II

But if the galley of old Venice stimulates my Socialism, the

cinematograph of modern Venice torpifies it again. For be it known that

in Venice there are scores of halls and theatres devoted to delectable

visions at prices to suit the poorest, and open to _ragazzi_ for a

couple of _soldi_. And in every city of Italy the fever rages; one

performance follows on the heels of another, and the wretched

manipulator of the magic lantern must subsist on sandwiches while the

theatre is clearing and re-filling. Every unlet dancing-hall or decayed

rink or bankrupt building has blossomed out into a hall of enchantment

where even the words of the play are sometimes given by the cunning

juxtaposition of gramophones. In this way I heard _Amletto, or the

Prince of Denmark_, its too, too solid flesh melted into a meat extract.

But the most wonderful spectacle of all was soundless, save for the

flowing music. For twenty _centesimi_ the Teatro S. Marco passed before

my eyes an exquisite vision of _Le Ore_—the hours in ten “_Quadri

animati_,” from the shiver of light that precedes the dawn to the last

falling of night. In the Sala d’Aurora of the Castle of Ferrara, Dosso

Dossi has depicted _Tramonto_, _Notte_, _L’Aurora_ and _Mezzogiorno_,

but not more poetically than the modern stage-manager who arranged these

living pictures. As I watched these allegorical groupings of nymphs and

fauns by their stream in the glade, I felt that the old pagan religion

still lingered in the souls that could conceive and enjoy this

nature-poetry.

And as I sat here, amid Venetian washerwomen and street boys, it was

further borne in upon me that no State Bureau would ever have begotten

this marvel for the joy and uplifting of the people, and that in the

present imperfection of human nature individual initiative under the

spur of gold or hunger could alone work these miracles of Socialism.

“_La propriété c’est la vol_,” said Proudhon, but “_vol_” in his sense

implies a bullish acceptance of the very conception he is combating. Let

us translate it by “flight.” Property is the impulse of the aeroplane.

Therefore pray do not count my aspiration for a solvent social order as

an adhesion to any cut and dried theory of the State owning and

administering all social resources. For that sort of Socialism is—like

science—bankrupt, even before it begins. It fails, not merely because

it would substitute an external arrangement for a change of heart—and

Socialism will either be a religion or will not be—but because no

external arrangement is possible. The collective ownership of land and

capital is feasible in Juan Fernandez so long as Robinson Crusoe and

Friday continue exiled from civilisation, but impossible in our world of

international finance, where private ownership extends to countries

which the property holder will never even visit. Unless, therefore,

every country in the world simultaneously adopted Socialism, there would

be an inextricable tangle of Socialism and Individualism. Not to mention

that capital—as every shareholder knows—means men as much as money.

But even in Juan Fernandez, as soon as it became thickly populated,

Socialism would be unmanageable, because the stock of concentrable human

consciousness is insufficient to arrange a social order from a central

bureau. Omniscience alone would be equal to the task, not to mention All

Goodness and All Wisdom. Despite the vast loss by friction and absence

of organisation, despite the vast suffering, the struggle for existence

is the only agency capable of fitting the pegs into the holes. Shall the

State, for example, select which man shall write poetry? And still more

vital, which poetry the State Press shall print? We have already had

experience of the State as a selector of Laureates and a censor of

drama, and Milton knew it as a censor of literature. Our most brilliant

Socialists, an they had their way, would be reduced to pasting

pasquinades on the pedestals of our street statues.

But in a looser connotation, “we are all Socialists now,” if indeed we

ever were anything else. From the day of the first human grouping for

co-operation and common defence, Socialism has been the rule of life,

and the question of how the common work and the common products are to

be apportioned is a mere question of organised distribution. That we

have hitherto left this cumbrous and infinitely complex problem of

distribution to solve itself by natural selection does not make society

less socialistic. Nor would the discovery of a more excellent way of

dividing up the labour and its results make society more socialistic.

For compared with the assets of civilisation in which we share

equally—the museums, picture galleries, libraries, parks, roads,

schools, life-boat and fire-engine services, armies, navies,

light-houses, weather-bureaus, asylums, hospitals, observatories—the

assets in which we share unequally are relatively unimportant, and

without sacrificing to a machine the zest and stimulus of liberty, and

the fine flavour of individuality, it is a comparatively simple matter

to minimise the waste and suffering produced by the struggle for

existence, and to arrange that talent shall rise to the top, not for its

sake but our own. It is no evil that one man should live in a palace and

another in a cottage; these differences even add to the colour and joy

of life. The evil is solely that any man willing to work should lack a

cottage, or that the cottage should be a malarious hovel. Levelling up

is the only reform necessary, as it is the only reform possible. For if

the gradual consolidation of railways, land, mines, and a few leading

industries in the hands of the State is not beyond practical politics,

this would still be very far from “Socialism,” and it is vastly amusing

to witness the agony of apprehension with which respectable society

looks forward to the advent of a social order which cannot possibly

materialise, and which menaces us less than the flaming tail of a comet.

Only less amusing is the awe with which society regards Property as

something sacrosanct in quality and immutable in quantity. Why, even the

King’s shilling is as nimble and elusive as mercury, will buy you mutton

to-day and only tripe to-morrow, and scarcely run to dog-sausage in a

siege. Property is a Proteus, a shadow, a transient and generally

embarrassed phantom. Property merely means a potential call upon human

service—past or future—and if human service is unwilling or absent,

Property shrinks or collapses, like the bag of pearls found by the

thirsting Arab in the desert. Finance—like all other branches of

science—has been treated as though its subject-matter had absolute

existence. But the assets of the world’s bankers incalculably outrun the

world’s power of service, and Property is merely a promissory note which

can only be redeemed if there is not too great a run upon the labour

bank at which it is presented. Still more elastic is the service that

produces this right to call upon the service of others. A hundred

thousand readers buy this book—instead of borrowing it—and I am a

Crœsus; a hundred, and I am free of income tax. Motor cars are invented,

and my house in Ascot falls to half its former value because the smart

set need no longer stay overnight during the Ascot week. My unknown aunt

remembers me in her will and I am a thousand pounds the richer. The

Seine rises and my Paris flat is a ruin. I die and my land dwindles to

six feet. Where in this foolish flux is room for holiness? And why may

not society—the only source of values—mould Property as it will for

society’s ends? Why—among the many vicissitudes with which Property

must reckon—should not social reform count equally with bad harvests,

wars of conquest and Stock Exchange manœuvres?

To say that Property is sacred is to confuse the means with the end,

like the miser who hoards his gold and forgets its uses. Society is

sacred, not Property, and whatever sanctitude or stability has been

attached to Property has been attached entirely for socialistic

purposes; not that the individual may be enriched, but that he may not

lose the spur that drives him to enrich society. Individual property is

merely a by-product of labour for society. He who demands overmuch for

his labour is under-moralised. The true citizen is anxious to be taxed

for the general good, provided his taxes are used for social service. He

is anxious that some form of distribution of the common products shall

be organised to supplement natural selection and correct its

over-harshness. Experience might prove that interference with natural

selection saps the stamina and initiative of society more than it

benefits the “submerged tenth,” in which case we should reluctantly

return to the present form of Socialism.

As for land, it is the one thing that I can conceive nationalised even

under our present form of Socialism, nay, which is already nationalised

to the extent that the private owners of British land may not sell it to

Germany or Japan, as they may sell anything else of theirs. Every new

State should doubtless begin by trying to nationalise its land. I say

“trying,” because it is by no means certain that it would succeed, since

so far from the increment in land values being unearned, it is the very

possibility of earning it that induces the pioneer to suffer peril,

privation and isolation. Were Canada, for example, not to give away its

land, the many adventurers who have flowed in from the United States

would probably have remained at home, and all this Canadian territory

have been still empty. And once you have made land quasi-private

property, it cannot justly be subjected to any peculiar tax, since

colossal as is the rise of land values in growing towns, the value of

land is controlled by the same factors of luck and judgment as rule all

other property values, and may be depreciated as well as enhanced by the

operation of social forces beyond the owner’s control or prevision.

Wherefore all increments in value—in stocks and shares, copyrights,

patents, &c. &c.—should be treated as potential matter for taxation

equally with the so-called “unearned increment” on land.

One would imagine from the war cries in our latest political campaign

that Socialism was already upon us, and that the only refuge from it lay

in Tariff Reform. But it is precisely Tariff Reform which is Socialism;

a taxation of the entire community in the interests of this or that

industry. Nor should the entire community be averse from taxation for

any provably good object; a moralised community would even be always

looking round for fresh methods of self-taxation. Budget Day would be a

national festival, a day of solemn joy, tense with the hope that new

ways would be found of making England the Kingdom of God. Alas! it is a

day of sick anxiety, with a sequel of farcical unfailingness, in which

every section taxed sends a deputation to show that it is the one

section that should have been left unburdened, while from the bloated

gluttons and swillers at the great hotels arises the cry of “Red ruin

and the breaking-up of laws.” And the poor philanthropist we have always

with us—he who threatens to stop his charity contributions. As if the

abolition of charity was not the very object of social reform! Every

benevolent activity means a sore in the social system, and charity

covers indeed a multitude of our sins.

Strange that these sordid questions of money should so fever this mighty

England of Shakespeare and Milton. Ship-money cost Charles the First his

head, and a petty land tax changes the House of Peers. Poor humanity, so

deluded as to the essential values of life, so peculiarly demented in

all that concerns Property! But I bid you cast away your fears. I repeat

to you my good tidings of great joy. Socialism is impossible. A perfect

and just distribution of the goods and labours of life—“to each

according to his needs, from each according to his powers”—is Utopian.

Moreover envy, hatred and all uncharitableness prevent it: stupidity,

sloth, selfishness, treachery and tyranny preclude it. Rejoice,

therefore, and let us cry Hosanna!

Nor are these evil qualities confined to the capitalist, they are found

in even uglier forms in the working man, who is merely a capitalist

without means, and through his Trade Unions talks equally of rights and

even less of duties and ideals.

But if Socialism is impossible, and Socialist parties consequently

deficient in constructive potency, they yet perform in every country a

critical and regulative function of the first importance. Our own Labour

members are the only gentlemen in British politics. To all questions,

national or international, they bring a broad spirit and a quixotic

ideal, and while our Howards and our Percys cower in craven terror of

Germany, or make prudent alliance with Holy Russia, or handle with

correlative despotism India, Ireland or the woman question, our men from

the pits and the factories sit free and fearless, the sole guardians of

England’s ancient glory.