of all kinds of leadership this has the readiest recognition and the
highest market value; and naturally so, since it is essential to
every sort of coöperative achievement. Its possessors understand the
immediate control of the world, which they will exercise no matter what
the apparent forms of organization may be. In all ages they have gained
and held the grosser forms of power, whenever these were at all open
to competition. Thus, during the early Middle Age, men of energy and
management, more or less favored by situation, built up for themselves
local authority and estate, or perhaps exploited the opportunities for
still wider organization, like the founders of Burgundy and Brittany
and the early kings of France; very much in the same manner as men
of our own day build up commercial and industrial systems and become
senators and railway presidents.
Indeed, this type of ability was never in such demand as it now is,
for the conduct of the vast and diverse social structures rising about
us—industrial enterprises, political parties, labor unions, newspapers,
universities and philanthropies.
It has its high money value partly because of its rarity and partly
because there is a regular market for it; the need being so urgent and
obvious as to create a steady and intelligent demand. In this latter
respect it contrasts with services, like moral leadership, which people
need but will seldom pay for. A third reason is that its possessors
are almost always clever enough to know their own value and secure its
recognition.
In discussing the power of the capitalist class there is no question of
the finer and higher forms of power. We shall rarely find among the
rich any pregnant spiritual leadership, theirs being a pedestrian kind
of authority which has a great deal to do with the every-day comfort
of their contemporaries but does not attempt to sway the profounder
destinies of the race. Nor does the world often accord them enduring
fame: lacking spiritual significance their names are writ in water.
Even in industry the creative thought, the inventions which are the
germs of a new era, seldom come from money-winners, since they require
a different kind of insight.
The capitalist represents power over those social values that are
tangible and obvious enough to have a definite standing in the market.
His money and prestige will command food, houses, clothes, tools
and all conventional and standard sorts of personal service, from
lawn-mowing to the administration of a railroad, not genius or love or
anything of that nature. That wealth means social power of this coarser
sort is apparent in a general way, and yet merits a somewhat closer
examination.
We have, first, its immediate power over goods and services: the master
of riches goes attended by an invisible army of potential servitors,
ready to do for him anything that the law allows, and often more. He
is in this way, as in so many others, the successor of the nobleman
of mediæval and early modern history, who went about with a band of
visible retainers eager to work his will upon all opposers. He is the
ruler of a social system wherever he may be.
The political power of wealth is due only in part to direct corruption,
vast as that is, but is even more an indirect and perfectly legal
pressure in the shape of inducements which its adroit use can always
bring to bear—trade to the business man, practice to the lawyer and
employment to the hand-worker: every one when he thinks of his income
wishes to conciliate the rich. Influence of this sort makes almost
every rich man a political power, even without his especially wishing
to be. But when wealth is united to a shrewd and unscrupulous political
ambition, when it sets out to control legislation or the administration
of the laws, it becomes truly perilous. We cannot fail to see that
a large part of our high offices are held by men who have no marked
qualification but wealth, and would be insignificant without it; also
that our legislation—municipal, state and national—and most of our
administrative machinery, feel constantly the grasp of pecuniary power.
Probably it is not too much to say that except when public opinion is
unusually aroused wealth can generally have its way in our politics if
it makes an effort to do so.
As to the influence of the rich over the professional classes—lawyers,
doctors, clergymen, teachers, civil and mechanical engineers and the
like—we may say in general that it is potent but somewhat indirect,
implying not conscious subservience but a moral ascendency through
habit and suggestion. The abler men of this sort are generally educated
and self-respecting, have a good deal of professional spirit and are
not wholly dependent upon any one employer. At the same time, they get
their living largely through the rich, from whom the most lucrative
employment comes, and who have many indirect ways of making and marring
careers. The ablest men in the legal profession are in close relations
with the rich and commonly become capitalists themselves; physicians
are more independent, because their art is not directly concerned
with property, yet look to wealthy patients for their most profitable
practice; clergymen are under pressure to satisfy wealthy parishioners,
and teachers must win the good will of the opulent citizens who control
educational boards.
Now there is nothing in social psychology surer than that if there is
a man by whose good will we desire to profit, we are likely to adapt
our way of thinking to his. Impelled to imagine frequently his state
of mind, and to desire that it should be favorable to our aims, we are
unconsciously swayed by his thought, the more so if he treats us with a
courtesy which does not alarm our self-respect. It is in this way that
wealth imposes upon intellect. Who can deny it?
Newspapers are generally owned by men of wealth, which has no doubt
an important influence upon the sentiments expressed in them; but
a weightier consideration is the fact that they depend for profit
chiefly upon advertisements, the most lucrative of which come from rich
merchants who naturally resent doctrines that threaten their interest.
Of course the papers must reach the people, in order to have a value
for advertising or any other purpose, and this requires adaptation to
public opinion; but the public of what are known as the better class of
papers are chiefly the comparatively well-to-do. And even that portion
of the press which aims to please the hand-working class is usually
more willing to carry on a loud but vague agitation, not intended to
accomplish anything but increase circulation, than to push real and
definite reform.
All phases of opinion, including the most earnest and honest inquiry
into social questions, finds some voice in print, but—leaving aside
times when public opinion is greatly aroused—those phases that are
backed by wealthy interests have a great advantage in the urgency,
persistence and cleverness with which they are presented. At least,
this has been the case in the past. It is a general feeling of
thoughtful men among the hand-working class that it is hard to get
a really fair statement of their view of industrial questions from
that portion of the newspaper and magazine press that is read by
well-to-do people. The reason seems to be mainly that the writers live
unconsciously in an atmosphere of upper-class ideas from which they do
not free themselves by thorough inquiry. Besides this, there is a sense
of what their readers expect, and also, perhaps, a vague feeling that
the sentiments of the hand-working class may threaten public order.
Since the public has supplanted the patron, a man of letters has least
of all to hope or fear from the rich—if he accepts the opinion of Mr.
Howells that the latter can do nothing toward making or marring a new
book.
The power of wealth over public sentiment is exercised partly through
sway over the educated classes and the press, but also by the more
direct channel of prestige. Minds of no great insight, that is to say
the majority, mould their ideals from the spectacle of visible and
tangible success. In a commercial epoch this pertains to the rich; who
consequently add to the other sources of their influence power over the
imagination. Millions accept the money-making ideal who are unsuited to
attain it, and run themselves out of breath and courage in a race they
should never have entered; it is as if the thin-legged and flat-chested
people of the land should seek glory in foot-ball. The money-game is
mere foolishness and mortification for most of us, and there is a
madness of the crowd in the way we enter into it. Even those who most
abuse the rich commonly show mental subservience in that they assume
that the rich have, in fact, gotten what is best worth having.
As hinted above, there is such a thing as an upper-class atmosphere,
in the sense of a state of mind regarding social questions, initiated
by the more successful money-winners and consciously or unconsciously
imposed upon business and professional people at large. Most of us
exist in this atmosphere and are so pervaded by it that it is not easy
for us to understand or fairly judge the sentiment of the hand-working
classes. The spokesmen of radical doctrines are, in this regard, doing
good service to the public mind by setting in motion counterbalancing,
if not more trustworthy, currents of opinion.
If any one of business or professional antecedents doubts that he
breathes a class atmosphere, let him live for a time at a social
settlement in the industrial part of one of our cities—not a
real escape but as near it as most of us have the resolution to
achieve—reading working-class literature (he will be surprised to
find how well worth reading it is), talking with hand-working people,
attending meetings, and in general opening his mind as wide as possible
to the influences about him. He will presently become aware of being in
a new medium of thought and feeling; which may or may not be congenial
but cannot fail to be instructive.
FOOTNOTES:
[119] The Spirit of Laws, book v, chap. 6.
[120] Henry D. Lloyd, Man the Social Creator, 255.
[121] _Idem_, 246. Lloyd was rather a prophet than a man of science,
but there is a shrewd sense of fact back of his visions.
[122] Such a one
“Lässt jeden ganz das bleiben was er ist;
Er wacht nur drüber das er’s immer sei
Am rechten Ort; so weiss er aller Menschen
Vermögen zu dem seinigen zu machen.”
“He lets every one remain just what he is, but takes care that he shall
always be it in the right place: thus he knows how to make all men’s
power his own.” Schiller, Wallenstein’s Lager, I, 4.