E-text prepared by Jeannie Howse, Carl Hudkins,
jnik (media provider),
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)

BRITISH SOCIALISM

BRITISH SOCIALISM

AN EXAMINATION OF

ITS DOCTRINES, POLICY, AIMS
AND PRACTICAL PROPOSALS

BY

J. ELLIS BARKER

AUTHOR OF
'MODERN GERMANY: HER POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC PROBLEMS, ETC.'
'THE RISE AND DECLINE OF THE NETHERLANDS'

LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO.
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1908

CONTENTS

BRITISH SOCIALISM

CHAPTER IToC

INTRODUCTION—WHAT IS SOCIALISM?

What is Socialism?

It is exceedingly difficult to answer that question in a few words, for Socialism is exceedingly elusive and bewildering in its doctrines, its aims, and its proposals.

Its opponents have described it as "a doctrine of sordid materialism and of atheism," they have denounced it as "the gospel of everlasting bellyful,"[1] and as "the coming slavery."[2] They have stated that Socialism means to abolish religion, that it "would try to put laziness, thriftlessness, and inefficiency on a par with industry, thrift, and efficiency, that it would strive to break up not merely private property, but, what is far more important, the home, the chief prop upon which our whole civilisation stands."[3]

The Socialists, on the other hand, claim that "Socialism presents the only living ideal of human existence"[4]; that "Socialism is science applied with knowledge and understanding to all branches of human activity"[5]; that [2]"Socialism is freedom,"[6] and that it is exceedingly just, for "the justice of Socialism will see all things, and therefore understand all things."[7] One of the Socialist leaders has told us "Socialism is much more than either a political creed or an economic dogma. It presents to the modern world a new conception of society and a new basis upon which to build up the life of the individual and of the State."[8] Another informs us "Socialism to Socialists is not a Utopia which they have invented, but a principle of social organisation which they assert to have been discovered by the patient investigators into sociology whose labours have distinguished the present century."[9] A third has stated that "Socialism is really neither more nor less than the science of sociology."[10] A fourth asserts that "it is a scientific scheme of national government entirely wise, just, and practical."[11] A fifth states "Socialism to me has always meant not a principle, but certain definite economic measures which I wish to see taken."[12]

Other Socialists have taught that "Socialism is an ethical system founded on justice and truth; it is a heartfelt, soul-inspiring religion, resting upon the love of God."[13] "Socialism is a theory of social organisation, which reconciles the individual to society. It has discovered how the individual in society can attain to a state of complete development."[14] "Socialism is the right of the community, acting in its corporate capacity, to intervene in the lives and labours of men and women."[15] [3]"Socialism is nothing but the extension of democratic self-government from the political to the industrial world."[16] "Socialism is an endeavour to substitute for the anarchical struggle or fight for existence an organised co-operation for existence."[17] "Socialism may be described as an endeavour to readjust the machinery of industry in such a way that it can at once depend upon and issue in a higher kind of character and social type than is encouraged by the conditions of ordinary competitive enterprise."[18] "Socialism is the development of policies concerning the welfare of society."[19] "It is not arbitrary destruction and reconstruction, but a natural process of development."[20] "The idea of Socialism will conquer the world, for this idea is nothing but the real, well understood interest of mankind."[21] "Its principles will carry the whole human race to a higher state of perfection."[22] "It is the great modern protest against unreality, against the delusive shams which now masquerade as verities."[23] "Socialism is of the character of a historical discovery."[24] "Socialism, the inspiring principle of all Labour Parties, whether they know it or not, is the next world movement—the movement of the constructive intellect."[25]

Socialism is rich in promises, and its claims to our consideration and support are manifold. Are these claims justified or not? Are the Socialists or the Anti-Socialists right in their conception of Socialism?

The Socialists maintain that all opposition to Socialism is based either on self-interest or ignorance, and [4]principally upon the latter. Therefore one of the Socialist leaders wrote: "Those who wish to understand Socialism will be wise to study Socialist books and papers. One does not expect a true and fair account of any theory or cause from its enemies. The man who takes his ideas of Trade-Unionism from the Free Labour League, his ideas of Liberalism from the Tory papers, his ideas of South African affairs—or any other affairs—from the Yellow Press, will be misled into all manner of absurdities and errors. The statements of party politicians and party newspapers on most controversial subjects are prejudiced and inaccurate; but there is no subject upon which the professional misleaders of the people are so untrustworthy and so disingenuous as they are upon the subject of Socialism."[26] A leading Socialist organ complained: "Our opponents decline to deal with the fundamental principles of Socialism—its unanswerable indictment of the capitalist system, with all its concomitants of wage-slavery and slumdom; prostitution and child murder—and prefer instead to indulge in calumniation and misrepresentation of Socialism. We need not complain about that. It is a tribute to the soundness of the Socialist position, to the irrefutability of its principles, the impregnability of the rock of economic truth upon which it is based, that our enemies dare not oppose the principles of Socialism, dare not attempt to meet the charge Socialism levels against the existing order."[27]

There is much truth in these complaints. The general public and most writers and speakers know very little about Socialism, because this most interesting subject has been very inadequately treated in the existing books.

The existing books on Socialism describe, analyse, and criticise the Socialist doctrines only in the abstract [5]as a rule. However, Socialism is not only an elaborate economic doctrine, it is at the same time a complete system of practical politics. Hence it does not suffice to study the doctrines of Socialism by themselves. In order to understand Socialism we must also investigate its practical proposals.

Following the methods of our political economists, most writers on Socialism have, unfortunately, treated Socialism rather as a scientific abstraction than as a business proposition. Consequently the most important practical details of Socialism, such as: What are the views of the Socialist with regard to the Monarchy, the Army, the Banks, the National Currency, the Law, Education? what are their practical aims as regards Parliamentary Representation, Foreign Policy, Agriculture, Taxation, Old-age Pensions, Fiscal Policy? what are their relations with the Parliamentary Parties, the Trade-Unions, the Co-operators, etc? what is their attitude towards International Communism and Anarchism? is English Socialism an Evolutionary or a Revolutionary Movement?—these and many other questions are touched but lightly or are not touched at all.

It is somewhat difficult to deal fully with the practical proposals of the Socialists, because the Socialists are very averse from formulating their aims and disclosing their plans. An English Socialist wrote: "To dogmatise about the form which the Socialist State shall take is to play the fool."[28] Another one stated: "It is quite impossible, at this time, nor would it be desirable, if possible, to lay down any hard and fast line as to the development of the details of Socialist organisation. Broad principles are all that can with any degree of confidence be spoken about. The details will arrange themselves, as the time arrives when it becomes necessary to settle them."[29] [6]Gronlund, perhaps the most prominent American Socialist, stated: "Socialists do not profess to be architects. They have not planned the future in minute detail."[30] Herr Bebel, the leader of the German Social-Democratic Party, said on February 3, 1893, in the Reichstag, replying to the Roman Catholics, "We do not ask from you the details of the future life of which you speak so incessantly. Why, then, do you ask us about the future society?"[31] Although we are told that "Socialism claims the consideration of mankind, because it comes forward and offers a complete scheme to improve the conditions of human life,"[32] Socialists carefully abstain as a rule from giving us the details of that scheme.

The Socialists of all countries have very excellent reasons for keeping to themselves the details of their plans for the future. Nevertheless, a careful search through their numerous writings will enable us to obtain a fairly clear and comprehensive view of their political and economic plans and intentions.

Great Britain does not as yet possess a great Socialist party but only a number of Socialist groups and factions which are totally at variance as regards their aims, policy, and tactics. "They differ as to the best means of getting what they want, and as to the best ways of managing the work, and as to the proper way of sharing the earnings. Some Socialists still believe that Socialism will have to be got by force. I think there are not many. Some are in favour of buying the land, the railways, the machinery, and other things; and some are in favour of taking them, by force, or by new laws. Then some say that there should be no wages paid at all, but that everyone should do an equal share of work, and take whatever he needed from the nation's goods. Others say that all men should [7]do an equal share of work, and have an equal share of the goods, or of the earnings. Others say it would be better to pay wages, as now, but to let the wages be fixed by the Government, or by corporations, or other officials, and that all wages should be equal. Others, again, say that wages should be paid, that the wages should be fixed as above stated, and that different kinds of work should be paid for at different rates. In one kind of Socialism the civil engineer, the actor, the general, the artist, the tram guard, the dustman, the milliner, and the collier would all be paid the same wages. In another kind of Socialism there would be no wages, but all would be called upon to work, and all who worked would 'take according to their needs.' In another kind of Socialism the civil engineer would be paid more than the navvy, the opera singer more than the milliner, the general more than the sergeant, and the editor more than the scavenger."[33]

Notwithstanding these numerous and important differences, of which more will be learned in the course of this book, British Socialists are absolutely united in certain important respects. "The policies of Socialism are a changeable quantity, though the principle is as fixed as the Northern Star."[34] "Socialism is as flexible in its form as it is definite in its principles."[35]

A superficial study of Socialism reveals to us not a single and generally accepted plan, but a confused and confusing mass of mutually contradictory plans and doctrines. Therefore he who wishes to know what Socialism is, must study the many-headed movement in its entirety and give an impartial hearing to all its advocates. We can understand Socialism only if we are acquainted with practically its entire literature.

[8]Unfortunately the literature of Socialism is very vast. A complete collection of modern Socialist literature would embrace at least thirty thousand items. Therefore a full analysis of international Socialism based upon the study of the original sources is a forbidding undertaking. I have consequently limited myself to the investigation of the British Socialist movement, although I have cast a cursory glance upon foreign Socialism whenever it seemed necessary to do so.

I have consulted altogether about a thousand books and pamphlets, and have given representative extracts from four hundred or five hundred of those which seemed most proper to elucidate the subject of this book. Having given space to the views of all the Socialist groups, this book is a summary of the whole literature of British Socialism and a key to it. It is based exclusively on first-hand evidence, and every statement contained in it can instantly be verified by reference to the original sources indicated in the footnotes. In the Bibliography at the end of this volume the full title, publisher's address, and date of publication of all sources drawn upon are given, so that readers will have no difficulty in procuring any Socialist books they may want for further study.

Most of the books quoted are unknown to booksellers, and are not in public libraries. Even the British Museum Library possesses only part of the publications used in this book, which is the first to exploit fully the whole Socialist party literature. Whilst most books on Socialism take note only of Socialist text-books addressed to students, the present volume considers chiefly the propaganda literature which is educating the Socialist rank and file and shaping its political views. For all practical political purposes the propaganda literature is undoubtedly by far the more important of the two to the statesman and the citizen.

[9]The present volume is the only book of its kind, and I hope that the Socialist movement in Germany, France, and the United States will be treated with similar completeness by writers of these countries. The perusal of the present volume will enable us to form an opinion of the merits or demerits of the Socialistic theories and practical plans, and make it possible for us to separate the grain from the chaff, the wisdom from the folly, in the teachings of the Socialists. Thus we shall be able to see which of their complaints and proposals are justified and practical, and which are unjustified and unpractical.

Popular dissatisfaction, Socialistic and non-Socialistic, points to the existence of ills in the body politic, and the Socialistic agitation is exceedingly valuable inasmuch as it draws general attention to these ills. Some complaints of the Socialists will be found to be imaginary, others are very real.

It would be a sterile undertaking merely to analyse and criticise Socialism and the Socialistic proposals. Therefore, after having described the policy, ideals, and aims of the Socialists, I mean to analyse the disease of which Socialism is a consequence and a symptom, and to propose practical measures for curing it.

In the course of this book I shall show that Socialism seems likely to become a very great danger in this country—a far greater danger than is generally realised. Therefore its opponents will be wise not to sneer at Socialism, but to study it and to try to understand it. That task will be found worth our while, and only after it shall we be able to further Socialism if it is beneficial, to combat it if it is pernicious, and to correct it if it is only the misguided expression of genuine suffering and want. Indifference to a great and dangerous political movement such as Socialism may have the gravest consequences. Idlers do not make history. They suffer it.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER IIToC

SOME SOCIALIST VIEWS OF PRESENT SOCIETY AND OF THE SOCIETY OF THE FUTURE

"We are not indebted to reason," wrote the greatest American Socialist, "for the landmarks of human progress, for the introduction of Christianity, the institution of the monastic orders, the Crusades, the Reformation, the American Revolution, or the abolition of slavery. Man is only irresistible when he acts from passion. The masses of men are never moved except by passions, feelings, interests."[36] "Socialism has the advantage of appealing to the interests as well as to the enthusiasm of all except the few who think the world good enough as it is.... It is, of course, to the discontented wage-workers that the Socialist can appeal with the greatest chance of success."[37] These indiscreet words, which might have been written by the most implacable of Anti-Socialists, sum up and explain the Socialistic agitation and tactics. They are a proclamation and an avowal, and the worst enemy of Socialism would have found it difficult to pen a more damaging statement. Socialists rely not on reason or justice, but on unreason and passion, for the victory of their cause; and that fact is very much to be regretted, for it is bound to create prejudice and suspicion, and to greatly weaken their case.

The British Socialists, seeking to rouse the passions of men, habitually rely on exaggeration and misrepresentation. They do not tire of painting the present [11]state of society in the darkest colours and of describing with an unbounded but hardly justifiable optimism and enthusiasm the advantages which will accrue to society when Socialism has come to rule. It will be seen that in describing society of the present and society of the future, Socialists let their imagination run riot in the most astounding fashion.

To the Socialist modern civilisation is worse than a failure. "Our civilisation seems all so savage and bestial and filthy and inartistic; all so cowardly and devilish and despicable. We fight by cheatery and underselling, and adulteration and bribery, and unmanly smirking for our bone of a livelihood; all scrambling and biting round the platter when there is abundance for all, if we were orderly and courteous and gentlemanly; all crushing the weaker; all struggling to the platter-side for the privilege of wearing tall hats and of giving good advice to the poor dogs outside. We, the well-fed, shout lordily to the hungry and cheer them with legends to the effect that though the poor are juggled out of earth, they may be masters in Heaven. Our civilisation is barbarous."[38]

"The one reality of the nineteenth century is the scramble for wealth; politics, literature, science, religion, art, are, apart from money-getting, mere lifeless wraiths."[40] Government in general, and British Government in [12]particular, is vicious, tyrannous, and neglectful, and deserves the utmost contempt. "National Government is devised for other objects than the adjustment of essential, economic, and hygienic arrangements for the redemption of human life; to use it for such a purpose is gross tyranny and a deadly blow at the very foundations of morality and religion! Governments exist for quite other purposes than this—to pay a million pounds yearly to one family and its immediate parasites, to supply power of life and death over the people to the exploiting class and fat places to their satellites and creatures, to squander hundreds of millions on gunpowder and armaments, to use the whole socialised power of the nation to overawe, exploit, rob, and ruin the so-called lower races—all these are the proper objects of government according to our orthodox wiseacres, but to use the same obvious instrument adequately to protect human life at home, and that life, to quote Mr. Burns, 'the weakest, the smallest, and the dearest to us all,' is to undermine the foundations of British manliness and to poison the fountain of British liberty and greatness. Such is the curious mélange of selfishness, hypocrisy, prejudice, ignorance, and incoherence which passes muster for argument amongst our anti-Socialist opponents."[41]

British social legislation has been a failure. Never was the lot of the workers worse than it is now. "Your legislation for the past hundred years is a perpetual and fruitless effort to regulate the disorders of your economic system. Your poor, your drunken, your incompetent, your sick, your aged, ride you like a nightmare. You have dissolved all human and personal ties. The salient characteristic of your civilisation is its irresponsibility. The making of dividends is the universal preoccupation; the well-being of the labourer is no one's concern. You depend on variations of supply and demand which you [13]can neither determine nor anticipate. The failure of a harvest, the modification of a tariff in some remote country dislocates the industry of millions, thousands of miles away. You are at the mercy of a prospector's luck, an inventor's genius, a woman's caprice—nay, you are at the mercy of your own instruments. Your capital is alive and cries for food."[42]

Virtue has disappeared, religion is a fraud, clergy and priesthood are mercenary, cowardly, and interested time-servers. "The priests and the parsons are salary-slaves as much as the workers are wage-slaves. The majority of them dare not preach the Gospel of Humanity, Justice, and Socialism from their pulpits owing to their fear of their paymasters. Religion is divorced from business, politics, the administration of public authorities, the treatment of the aged worker, and written across the actions of the professing Christians is 'Self-interest; every man for himself and the Workhouse take the hindmost.'"[43]

Life is hell, and only Socialism can regenerate the world.

Apparently all British workers spend their lives in terrible misery and constant privation. Hunger and despair are their constant companions, and they will see in Socialism their only salvation even if Socialism should destroy individual liberty, for to them individual liberty is a word without meaning. One of the most [14]prominent British Socialists, Mr. Philip Snowden, M.P., in a pamphlet addressed to working men, writes: "Let those who fear that Socialism will destroy individual liberty and hinder intellectual development go with their talk to the machine-workers of our great northern towns, who are chained for eleven hours a day to a monotonous toil, with the eye of the overseer and the fear of dismissal spurring them on to an exertion which leaves them at the end of their day's work physical wrecks, with no ambition but to restore their wasted energies at the nearest public-house. Let them go with their talk of the blessings of civilisation to the pottery and chemical workers, whose systems are poisoned, whose sight is destroyed, where, through the bodies of the parents being saturated with poison, half the children are born dead, and of the rest not one in four lives to be five—tell them to hold fast to their share of the blessings of our glorious civilisation. Or go to the sweaters' victims, living, eating, working, dying in one room, for which a vampire landlord will take in rent one-half of all the family can earn by working day and night—talk to them of individual liberty and warn them of the tyranny of the coming Socialism. Or go on a bitterly cold winter morning to the dock gates of one of our great ports and see thousands of men waiting in the hope of a day's job, and watch how a few here and there of the strongest are selected, and the rest left to another day of hunger and despair; or, wait still, and see how a few remain behind in the hope that their mate may meet with an accident and 'they can snatch at the work he had.' Why, to talk of individual freedom and equality of opportunity under a system of cannibalistic competition like this is like the mocking laughter of a raving maniac gloating over the torture of the victim it holds in its murderous grip."[45] In another popular pamphlet the [15]worker is told: "After all, John, does it not strike you that there is some foul iniquity in a system which allows one part of the community to do another portion of it to death and to rob and enslave those it is pleased to let live? Do you not see that those your capitalists find it convenient and profitable to employ may live; and that those they do not choose to employ must die? Do you not see that these are hurried and driven hither and thither in haggard, destitute misery; are thrust into festering heaps in your foul slums; into your gaols, and penitentiaries, and workhouses; that they wander in hopeless misery, hungering within sight of food, penniless amid plenty, enforcedly idle, and work to which they can have no access lying upon every hand of them, as though the world were under an enchantment and God were dead!"[46]

The British working man, as he is generally known, is a manly and very independent personage. As a rule his master is more afraid of him than he is of his master. Yet, according to the picture drawn of him by the Socialists, he is a timorous, cowardly, whining, pitiful creature who has to cringe to his tyrannic employers:

During the week the British workers work at most five and a half days out of seven, and as a rule they work during from eight to ten hours a day. Generally speaking, the pace at which British workmen work is not forced. Except in a few special industries overwork among the working men is practically unknown. Besides, the pace at which work is performed is as a rule determined not by the employer, but by the employees. Nevertheless we read, "It is monstrous that, while some half million of men are vainly seeking employment, millions of their fellows should have no respite from arduous ill-requited toil and should be hastening to a premature death through overwork."[48] In prose and verse the British workers are constantly told that they are slaves[49] who are driven into starvation and suicide:

Now let us cast a glance at the Socialist picture of the society of the future under Socialistic rule.

The first thing which Socialism would do would be to organise work, for "practical Socialism is a kind of national scheme of co-operation, managed by the State."[51] There would be no more employers, for "under Socialism all the work of the nation would be managed by the nation for the nation,"[52] and all would have plenty to eat, because "Socialism would leave no man to starve."[53] "All the work of the nation would be organised—that is to say, it would be ordered or arranged so that no one need be out of work, and so that no useless work need be done, and so that no work need be done twice where once would serve."[54]

It is expected that the national organisation and administration of all the industries would prove more efficient than private enterprise. We are assured that "under Socialism the efficiency of production developed by Capitalism will not only be preserved but improved. Mechanical invention will be encouraged and utilised to the utmost."[55] Compulsory labour, State regulation of work, and increased production would lead to increased consumption and increased comfort. "Who would deny [18]that, if it is everybody's duty to work, if the production of unnecessary—nay, even of injurious—articles is abolished, if production is organised in conformity with the real wants and pleasures of mankind—who would deny, I ask, that the standard of life of the whole human race might be raised infinitely above its present grade?"[56]

Although Socialism would make work compulsory to all, and place every man, woman, and child under the direction of the great Socialist organisation with its army of officials, and although it would destroy individual liberty as at present understood, by placing the daily life of every citizen under Government regulations and restrictions, it would bring with it a greater liberty. Unfortunately the Socialists fail to say what that liberty consists in, and we must take their assurances in lieu of details. "Those who fear that Socialism will destroy individual liberty fail to distinguish between liberty and licence. Individualism is licence—it is the freedom of the individual to do as he likes without regard to the effect of his action on others, or even without regard to his own best welfare. Socialism is liberty; for it will restrict the freedom of the individual to inflict injury upon others or to do what is morally injurious to himself."[57]

Socialism will release the British slaves out of their slavery, and restore them to everlasting freedom. "Such Socialism as we champion means for all future generations not slavery, but full and never-ending freedom."[58] "Socialism declares it to be the duty of man to remove all artificial barriers to the improvement of circumstances, in order that humanity, as a whole, may have freedom and all possible assistance to attain to its full stature, physically, mentally, and spiritually."[59]

[19]With the introduction of the Socialist régime the earth would, as by a magician's wand, be transformed into a paradise. Over-population, bad harvests, the maladjustment of international demand and supply, and individual folly, laziness, wastefulness, improvidence, and passion would apparently no longer have the same unfortunate consequences which they have now. "The struggle for individual existence disappears...."[60] "The words 'poor' and 'charity' will be expunged from the dictionary as relics of a barbarous past."[61] "There would be no starvation, there would be no pauperism, there would be no sweaters; there would be no barefooted children in the streets; there would be no fraudulent trustees, no bankrupts; there would be no slums, no annual massacre of innocents by preventable disease; there would be hardly such a thing known as ignorance, there would be scarcely any drunkenness, and crime would shrink to microscopic dimensions."[62]

"Practical Socialism would educate the people. It would provide cheap and pure food. It would extend and elevate the means of study and amusement. It would foster literature and science and art. It would encourage and reward genius and industry. It would abolish sweating and jerry-work. It would demolish the slums and erect good and handsome dwellings. It would compel all men to do some kind of useful work. It would recreate and nourish the craftsman's pride in his craft. It would protect women and children. It would raise the standard of health and morality; and it would take the sting out of pauperism by paying pensions to honest workers no longer able to work."[63]

"There is something in Socialism to kill ignorance and to destroy vice. There is something in it to shut up [20]the gaols, to do away with prostitution, to reduce crime and drunkenness, and wipe out for ever the sweater and the slums, the beggars and the idle rich, the useless fine ladies and lords, and to make it possible for sober and willing workers to live healthy, and happy, and honourable lives."[64]

The Socialist Government would apparently be all-powerful and all-wise. At any rate, it would improve the character of the people. "Socialism would teach and train all children wisely; it would foster genius and devotion to the common good; it would kill scamping, and loafing, and jerrymandering; it would give us better health, better homes, better work, better food, better lives, and better men and women."[65]

When Socialism is introduced and private capital abolished, the golden age of the world will begin:

So far we have looked chiefly at the economic consequences which the introduction of Socialism is going to [21]bring about. However, according to the Socialists, it is not true that "Socialism is merely sordid and material, and has no regard for the more ideal side of human interests. The Socialist recognises, far more than others, the higher ideals of human life as being its true end."[67] Therefore "Socialism seeks to improve the physical, mental, and spiritual environment of every man, woman, and child, so that all mankind may be purer, healthier, happier, stronger, nobler, and that each generation may be nearer perfection than the one immediately preceding."[68] In other words, "the creation of a higher type of mankind than the modern man will be the result of Socialism. Men will have no need to think, day in, day out, where to get the bread for to-morrow."[69] "Material conditions form the fundamental basis of human existence. When these become common property, free to all and abundant for all, they will cease to have that importance they now possess. The sordid struggle for mere material things will disappear; free play will be given to man's higher faculties, and the struggle, competition, or emulation between man and man will be for the realisation of his highest conceivable aspirations."[70]

According to many Socialists, money and wages would disappear. Food, clothing, lodging, &c., would be given gratis to the citizens. "Under ideal Socialism there would be no money at all and no wages. The industry of the country would be organised and managed by the State, much as the Post Office now is; goods of all kinds would be produced and distributed for use, and not for sale, in such quantities as were needed; hours of labour would be fixed, and every citizen would take what he or she desired from the common stock. Food, clothing, [22]lodging, fuel, transit, amusements, and all other things would be absolutely free, and the only difference between a prime minister and a collier would be the difference of rank and occupation."[71]

Not only food, clothing, and shelter would be supplied gratis by a bountiful State to the people. In order to banish ennui from among the workers, entertainments and amusements also would be provided, free of charge. Gratis travel on the railways would make life a permanent holiday, and the last cause of dissatisfaction would be removed by transferring the surroundings of the gratuitously maintained and amused people into a garden of Eden. "I would have the towns rebuilt with wide streets, with detached houses, with gardens and fountains and avenues of trees. I would make the railways, the carriage of letters, and the transit of goods as free as the roads and bridges. I would make the houses loftier and larger, and clear them of all useless furniture. I would institute public dining-halls, public baths, public washhouses on the best plans, and so set free the hands of those slaves—our English women. I would have public parks, public theatres, music-halls, gymnasiums, football and cricket fields, public halls and public gardens for recreation and music and refreshment. I would have all our children fed and clothed and educated at the cost of the State. I would have them all taught to play and to sing. I would have them all trained to athletics and to arms. I would have public halls of science. I would have the people become their own artists, actors, musicians, soldiers, and police. Then, by degrees, I would make all these things free."[72] In the words of the Socialist poet—

[23]Men, being no longer compelled to work hard for a living, will lose the desire for wealth and all that wealth supplies and will devote themselves more and more to the culture of their mind. "Under Socialism the possession of riches will cease to be a ruling passion, for honest labour will be a guarantee against want, and riches will no longer be the passport to social position. Under such conditions the possession of riches will be a superfluous burden which no sane man will wish to bear."[74] "When land and capital are the common property of all the people, class distinctions, as we know them at present, will no longer exist. The Mind will then be the standard by which a man's place among his fellows will be determined."[75] Hence "Socialism means the elevation of the struggle for existence from the material to the intellectual plane. Socialism will raise the struggle for existence into a sphere where competition shall be emulation, where the treasures are boundless and eternal, and where the abundant wealth of one does not cause the poverty of another."[76]

The poet has described in a vision this phase of the golden age of Socialism as follows:

"Socialism, being at the same time the sublimest science, art, and religion, will naturally elevate man. The British people will become a nation of scientists and philosophers who, throwing natural enjoyments aside, will lead a life of pure intellectual happiness. Mortal men will become demi-gods. Socialism will justify God's way to man."[78] "Socialism comes as the Angel of Light bearing to mankind this message of truth. Socialism, equipped with all the learning of the ages, takes up the ripest teaching of the poet, the philosopher, the economist, the scientist, the historian, and joins the conclusion of each together into one harmonious whole. Now we know that suffering, misery, and poverty are a [25]violation of God's will. Now we know that the fulness of time has come for us to cast the last relic of our fallen nature from us and to follow the beckoning angel who is waiting to lead us back through the gates of Paradise into an Eden of intellectual joys."[79]

All men will be brothers. The difference among nations and races will disappear by the rule of love and justice. "Justice is to be the foundation on which we must build: not the kind of justice we have hitherto considered as sufficient for us, and which many countries [26]pride themselves is their watchword and standard, but a justice that demands freedom for all."[81]

Wars will be abolished.

Being a religion of peace and love, and preaching the brotherhood of man, Socialism will conquer the world. "Socialism with its promise of freedom, its larger hope for humanity, its triumph of peace over war, its binding of the races of the earth into one all-embracing brotherhood, must prevail."[84] "We mean the establishment of a political power which shall have for its conscious and definite aim the common ownership and control of the whole of the world's industry, exchange, &c."[85]

According to many Socialists, Socialism is not an original religion, but it is the most sublime form of Christianity. "Socialism is in accordance with the revealed will of God."[86] "Karl Marx was an utter [27]pagan, but there is not an essential proposition in 'Das Kapital' that Jesus of Nazareth did not inculcate. Is it a question of rent? You are as much entitled to immunity from it as the birds of the air, or the grass of the fields. Is it a question of usury or interest? Lend, hoping for nothing again. Is it a question of profit or inequitable exchange? Do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you."[87] "Did Jesus Christ teach Socialism? Unless we are prepared to deny the truth of the Gospel, there can be but one answer—Yes. And Socialism naturally evolves from Christianity."[88] Socialism will mean the establishment of the rule of Christ upon earth. "The political democracy, dominated by the social ideal, will be the coming of Christ to rule the nations in righteousness."[89] The Socialist leaders see visions. "I do sometimes dream dreams, and I see a vision of what the world will be when this spirit of love and sacrifice which has actuated some noble spirits in all ages and which shone with the glory of full perfection in the life and example of Jesus of Nazareth—I sometimes see, as through a glass darkly, a vision of what the world will be when this spirit of love and sacrifice shall animate all men. I see our modern towns swept away, and in their place beautiful cities whose buildings reflect the pride of the community in their common life, and whose healthy homes show the value society attaches to the individual life. I see everywhere a change come over the face of the landscape; every meadow smiles with plenty, every valley blossoms as the rose, every hill is green with the glory of Lebanon. I see a revived art and a revived literature. I see a people healthy, happy, cultured, contented, whose wealth is life, full and free, 'whose ways are ways of pleasantness, whose flowery [28]paths are paths of peace.' And my vision extends, though more dimly, beyond the confines of my own dear land, and I see this spirit of brotherhood among the nations has broken down international barriers, and international hatred is no more. The sword is beaten into a ploughshare, the spear into a pruning-hook, and the peoples of all lands are one, each freely sharing of its special bounties to add to the comforts of all."[90]

The new Christian religion, like the old one, demands its saints and its martyrs, if not the reincarnation of Christ. "The only way to regain the earthly paradise is by the old, hard road to Calvary—through persecution, through poverty, through temptation, by the agony and bloody sweat, by the crown of thorns, by the agonising death, and then the resurrection to the New Humanity—purified by suffering, triumphant through Sacrifice."[91]

The new Christ also has his forerunner and herald. "Mr. Keir Hardie, M.P., the leader of the Labour Party, resembles John the Baptist,"[92] and the Socialist leaders will do even greater things than did Christ. We are told: "When Christ told His disciples that it was possible for them to do greater things than they had seen Him do they must have been fairly staggered. Just think for a moment of the nature of the works He had done, most of them in their very presence. Those who are striving to obtain a better social order and provide a fairer distribution of the good gifts of God among the sons of men, these men I say, in so far as their efforts are successful, are doing greater things than Christ did when He performed the miracle of feeding the hungry."[93]

"Man is only irresistible when he acts from passion. The masses of men are never moved except by passions [29]feelings, interests. It is of course to the discontented wage-earners that the Socialist can appeal with the greatest chance of success."[94] All Socialists agree in depicting to the workers life in present society as hell incarnate and in giving a picture of life in the Socialist State of the future which resembles the descriptions found in the "Arabian Nights" tales. They only disagree in this: that some promise him heaven, whilst those possessed of less enthusiasm promise him only an earthly paradise.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER IIIToC

THE GRIEVANCES OF THE SOCIALISTS

"Socialism is not only a theory of another and better system of society: it is an indictment of the existing order."[95] The Socialist conception of society as at present constituted, given in the preceding chapter, will have prepared the reader to some extent for the Socialist grievances. These grievances are three in number, and may be summed up as follows:

(1) The workers are for all practical purposes slaves who are kept in chains and forced to work by the capitalist class.

(2) The rich men cause the poverty of the poor by defrauding them of the largest part of their wages.

(3) The workers receive only from one third to one fourth of the wage which is their rightful due.

Let us look into these grievances.

According to the Socialist leaders, the workers—

keep the rich in affluence. Nevertheless they themselves are kept in poverty, degradation, and slavery by the capitalists whom they nourish by their labour. "The landlord owns the raw material and can live in idleness. The capitalist owns the machinery and can live in idleness. The worker has nothing, except his ability to work, and [31]he cannot work without the consent of the landlord and the capitalist. Therefore, he is virtually a slave. He cannot control his own life."[97]

As a matter of fact the position of the worker is worse than was that of the slave. "It did not always pay to starve a slave, because if he died you might have to buy another one. Therefore the lot of the slave under a good master was in many respects better than that of the proletariat in our great cities."[98] "Poverty rather than property is the reward of labour to-day."[99] "Poverty is our reward for creating plenty, and the class that lives in luxury by exploiting our labour contemptuously informs us that the law of supply and demand condemns us to suffer the most hideous privation whenever our excessive industry has created a glut of all the things that satisfy human needs."[100]

The workers are unfree, being enslaved by the capitalists. It is true that they possess freedom of contract, but freedom of contract, like individual liberty, is an illusion, because the workers, being penniless, are compelled to accept whatever work is obtainable, and to be satisfied with whatever wages are offered. "The right to sell in the markets is now well established, but the chief difficulty with the majority of workers lies in the fact that they have nothing but their labour to sell, and a market is not easy to find even for that."[101]

Although co-operation has made millions of workers in Germany, France, Belgium, and other countries prosperous and independent, independence is, according to the Socialists, for some unspecified reason, unobtainable for the workers of Great Britain, and co-operation is a failure. "The chance of the great bulk of the labourers ever coming to work upon their own land and capital in [32]associations for co-operative production, has become even less hopeful than it ever was."[102] "Everywhere the workman is coming to understand that it is practically hopeless for him, either individually or co-operatively, to own the constantly growing mass of capital by the use of which he lives."[103] The advent of the great industry has not benefited but harmed him. "The supersession of the small by the great industry has given the main fruits of invention and the new power over Nature to a comparatively small proprietary class, upon whom the mass of the people are dependent for leave to earn their living."[104] "The worker is now a mere item in a vast industrial army over the organisation and direction of which he has no control. He is free, but free only to choose to which master he will sell his labour—free only to decide from which proprietor he will beg that access to the new instruments of production without which he cannot exist."[105]

As the capitalist class owns the factories, workshops, &c., the worker has become to that class a slave in the full and generally accepted meaning of the word. "The effect of private property in land and capital is in all essential respects the same as was the effect of private property in human beings. In each case slavery is the result. The form may have changed, but the substance remains."[106] "The labourer to-day is a slave, and labour has become a mark of bondage."[107] Except for a slight difference in outward form, the British wage-slaves are no better off than were the black slaves on the sugar plantations in the past. "Much as the 'free-born Briton' may dislike to hear the painful truth recited, it is a fact, [33]not to be controverted, that four-fifths of our total population are bound as completely and as miserably as ever was a black African slave to a Western planter. There is no real freedom which is not economic freedom. He is a slave who depends for his bread upon the will or the whim of a man like himself, or of a number of such masters."[108] In other words, capitalism and slave-owning are for all practical purposes synonymous words, as may be seen from the Socialist Catechism: "Q. What constitutes the chief difference between capitalism and slave-owning? A. The fact that the capitalist goes through the form of bargaining with the labourer as to the amount of the portion of the produce that shall be returned to him.—Q. What is this farce called? A. Freedom of contract.—Q. In what sense is it free? A. In this sense—that the labourer is free to take what is offered or nothing.—Q. Has he anything to fall back upon? A. He has absolutely nothing in countries where the tyranny of capitalism is untempered by any form of Socialism."[109]

To those working men who might object that it is a gross exaggeration to say that the British worker is a slave, and that he is penniless, the Socialist agitator answers: "What? You are a free man and not a slave? There are no slaves in this country? What is a slave? One who works at the bidding of another, and only by permission of another, and for the profit of that other. Does not that fit your case exactly? Do you work when you like and idle when you like? Not you! You work when the capitalist requires your labour, when your services will be useful in making a profit for him. When that is not the case you can starve in the gutter, although there may be all the necessaries of life in profusion around you. These things do not belong to you, although you and your class have made them; they are so much [34]wealth which your masters have acquired from your unpaid labour, things which you have produced, but for which you have never been paid, out of which you have been swindled by the natural operation of the system of wage-slavery of which you are the unconscious victim. From this condition of things there is no escape while the whole of the people do not own the means of production. Nothing but the abolition of the class ownership of the means of life, and the substitution of ownership of the whole people, will abolish this form of slavery."[110]

The foregoing grievance is absurd. If regular work for a regular wage, agreed upon by contract, is slavery, then all salaried men from the Prime Minister and the Lord Chancellor downward are also "wage-slaves."

The Socialist agitator, after having told the working men that they are no better off than negro slaves, then asks his hearers, as a rule: "Why is it that the producers in this country are the poorest of the population? Why is it that those who do not produce are the richest?"[111] The manner in which this question is put suggests the reply. Indeed, all Socialists agree in holding the rich responsible for the poverty of the poor, as the following utterances will show: "Socialism contends that the poverty of the poor is caused by robbery on the part of the rich. The mansion explains the hovel. Belgravia has its counterpart in Shoreditch. The factory, the foundry, the ship-building yard account for the shooting lodge, the yacht, and the tours in foreign lands. The long day's toil of one class renders possible the life-long play of the other."[112] "If you have no unemployed at the top of the social ladder you will have none at the bottom."[113]

[35]"The riches of the rich class are the cause of the poverty of the masses."[114] "You make the automobile, he rides in it. If it were not for you, he would walk; and if it were not for him, you would ride."[115] "Colossal poverty is the foundation of colossal wealth; he who would eliminate the poverty of the masses assails the wealth of the few."[116]

The foregoing arguments, or rather assertions, may sound very convincing and may be exceedingly useful for propaganda purposes, but they are disproved by facts. If the existence of the rich were the cause of the poverty of the masses, the workers in countries which possess few rich capitalists, such as Ireland, Spain, Italy, Servia, and Bulgaria, should be exceedingly well off; the workers in the countries where the richest millionaires live, such as the United States, should be the poorest. In reality, the American workmen are the most prosperous, whilst the workers in Ireland and other millionaire-less countries are the poorest. Rich men are not the consumers, but merely the trustees and managers, of the national wealth which is invested chiefly in reproductive undertakings—mills, railways, mines, &c.—which supply comforts and conveniences to all.

The capitalists, the employers, British Socialists say, have become rich by defrauding the worker of his wages. The worker must starve so that a few rich people may live in luxury, and things will become better for the worker only when there are no more rich men. "The gains of the capitalist are simply the losses of labour! The partly or wholly unearned incomes of the rich consist of the unpaid, withheld wages of the industrious poor."[117] "Only by living off another man's labour and [36]denying another man the fruits of his toil can riches be acquired. Riches are directly responsible for poverty, and the art of being rich is the art of keeping one's neighbour poor. When there are no rich there will be no poor. To the wealth of the few, acquired at the expense of the many, and not to drink or want of thrift, are all the evils of our social life to be ascribed."[118] "Production is carried on to-day purely in the interest and for the profit of the class which owns the instruments of production."[119]

The working men are, according to the Socialist agitators, "excluded" from property by the capitalist class which owns all the land, factories, machinery, &c. The capitalist class has thus reserved for itself a monopoly of all the instruments of production. Consequently, "the only means by which the excluded class can live is by working for the capitalist class—by getting some one or [37]other of the capitalist class to allow them access to the tools and materials in his possession, and pay them wages in return for their labour."[122] However, the capitalists do not grant to the workers access to the instruments of production free of charge. They exact a toll from them, and employ them only if, by so doing, they can secure a profit for themselves. In the fact that an employer will engage workmen only if he can make a profit by their labour, the Socialists see a cruel injustice. "Your capitalist class draw upon this excluded horde of landless, toolless, foodless lack-alls, and do actually find work for as many as they can employ at a profit to themselves. This excluded class have no rights—not even the elementary right to exist. What God meant by creating them when He knew, or might have known, that everything belonged to the capitalists, nobody can understand."[123] "The whole of our industrial system is founded on a principle existing nowhere else in Nature, the principle of production and distribution for profit. If no employer can make a profit out of the worker's labour he is cast into the unemployed army."[124] "Seven out of every eight persons in your community, 37,500,000 of the men, and women, and children who form your nation, can lay no claim to any right to exist—exist only on sufferance. If one or other of the irresponsible persons who own the country can be induced to allow them to earn their bread, well and good; if not, they must die. At the present moment there are 700,000 persons shut out in this manner from any chance of obtaining food to eat. You call it being 'out of work,' and can see the spectral army, 700,000 strong, hungry and in want. They are not kept idle and hungry because there is no 'work.' The earth is there with all its boundless store that their 'work' would turn into wealth if they could but get at it. They [38]are kept idle because those who own the country cannot find them employment at a profit to themselves, because the blind, fatuous insanity of your 'system of trade' makes no provision even for keeping its slaves in work."[125]

According to the Socialists, the employer of labour has no right to work at a profit, and the capitalist has no right to demand rent or interest. "The great central truth of Socialistic economy, ever to be kept in mind, is Adam Smith's definition of wages: 'The produce of labour is the natural recompense or wages of labour.' From this 'natural recompense' rent and profit are, in Socialist eyes, unnatural, illegitimate abstractions, to be recovered and added to wages as speedily as possible."[126] "Profit is the result of unpaid labour; it is the produce of the working man, for which the latter receives no equivalent. If he received his proper and just share, if the capitalist could not deprive him of this, then the capitalist could make no profit."[127]

Not only are "rent" and "profit" illegitimate abstractions, but they are downright theft. Every landowner, every banker, every manufacturer, every shopkeeper is a thief. All business for profit is swindling. "Land-rent and capital-rent are thefts from the produce of labour."[128] "The manufacturer aims primarily at producing, by means of the labour he has stolen from others, not goods, but profits."[129] "What is successful business but cheating? What is the whole basis of capitalist industry but the use of the means of production, not for the legitimate end of producing wealth for use, but for the purpose of making profit for the few [39]by despoiling, sweating, pillaging, and murdering the many?"[130]

Even the more moderate Socialists complain that work is carried on by the employers only "at a profit to themselves," and they wish to abolish this state of affairs, which, they argue, is demoralising to the working men, and is the cause of low wages and unemployment. "The workman is called into the workshop when capital can profitably employ him, and turned adrift again the moment capital finds it can no longer turn his services to profitable account. He is not consulted as to when he shall be employed or when cast adrift. His necessities and those of his dependents are no concern of anyone save himself. He has no right to employment, no one is under obligation to find him work, nor is he free to work for himself, since he has neither the use of land nor the command of the necessary capital."[131] "So long as industry is carried on for profit instead of for use, for gain instead of for need, so long must the evils of low wages and no wages go on."[132]

The grievance that the manufacturers manufacture "not for use but for profit" is ridiculous. The manufacturers manufacture things which the public will buy and use. There is consequently no distinction between manufacturing for use and manufacturing for profit, except this, that no manufacturer will give his time and trouble, and run considerable risks, without adequate compensation. The complaint must therefore be limited to the fact that the employer of labour makes a profit. The question now arises: "What does the manufacturer do with his earnings?" In the vast majority of cases he will use by far the larger part of his profits for renewing machinery and enlarging his works, and thus increase the [40]national capital and the national power of production, spending privately only a director's salary which he would also receive as a director-employee of the Socialist commonwealth. "The employer who works without a profit breaks himself,"[133] and in breaking himself he breaks up the factory. Universal production regardless of profit would lead to universal bankruptcy, whilst the curtailing of profits may lead to a proportionate curtailment in the expansion of industry and in the production of articles for use, and to general poverty. It has the same effect whether the workers destroy the capitalist's capital or whether they break the machinery and devastate the corn-fields.

The complaints of the Socialists as to the way in which the workers are exploited by the capitalist class are founded not only on arguments such as those given in the foregoing but on figures as well, and these are exceedingly curious and interesting. Under titles such as "How the Worker is Robbed,"[134] statements are made every day, and by all Socialists, which are to prove that the national income is inequitably divided between capitalists and workers. These statements are calculated to make every workman's blood boil, and they seem to confirm the contention of the Socialists that the capitalists inhumanely plunder the working masses. However, these figures are so palpably false and so grossly misleading that attention cannot sufficiently strongly be drawn to the deception which is constantly being practised upon the workers. I hope, therefore, that my readers will patiently and carefully consider the following.

The figures relating to the yearly income of the "capitalist class" and the "working class" which are given in innumerable Socialistic writings, and which are brought forward at almost every Socialist meeting and [41]lecture, are usually taken from a pamphlet entitled "Facts for Socialists from the Political Economists and Statisticians," published by the Fabian Society. The copy lying before me bears the notice, "Tenth Edition (Revised), 111th thousand, 1906." That pamphlet furnishes the statistical basis of fact to the Socialist agitation. Its effect may be measured by its enormous circulation. It contains a vast number of quotations from Blue-books, political economists, and statisticians; and a certain show of learning, of thoroughness, and of conscientiousness gives it at first sight the appearance of being a reliable and honest production. However, appearances are proverbially deceptive.

According to "Facts for Socialists," the whole national income amounts to 1,800,000,000l. per year (page 3), and is derived from the following sources:

"I.—Rent

"The total profits from the ownership of lands, houses, tithes, &c., the rents of mines, quarries, ironworks, gasworks, waterworks, canals, fishings, shootings, markets, tolls, &c., must amount to at least 290,000,000l.[135]

"II.—Interest on Capital

"The profits of public companies, foreign investments, railways, &c., assessed to income tax in the United Kingdom, the interest payable from British public funds and from Indian, Colonial, and Foreign Governments' funds, and the interest on capital employed in private undertakings of manufacture or trade cannot be less than 360,000,000l. Adding hereto the rent (290,000,000l.), we have a total of 650,000,000l. for rent and interest together. This represents the proportion [42]of the nation's income claimed from the workers, not in return for any service rendered to the community, but merely as the payment for permission to use the land and the already accumulated capital of the country.[136]

"III.—Profits and Salaries

"The numbers and total income of this large class cannot be exactly ascertained. It includes workers of all grades, from the exceptionally skilled artisan to the Prime Minister, and from the city clerk to the President of the Royal Academy. It is convenient for statistical purposes to include in it all those who do not belong to the 'manual labour class.' If we take the 'rent of ability' to have increased in the same proportion as the assessments to income tax, this prosperous body may be estimated to receive for its work as profits and salaries about 460,000,000l. annually.[137]"

Adding up the income from "Rent," "Interest and Capital," and "Profits and Salaries," the pamphlet continues:

"The Classes

"The total drawn by the legal disposers of what are sometimes called the 'three rents' of land, capital, and ability amounts at present to about 1,110,000,000l. yearly, or just under two-thirds of the total produce.

"And the Masses

"Allowing for the increase since these estimates were made, we may safely say that the manual labour class receives for all its millions of workers only some 690,000,000l."[138]

[43]In a short table the distribution of the national income is then given as follows:

At first sight it seems outrageous that "the income of the legal proprietors of the three natural monopolies of land, capital, and ability" should come to 1,110,000,000l. per annum, and the income of the manual labour class only to 690,000,000l. per annum, about one-third of the whole, especially as we learn on page 4 of the pamphlet that the "idle rich" are only a small fraction of the community. This statement would prove the assertion that the idle rich are causing the poverty of the poor to be correct if it were honest and fair, but it is neither the one nor the other.

In the first place the foregoing statement divides the nation into two classes "the masses" and "the classes": manual labourers and "the legal proprietors of the three natural monopolies." As the pamphlet is addressed to the uncritical body of general readers, and especially to working men, these will naturally divide, owing to the artful wording of the phrase, the national income between manual labourers and capitalist monopolists. According to this pamphlet everyone who is not a labourer is a capitalist monopolist. Therefore the capitalist monopolist class includes all lawyers and [44]doctors, all parsons and clerks, all officers and salaried officials. Every business man, every farmer, every fisherman, every greengrocer, every baker, every butcher, every sailor, every cobbler, every chimney-sweep, every clerk, being not a wage-earning labourer, is "one of the legal proprietors of the three natural monopolies," or in plainer language, a monopolist. At least, the income of this very large class has barefacedly been credited to the capitalist class, whilst its members have been utilised (on page 4 of the pamphlet) to swell the ranks of the workers. This is dishonesty number one.

The income of the exceptionally skilled artisans, who also form a very large class, is credited on page 7 to the "classes" under the heading "profits and salaries." They also are included among the "monopolists," although their number has likewise been utilised (on page 4) to swell the number of the workers. This is dishonesty number two.

Let us now look at the result of the dishonest Fabian juggling with figures by comparing the statement regarding the national income contained in the Fabian pamphlet with a recent statement of Mr. Chiozza Money, M.P., who is a Socialist, and who divides the national income as follows:

[45]From the foregoing statement it appears that the rich draw not two-thirds, but only one-third, of the national income, and this fact should be carefully borne in mind in view of the contents of the following pages.

The pamphlet states on page 6 that 650,000,000l. per annum are paid in the shape of rent and interest, "not in return for any service rendered to the community, but merely as the payment for permission to use the land and the already accumulated capital of the country." The national capital is invested chiefly in perishable objects such as houses, factories, railways, steamships, mines, &c., which depreciate unless kept in proper repair. There is wear and tear in capital as in everything else. Capital is lost and destroyed every day. Lastly, the national capital is growing, and must continue growing, in accordance with the growing capital requirements of the time and the growing number of its inhabitants, or the country will decay. New houses, new factories, new railways, new steamships must be built and new mines be opened to increase the comfort of all. From 200,000,000l. to 300,000,000l. are thus reinvested every year in Great Britain, and only by this constant process of reinvestment is it possible to maintain and increase the productive power of the country for the benefit of all. The 200,000,000l. to 300,000,000l. which are yearly reinvested in reproductive undertakings are found by the capitalists, the trustees, directors and managers, not the consumers, of the national industry and of the national wealth. This sum comes out of their earnings, which thus benefit not only the capitalists but the whole nation. Much irrelevant statistical matter is given in the pamphlet, but this large item is left out. That is dishonesty number three.

On page 6 the profits of public companies are treated as "Interest on capital," and interest on capital is disparagingly called "unearned income" on page 7. Most [46]British industries are carried on by limited companies, and limited companies are as a rule formed in this way, that the partners in the former private enterprise become directors. As directors they receive a purely nominal salary. They work as much as they did whilst the business was a private concern, and their income depends on their usually very large holding of shares. The large director-shareholders, and their number is very great, earn their dividends by hard work. Nevertheless their whole income is included in the item "interest on capital," and called "unearned income." This is dishonesty number four.

On page 7 the property of the "manual labour class," or the poor, in land and capital is given as follows:—

In reality the property of the "manual labour class" in land and capital amounts not to 348,804,106l., but to at least 1,000,000,000l.[142] This is dishonesty number five.

The imports of Great Britain are larger than the exports by about 150,000,000l. The larger part of the money paid for these imports goes in wages paid to [47]foreigners, and is paid away by the British capitalist class out of their earnings. British wage-earners surely cannot expect to be paid wages in respect of articles made abroad. However, no allowance for this large item has been made in comparing the appropriation of the national income between capital and labour. This is dishonesty number six.

Between one hundred and two hundred million pounds of the national income is derived from foreign investments. The income derived from foreign investments should in fairness either be left out of the account or the income of foreign labour, received in respect of these investments, be added to the British labour income. In comparing the income of capital and labour, the pamphlet takes note of the earnings of British capital on all five continents and on the sea, and compares with it only the income of British labour—although foreign, not British labour, produces the foreign income of British capital.

Giving as authority an ancient Board of Trade Return, and wishing to magnify the difference in the earnings of the idle rich and the industrious poor, the average yearly income of "those of the manual labour class who are best off" is given at 48l. per adult. This means 18s. per week. In view of the fact that most British workers earn between 1l. and 2l. per week, that in many Trade-Unions the average wage is about 35s. per week, the figures given are palpably wrong unless the female workers are included. Whether this is the case or no is not stated, but even if the wages of both sexes should be joined together they appear to be very considerably understated. This is dishonesty number seven.

There are many more unfair, misleading, and dishonest statements in this pamphlet which it would lead too far to enumerate.

Most of the important pamphlets issued by the Fabian Society are signed by their authors. The fact that the [48]most effective, "Facts for Socialists," is unsigned seems to indicate that the author—apparently a well-known leader of the Fabians—had some sense of shame, and it is to be hoped that the Fabian Society will immediately, and publicly, repudiate this dishonest pamphlet.

The statements contained in the pamphlet "Facts for Socialists," may be misleading and utterly dishonest, but they are very useful for propaganda purposes. Nothing is more likely to inflame the masses than to be told that the "idle rich" take more than two-thirds of the national income. The practical effect of this pamphlet may be seen in utterances such as the following: "It has been estimated that in our country of the wealth produced, one-third is enjoyed by those who earn it and two-thirds by those who have not laboured for it. To put it in other words, of every three pounds earned by labour, one pound goes to him who earned it and two pounds to others who have done nothing towards its production."[143] "For two-thirds of his time the worker is a slave, labouring not for himself but for others."[144] "On the average at the present time the workers produce nearly four times as much as they consume."[145] "Nearly two-thirds of the wealth produced is retained by an eighth of the population."[146] "The great mass of the people, the weekly wage-earners, four out of five of the whole population, toil perpetually for less than a third of the aggregate product of labour, at an annual wage averaging at most 40l. per adult, and are hurried into unnecessarily early graves by the severity of their lives."[147] "Out of the wealth which his labour creates, the worker receives but one-third. He is paid one-third the value of his labour, and when he [49]seeks to lay it out he is robbed of one-half its purchasing power, and all this is done by a Christian people."[148] "Q. How does the capitalist act? A. He extorts from those labourers who are excluded from the land a share of all that they produce, under threat of withholding from them the implements of production and thus refusing to let them work at all.—Q. On what terms does the capitalist allow the labourers to work? A. The capitalist agrees to return to them as wages about a quarter of what they have produced by their work, keeping the remaining three-quarters for himself and his class.—Q. What is this system called? A. The capitalist system."[149] "By analysing the returns of the income-tax, various economists show that the value received by the working class and the superintendents of labour amount to a third or less of the wealth produced. The income-tax returns, however, are not a very reliable test of the degree of exploitation, though, of course, they afford us valuable and incontestable evidence that the worker does not receive more than a third of what he produces. One to four, or one to five, in my opinion, expresses more accurately the rate of exploitation."[150]

I am not prepared to give an estimate how the national income is distributed between hand workers, brain workers, and men who live on their income without doing any useful work, because such an estimate could be arrived at only by guesswork. However, it is quite clear that it is untrue that the wage-earners receive only one-third, one-fourth, or one-fifth of the wages which they ought to receive, as is constantly stated.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER IVToC

THE FUNDAMENTAL DOCTRINES OF SOCIALISM

In describing the doctrines of Socialism I do not mean to state in detail the whole of the Socialistic theories. Such a statement would fill a volume, it would be excessively tedious to most readers, and it is for all practical purposes quite unnecessary. A statement of the leading doctrines on which the activity of the Socialists is based—the doctrines which are constantly asserted and which are the fundamental dogmas of the Socialist faith—will enable us to obtain a clear view of the foundations upon which the theoretic fabric of Socialism is built, and to judge whether that foundation is scientific and sound, or unscientific and unsound.

The basic doctrine of Socialism, upon which the great edifice of Socialistic theory has been reared, may be summed up in the phrase

"Labour is the only Source of Wealth"

Therefore we read in the celebrated pamphlet "Facts for Socialists," of which some important extracts were given in the preceding chapter: "Commodities are produced solely by the 'efforts and sacrifices' (Cairns), whether of muscle or of brain, of the working portion of the community, employed upon the gifts of Nature. Adam Smith 'showed that labour is the only source of wealth.... It is to labour, therefore, and to labour only, that man owes everything possessed of exchangeable [51]value (McCulloch's 'Principles of Political Economy,' Part II., section 1). 'No wealth whatever can be produced without labour' (Professor Henry Fawcett (Cambridge), 'Manual of Political Economy,' p. 13),"[151]

This statement is scarcely honest, for it quotes opinions of Adam Smith and others which are erroneous, as will be seen in the following, and which have been generally abandoned. This statement may impose upon the simple by its show of learning, but it is somewhat vague, for it only suggests, but does not distinctly assert, that manual labour is the only source of wealth. However, in most—one might say in nearly all—Socialist books, pamphlets, and declarations of policy we find the basic doctrine of Socialism asserted in a form which leaves no doubt that according to the Socialist theories the manual labour of the labourer is the only source of wealth.

The founder of modern Socialism declared, "Labour is the only source of wealth,"[152] and his disciples—at least his British disciples—support that declaration. "All wealth is due to labour; therefore, to the labourers all wealth is due."[153] "Labour applied to natural objects is the source of all wealth."[154] The Socialist Party of Great Britain declares: "Wealth is natural material converted by labour-power to man's use, and as such is consequently produced by the working class alone."[155] The Independent Labour party asserts: "No man or class of men made the first kind of wealth, such as land, minerals, and water. Therefore no man or class of men should be allowed to call these things their own, or to prevent others from using them (except on certain conditions), as the landowners and mine-owners do now. [52]The only class of human beings who make the second kind of wealth are the workers. Working men and women produce and prepare for us all those things which we use or consume, such as food, clothing, houses, furniture, instruments and implements, trams, railways, pictures, books, gas, drains, and many other things. They produce all the wealth obtained by toil from the land."[156]

Those who maintain that labour, or, as some Socialists assert, the labourer's labour, is the only source of wealth, look merely at the mechanical factor, but omit the force which directs and controls it. The Socialistic argument "We can run the mills without the capitalists, but they cannot run them without us"[157] is misleading. Labour is certainly an indispensable ingredient in production, but it is no more indispensable than is direction, invention, and thrift. Hence it is as absurd to assert "All wealth is due to labour" as to say "All wealth is due to invention," or "All wealth is due to thrift." As the brain is more important than the hand, at least in a highly organised state of production, so invention, organisation, management, and thrift are more important than manual labour, because invention, organisation, management, and thrift alone enable manual labour, working with modern machinery, to be highly productive. In fact, it may be asserted that wealth is created not so much by labour as by the saving of labour. A factory-owner who is dissatisfied with the profits of his factory or with its products does not get better workers, but gets a better manager or better machinery, keeping his workers. This fact proves that labour is the least important factor in modern production. The doctrine "Labour is the only source of wealth" is untenable and absurd.

[53]Another fundamental doctrine of Socialism is that of

"The Iron Law of Wages"

According to that law, "wages under competition can never be higher than that which will just support the labourer and enable him to renew his kind."[158] In the words of Lassalle, the inventor of the Iron Law of Wages, "the wages of the labourer are limited to the exact amount necessary to keep him alive."[159]

The British Socialist writers tell us: "The average price of wage-labour is the minimum wage—i.e. that quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the labourer in bare existence."[160] "The labourer cannot as a rule command more than his cost of subsistence in return for his labour. This principle, that the return to labour is determined by the cost of subsistence of the labourer, is generally known as 'The Iron Law of Wages.' But has not this law been discarded even by some Socialists? There have been attempts in some quarters to demonstrate that this law does not actually operate with the rigidity at first claimed for it; but in truth, it stands as firmly to-day as when insisted upon by Lassalle."[161] "Capitalism always keeps the wages down to the lowest standard of subsistence which the people will accept,"[162] for "the basis of wages is the cost of subsistence of the labourer. This is called the 'Iron Law of Wages.'"[163] "By the Iron Law of Wages the recompense of the workers always tends to the minimum on which they are willing to subsist. If they are content with water to drink and cabbage to eat, they may be sure that the means of buying whisky or roast beef will [54]very soon be taken from them. Messrs. Rentmonger, Interestmonger, and Profitmonger will speedily scent additional swag, and they will have it, too."[164] "The 'Iron Law of Wages' reduces the wages to as near the level of the means of subsistence as local circumstances will admit of."[165] If these arguments were correct it would follow that the workers could cause their wages to rise by drinking wine instead of whisky, and by smoking Havana cigars instead of pipe-tobacco.

This theory of wages is called the "Iron Law of Wages" because of its absolute and pitiless rigidity. For instance, the Iron Law of Wages will prevent lower prices of food benefiting the workman in any way. "If the working class is enabled to buy cheap bread, the operation of the 'Iron Law of Wages' will secure all the advantage for the capitalists, as it did in the days of the saintly Bright, when the corn laws were repealed. Capital is always the same in its effect on the working-class, whether manipulated by an individual capitalist, joint-stock enterprise, municipality, or government, and with each step in concentration the working-class gets relatively less and the master class gets richer, more corrupt, and more bestial, as recent events in Berlin and elsewhere show."[166] The "Iron Law of Wages" is irrefutable and irresistible. "Economists have come to talk about the 'Iron Law of Wages' with as much assurance as if it were an irreversible law of Nature."[167]

The Iron Law of Wages exists chiefly in the imagination of British Socialists. The general wage of British workmen living in towns ranges from, say 18s. to more than 2l. per week, and its amount does not depend on the cost of subsistence, but on the working skill and [55]various other factors. If the Iron Law of Wages were correct, wages would be almost uniform. The Iron Law of Wages can possibly apply only to one small class of workers, the lowest and least skilled labourers, provided that unemployment is so great among them that they abandon collective bargaining and underbid one another down to the level of subsistence. When workers are organised, the Iron Law of Wages does not apply. The level of wages depends, broadly speaking, on supply and demand. Wages rise when two employers run after one workman; wages fall when two workmen run after one employer. An employer who engages a workman does not ask, "How much do you eat?" but "What can you do?" and he proportions the worker's remuneration not to his appetite, but to his ability and his value as a producer. The wages paid to married men and to unmarried men are identical in the same trade. If there was an "Iron Law of Wages," the wages of married men should be about twice as large as those of unmarried men.

The Iron Law of Wages is manifestly absurd. It has therefore been officially abandoned by the German Socialists at the Halle Congress of 1890 "as being scientifically untenable."[168] "German Social Democracy no longer recognises the Iron Law of Wages."[169] The British Socialists have not abandoned it, probably not because they believe it to be scientifically correct—no one can believe that—but because it is a plausible and effective means of poisoning the minds of the people.

As regards the factors which determine wages, one of the foremost Socialist authorities says: "Thoughtful workmen in the staple trades have become convinced by their own experience, no less than by the repeated arguments of the economists, that a rising standard of wages and other conditions of employment must depend [56]ultimately on the productivity of labour, and therefore upon the most efficient and economical use of credit, capital, and capacity."[170] In other words, productivity and profit determine wages, and it is ridiculous that Socialists argue: "Over 90 per cent. of our women do not drink, back horses, smoke, attend football or cricket matches, they do not stop off their work to watch England and Australia play at cricket, and the result is they are paid less wages than men in our factories for doing the same work."[171] Does Councillor Glyde really believe that women's wages would rise as soon as they took to smoking and drinking?

The Law of Increasing Misery

According to this law the improvements in machinery, the increase of capital and increase of production do not benefit the worker. They only lead to a decline in wages and thus increase the workers' misery. "In proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases whether by prolongation of the working hours, by increase of the work exacted in a given time, or by increased speed of the machinery, &c."[172] "The faster productive capital increases, the more does the division of labour and the employment of machinery extend. The more the division of labour and the employment of machinery extend, so much the more does competition increase among the labourers and so much the more do their average wages dwindle. And thus the forest of arms outstretched by those who are entreating for work becomes ever denser and the arms themselves grow ever leaner."[173] "The more the worker labours the less reward he receives for it; [57]and that for this simple reason, that he competes against his fellow-workmen and thus compels them to compete against him and to offer their labour on as wretched conditions as he does, and that he thus, in the last result, competes against himself as a member of the working-class."[174] "The worker in the factory gets, as a worker, absolutely no advantage from the machinery which causes the product of his labour to be multiplied a hundredfold."[175] "John Stuart Mill, it will be remembered, questioned whether mechanical invention had lightened the labours of a single human being."[176] "With increasing powers of production, the worker's share, and therefore his purchasing power, grows less."[177] "Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers."[178] "The iron law of competition means, and must mean, continued degradation for the workers, even though their physical condition in youth may be improved."[179] "The worker in the factory is now seen to work no shorter hours or gain no higher wages merely because the product of his labour is multiplied a hundredfold by machinery which he does not own. 'The remuneration of labour as such,' wrote Cairnes in 1874, 'skilled or unskilled, can never rise much above its present level.'"[180]

The celebrated "Doctrine of Increasing Misery" stands in diametrical opposition to those facts with which nowadays every child is acquainted. During the time when our Socialists have been preaching the "Doctrine of Increasing Misery" working hours have been very greatly diminished and wages have not been reduced, but have risen by about 100 per cent. During the same time working hours in Germany have also been [58]reduced and wages have risen up to 400 per cent.[181] The German Socialists have been honest enough to abandon the Doctrine of Increasing Misery under the guidance of Bernstein; the French have dropped it under the guidance of Sorel; the Dutch have seen its absurdity, guided by Vandervelde, their foremost leader. The British Socialists, on the other hand, have not abandoned it, though they must see its absurdity, probably because, though palpably and ridiculously false, the Doctrine of Increasing Misery is considered to be a useful and effective part of the Socialist agitator's stock-in-trade.

The next doctrine to be considered is

The Surplus-Value Doctrine

The Socialists argue that the position of the worker cannot improve because the capitalist, possessing the monopoly of property, pockets all that the worker produces except the mere cost of his subsistence, which, owing to the "Iron Law of Wages," is given to the workman in the form of wages. "The amount of wealth which the labourer produces in the time for which he has sold his labour-force is out of all proportion to what it costs to produce and maintain his labour-force for that time. This, the difference between what he produces and his own cost of production, is surplus-value, and is taken and divided up by the capitalist into rent, interest, profit. This surplus-value, then, this profit, is so much robbery effected by taking advantage of the necessity of the proletarian—the naked propertyless labourer."[182] "All that the worker produces beyond what is absolutely necessary to keep himself and his offspring in life, this surplus beyond subsistence—this difference between the recompense of labour and its products—this unrighteous [59]subtrahend, this swag, is the booty alike of slavelord, serflord, and drudgelord, or capitalist."[183] The question now arises: "How does the capitalist secure this surplus-value of labour without paying for it? If the workman is free, why cannot he insist on receiving, not the mere exchange-value of his commodity—'labour-power'—but the full value of the labour he expends for the capitalist? The capitalist obtains this surplus-value owing to his monopoly of the means of production. The labourer cannot, as a rule, command more than his cost of subsistence in return for his labour—although his wages, like the prices of all commodities, sometimes rise above this and sometimes fall below—because, although apparently free, he is really not free. He must sell his labour-power in order to live; he has no other commodity to dispose of. Consequently he must accept the terms that the purchaser will offer, subject only to two conditions—his own cost of subsistence and the fluctuations of the market."[184] "Owing to the monopoly of the means of production in the past, industrial inventions and the transformation of surplus income into capital have mainly enriched the proprietary class, the worker being now dependent on that class for leave to earn a living."[185]

The Surplus-Value Doctrine, like the preceding doctrines, is founded rather upon imagination than upon fact. In the first place, it is absurd to speak of a "capitalist class" which, having a "monopoly of the means of production," exploits "the naked and propertyless labourer." This picture is a fancy picture. In the second place, "class" is not synonymous with "caste." The population is not divided into two rigidly defined and limited castes of capitalists and wage-earners. There is neither a monopoly of capital nor a monopoly of labour. [60]Capital is founded by thrift. Most respectable workmen are capitalists to a greater or lesser extent. Every day workmen become capitalists. It should not be forgotten that many of the wealthiest men, such as Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Krupp, the first Rothschild, Sir Thomas Lipton, Passmore Edwards, and many others, have risen from the ranks and were working men—and every day capitalists lose their money and become workmen. Workmen may become capitalists by thrift. Co-operating workmen in England, France, Germany, and other countries own vast industrial undertakings, banks, &c. In those districts where thrift and co-operation are general (France, Switzerland, Holland) the "naked and propertyless labourers" disappear, whilst in equally prosperous districts where improvidence is general, they are many. The prosperity of the working classes in France, Switzerland, Holland, and other countries disproves the assertion that the workman is condemned to everlasting poverty because of the Surplus-Value Doctrine.

Assertions in support of the "Surplus-Value Doctrine" such as "Carnegie and other millionaires have wrung their wealth literally out of the bodies of the underfed"[186] are as malicious as they are untrue. Men like Carnegie and Krupp have not "wrung their wealth out of the bodies of the underfed," but out of Nature. They have created vast industries in barren places, and the industries which they have created nourish now tens of thousands of working men. Men like Krupp and Carnegie have diminished misery, not increased it. Their capital, created by their brains with the assistance of labour out of Nature, has rather enriched labour than that labour has enriched Carnegie and Krupp. Their wealth is not dead wealth; it produces wages and articles of use. The "Surplus-Value Doctrine" is a grotesque distortion of, and an unjustified protest against, the fact that [61]manufacturers and other organisers and directors of labour will not work for nothing.

We have seen in the foregoing that, according to the fundamental Socialist doctrines, "labour is the only source of wealth." We have also seen that, according to the "Iron Law of Wages" and the "Law of Increasing Misery," the workmen are condemned to great, permanent, and constantly increasing misery. Further, we have learned that, according to the "Surplus-Value Doctrine," all the fruit of their labour, minus the cost of their bare subsistence, is taken from the workers by the capitalists. Hence it is only natural and logical that the assertion of the fundamental doctrines, namely—

has led to this fifth doctrine:

The Labourer is Entitled to the Entire Product of His Labour

This doctrine is put forth by practically all British Socialists, not only as a doctrine but also as a demand. For instance "the New School of Trades-Unionists declare themselves in open and uncompromising revolt against the established relations between capital and labour; and they expound a new political economy which says that nothing less than the full fruits of industry shall be reckoned the fair reward of the producing class. They want the whole four-fourths of their earnings, instead of the one-fourth at present doled back in wages."[187] This demand must have precedence over all other measures whatsoever, for "until you have settled [62]the material question as to how the producers of wealth are to get for themselves the full value of what they produce by their labour, it is impossible to settle anything else."[188]

According to many Socialists, Socialism would immediately abolish their grievances and give to the worker the entire produce of his labour. "At present the frugal workman only gets about one-third of his earnings. Under Socialism he would get all his earnings."[189] "Under the new order all will be productive workers, receiving an equivalent for what they produce—not merely one-half of it as now under the wage-system—in some form."[190] Under the heading "Basis of the Fabian Society," the Fabian Society publishes a statement of the fundamental principles of that Society in which we read: "If these measures" (confiscation of all private property) "be carried out, without compensation (though not without such relief to expropriated individuals as may seem fit to the community), rent and interest will be added to the reward of labour, the idle class now living on the labour of others will necessarily disappear, and practical equality of opportunity will be maintained by the spontaneous action of economic forces with much less interference with personal liberty than the present system entails."

The absurdity of the demand for "the entire product of labour," which is raised by Socialists on behalf of the labourer is clear even to the most superficial thinker. The majority of Socialists know quite well that writing off, repairs, renewals, the replacing of machinery, the enlargement of factories, &c., cannot be done gratis, that the distribution of the whole produce of labour to the workers can be effected only by neglecting and destroying the means of production.

[63]The impossibility of giving to the worker the "whole product of his labour" by abolishing the private capitalist is clearly recognised and honestly admitted by the German Socialists. Kautsky, for instance, writes: "If the income of the capitalists were added to that of the workers, the wages of each would be doubled. Unfortunately, however, the matter will not be settled so simply. If we expropriate capitalism, we must at the same time take over its social functions—among these the important one of capitalist accumulation. The capitalists do not consume all their income; a portion of it they put away for the extension of production. A proletarian régime would also have to do the same in order to extend production. It would not therefore be able to transfer, even in the event of a radical confiscation of capital, the whole of the former income to the working class. Besides, a portion of the surplus value which the capitalists now pocket, they must hand over to the State in the shape of taxes. For these reasons our Socialists are guilty of wilful deception if they tell the workers that under a Socialist régime their wages would be doubled and trebled."[191] Nevertheless, the doctrine and the demand that "the labourer is entitled to the entire product of his labour" is not abandoned by British Socialists, apparently because it is extremely useful for arousing the passions of the workers against the capitalists in accordance with Gronlund's advice,[192] and for bringing new adherents to the Socialist camp.

Only the Fabian Society, the more scientific section of the English Socialists, has mildly protested against this absurd doctrine and demand, but that protest has not been heeded. In a little-read pamphlet of that Society, the following statement may be found: "The Fabian Society steadfastly discountenances all schemes for [64]securing to any person or any group of persons the entire product of their labour. It recognises that wealth is social in its origin and must be social in its distribution" (which means in plain English, must be preserved by the thrifty few, official or non-official, for the use of the unthrifty many), "since the evolution of industry has made it impossible to distinguish the particular contribution that each person makes to the common product, or to ascertain the value."[193] Notwithstanding these emphatic statements, the Fabian Society preserves with characteristic duplicity[194] the statement in its programme that "rent and interest, will be added to the reward of labour."

Most British Socialist writers are not aware, or rather pretend not to be aware, of the necessity of preserving and increasing the national capital. In "Land, Labour, and Liberty," we read: "Whilst in 1845 the total wealth of this country was estimated at 4,000,000,000l., it is now estimated at over 12,000,000,000l. The monopolist classes, without denying themselves anything, and whilst producing comparatively nothing, have piled up an additional eight thousand millions. The superfluous handful of mere possessors remain the flowers and foliage of society; the three-quarters of the nation of indispensable producers remain the manure."[195] This writer, like most Socialists, though acknowledging the enormous growth of the national capital of Great Britain, pretends that the "monopolist classes" have not denied themselves anything. If that were true, the national capital would still amount to only 4,000,000,000l. as in 1845. Great Britain would have few factories, no new machinery, no steamships, and but a very few miles of railway. But for the self-denial, the thrift of the "superfluous handful of mere possessors," Englishmen would still live [65]in the Hungry Forties and Great Britain would be able to nourish only about 20,000,000 people as she did in 1845. National capital and the comforts and conveniences which it supplies to all are at least as much the result of thrift, inventiveness, enterprise, and wise direction as of manual labour.

The foregoing shows that, to say the least, the grievances of the Socialists are greatly—one might almost say grotesquely—exaggerated, and that they are largely founded on a perversion of facts; a perversion which can be easily explained by the desire of the Socialist leaders to arouse the blind passions of the discontented wage-earners in accordance with Gronlund's advice, quoted on page 10.

The next doctrine which should be considered may be summed up in the words:

"The Existing Misery can be Abolished, not by Increasing Production,
but by Altering the Distribution of the Wealth Produced"

"The Socialist emphatically denies the assertion that the poor must always be with us. The productive capacity of society is now so great that none need want, and all are able to earn their livelihood, and more, except where they are prevented from doing so by sickness, infirmity, or by the existence of laws and customs which the individual cannot himself, acting alone, remove."[196] "There is a demand for the labour of every man under any well-ordered social system. If there is a waste of men now, it is the fault of the wage system."[197] "Sufficient wealth is produced in this country to-day which would, under a well-ordered state of society, enable every man, woman, and child to have a sufficiency [66]of all things essential to a healthy human life. To-day the people produce this wealth, and, after they have produced it, quite two-thirds of it is taken from them by a very small section of the people. Consequently we have a very few rich, and many that are poor."[198] "We may claim to have solved the problem of how to produce enough, and the question which confronts us is how to bring distribution into line with the productive capacity of our people."[199] "The old argument that there is not enough work to do cannot be seriously listened to by anyone who has walked through a London or Manchester slum. There is work in the world for all, just as there is wealth in the world for all, and every man has a right to work, just as he has a right to wealth."[200] "The chief problem is not the production of more wealth, but its equitable distribution."[201]

The increase of production and therefore of reproductive capital in the form of machinery, mines, railways, ships, &c., in which most of the "Surplus-Value" is invested, is explained to be a matter of secondary consideration and importance, and it is stated that the world suffers rather from over-production than from under-production. "The tendency of the conditions of employment under present circumstances, under the capitalist system, always is for production to outstrip consumption."[202] "Our power to produce has always, since the beginnings of capitalism, shown a tendency to grow more rapidly than our power to consume."[203] "Then because there is a plethora of goods and a dearth of purchasers, the workshops are closed and Hunger lashes the working population with his thousand-thonged whip. The workers, stupefied by the dogma of work, do not [67]understand that the cause of their present misery is the overwork that they have inflicted on themselves during the time of sham prosperity."[204] "For some insane reason the capitalist has thought of nothing but production."[205] "If, by a fiat from heaven, the wealth of the world were doubled to-morrow and the present system of capitalistic monopoly and commercial competition were allowed to continue, the social misery would, in a very short time, reappear in a form even still more accentuated, were that possible. Individualism, commercialism, capitalism—call it what we may—has demonstrably produced the evil."[206]

The Existing Capitalist System is Responsible for Poverty, Want, and Unemployment

Unemployment is largely caused by commercial crises, commercial crises are caused by over-production, over-production is caused by the fact that the national industries are divided and the industrial output is regulated not by the nation in accordance with the national demand but by irresponsible private individuals whose aim is profit, not the fulfilment of a national demand. "The causes of commercial depression lie in the non-consumption of the incomes of our millionaires."[207] Another Socialist writer asserts: "Our era is cursed with crises occurring far more frequently than plagues and causing as much misery. Economists say that these crises are caused by over-production. Private enterprise compels every producer to produce for himself, to sell for himself, to keep all his transactions to himself, without regard to anybody else in the wide world. Merchants have got no measure at hand by which they can, even approximately, either [68]estimate the effective demand of their customers or ascertain the producing capacity of their rivals. Production by all these manufacturers is, and must necessarily be, absolutely planless. This planless production must end in the market being overstocked with commodities of one kind or another; that is, that it must end in 'over-production.' In the trade which has been thus overdone, prices fall and wages come down; or a great manufacturer fails and a smaller or greater number of workmen are discharged. Crises are therefore the direct result of private enterprise."[208] "Why are men—men that is who are able and willing, nay, eager and anxious, to work—unemployed? Because, it is said, there is nothing for them to do. Nothing for them to do? Is all the necessary work of the world, then, already finished, so that there is nothing more remaining for anyone to do? No; it is not because all the necessary and useful work is done that men are unemployed, it is because all the means of production—all the machines, tools, and implements of labour and all the raw material—are owned by a class, and may only be used by permission of that class, and when that class can make a profit out of their use."[209] "It is indisputable that modern poverty is artificial. It is neither the result of divine anger nor the niggardliness of Nature. It is the product of the private ownership of land and capital by which men are prevented from earning their living unless the proprietary class can make profit from their labour. The inevitable result of this system is that in all industries and at all times there are more men seeking employment than there is employment for.[210]" "Your system of private ownership, in conferring the possession and control of the nation's storehouse of wealth and of the instruments by which all further wealth [69]must be obtained from it, upon your capitalist class, has reduced the nation at large into nothing more nor less than an elaborate machine which your capitalists use for extracting wealth from the earth for their own benefit.... It is not well that by a foolish and wicked system of government, one small class of the community should be enabled to organise its production in such a manner that the full stream of wealth is diverted into their own possession whilst the mass of the nation by whose labour it is obtained are defrauded of it, and brought into a state of subtle slavery worse both in kind and degree than could be possible under any system of direct and open slavery."[211] "Unemployment is an inevitable feature of capitalism, and is impossible of removal without at the same time abolishing the capitalist system that produces it. That is a fact known to any Socialist with the most elementary knowledge of the economics of capitalism. Unemployment is caused by the exactions of the capitalist class. The prime cause of unemployment is the robbery of the workers by which the capitalist class appropriate the whole of the wealth produced by the workers, returning to them just as much on the average as will keep them physically fit to continue working. The difference between the quantities produced and consumed by the working class (a difference continually increasing with every increase in the productivity of labour) represents a surplus which all the waste and all the luxury of its owners cannot absorb, with the result that the markets are glutted with an excess of commodities. Thus the 'over-production,' the crisis, and the slackening of production involving an increase of unemployment."[212]

Employers of labour profit directly from unemployment, and will therefore presumably do all they can to bring it about. "Employers and other well-to-do people [70]have no interest in finding work for the workless. They benefit from the unemployment of the poor."[213] The foregoing statement is as malicious as it is absurd. Employers do not desire unemployment, partly from humanitarian reasons, partly because it is a loss to them. The father of English Socialism taught: "The labourer perishes if capital does not employ him. Capital perishes if it does not exploit labour."[214] In other words, unemployed labour means unemployed capital; besides, those business men who do not actually dismiss their workers suffer also through unemployment, because the unemployed are supported by the rates.

The doctrines that "the existing misery can be abolished, not by increased production but by altering the distribution of the wealth produced," and that the "capitalist system is responsible for want, poverty, and unemployment," are manifestly unsound. A larger consumption of food, clothing, &c., can be effected only by a larger production. Gluts and crises, with consequent unemployment, occur, not through general over-production, which would benefit all, but by ill-balanced production, as the following example will prove: Imagine an island off the African coast on which there are two villages, the inhabitants of which require only two commodities, loin-cloths and mealies. One village manufactures loin-cloths, the other raises mealies, and these are exchanged against each other. These villages fulfil the Socialistic ideal. There are no capitalists and no middlemen, and production is only "for use," not "for profit." Balanced over-production will result in this, that every native will have a superabundance of loin-cloths and food. But supposing that the agriculturists go in for loin-cloth making, finding that occupation more congenial, and that they abandon much agriculture; or supposing [71]that inclement weather, or a plague of grasshoppers, should seriously curtail the harvest, then there will soon be a glut of loin-cloths and a crisis. The cry of over-production will arise among the loin-cloth makers, but that cry will be unjustified and absurd. The more the people make the more they will have, provided production is properly balanced. The doctrine that we suffer from over-production and that the capitalist system is at fault, that altered distribution rather than increased production will abolish misery, and that Socialism can prevent want and unemployment by a scientific organisation of production, is wrong.

Socialists may, of course, argue, "In the Socialist State production would be organised, and controlled, and properly balanced and harmonised," an argument which is irrelevant with regard to the over-production doctrine, and which besides is unsound, although it may be found in most Socialistic writings. As production is world-wide, the Socialists' control of production would also have to be world-wide. It would involve not only the control of all human energy throughout the world, but also the control of the seasons, of the weather, of insect plagues, of fashions, of appetite, &c.

The foregoing proves that "men can never become richer till the produce of their labour increases. The more they produce the richer they will be, provided there be a demand for the produce of their labour. If a shoemaker makes four pairs of shoes in a day he will be twice richer than he would be if he made only two pairs in a day, provided that an increased demand is co-existing. The question, therefore, 'How can we become richer?' is reduced to this one, 'How can we increase the produce of labour and at the same time maintain an equivalent demand for that produce?'"[215] The doctrines that want and unemployment are due to over-production and to the capitalist system are wrong.

[72]We now come to the

Doctrine of the Class War

Having, by the fundamental doctrines enumerated in the foregoing, proved that all misery of the working masses is caused by the existence of a capitalist class which has enslaved the workers, the Socialists conclude that there is a natural antagonism between capital and labour; that social life is dominated by the Class War.

"The Socialists say that the present form of property-holding divides society into two great classes."[216] "Capitalist society is divided into two classes: owners of property and owners of no property."[217] "Society is to-day divided into two classes with opposing interests, one class owning the means of life, and the other nothing but their power to work. Never in the history of society was the working-class so free from all traces of property as to-day."[218] "There are in reality but two classes, those who live by labour and those who live upon those who labour, the two classes of exploiter and exploited."[219] "Society has been divided mainly into two economic classes, a relatively small class of capitalists who own tools in the form of great machines they did not make and cannot use, and a great body of many millions of workers who did make these tools and who do use them, and whose very lives depend upon them, yet who do not own them."[220]

It is usually said that society has three classes, but Socialists maintain that there are in reality only two classes. William Morris still divided society into three groups, which, however, at closer inspection will be found to form but two classes. According to Morris, "Civilised States consist of (1) the class of rich people doing no [73]work, who consume a great deal while they produce nothing. Therefore, clearly they have to be kept at the expense of those who do work, just as paupers have, and are a mere burden on the community. (2) The middle class, including the trading, manufacturing, and professional people of our society. It is their ambition and the end of their whole lives to gain, if not for themselves, yet at least for their children, the proud position of being obvious burdens on the community. Here then is another class, this time very numerous and all-powerful, which produces very little and consumes enormously, and is therefore supported, as paupers are, by the real producers. (3) The class that remains to be considered produces all that is produced and supports both itself and the other classes, though it is placed in a position of inferiority to them, real inferiority, mind you, involving a degradation both of mind and body. To sum up, then, civilised States are composed of three classes—a class which does not even pretend to work, a class which pretends to work but which produces nothing, and a class which works."[221] In other words, William Morris divided society into two classes: propertied non-producers and non-propertied toilers.

According to practically all living English Socialists, there are but two classes in society. "Modern society is divided into two classes—the possessors of property and the non-possessors: the dominant class and the subject class; the class which rules and the class which has to obey. He who possesses sufficient wealth to exercise control over the labour of others, to exploit that labour for his own profit, belongs to the one class; he who possesses nothing but the power to labour contained in his own body, and who is therefore compelled to sell that labour power in order to live, belongs to the other. It is this struggle and conflict between these two classes [74]that Socialists call the class war, a recognition of which is essential to a clear conception of what the Socialist movement involves."[222] "Society is divided into two opposite classes, one, the capitalists and their sleeping partners the landlords and loanmongers, holding in their hands the means of production, distribution, and exchange, and being therefore able to command the labour of others; the other, the working class, the wage-earners, the proletariat, possessing nothing but their labour power, and being consequently forced by necessity to work for the former."[223] "In society there is an antagonism of interests, manifesting itself as a class struggle between those who possess but do not produce, and those who produce but do not possess."[224] "The people of this unfortunate country have been aptly divided by Mr. Gladstone into the 'masses' and the 'classes'—that is to say, into those who live by their own labour and those who live on the labour of others. Among the latter tribe of non-producers are included all manner of thieves, pick-pockets, burglars, sharpers, prostitutes, Peers of Parliament, their families and menials, all, or nearly all, the 'six hundred and odd scoundrels of the House of Commons,' the twenty thousand State parsons, who every Sunday shamelessly travesty the Christian religion in the interest of the 'classes.'"[225]

The theory of dividing society into two classes, capitalists and workers, or as others put it, "exploiters and exploited," is manifestly absurd, and its absurdity has been pointed out by a few Socialists. "It is not true that there are only two great economic classes in the community. The Communist Manifesto, even in its day, admitted as much, but made no place for the fact in its theories. There is an economic antagonism between [75]landlords and capitalists as well as between capitalists and workmen."[226] Besides, most capitalists are workers, and probably the great majority of English workers are capitalists to a larger or smaller extent.

Now let us study the Socialists' description of the hostile forces which are engaged in the Class War.

According to the Socialist teaching, the property-owners as a class are useless idlers who impoverish the workers and who shamelessly spend their whole income on demoralising luxuries. "The idlers and non-workers produce no wealth and take the greater share. They live on the labour of those who work. Nothing is produced by idleness; work must be done to obtain a thimble, a pin, and even a potato for dinner. The non-workers get the greater share of the wealth, and the greater part of this share is wasted. Therefore it is not good to have any people in the land who do not work. Only those who are old or sick should be kept by the toil of the rest."[227] Taking their figures from the pamphlet "Facts for Socialists," of which details have been given on pp. 41-48, the Independent Labour party states under the heading of "Wealth Makers and Wealth Takers": "The total incomes of persons in the United Kingdom amount in round figures to 1,800,000,000l. How is this wealth distributed? 250,000 persons actually receive a total of 585,000,000l.—that is, one-thirtieth of the population receive one-third of the national income. Nearly the whole of these large incomes are unearned—i.e. they are made up of rents, interest, dividends, &c. This small class of rent and interest receivers perform no useful function. We may describe these people as social parasites, absolutely useless, yet levying toll to the extent of 6s. 8d. in every 20s. value of wealth created."[228] "At [76]present more than 600,000,000l. of the national income goes in the form of unearned rent and interest to support an idle class who spend it mainly on profitless and demoralising luxuries."[229]

The foregoing extracts make it clear that, in the eyes of Socialists, practically all citizens, manual labourers excepted, are "drones and parasites." Directors, managers, doctors, chemists, ships' captains, teachers, &c., and even workmen of exceptional ability also, rob the general body of workers of half their wages and subsist only owing to the monopoly of property-holders who control the distribution of wealth. Upon these curious premisses are based the conclusions: "The profits and salaries of the class who share in the advantages of the monopoly of the instruments of production, or are endowed by Nature with any exceptional ability of high marketable value, amount according to the best estimate that can be formed, to about 460,000,000l. annually, while out of a national income of some 1,800,000,000l. a year the workers in the manual labour class—four-fifths of the whole population—obtain in wages not more than 690,000,000l. It may be safely said that the workers from top to bottom of society pay a fine of one-half the wealth they produce to a parasitic class before providing for the maintenance of themselves and their proper dependents."[230] "It is this robbery and waste on the part of the minority which keeps the majority poor."[231] "So long as the instruments of production are in unrestrained private ownership, so long must the tribute of the workers to the drones continue, so long will the toiler's reward inevitably be reduced by their exactions."[232]

"Socialism regards the capitalist proper not as a useful captain of industry, but as a mere share-holding, [77]dividend-drawing parasite upon labour, and the Socialist party presses forward to his elimination from the field of production."[233] "The workers who have produced all this wealth only get a part—the smallest part at that—of the wealth they produce. Now we Socialists say that this wealth produced by the labour of the workers should belong to them, and not to the capitalists who produce nothing. Seeing that the interest of the worker is to get as much of this wealth, and on the other hand the capitalist wants as much of this wealth, as he can get, therefore we say that the interests of the workers and of the capitalists are not identical, but opposite."[234] "The interest of the working class can only be served even in the smallest degree by the curtailment of the power of the master class; that every material advance is useless except in so far as it helps to effect other achievements, and that the realisation of Labour politics, the well-being of the working class, can only be accomplished by its complete emancipation from capitalism."[235] In other words, the Socialist writers quoted agree in this: that the lot of the wage-earners can be improved only by taking the wealth from the rich. In order to introduce Socialism the present social order must be overturned. With this object in view they have addressed declarations of war to the owners of property.

We owe to Marx not only the Class War doctrine, but also a declaration of war to the propertied class: "The Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things. In all these movements they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time. Finally they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries. [78]The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries, unite!"[236]

Marx's disciples have issued similar declarations. For instance, in the official programme of the Social Democratic Federation we read: "The Social Democratic Federation is a militant Socialist organisation whose members, men and women, belong almost entirely to the working class. Its object is the realisation of Socialism, the emancipation of the working class from its present subjection to the capitalist class. To this end the Social Democratic Federation proclaims and preaches the Class War."[237] "There is no way in which the Class War can be avoided. You cannot have the reward of your labour and the idler have it too. There is just so much wealth produced every day. It may be more, it may be less; but there is always just so much, and the more the capitalist gets the less you will get, and vice versa. We preach the gospel of hatred, because in the circumstances it seems the only righteous thing we can preach. The talk about the 'Gospel of Love' is simply solemn rubbish. It is right to hate stealing, right to hate lying, it is right to hate meanness and uncleanness, right to hate hypocrisy, greed, and tyranny. Those who talk of the Gospel of Love with landlordism and capitalism for its objects want us to make our peace with iniquity."[238] "The Class War is inevitable under the present form of property-holding, and for it there can be neither truce, quarter, nor ending, save by the extinction of the class [79]system itself. The identity of interests between capitalism and labour is a shibboleth that can only be given any sane meaning at all in the cynical sense that the interests of the wolf and the lamb are also 'identical' when the wolf has got the lamb inside him."[239]

The doctrine of the Class War is a holy faith, the expropriation of property-owners is a divine task. "Unless we hate the system which prevents us from being what we otherwise might have been, we will not be able to strive against it with the patient, never-flagging zeal which our work, to be well done, requires. And to keep alive and undimmed this flame of hatred, divine not diabolical, we require to not only look around us, but especially to look back upon the world as it has been and to the example of those who have fought the good fight. To Socrates, to Savonarola, to John Ball, Wat the Tyler, and Jack Cade, in our land the first forerunners of Socialism; to Bruno and Vanini, to Cromwell, Milton, Hampden, and Pym, to John Eliot, Harry Vane; to Defoe, Mure, and Thomas Spence; to Ernest Jones, Bronterre O'Brien, and Robert Owen; to Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet; to Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien; to Vera Sassoulitch, Marie Spiridonova, Sophia Perovsky; to Karl Marx."[240] The company of reformers and revolutionists seems somewhat mixed.

The doctrine that the interests of employers and employees are irreconcilably opposed, not identical, is false, Socialist rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding. As soon as a calamity threatens capital—for instance, a rise in raw cotton or a cotton famine—masters and men are seen to be in the same boat and devise combined measures for meeting the difficulty. The doctrine of the Class War is opposed to common experience and to common-sense.

[80]Let us now take note of the doctrine

Private Property is Immoral and Private Wealth is a Crime

In the Class War right is, according to the Socialists, on the side of the propertyless. Not only are the owners of property objectionable in their persons, being "drones and parasites" who squander the earnings of the poor on riotous living, as we have learned in the foregoing pages, but private property as an institution is immoral in itself and ought to be abolished. No man has a right to be rich; no man can become rich honestly. Hence it follows that all rich men are robbers, thieves, and swindlers. "The poor owe no duty to the rich, unless it be the duty which an honest man owes to the thief who has robbed him. The rich have no right to any of their possessions, for there is but one right, and that is the right of the labourer to the fruits of his labour, and the rich do not labour. No man has any right to be rich. No man ever yet became rich by fair means. No man ever became rich by his own industry."[241] "No man or class of men made the first kind of wealth, such as land, minerals, and water. Therefore no man or class of men should be allowed to call these things their own."[242] As private property is immoral in itself, it is doubly immoral to lend out such property and to charge rent or interest for the use of it. Mr. G.J. Wardle, M.P., said, in a recent speech at Glasgow, that rent "was social immorality, and the State or society which allowed crimes of that kind to go on unpunished could never be a moral society. The same thing applied to interest on money. From the moral standpoint interest is unearned by the man who gets it, and it does not matter how that is cloaked over, that is the fact. Nowadays it was counted the [81]greatest virtue to lend at so much per cent. That was a socially immoral proceeding, and because it was socially immoral it ate like a canker into the heart of society. As Socialists they objected to profit."[243]

There are Socialists who preach the same doctrine of immorality and criminality of private property in more decided terms. They assert that it is criminal and immoral to make a profit as a compensation for the work of directing and taking heavy capital risks in productive business because such profits are opposed to the principle, "The labourer is entitled to the whole product of his labour" (see page 61). "A man has a 'right' to that which he has produced by the unaided exercise of his own faculties; but he has not a right to that which is not produced by his own unaided faculties; nor to the whole of that which has been produced by his faculties aided by the faculties of another man."[244] "Everyone who pockets gains without rendering an equivalent to society is a criminal. Every millionaire is a criminal. Every company-chairman with nominal duties, though his salary be but 400l., is a criminal. Everyone who lends his neighbour 5l. and exacts 5l. 5s. 0d. in return, is a criminal."[245] "When Proudhon advanced the somewhat startling proposition, 'Property is theft,' he merely stated positively what good, orthodox Adam Smith, in his 'Wealth of Nations' set forth more urbanely when he wrote, 'The produce of labour (it is clear from the context that he meant the whole produce), is the natural recompense or wages of labour.'"[246] "'Property' is theft, said Proudhon, and surely private property in the means of production is not only theft, but the means of more theft."[247]

[82]Starting from the premiss that profit is immoral, the philosopher of British Socialism logically concludes: "The cheapest way of obtaining goods is not to pay for them, and if a buyer can avoid payment for the goods he obtains, he has quite as much right to do so as the seller has to receive for them double or treble their cost price and call it profit."[248]

Private property being, according to the Socialist doctrines, immoral and criminal, it follows that

"Private Property Ought to be Abolished"

Let us take note of an utterance in support of that doctrine: "If the life of men and women were a thing apart from that of their neighbours, there would be no need for a Socialist party nor any call for social reform. But man is not an entity; he is only part of a mighty social organism. Every act of his has a bearing upon the like of his fellow. It is difficult, if not impossible, to determine the moral title to private property in anything. Private property exists entirely on sufferance. Private property therefore cannot be justly allowed when it interferes with the law of our social life or intercepts the progress of social development."[249]

Let us now consider the doctrine

"Competition should be Replaced by Co-operation"

Socialists teach: "Under Socialism you would have all the people working together for the good of all. Under non-Socialism you have all the persons working separately (and mostly against each other), each for the good of himself. So we find Socialism means co-operation and non-Socialism means competition."[250] "Socialism [83]is constructive as well as revolutionary, and Socialists propose to replace competition by co-operation."[251]

The question now arises: "On what ground do capitalists defend the principle of competition? A. On the ground that it brings into play a man's best qualities.—Q. Does it effect this? A. This is occasionally its result, but it also brings out his worst qualities by stimulating him to struggle with his fellows for the relative improvement of his own position rather than for the absolute advancement of the interests of all."[252]

"Apart altogether from its injustice, competitive capitalism, regarded as a system of serving the community, is a business bungle. What the party of the Fourth Estate objects to in the existing commercial and industrial system is, not merely the stealages which go on under the guise of rent, profit, and interest, but the enormous waste arising from lack of consolidation and co-operation in the processes of production and distribution."[253] "During the last half-century we have lost more by our 'business principle' of dividing up our national work into competing one-man and one-company speculations, and insisting on every separate speculation paying its own separate way, than by all the tariffs and blockades that have been set up against us."[254] "In our age there is, as we have seen, throughout our whole economic sphere, no social order at all. There is absolute social anarchy. Against this anarchy Socialism is a protest."[255] "There is only one remedy for both the waste and the stealages, and that is the substitution of public enterprise with organisation for private enterprise with competition."[256] "Socialism means the socialising of the means and [84]instruments of production, distribution, and exchange. For the individual capitalist it would substitute, as the director and controller of production and distribution, the community in its organised capacity. The commercial and industrial chaos and waste which are the outcome of monopolistic competition would give place to the orderliness of associated effort, and under Socialism society would for the first time in history behave like an organism."[257] Private capitalism and consequent competition are responsible not only for waste and muddle, but also for the adulteration of food and other necessaries of life. "Every man who knows anything of trade knows how general is the knavish practice of adulteration. Now all adulteration is directly due to competition. Did not Mr. John Bright once say that adulteration is only another form of competition?"[258]

There is much truth in the contention of the Socialists that co-operation is mightier, and often better, than free competition. However, that is no new discovery, and the introduction of Socialism is not needed to bring about co-operation. In Germany, Switzerland, and Denmark national and private co-operation are far more developed than in Great Britain, and waste, muddle, and stealages are rare in those countries, although none of these is ruled by a Socialist Government. Co-operation, national as well as private, is developing also in Great Britain, and it will continue to develop as its value becomes more and more understood. It is a curious fact that Socialists, though they recommend co-operation in the abstract, oppose it in the concrete for similar reasons. They fear that satisfied and prosperous co-operators will oppose Socialism.[259]

The assertion that adulteration is due to competition is not founded upon fact. Adulteration springs from [85]many causes, and would continue to flourish even under the Socialistic régime. If all cowkeepers were salaried officials of the Socialist State or municipality, they might nevertheless mix water with the milk to obtain milk for their own consumption and that of their families, and to diminish the labour of milking. Adulteration may be abolished by efficient supervision and well-devised and rigorously enforced sanitary laws.

Let us now glance at the doctrine

"The Socialist State will Arise by Natural Development, and it will
Handle Business more Efficiently than do Private Individuals"

"The State now registers, inspects, and controls nearly all the industrial functions which it has not yet absorbed. The inspection is often detailed and rigidly enforced. The State, in most of the larger industrial operations, prescribes the age of the worker, the hours of work, the amount of air, light, cubic space, heat, lavatory accommodation, holidays, and meal-times; where, when, and how wages shall be paid; how machinery, staircases, lift-holes, mines, and quarries are to be fenced and guarded; how and when the plant shall be cleaned, repaired, and worked."[260] "Step by step political power and political organisation have been used for industrial ends, until a Minister of the Crown is the largest employer of labour in the country, and at least 200,000 men, not counting the army and navy, are directly in the service of the community, without the intervention of the profit of any middleman."[261]

From the fact that the State inspects many things and carries on some business, it does not by any means follow that the State should inspect all things and could efficiently carry on all business. Questions such as "If the [86]State can build battleships and make swords, why not also trading ships and ploughshares,"[262] are ridiculous. One might as well ask, "If Messrs. Whiteley or Marshall Field can supply furniture, houses, dresses, and funerals, being universal providers, why not also battleships, armies, and colonies?" It is also not true that the State or municipal corporations have more business ability than private business men. As an example of successful business management Socialists are fond of pointing to the Post Office, and of asserting that no private company could work as efficiently and as cheaply. These statements are erroneous. The success of the British Post Office, as of every post office, is due not to ability but to monopoly, as the following example will prove. Private individuals in Germany discovered some years ago a flaw in the legislation regarding the Post Office which enabled them to compete with the Imperial Post Office, not in postal business between different towns, but in local delivery. Private post offices sprang up in many towns and began to deliver letters at the rate of two pfennigs (one farthing) each. Although the German Post Office is the most efficient Post Office in Europe, it could not compete with these private post offices, and, after lengthy competition, steps had to be taken to extend the postal monopoly to town deliveries. The British Post Office, like most public offices, is a most conservative institution. Every progress and every reform had to be forced upon it by outside agitation. Services such as money delivery at private residences, cash on delivery parcels, &c., which other countries have enjoyed during several decades, are stubbornly denied to England. Private competition would probably have furnished these conveniences long ago. In London the Messenger Boy Company competes with the Post Office in the carrying of express letters, and various private carriers compete with it in delivering parcels, and [87]in both instances the private trader supplies a better and cheaper service than the Government Post Office. A comparison of the Post Office telephone in England and the private telephone in America shows the great superiority of the latter. The slow and ultra-conservative British Post Office supplies no proof that the Government would handle production and distribution better than private enterprise. On the contrary.

British Socialists claim unanimously that their theories and demands are founded upon science. "The Socialist doctrine systematises the industrial changes. It lays down a law of capitalist evolution. It describes the natural history of society. It is not, therefore, only a popular creed for the market-place, but a scientific inquiry for the study. Like every theory in Sociology, it has a political bearing, but it can be studied as much detached from politics as is Darwinism."[263] Do the fundamental doctrines of British Socialism bear out the claims of its champions? The foregoing pages prove that the scientific basis of Socialism, or rather of British Socialism, consists of a number of doctrines which cannot stand examination and which are disproved by daily experience and by common-sense.

The question now suggests itself: "How is it that the British Socialists base their demands on pseudo-scientific doctrines of obvious absurdity?"

British Socialism has been imported from Germany. Marx, Engels, Lassalle, Rodbertus, and various other Germans are the fathers of modern scientific Socialism. "To German scholars is largely due the development of Socialism from the Utopian stage to the scientific. Universality is its distinguishing feature."[264] "Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in 1847 laid, through the 'Communist Manifesto,' the scientific foundation of modern [88]Socialism."[265] "And 'Capital,' Karl Marx's great work, has become the loadstar of modern economic science."[266] Karl Marx's "Manifesto" appeared in 1847; the first volume of his "Capital" was published in 1867. Since the appearance of the former sixty years, and since the publication of the latter forty years, have passed by. Much has changed in the world, but the Marxian doctrines have remained unchanged.

The worst about speculative doctrines is that time is apt to disprove them.

Whilst the German Socialists have thinkers in their ranks who have adapted the older Communist theories to present conditions, leaving out those theories which are palpably false, English Socialists have stood still and are satisfied to repeat those ancient doctrines which the Germans have abandoned long ago. English Socialists try to impose upon an uncritical public by parading the worn-out stage properties of the forties. Marx is to the vast majority of British Socialists still an oracle and the fountain head of all wisdom. "Marx is the Darwin of modern sociology."[267] "All over the world his brain is put on pretty much the same level as Aristotle's."[268] "Modern Socialism is based, nationally and internationally, theoretically and to a large extent practically, on the writings of Karl Marx. These writings have been expounded, and where necessary applied, extended, and amplified, to meet conditions which have developed since his death nearly a quarter of a century ago, in every civilised country. It is safe to say that no one who does not understand and accept in the main the views set forth by Marx, comprehends the real position of capitalist Society, nor, what is even more important, can [89]fully master the problems of the coming time."[269] "The Social-Democratic Federation, which is by far the oldest and still the most active Socialist organisation in this country, bases its teaching to-day, as it has always done, upon the words of Karl Marx."[270]

Most active Socialists in Great Britain think Marx and Lassalle infallible. It is true that the Fabian Society has pointed out "the necessity of maintaining as critical an attitude towards Marx and Lassalle, some of whose views must by this time be discarded as erroneous or obsolete,"[271] but that protest appears to have been left unheeded by most British Socialists. In fact, the abandonment of revolutionary Marxianism has caused the Fabians to be treated with open hostility by the other Socialist sections. The reasons for that hostility are obvious. The doctrines of Marx and Lassalle, though they are, to say the least, erroneous and obsolete, are admirably fitted to inflame the passions of the masses. Their doctrines may not be true, but they are useful to professional agitators. Independent Socialists in all countries have not disguised their opinion of Marx's "Capital," which, in the words of an English Socialist, "is not a treatise on Socialism; it is a jeremiad against the bourgeoisie, supported by such a mass of evidence and such a relentless Jewish genius for denunciation as had never been brought to bear before."[272]

British Socialism is neither scientific nor sincere. Its leaders know that the Iron Law of Wages (see p. 53), the Law of Increasing Misery (see p. 56), and other doctrines, which are exceedingly useful to the agitator who wishes to poison the mind of the masses, have been thrown into the lumber room in Germany and [90]most other countries (see the writings of Bernstein, Jaurès, and others), but they do not abandon them. Apparently it is their policy rather to create strife and confusion than to alleviate existing misery. That attitude must have covered English Socialists with ignominy in the eyes of foreign Socialists. The very humiliating treatment which the English Socialists received at the International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart of 1907 from their Continental comrades suggests that the curious attitude and the not very estimable tactics of British Socialists have not found the approval of their Continental colleagues.

The doctrines of the English Socialists with regard to property are identical with those of most Anarchists (see Eltzbacher, "Der Anarchismus"). For instance, Proudhon taught: "We rob (1) by murder on the highway; (2) alone, or in a band; (3) by breaking into buildings, or scaling walls; (4) by abstraction; (5) by fraudulent bankruptcy; (6) by forgery of the handwriting of public officials, or private individuals; (7) by manufacture of counterfeit money; (8) by cheating; (9) by swindling; (10) by abuse of trust; (11) by games and lotteries; (12) by usury; (13) by farm rent, house rent, and leases of all kinds; (14) by commerce, when the profit of the merchant exceeds his legitimate salary; (15) by making profit on our product, by accepting sinecures, and by exacting exorbitant wages."[273] "What is property? It is robbery."[274] "Property, after having robbed the labourer by usury, murders him slowly by starvation."[275] Practically the identical doctrines are propounded by British Socialists. Further instances of the resemblance between Socialism and Anarchism will be found in Chapter XXX, "Socialism and Anarchism."

Society is at present based upon individualism. In [91]their anxiety to prove the failure of modern civilisation British Socialists deny that the world has progressed under individualism. "Not by individual selfishness, or national selfishness, has the progress of the human race been advanced."[276] And they boldly declare that all history, having been written by men of the dominant class, is a deception. "Are we then to understand that the whole of history, so far, has been written from the point of view of the dominant class of every age? Most assuredly so; and this applies to well-nigh the whole of the sources of past history."[277]

The foregoing should suffice to make it clear that the Socialist agitation is not based on irrefutable scientific doctrines, as Socialists pretend, but on deception. It may be said that no agitation is free from deception, that the end justifies the means, that Socialism means for the best. We have been told "Socialism is a religion of humanity. Socialism is the only hope of the race. Socialism is the remedy—the only remedy—which Lord Salisbury could not find."[278] We must look into the practical proposals of British Socialism in order to be able to judge its character.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER VToC

THE AIMS AND POLICY OF THE SOCIALISTS

Those people who formerly called themselves Communists now call themselves Socialists. Marx and Engels wrote in their celebrated "Manifesto": "The theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property."[279] The policy of modern British Socialism may be summed up in the identical words. Indeed, we are told by one of its most eager champions that "The programme of Socialism consists essentially of one demand—that the land and other instruments of production shall be the common property of the people, and shall be used and governed by the people for the people."[280] "We suggest that the nation should own all the ships, all the railways, all the factories, all the buildings, all the land, and all the requisites of national life and defence."[281]

According to the Socialist doctrines which have been given in Chapter IV, private property is the enemy of the workers. Therefore they quite logically demand that all private property must be abolished. "The problem has to be faced. Either we must submit for ever to hand over at least one-third of our annual product to those who do us the favour to own our country without the obligation of rendering any service to the community, and to see this tribute augment with every advance in our industry and numbers, or else we [93]must take steps, as considerately as may be possible, to put an end to this state of things."[282] "The modern form of private property is simply a legal claim to take a share of the produce of the national industry year by year without working for it. Socialism involves discontinuance of the payment of these incomes and addition of the wealth so saved to incomes derived from labour. The economic problem of Socialism is thus solved."[283]

A general division of the existing private property among all the people is not intended, because it is considered to be impracticable. "Socialism does not consist in violently seizing upon the property of the rich and sharing it out amongst the poor."[284] "Plans for a national 'dividing up' are not Socialism. They are nonsense. 'Dividing up' means individual ownership. Socialism means collective ownership."[285] "It is obvious that, in the present stage of economic development, individual ownership is impossible. All the great means of production are collectively owned now. Individual liberty based upon individual property is therefore out of the question, and the emancipation of the working class can only be achieved in social freedom, based upon social property, through the transformation of privately owned collective property into publicly owned collective property."[286]

Starting from these premisses, the Socialists arrive at the demand that "all the means of production and distribution, all the machinery, all the buildings, everything that is necessary to provide the fundamental necessaries of life, must be common property."[287] "We want all the instruments for the purposes of trade to be the property of the State. With that will have come at the same [94]time the abolition of power permitting any individual to exact rent or interest for the loan of land or of the implements of production. The abolition of all private property will mean the extinction of the parasite."[288] "The overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, by and in the interest of the whole community: That is Socialism."[289] "The Fabian Society aims at the reorganisation of society by the emancipation of land and industrial capital from individual and class ownership, and the vesting of them in the community for the general benefit. The Society accordingly works for the extinction of private property in land, and of the consequent individual appropriation, in the form of rent, of the price paid for permission to use the earth, as well as for the advantages of superior soils and sites. The Society, further, works for the transfer to the community of the administration of such industrial capital as can conveniently be managed socially."[290] "Here in plain words is the principle, or root idea, on which all Socialists agree—that the country and everything in the country shall belong to the whole people (the nation), and shall be used by the people and for the people. That principle, the root idea of Socialism, means two things: (1) That the land, and all the machines, tools, and buildings used in making needful things, together with all the canals, rivers, roads, railways, ships, and trains used in moving, sharing (distributing) needful things, and all the shops, markets, scales, weights, and money used in selling or dividing needful things, shall be the property of (belong to) the whole people (the nation). (2) That the land, tools, [95]machines, trains, rivers, shops, scales, money, and all the other things belonging to the people, shall be worked, managed, divided, and used by the whole people, in such way as the greater number of the whole people shall deem best."[291]

A perusal of the party programmes and other Socialist documents contained in the Appendix will show that the abolition of all private property, and its transference to the State, is the aim of all the Socialist organisations and parties, and no further extracts need be given in order to prove the unanimity of the Socialists on this point.

The question now arises: How is this transference of all private property to the State to be effected? Will the present holders of property be fully compensated, partly compensated, or not compensated at all? Do the Socialists aim at purchase or at confiscation of existing private property. Will they respect existing rights, or are they bent upon open or more or less disguised spoliation?

It is, unfortunately, very difficult to obtain a plain and straightforward answer upon this important point. Instead of giving this answer, British Socialists loudly protest that it is not their aim to destroy or abolish property. As nobody has suspected the Socialists to be foolish enough to abolish or destroy property—which means the instruments of production, such as factories, machines, railways, &c., by the use of which the people live, and thus bring starvation upon themselves—their eagerness to explain that they do not intend to abolish or destroy property can only be explained by the surmise that they hope shallow simpletons will say, "The Socialists have no intention to take our capital away from us by force and without compensation, for they have declared that they do not intend to abolish property." A few of these declarations should here be [96]given: "So far from abolishing property, Socialism desires to establish it upon the only basis which makes property secure—that of service, of creative service."[292] "Socialism does not propose to abolish land or capital. Only a genius could have thought of this as an objection to Socialism."[293] "Socialism is far from aiming at the destruction of private property. Its object is to increase private property amongst those whose property is so limited that they have a difficulty in keeping themselves alive."[294] Another Socialist makes the very irrelevant and unnecessary observation: "It is a firm principle of Socialism never to interfere with personal property in order to investigate its origin or to arrange it in a different way. Never and nowhere! And whoever asserts to the contrary either does not know the principles of Socialism or willingly and knowingly asserts an untruth. The Socialists deem an investigation into the origin of an acknowledged personal property an unnecessary trouble. They consider the personal property an accomplished fact and respect it: so much so, that they consider stealing a crime."[295] Mr. Blatchford informs us, "We do not propose to seize anything. We do propose to get some things and to make them the property of the whole nation by Act of Parliament or by purchase."[296]

As regards the question whether compensation or no compensation will be given, our Socialist leaders give us very vague and unsatisfactory replies, which rather contain highly respectable but perfectly irrelevant commonplaces than definite proposals. Most Socialists will answer the plain question of confiscation or no confiscation with a quibble or a conundrum, as the following examples will show: "One view of Socialism is that [97]it is a scheme of confiscation of property from one class to give it to another class—that Socialists are Dick Turpins made respectable by using Acts of Parliament instead of pistols. Now the real fact is that the Socialist has come to put an end to Dick Turpin methods. Socialism is a rational criticism of our present methods of production and distribution. It desires to say to the possessors: Show us by what title you possess; and it proposes to pass its judgments upon the axiom that whoever renders service to society should be able to have some appropriate share in the national wealth."[297] In other words, an inquisitorial tribunal with arbitrary powers would be empowered to confiscate at will. "Socialism is not a plan to despoil the rich: it is a plan to stop the rich from despoiling the poor. Socialism is not a thief; it is a policeman."[298] "Do any say we attack private property? We deny it. We attack only that private property for a few thousand loiterers and slave-drivers which renders all property in the fruits of their own labour impossible for millions. We challenge that private property which renders poverty at once a necessity and a crime."[299] "Socialism would not rob anyone. It would distinguish between the lawful possessor and the rightful possessor, and it would compel the 'lawful' possessor to restore to the rightful possessor the property of which he had robbed him."[300] "We do not propose to rob the rich man of his wealth; we deny that it is his wealth. Wealth is a social product, and therefore belongs to society. It is not an act of brigandage to demand that society shall own and use what society has created."[301]

Some Socialists consider the question of compensation [98]or no compensation as one of very minor importance. "The question of compensation need not greatly worry us. Socialists hold that plutocrats owe all their wealth to society; and therefore that society has the right at any moment to take it back."[302] The more cautious and moderate French and German Socialists are apt to promise compensation in terms such as the following: "We declare expressly that it is the duty of the State to give to those whose interests will be damaged by the necessary abolition of laws which are detrimental to the common interest compensation as far as it is possible and consistent with the interests of all."[303]

It will be observed that the plain word compensation is circumscribed by the phrase, "compensation as far as it is possible and consistent with the interests of all." In other and plainer words, compensation is to be arbitrarily given, and its proportion to the property acquired is apparently to be determined not by its value or by fairness and equity, but by the will of those who may be in power.

English Socialists, on the other hand, are apt to recommend a far more drastic treatment of property-owners. "We claim that land in country and land in towns, mines, parks, mountains, moors, should be owned by the people for the people, to be held, used, built over, and cultivated upon such terms as the people themselves see fit to ordain. The handful of marauders who now hold possession have, and can have, no right save brute force against the tens of millions whom they wrong."[304] The most moderate school of British Socialism, the Fabian Society, favours in its statement of policy given under the heading "Basis of the Fabian Society" the [99]expropriation of all private capital "without compensation, though not without such relief to expropriated individuals as may seem fit to the community." In other words, expropriated property-owners may, or may not, be given something to protect them from starvation, not as a matter of right, but of charity.

Most Socialists who favour compensation recommend that it should be given only in the form of consumable articles such as food, clothes, &c., or in bonds which are changeable only into consumable articles. "Rothschild will be paid in bread and meat and luxury and wine and theatre tickets."[305] "When capitalistic property shall have been socialised, the holders of compensation deeds will not be able to purchase either fresh means of production or producers; they will only be able to buy products."[306]

Some Socialists suggest that the bonds given in exchange for property acquired by the State might be cancelled later on. The property-owners could be deprived of their possessions without any difficulty, either gradually by taxation or at one blow by confiscation at the option of the men in power. "When the entire capitalistic property takes the form of State bonds, the property which it is impossible to ascertain to-day would then be known to everybody. It would only be necessary to decree that all bonds are to be registered in the name of the owner, and it would be possible to estimate exactly the capitalist income and the property of everyone. It would then also be possible to screw up the taxes to any extent without fear of their being evaded by any concealments. It would then be also impossible to escape them by emigration, since it is the public institutions of the country, and in the first place the State, from which all interest comes, and the latter can deduct the tax from [100]the interest before it is paid out. Under these circumstances it would be possible to raise the progressive income and property tax as high as necessary—if necessary as high as would come very near, if not actually amount to, confiscation of the large property."[307] The foregoing is a simple plan of swindling property-owners out of their holdings.

Some of the more moderate Socialists argue: "There is much to be said in favour of the liberal treatment of the present generation of proprietors and even of their children. But against the permanent welfare of the community the unborn have no rights."[308] On the other hand, Bax, the philosopher of British Socialism, quite logically and honestly states that the idea of compensation has no room in the Socialist code of ethics, that the bourgeois idea of compensation on grounds of justice is irreconcilable with the Socialist conception of justice. He says: "Between possession and confiscation is a great gulf fixed, the gulf between the bourgeois and the Socialist worlds. Well-meaning men seek to throw bridges over this gulf by schemes of compensation, abolition of inheritance, and the like. But the attempts, as we believe, even should they ever be carried out practically, must fall disastrously short of their mark and be speedily engulfed between the two positions they are intended to unite. Nowhere can the phrase 'He that is not for us is against us' be more aptly applied than to the moral standpoint of modern individualism and of modern Socialism. To the one, individual possession is right and justice, and social confiscation is wrong and injustice; to the other, individual possession is wrong and injustice, and confiscation is right and justice. This is the real issue. Unless a man accept the last-named standpoint unreservedly, he has no right to [101]call himself a Socialist. If he does accept it, he will seek the shortest and most direct road to the attainment of justice rather than any longer and more indirect ones, of which it is at best doubtful whether they will attain the end at all. For be it remembered the moment you tamper with the sacredness of private property, no matter how mildly, you surrender the conventional bourgeois principle of justice, while the moment you talk of compensation you surrender the Socialist principle of justice, for compensation can only be real if it is adequate, and can only be adequate if it counterbalances, and thereby annuls, the confiscation. It is just, says the individualist, for a man to be able to do what he likes with his own. Good; but what is his own?"[309] "The great act of confiscation will be the seal of the new era; then and not till then will the knell of civilisation, with its rights of property and its class society, be sounded; then, and not till then, will justice—the justice not of civilisation but of Socialism—become the corner-stone of the social arch."[310]

I think the straightforwardness of Bax is preferable to the crooked and insincere explanations and proposals of the British and foreign Socialist given in the foregoing. Bax's opinion is irrefutable. According to the doctrines of Socialism given in Chapter IV., labour is the source of all wealth; the greater part of the products of that labour is dishonestly abstracted from the labourer by the capitalist class, which has converted the result of that labour into property. Hence Socialists think with Proudhon, and they very often openly declare, that property is theft. Capitalist society will not compensate the thief when taking from him his booty. Socialism will not compensate property-owners when taking away their property. Besides, compensation would be utterly opposed to the root idea of Socialist justice. At present [102]expropriation without indemnity is called theft, but it would not be called theft under a Socialist régime. The chapter on "Law and Justice under Socialism" will make that quite clear.

Socialism teaches that no man is entitled to anything except that which he has made himself. "No man has a right to call anything his own but that which he himself has made. Now, no man makes the land. The land is not created by labour, but it is the gift of God to all. The earth belongs to the people. For the nonce please take the statement on the authority of Herbert Spencer, All men 'have equal rights to the use of the earth.' So that he who possesses land possesses that to which he has no right, and he who invests his savings in land becomes a purchaser of stolen property."[311] "No man made the land, and laws and lawyers notwithstanding no man has any moral right before God to call a solitary strip of God's earth his than has the burglar to call his stolen goods his personal property. It is therefore evident that the bite named 'rent' given to landlords for permission to live upon and use God's free gift to man is as much the fruit of robbery, the spoil of plunder, as is the result of a burglar's night's marauding, a common pickpocket's day's 'takings.'"[312] Capital is in the same position as land, for "Land and capital are indistinguishable."[313]

The more honest Socialists agree with Bax that compensation for property acquired would be inadvisable and impracticable. "In a pamphlet called 'Collectivism and Revolution' M. Jules Guesde said, 'Expropriation with indemnity is a chimera. And whatever regret one may feel, however difficult may appear to peaceful natures the last method, we have no other way than to retake violently that which belongs to all, by—let us say the [103]word—the Revolution.' He added, 'Capital which it is necessary to take from individuals, such as the land, is not of human creation; it is anterior to man, for whom it is a sine qua non of existence. It cannot therefore belong to some to the exclusion of others, without the others being robbed. And to make the robbers deliver up, to oblige them to restore in any and every way is not so much a right as a duty, the most sacred of duties."[314] A respected English Socialist says bluntly, "How to secure the swag to the workers is the problem."[315] A Christian Socialist clergyman sarcastically proposes: "If you are a Christian and love your rich neighbour as yourself, you will do all you can to help him to become poorer. For if you believe in the Gospel, you know that to be rich is the very worst thing that can happen to a man. That if a man is rich, it is with the greatest difficulty that he can be saved; for 'it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God' (Mark x. 25). This is startling now, but it was not less strange and startling to the disciples who 'were astonished out of measure, saying among themselves, Who then can be saved?' But the needle's eye has not grown any larger since then, and the camels certainly have not grown smaller! All true Christians then must desire to relieve the rich man of his excess for his own sake, since the inequality that ruins the body of Lazarus ruins the soul of Dives; and Dives is the more miserable of the two, because the soul is more precious than the body."[316]

The abolition of private property requires also the abolition of the right of inheritance, as otherwise capital might again be accumulated in the hands of the thrifty and the enterprising. Therefore the manifesto of Marx and Engels already demands the "abolition of all right of [104]inheritance."[317] Other Socialists say that this right should not be abolished. "Socialists used to insist upon the abolition of the right of inheritance and bequest. But if what I gain by my own labour is rightfully my property—and the Co-operative Commonwealth will, as we have seen, declare it to be so—it will be inexpedient in that Commonwealth to destroy any of the essential qualities of propertyship; and I can hardly call that my property which I may not give to whom I please at my death. No man in a Co-operative Commonwealth could acquire so much more wealth than his fellows as to make him dangerous to them."[318] "Socialists do not object to property; they are not opposed to private property. They are therefore not opposed to inheritance. The right to acquire and hold involves the right to dispose by will or by gift. We only object to such a use of property as enables classes for generation after generation to live on the proceeds of other people's labour without doing any useful service to society."[319] This very diplomatic sentence may be explained in a variety of ways. Probably it means that holders of property of large size could summarily be deprived of their possessions by order of the Government, as has been indicated by that writer in another passage (see page 97). Such a power would make the right to hold and to bequeath property a farce. Property could be held then only on the same terms on which, I believe, it is held by Central African negroes. Another Socialist states, "If I am entitled to what I produce, then it follows that I am entitled to dispose of all that I produce;" and then denies the right to personal property by continuing: "The Socialists say, 'Not thine or mine, but ours.'"[320]

[105]It would be only logical that the Socialist State, after abolishing private property by following the principle "not thine but ours," should not allow its re-creation and re-accumulation. "This pernicious right (wrong) of inheritance must be abolished. It is the means by which the 'classes' perpetuate their robbery of the 'masses' from generation to generation and age to age. The disinherited would of course have the community to look to for sound education in youth, suitable employment in years of maturity, generous pension in old age, &c., and to what else can any rational human being lay just claim?"[321] Some Socialists argue that in the Socialist State "there will be nothing to bequeath, unless we choose to regard household furniture as a legacy of any importance. This settles the question of the right of inheritance, which Socialism will have no need to abolish formally."[322] "Socialism condemns as reactionary and immoral all that tends to the debasement of humanity. It condemns our industrial and commercial system as a degrading system—degrading both to the few who amass wealth and to the many who by their labour enable the few to lay up riches. It is degrading to those who rob and to those who are robbed; to those who cheat and to those who are cheated; to those who swim and to those who sink; to those who revel in luxury and to those who, barely sustaining their own lives, are compelled by their toil to supply luxuries for others to enjoy."[323] Therefore Socialism means to abolish the present system root and branch, and the most straightforward Socialists are frankly in favour of the most thorough measures for abolishing private property.

Children and poets proverbially speak the truth. Let us see what the Socialist poets think of the expropriation of property-owners.

[106]Some of the poets tell the workers that the labourers not only produce all the wealth, but are also all-powerful, and, if they wish to, they can do what they like with the country.

Others remind them of their grievances, and urge them to drive the rich man out of the country:

[107]Others, again, urge the workers to seize all property and to make the rich man work for them.

Some Socialists believe that they will come to power suddenly and by violence, and abolish private capital at a stroke. Others are inclined to think that they will only gradually abolish it. Karl Marx was of the latter opinion. Therefore he wrote in his "Manifesto": "The first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy. The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State—i.e. of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible. Of course in the beginning this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property and on the conditions of bourgeois production: by means of measures therefore which appear economically [108]insufficient and untenable, but which in the course of the movement outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production. These measures will of course be different in different countries. Nevertheless in the most advanced countries the following will be pretty generally applicable:

Marx's programme has served as a model to the English Socialists, as the following demands of some of [109]our Socialists will show: "The things you will be working for will be something like this. Shorter hours is the first thing, then a tax on landlords, then abolition of the House of Lords and the Monarchy, then more Home-Rule and more Local Government, then extension of municipal operations, the socialisation of coal stores, dairy farms, bakeries, laundries, public-houses, cab-hiring, the slaughter of cattle and the sale of butcher meat, the building and letting of houses—in short, the taking over by the local bodies of as many departments of production and distribution as need be. By this time the Class War will be shaping for a last great engagement."[330]

"As stepping stones to a happier period we urge for immediate adoption: The compulsory construction of healthy artisans' and agricultural labourers' dwellings in proportion to the population, such dwellings to be let at rents to cover the cost of construction and maintenance alone. Free compulsory education for all classes, together with the provision of at least one wholesome meal a day in each school. Eight hours or less to be the normal working day in all trades. Cumulative taxation upon all incomes above a fixed minimum not exceeding 500l. a year. State appropriation of railways with or without compensation. The establishment of national banks which shall absorb all private institutions that derive a profit from operations in money or credit. Rapid extinction of the National Debt. Nationalisation of the land and organisation of agricultural and industrial armies under State control on co-operative principles. By these measures a healthy, independent, and thoroughly educated people will steadily grow up around us, ready to abandon that baneful competition for starvation wages which ruins our present workers, ready to organise the labour of each for the benefit of all, determined, too, to take control finally of the entire social [110]and political machinery of a State in which class distinctions and class privileges shall cease to be."[331]

The Social-Democratic Federation demands the following immediate reforms: "The socialisation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange to be controlled by a democratic State in the interests of the entire community, and the complete emancipation of labour from the domination of capitalism and landlordism with the establishment of social and economic equality between the sexes. Abolition of the Monarchy. Democratisation of the governmental machinery, viz. abolition of the House of Lords, payment of members of legislative and administrative bodies, payment of official expenses of elections out of the public funds, adult suffrage, proportional representation, triennial Parliaments, second ballot, initiative and referendum. Foreigners to be granted rights of citizenship after two years' residence in the country, on the recommendation of four British-born citizens, without any fee. Canvassing to be made illegal. Legislation by the people in such wise that no legislative proposal shall become law until ratified by the majority of the people. Legislative and administrative independence for all parts of the empire.

"Repudiation of the National Debt. Abolition of all indirect taxation and the institution of a cumulative tax on all incomes and inheritances exceeding 300l.

"Extension of the principle of local self-government. Systematisation and co-ordination of the local administrative bodies. Election of all administrators and administrative bodies by equal direct adult suffrage.

"Elementary education to be free, secular, industrial, and compulsory for all classes. The age of obligatory school attendance to be raised to sixteen. Unification and systematisation of intermediate and higher education, both general and technical, and all such education to be [111]free. Free maintenance for all attending State schools. Abolition of school rates, the cost of education in all State schools to be borne by the National Exchequer.

"Nationalisation of the land and the organisation of labour in agriculture and industry under public ownership and control on co-operative principles. Nationalisation of the trusts, of railways, docks, and canals, and all great means of transit. Public ownership and control of gas, electric light, and water-supplies, tramway, omnibus, and other locomotive services, and of the food and coal supply. The establishment of State and municipal banks and pawnshops and public restaurants. Public ownership and control of the lifeboat service, of hospitals, dispensaries, cemeteries and crematoria, and control of the drink traffic.

"A legislative eight-hour working day or forty-eight hours per week to be the maximum for all trades and industries. Imprisonment to be inflicted on employers for any infringement of the law. Absolute freedom of combination for all workers, with legal guarantee against any action, private or public, which tends to curtail or infringe it. No child to be employed in any trade or occupation until sixteen years of age, and imprisonment to be inflicted on employers, parents, and guardians who infringe this law. Public provision of useful work at not less than trade-union rates of wages for the unemployed. Free State insurance against sickness and accident, and free and adequate State pensions or provision for aged and disabled workers. Public assistance not to entail any forfeiture of political rights. The legislative enactment of a minimum wage of 30s. for all workers. Equal pay for both sexes for the performance of equal work.

"Abolition of the present workhouse system, and reformed administration of the Poor Law on a basis of national co-operation. Compulsory construction by public [112]bodies of healthy dwellings for the people, such dwellings to be let at rents to cover the cost of construction and maintenance alone, and not to cover the cost of the land. The administration of justice to be free to all; the establishment of public offices where legal advice can be obtained free of charge."[332]

Mr. Blatchford suggests the following: "The public maintenance and the public education of children. The public provision of work for all. The taxation of the land and of all large incomes. The confiscation of unearned increment. Old-age pensions. The minimum wage. Compulsory land cultivation. Universal adult suffrage. The second ballot. The payment of election expenses. The nationalisation of the railways and of the land. The nationalisation or municipalisation of trams, gas, water, bread, liquor, milk, coal, and many other things. The abolition of hereditary titles and of the House of Lords."[333]

The general policy which the Socialists should follow was summed up by Marx in the following way. "The Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things."[334] "Socialism is the only hope of the workers. All else is illusion. Workers of all lands, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to win."[335]

"This is the final struggle. The extinction of classes must follow the overthrow of the last form of class domination and the emancipation of the last class to be set free. Rally then, fellow workers, to the standard of the international class-conscious proletariat, the Red Flag of Social-Democracy. 'Workers of all countries, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains, you have a [113]world to win!'"[336] "The land of England is no mean heritage."[337]

"What has hitherto prevented the workers from combining for the overthrow of the capitalist system? A. Ignorance and disorganisation.—Q. What has left them in ignorance? A. The system itself, by compelling them to spend all their lives upon monotonous toil and leaving them no time for education.—Q. What account have they been given of the system which oppresses them? A. The priest has explained that the perpetual presence of the poor is necessitated by a law of God; the economist has proved its necessity by a law of Nature; and between them they have succeeded in convincing the labourers of the hopelessness of any opposition to the capitalist system.—Q. How is it that the labourers cannot see for themselves that they are legally robbed? A. Because the present method of extracting their surplus value is one of fraud rather than of force, and has grown gradually."[338]

The philosopher of British Socialism well sums up the aims and policy of the Socialists. He says: "What is vital in Socialism? In the first line, I take it, come

"1. The collectivisation of all the instruments of production by any effective means;

"2. The doctrine of the Class War as the general historical method of realising the new form of society;

"3. The principle of internationalism, the recognition, i.e. that distinction of nationality sinks into nothingness before the idea of the union of all progressive races in the effort to realise the ideal of true society as understood by the Social-Democratic Party;

"4. The utmost freedom of physical, moral, and intellectual development for each and all consistent with the necessities of an organised social State.

[114]"The Socialist's adhesion to the doctrine of the Class War involves his opposition to all measures subserving the interest of any section of capitalism. This coupled with his 'Internationalism' leaves him no choice but to be the enemy of 'his country' and the friend of his country's enemies whenever 'his country' (which means of course the dominant classes of his country, who always are for that matter his enemies) plays the game of the capitalist. Let us have no humbug! The man who cannot on occasion be (if needs be) the declared and active enemy of that doubtful entity, 'his country,' is no Social Democrat."[339]

"Justice being henceforth identified with confiscation, and injustice with the right of property, there remains only the question of 'ways and means.' Our bourgeois apologist, admitting as he must that the present possessors of land and capital hold possession of them simply by right of superior force, can hardly refuse to admit the right of the proletariat organised to that end to take possession of them by right of superior force. The only question remaining is, How? And the only answer is, How you can."[340]

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER VIToC

THE ATTITUDE OF SOCIALISTS TOWARDS THE WORKING MASSES

Before investigating the attitude of British Socialism towards the working masses, it is necessary to take note of its doctrines regarding work.

Most thinkers, from the time of King Solomon, Socrates, and Confucius down to the present age, have seen in work conscientiously performed a blessing; many, probably most, British Socialists declare it to be a curse and a vice. The leading English philosopher of Socialism, for instance, tells us: "To the Socialist labour is an evil to be minimised to the utmost. The man who works at his trade or avocation more than necessity compels him, or who accumulates more than he can enjoy, is not a hero but a fool from the Socialists' standpoint."[341] A leading French Socialist informs us: "Through listening to the fallacious utterances of the middle-class economists, the workers have delivered themselves body and soul to the vice of work."[342] When Mr. Victor Grayson, M.P., a Socialist, in a speech ventured to refer to work as "one of the greatest blessings and privileges ever conferred on humanity," one of the Socialist papers wrote: "Victor Grayson is simply an agent of the capitalist class. Is Mr. Victor Grayson, M.P., trying to allure the capitalist class by picturing work as a blessing, or is he trying to get the worker to look upon work through a rosy mist [116]conjured from the brains of the capitalist's agent who is saturated with capitalist philosophy? It is time the Beatitudes were extended or revised. How would this do?—'Blessed is the worker who works (for the capitalist), for he shall inherit the kingdom (of starvation and misery under capitalism).' 'Blessed is work in itself, because it enables (the capitalist) to live in peace and happiness.' Since work is a blessing, it follows that whatever saves work is a curse. All the beautiful machinery which the working class have shed their life blood to produce, to develop which an army of them have been sacrificed under capitalism by the capitalists; this which the workers of ages and ages have contributed their mite towards; have laboured long and suffered silently to create; this is an evil!!!"[343]

British Socialists do their utmost to convert the workers into shirkers by teaching them not only that work is an evil in itself, but by constantly admonishing them, "on scientific grounds," to work as little as possible during the time they are employed. "It is the interest of the employer to get as much work out of his hands as possible for as little wages as possible. It is the interest of the workers to get as high a wage as possible for as little labour as possible."[344] "The workers have been taught by the practical economists of the trade-unions, and have learnt for themselves by bitter experience, that every time any of them in a moment of ambition or good will does one stroke of work not in his bond, he is increasing the future unpaid labour not only of himself, but of his fellows."[345]

The Independent Labour Party has issued a leaflet entitled "Are you a Socialist?" in which the question occurs, "Do you believe that every individual should have [117]sufficient leisure to cultivate his higher faculties and enjoy life to the fullest extent?" and the answer is, "If you say 'Yes,' join the Independent Labour Party and help to carry its principles into effect."[346]

Many Socialists promise the workers that the Socialist State of the future will abolish the curse of work by greatly diminishing the hours of labour. A leading English Socialist writer says: "It is as plainly demonstrable as that twice four make eight that a due system of organised effort would enable your 43,000,000 of people to win from Nature an overflowing superfluity of all that man desires, without one-fourth the effort put forth now to win a beggarly subsistence so far short of what your community requires that 13,000,000 of your people live continually upon the very verge of starvation."[347] A leading American Socialist promises somewhat vaguely, "A few hours of work will secure to everybody all necessaries, decencies, and comforts of life."[348] William Morris tells us that four hours' work will suffice, and that it will not all be "mere machine-tending."[349] Morrison-Davidson prophesies that the "hours of labour will probably not exceed a minimum of two and a maximum of five daily."[350] Hyndman feels quite certain that "two or three hours' labour out of the twenty-four by all adult males would be enough to give the whole community all the wholesome necessaries and comforts of life,"[351] and Bax thinks that "In a perfectly organised Socialist State men never worked more than two or three hours a day."[352] Yves Guyot wittily says: "There is no reason why their demands [118]should not go further. Zero alone can bid them defiance."[353] It is worth noting that many Anarchists also promise a great lessening of the hours of labour when the State has been destroyed. Kropotkin, for instance, requires only from four to five hours' work.[354] Agitators desirous to secure the support of the workers cannot be too lavish in their promises.

In the Socialist State of the future a few hours' work every day will give boundless prosperity to all, for "Wealth may easily be made as plentiful as water at the expense of trifling toil."[355] "Under Socialism, nineteen-twentieths of the people will be better off materially than they are to-day, for they will be equal partners in all the productive and distributive wealth of the community."[356] "Comparative affluence would be enjoyed by each member of the community."[357]

In the Socialist commonwealth of the future "all wages will be immediately increased," for "the social community will apply itself to raise all salaries of workers and peasants."[358] "In a Socialist State you will have everyone paid a living wage. The surplus will be dispensed by the State, bringing happiness to the whole community."[359]

The British national revenue amounts at present only to a little more than 140,000,000l. By the abolition of the private capitalists and landowners the Socialist Government of Great Britain "would at once find themselves in possession of a revenue amounting to some 900,000,000l. per annum, and would probably be puzzled for a time how to dispose of it and prevent themselves [119]being buried under its accumulation."[360] This is neither a joke nor a misprint, for the well-known writer, author of countless Socialist pamphlets, continues: "After a variety of attempts to dispose of it by dividing into good fat salaries among those of your community who had had least to do with its production, after the usual custom, I believe means would be employed ultimately for inducing them to keep it under by increasing the wages of the workers, which is another way of saying that those whose labour had produced the wealth would be allowed to enjoy it, which would be something quite novel."[361]

The Socialist Government would not only diminish the working hours making them from three to five hours a day, but would also double and treble wages, partly in order to get rid of the glut of money flowing into the National Exchequer, partly because the workers would presumably receive the whole produce of their labour (see Chapter IV.) in the form of wages as soon as the private capitalists were eliminated. Repairs, renewals, replacement of capital losses, and the extension of national industry, which are at present effected out of the savings of private capitalists, would, under the Socialist régime, apparently no longer be required, and direction, supervision, and distribution would apparently no longer cost anything. The workers are quite seriously told by the philosopher of British Socialism, collaborating with the editor of "Justice": "Under present conditions the total wealth produced would, if equitably divided, amount to a value equal to more than 200l. per year per family. But to suppose that any mere distributive readjustment is what is meant by Socialism is to entirely misunderstand what Socialism really involves. Socialism means the complete reorganisation of production as well as distribution. With production scientifically and socially organised, the productivity of labour would be quintupled, and the [120]amount of wealth would be increased in proportion."[362] In other words, there would be 1,000l. a year for each family. Another Socialist more plainly states: "At the present hour it is calculated that the wealth of the United Kingdom exceeds 2,000 millions per year. This divided among forty millions gives 250l. per family. It is said that the abolition of waste labour and the absorption of the idle classes would quadruple the production. One thousand pounds per year per family is a very good standard of comfort under a co-operative system of living."[363]

The two estimates agree in this, that the Socialist family of five should receive in wages 1,000l. per annum, or about 3l. 10s. per working day. In another chapter we shall learn that in the Socialist State only the young and strong would work, and they would work, as we have seen in the foregoing pages, between three and four hours a day. In other words, the worker who earns now, say, 10d. an hour, would, under the Socialist commonwealth, receive 1l. per hour. Who would not be a Socialist?

A leading German Socialist has endeavoured to gauge the effect of Socialism upon the working classes. In making his calculations he has borne in mind the necessity of providing for the wear and tear of capital, and for other expenditure, and he has arrived at the conclusion: "A generous sick insurance will have to be set up, as well as an invalid and old-age insurance for all incapacitated workers, &c. Thus we see that not much will remain for the raising of the wages from the present income of the capitalists, even if capital were confiscated at a stroke, still less if we were to compensate the capitalists. It will consequently be necessary, in order to be able to raise the wages, to raise at the same time the production far above its present level."[364]

[121]The value of high wages lies in the produce they buy. It is of course quite clear that a nation, in order to consume more, must also produce more. It would be interesting to know whether leading Socialists, such as Messrs. Bax, Quelch, and Hazell, who must be acquainted with the sober estimates of the German Socialists, honestly believe that under a Socialist régime 1,000l. per annum will be available per family, or whether these statements have only been made to obtain supporters on the not very honourable principle, Vulgus vult decipi, decipiatur.

Let us now look into the practical proposals of the Socialists to the workers.

In the official programme of the Social-Democratic Federation[365] the following "Immediate Reforms" concerning the workers are demanded:

"A legislative eight hours' working day, or forty-eight hours per week, to be the maximum for all trades and industries. Imprisonment to be inflicted on employers for any infringement of the law. Absolute freedom of combination for all workers, with legal guarantee against any action, private or public, which tends to curtail or infringe it. No child to be employed in any trade or occupation until sixteen years of age, and imprisonment to be inflicted on employers, parents, and guardians who infringe this law. Public provision of useful work at not less than trade-union rates of wages for the unemployed. Free State insurance against sickness and accident, and free and adequate State pensions or provision for aged and disabled workers. Public assistance not to entail any forfeiture of political rights. The legislative enactment of a minimum wage of 30s. for all workers. Equal pay for both sexes for the performance of equal work."

It will be noticed that imprisonment is to be inflicted upon employers who allow their men to work overtime. [122]Would there also be imprisonment for workers working undertime? Similar demands have been made by other Socialist bodies. Let us look more closely into some of those demands which are to be fulfilled forthwith.

Old-age Pensions

With the same recklessness with which the Socialist leaders promise to the working man a large income in return for three or four hours' daily work in the golden age of Socialism, they try to dazzle him with promises of wonderful old-age pension schemes which are to be carried out in the immediate future. Mr. Smart thinks "The smallest sum upon which an old man can exist, even when his lodging is provided by his friends, is 7s. a week. The pension, therefore, should not be less than this amount, and should be obtainable at sixty years of age. The annual cost for a universal system would be, with the necessary administrative expenses, about 60,000,000l."[366] To Councillor Glyde the pensionable age of sixty seems to be too high, and the pension too low. Therefore he proposes that "Old-age pensions of at least 7s. 6d. per week should be provided for all aged workers over fifty-five years of age."[367] But why should a working man have to wait till he is fifty-five before receiving a pension? In another pamphlet, Mr. Glyde amends his scheme and tells us, "To give a pension of 7s. 6d. per week to all who wished to give up work at fifty years of age would have very satisfactory results. In the first place, it would make the aged workers happy and comfortable. In the second place, it would help to solve the unemployed question by the steady withdrawal of the aged workmen from the labour market, give them [123]purchasing power, and thus find a home market for the productivity of the younger, able-bodied workers. Thirdly, it would prevent the competition for jobs, and the playing off against the younger workmen by the employers of the cheaper-paid labour of those who cannot as they formerly could, so that there would be less strikes, reduction in wages, and petty tyranny practised upon the younger generation of workers. Fourthly, it would cause the abolition of workhouses, with their great army of expensive, well-paid officials. There would be no need for workhouses, because cottage homes would be provided for those who were infirm and feeble, on the lines of the present homes for children; an infirmary for those who were sick and invalids, and asylums for the imbecile. Thousands would be cared for by relatives and friends. Fifthly, by Imperial funds being used for old-age pensions, the Poor rate could be reduced from 6d. to 1s. in the pound. These reforms could be carried out without a single farthing extra taxation, nor anyone being any worse off than formerly, by the practice of economy."[368] To pension all workers at fifty would cost about 100,000,000l. a year, and I think it would be very difficult to save that amount on a budget of 140,000,000l. unless army, navy, and civil service were abolished. Mr. Morrison Davidson is neither satisfied with a pension of 7s. 6d. a week nor with the pensionable ages of sixty, fifty-five, or even of fifty. He proposes, therefore, that "Superannuation on full pay will take place at, say, forty-five or, at the most, fifty."[369]

Unemployment

In the Socialist State of the future there would be no unemployed workers. Many Socialist writers make [124]forecasts such as the following: "Under Socialism all the work of the nation would be organised—that is to say, it would be 'ordered,' or 'arranged,' so that no one need be out of work and so that no useless work need be done, and so that no work need be done twice where once would serve."[370] "There would be a mathematical ordering of production determined by the demands of the consumer."[371] "Periods of glut and want of work will be impossible in the new community."[372]

It is already difficult enough even for the ablest manager to secure constant employment to workers in a moderate-sized manufactory, shop, or office. A Socialist Administration composed of fallible men would have to control and satisfy the whole national demand and supply. It would have to sow and to reap, to dig for coal and ore, to fish, to manufacture and to distribute everything wanted and made by all the people. At the same time it would have to control the vast international trade on the regular flow of which constant employment in Great Britain necessarily depends. To satisfy every demand by an adequate supply, it would therefore have to direct and control not only all British industries, but also the fashions and the seasons in Great Britain and in all the countries which stand in commercial relations with the United Kingdom. The British Socialist Administration would not only have to provide a sufficient cotton crop in the United States, a sufficient wool crop in Australia, a sufficient wheat crop in Canada, but it would also have to provide an adequate demand for British cotton goods in India and China, for British coal on the continent of Europe, &c. It would have to provide sufficient sun in America to produce an adequate cotton crop and sufficient rain in India to enable the natives to [125]buy part of that cotton crop in the shape of manufactured articles made in Lancashire. Unless the Socialist Administration controls not only all foreign tariffs but also Nature the world over, there might be unemployment in a socialised Great Britain—and worse.

The doctrines of English Socialism may be summed up in a single phrase. Every existing evil is due solely to the capitalistic system, and every existing evil can be abolished only by Socialism. Unemployment is no exception to the rule. Our Socialists have, for reasons which will presently be given, concentrated much energy upon convincing the working masses that unemployment is due solely to private property in land and capital. The Social-Democratic Federation has shown that "The existence of an unemployed class is an essential characteristic of the capitalist system."[373] The Fabian Society in congress assembled has registered the declaration: "That the existence of a class of unemployed willing but unable to find work is a necessary result of the present industrial system, in which every improvement in machinery throws fresh masses of men out of work" [would improved machinery not have the same effect in the Socialist commonwealth?] "and the competition of capitalists for the market produces recurring commercial crises; that, consequently, unemployment can only be abolished with the complete abolition of the competitive system, and can only be limited in proportion as order and regulation are introduced into the present competitive confusion."[374] Yet the same Fabian Society frankly admits in another pamphlet that "No plan has yet been devised by which the fluctuations of work could be entirely prevented, or safe and profitable employment found for those rendered idle by no fault of their own. It is easy enough to demand something should be done, and I entirely agree with [126]agitating the subject; but something more than agitation is required. It is of no use urging remedies which can be demonstrably proved to be worse for the patient than the disease itself. I fear that if we were given full power to-morrow to deal with the unemployed all over England, we should find ourselves hard put to it how to solve the problem."[375] At the last Conference (1907) of the Social-Democratic Federation the resolution was moved, "That this Conference reasserts its statement that unemployment is due to the private ownership of land and capital."[376]

The emphatic statements contained in the foregoing declarations that unemployment is due to the private ownership of land and capital are absurd. If the private ownership of land and capital were the cause of unemployment, unemployment should be almost equally great in all civilised countries, because in all civilised countries land and capital are in private hands. Whilst in Great Britain unemployment is a fearful and permanent evil, it has been practically unknown during a long time in Germany, where there has been for many years so great a scarcity of labour that immigration is greater than emigration.[377] Whilst in capitalist Great Britain employment is so bad that from 200,000 to 300,000 people have to emigrate every year, employment in capitalist Germany has been excellent, and in the capitalist United States it has been so good that they have absorbed during a number of years almost 1,000,000 immigrants per year. These facts prove that private ownership of land and capital and over-production have nothing to do with unemployment, which is, as a rule, due not to over-production but to ill-balanced production, as has been [127]proved on page 70 of this book. In the case of a country such as Great Britain, unemployment is due principally to the insufficiency and insecurity of her markets for her manufactured goods and to the decay of her agriculture.

The various Socialist organisations have so constantly preached the doctrine that unemployment is due to the private ownership of land and capital that the Trade Unions have at last come to believe it. Owing to Socialist inspiration, the Trade Union Congresses have passed resolutions in favour of the nationalisation of land and of the other means of production at most of the meetings since 1888, and a Socialist weekly has been able to assert that "Every member of the Socialist Labour Party, either by Trade Union Congresses or by Independent Labour Party programme, is committed to the nationalisation of land and the instruments of production."[378] To the delight of the Socialists, resolutions of the Trade Unions urging the nationalisation of all land and capital are becoming more and more emphatic. In the "Social Democrat" for October 1907 we read, under the heading "Trade Unionists and Unemployment," the following: "The resolution on unemployment passed at the Bath Trade Union Congress shows that the Trade Unionists are falling into line with Social Democrats on this question, and that they are beginning to see that Trade Unionism alone is no solution for this evil. After referring to the failure of the Unemployed Workmen Act, and the niggardly manner of doling out the grant of 200,000l., the resolution goes on to say that 'This Congress, recognising that unemployment is now permanent in character in busy as in slack seasons, in summer and in winter, and is common to all trades and industries; also that this is due to industry being unorganised and carried on for private profit and is [128]bound to continue, and indeed become more accentuated as the development of machinery and other wage-saving methods proceeds, calls the attention of the Government to its neglect of the interests of the people in not grappling with this social evil, and urges it to at once embark upon work of public utility with the object of (a) absorbing the present unemployed labour, (b) laying the foundation for a permanent reorganisation of industry upon a co-operative basis.'"[379]

The Socialists have been anxious to convince the workers that unemployment is due to the private ownership of land and capital, and that all unemployed should be relieved by the State because "A really adequate system of helping the unemployed will completely alter the relation of power between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. It will make the proletariat masters in the factory. If the workers sell themselves to-day to the employer, if they allow themselves to be exploited and oppressed, it is the ghost of unemployment, the whip of hunger, which compels them to it. If, on the other hand, the worker is secure in his existence, even when not in work, then nothing is easier to him than to disable the capitalist. He no longer requires the capitalist, while the latter cannot conduct his business without him. When the matter has gone so far as that every employer, whenever a dispute breaks out, will get the worst of it and be forced to yield, the capitalists may certainly continue to be managers of the factories, but they will cease to be their masters and exploiters. But in that case the capitalists will recognise that they only carry the burdens and risks of the undertakings without receiving any advantage, and will be the first to give up capitalist production and insist on being bought out."[380] "The right to work is a charter of industrial freedom, the [129]emancipation of labour from capitalist tyranny. Till it is obtained there can be neither social nor moral progress. When it is obtained all other things become possible."[381]

The British Labour Party has drafted a Bill which, asserting the right to work, makes provision of work for the unemployed compulsory and enables the local authorities compulsorily to acquire land with a view of setting the unemployed to work.[382] The Annual Conference of the Independent Labour Party of 1907, going a step further, demanded the erection of a national department for creating work and giving a living wage to the unemployed. It resolved:

"This Conference welcomes the news that a Bill to secure the right to work is to be introduced into Parliament by the Labour party, expresses the hope that every effort will be made to secure its passing into law, and declares in favour of the establishment of a properly equipped and financed national department for dealing with the whole problem of unemployment on the basis of putting useful work at a living wage within the reach of every worker, and of training such as require to be taught in husbandry, and other forms of work upon the land."[383]

There is a great danger in these proposals.[384] Creating work for the unemployed may not cure, but may aggravate, the disease which springs not from private property in land and capital, but from an insufficient outlet for British manufactures. If the disease is wrongly treated, the unemployed may become an incubus which will cripple both workers and capitalists.

A champion of the policy of laisser faire argues: [130]"The State cannot make work, if by work is meant the doing of something that somebody wants done. It is of course true that the State can take on new functions, and do more of the work that is now left to private enterprise. But that would not make additional employment; it would only transfer employment from one set of men to another. When the State or the municipality, instead of seeking to do the thing that is wanted in the most economical and most efficient manner, deliberately picks out the least competent workmen and sets them to work on things that are not wanted, no new wealth is created, and the previous creation of wealth is diminished, because the taxpayer has been deprived of the means of employing as many persons as he would have employed. Artificial jobs may be created for the unemployed, who will be perfectly conscious that these jobs are artificial, and thus the independent and self-respecting workman will be arbitrarily deprived of his job. It cannot be too often repeated that the so-called 'right to work,' on which Socialists are fond of insisting, means in practice the right to deprive another man of his job."[385] These arguments are fallacious. There is work such as the reclamation of the foreshore, draining of bogs, constructing canals, planting of forests, &c., which are, as general experience shows, rather the province of the community than of the private individual. Unemployment may be relieved by the State and the local authorities if discretion be used. Proposals to create work of this kind for the genuine unemployed, and to provide compulsory labour for idlers and loafers, have been advanced by many Socialists and non-Socialists, and these proposals are worth considering and adopting.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER VIIToC

THE ATTITUDE OF SOCIALISTS TOWARDS TRADE UNIONISTS AND CO-OPERATORS

The British Socialists have during many years attacked and denounced the Trade Unionists and the Co-operators, firstly, because the trade unionists and co-operators are "capitalists," and therefore traitors to the Socialist cause; secondly, because Socialism unconditionally condemns providence and thrift among the working men, as will be seen in Chapter XXIII.

Although the Socialists pretend that they denounce co-operation and thrift, and even abstinence from alcoholic drink, on economic and scientific grounds, their real reasons are political. Socialism can flourish only if the masses are dissatisfied. The Socialists are therefore little interested in improving the position of the worker, but very greatly in increasing his poverty, unhappiness, and discontent. Socialism is revolutionary, and the Socialists know that people who are well off are not revolutionists. For tactical reasons, therefore, the Socialists oppose and denounce thrift, co-operation, and abstinence, qualities which are found pre-eminently in co-operators and trade unionists.

The trade unionists, the aristocracy of British labour, are too conservative, too temperate, too cautious, too prosperous, and too little revolutionary for the taste of Socialists. The Socialists complain: "The British trade union suffers from three fatal defects: (1) It is anti-revolutionary. It disavows the fact of the class [132]struggle. It accepts the capitalist system as a permanency. The rules and constitutions of many unions explicitly refer to the 'just rights of the employer,' and those who do not set forth any such statement openly, admit it in actual practice. The capitalist class, as voiced by the capitalist press, recognise in these unions the bulwark of present-day society against the advance of Socialism. (2) The British trade union method of organisation is a complete negation of the solidarity of labour. Each trade or section of a trade has its own particular and autonomous organisation. Even trades which are most closely connected are divided into separate unions, each union ignoring the interest of the rest, making its own special contracts with the capitalists, and assisting them by remaining at work when their fellow-workers in a kindred trade are on strike. The most noteworthy example of this form of inter-trade treachery was offered in the case of the engineers' strike of 1897-8, when the Boilermakers' Society by remaining at work were the means of defeating the Amalgamated Society of Engineers and of forcing them to return to work on the masters' terms. (3) The British trade union refuses to admit to its ranks those teeming millions of workers whom it terms 'unskilled.'"[386]

Other Socialists complain: "Trade unionism recognises the present system of society, justifies capitalism, and defends wage-slavery, and only seeks to soften the tyranny of the one and assuage the evils of the other. Social Democracy aims at destroying the whole system."[387] "We are never allowed to forget the splendid incomes earned by these aristocrats of labour, a mere tenth of the whole labour class. The trade unionist can usually only raise himself on the bodies of his less fortunate comrades."[388] "The old-fashioned policy of the English trade unions [133]has made them guilds of privileged, rather than fighting representatives of their class."[389]

Similar complaints are raised against the co-operators. "Co-operation, though regarded by the individual trader as an enemy, does not necessarily enter into conflict with the capitalist at all. Indeed, so far as it transforms workmen into shareholders, it forms a bulwark for capitalism, the same as the creation of small landholders or any other class of small proprietors would do."[390] "At present the co-operative societies in England are very apathetic with regard to political affairs."[391] "In spite of abstract resolutions, our trade unionists are devoted to the wages system; still our co-operators yearn after dividends; still the mass of our producers admire the men who rise upon their shoulders to place and pay. The twin curses of democracy, slavishness and jealousy, are curiously blended in their views of social and political life. They envy capacity; they bow down before successful blackguardism."[392]

Some Socialists have called for the unification of all the trades unions, arguing "Union has failed to adapt itself to changed conditions. Just as budding industrial development called into being the shop union, and further industrial expansion meant development of the union to the local and then the national organisation, so the exigencies of our time demand a working-class union—one union, not eleven hundred, as now."[393] Others have bespattered the unions with insults, and some do so still. A very violent Socialist organ recently wrote: "Our trade union leaders are not so corrupt as those of America? Are they not? As a matter of fact, the [134]corruption is tenfold greater. The difference is that here it is legalised and respectable. In America the corruption takes the form of a wad of dollar notes pushed into the fakir's hands in a dark corner. In this country our trade union leaders are openly corrupted in the face of day by positions on conciliation boards, Justiceships of the Peace, Cabinet positions" [this is a hit at Mr. John Burns], "and well-paid jobs in the Labour Department of the Board of Trade. Are Shackleton, Bell, and Barnes honester men than Gompers, Mitchell, and Tobin? As Dr. Johnson very coarsely expressed it: 'It is difficult to settle the question of precedence between a bug and a louse.'"[394]

To the more far-sighted Socialists the folly of attacking the powerful trade unions, with their 2,000,000 members, was perfectly clear. One of the Socialist leaders wrote: "Of all the blind, fatuous policies in the world, that of decrying trades unionism by professing Socialists is about the worst; and the next worst thing is the trades unionist abusing Socialism."[395] Some Socialists recommended changing the policy of denunciation for a wiser one: "We have to convert the trade unions, not to antagonise them"[396]; and their conversion was thought to be all the more easy because, to quote Ben Tillett, "The whole of the trades union movement has been tinged with Socialism; unconsciously the guides of the working classes have always marched towards the goal of Socialism."[397]

With this object in view the trade unionists were urged to reform their tactics, to abandon the economic struggle in the form of strikes, and to enter upon the more efficacious political struggle with the employers of [135]labour in the House of Commons. "To go on following the old beaten paths of trade unionism is simply to go on exhausting the possibilities of error for an indefinite period. If the new unions are simply to play the part of regulators of wages, as trade and prices rise and fall, they will be of very slight advantage to the workers compared with what they might accomplish if they took a broader view of their opportunities and their duties. What they have to do, and that now, is to use the power which organisation gives them to get control of the political machinery of the country and use it for the advancement of their class. By this means they could, if they chose, achieve as much in a year or two as would be gained in a century by the old methods of trade agitation and strikes."[398] "If the Labour party had a tithe of the money that the unions have spent upon getting thrashed and starved and defrauded, it would be a party to wonder at and be proud of. The miners of Yorkshire have spent 212,000l. on six strikes—all of which have been lost. Do you call this industrial warfare? Insanity and suicide—that is what it is. The engineers spent three-quarters of a million on the great lock-out. That is a sum in itself, the ransom of all the workers from the bonds of wage-slavery. What can the engineers show for their money to-day? Ask them! We could capture the British Parliament with that sum plus a little brains and courage."[399] The Fabian Society has issued numerous pamphlets in which it has shown how the position of the workers might be improved, and in these it has at every opportunity urged upon every worker to join a union, and has urged upon the trade unions to better the position of the workers by relying upon political action.[400]

[136]In pursuance of this policy the railway employees were told by the Socialists, when the difference between the British railway companies and their workers had been arranged: "You men must cling tight to the union and keep fostering the discontent of your fellows, not only with the sectional wrongs which affect you personally, but with the brutal system of competition of which your own wrongs are but one fractional consequence. Stick to the Labour party. You have two representatives in Parliament. Run some more. You need not bother now to build up a strike fund. Spend the money in politics. The more men you get in the House, the better chance you will have of convincing a Government arbitrator of the justice of your claims."[401]

Wishing to secure the support of the trade unionists and the co-operators, the Socialists began to preach that there was no antagonism between Socialists, trade unionists, and co-operators, and to stretch out a hand towards them. "Socialist influence makes its way in the union. The trade unions generally must sooner or later become—they already in some instances are to-day—part and parcel of the working-class Socialist movement, or must cease to exist as class organisations. Co-operation is in its inception Socialist. That is to say, that all co-operation implies co-operative effort and social union."[402] Another Socialist writer said: "I am sorry that some Socialists used to cry down the co-operative movement. I know it has some serious defects, but it has taught the workers of this country what they can do when they choose. If any power could induce trade unionists, co-operators, and Socialists to unite, a co-operative commonwealth would [137]be flourishing in this country before the rich and educated classes had rubbed open their drowsy eyes."[403]

The recommendations which the Socialists addressed to the trade unionists to increase their political power, and to improve their economic position by the use of their political power, became louder and louder. They were told that the capitalists were the enemies of both trade unionists and Socialists, and that co-operation would be of the greatest benefit to both bodies. The Socialist group of the London Society of Compositors, for instance, argued:

"It is unfortunate that after some dozen years or more of Socialist propaganda there should still be considerable bitterness existing between trade unionists and Socialists. The cause of the unpopularity of the Socialists was not due to any desire on their part to irritate trade unionists, but arose out of the stupid prejudices of the spokesmen and leaders of the trade unionists themselves. Socialists are staunch trade unionists. The New trade unionism is evidence of this, for Socialists are responsible for calling it into existence. The movement which is now gaining ground in favour of federation among trade unionists generally, is one of Socialist origin. Trade unionists look solely to unionism to maintain their miserable standard of living, ignorant of the economic laws working against them. Socialists accept unionism as only one method to maintain their present standard of comfort.

"Both Socialists and trade unionists have a common enemy, a common want, and a common economic force which continually and relentlessly drives them in one direction. Both are driven to defend attacks against their standard of living by the capitalist, and the one point of agreement between Socialists and trade unionists, therefore, is that they both desire to maintain and increase their present standard of living. Trade unionists enter a union [138]to resist the exactions of the capitalists, and to baulk attempts on their part to reduce wages. Socialists enter a union for precisely the same reason. If they would view Parliamentary action from the standpoint of the collective welfare of the people, they would soon realise its far-reaching effects. A legal forty-eight hour working week, for instance, would bring benefit to all and raise the standard of all by giving more leisure; thereby affording workers an opportunity of obtaining fresh air and following artistic and intellectual pursuits.

"One of the strongest agents which work in favour of the capitalists is the necessity of the workers to find food and clothing for their families. This evil can be met by the State proposal which is now making such headway in England—namely, Free Maintenance for Children. The old-fashioned prejudices, fostered by the capitalists and their hangers-on, that it is degrading to accept anything from the State, is fast dying out in the face of free education, free libraries, free maintenance for all sickened with infectious fevers. Free maintenance for children would be a tax on that surplus wealth which the capitalists and the aristocracy share between them. To the worker, free maintenance for his children would be equivalent to an additional income. His standard of living would rise. No doubt the capitalist would reduce his wages as much as possible, but the worker would then be able to fight him on more equal terms. His children being well cared for, he would be able to hold out against the capitalist for an indefinite period.

"The Housing Question is also worthy of attention. Trade unionism should require the State to erect buildings to be let at a sum which would cover cost of construction and maintenance alone. This would give them a stationary rent, and when locked out by their employers, they, as unemployed workers, would not be so liable to be turned into the street.

[139]"The workers, unconscious of economic development, unfortunately side with one political party or the other, not seeing that the one must inevitably be as antagonistic to their interests as the other. Tory and Liberal politically represent two classes, who divide the spoils between them. One is connected by tradition with the soil, the other with commerce. When they have a quarrel, it is as between kites and crows for the possession of prey. To assert that a Tory is better than a Liberal, or a Liberal better than a Tory, is like affirming that one exploiter is less a thief than another. Until trade unionists form themselves into an independent party, there can politically be no common agreement between them and Socialists, because, while they support the capitalist class they are placing power into the hands of the exploiting class, who is the common enemy. Co-operation between Socialists and trade unionists should be adopted whenever possible, and, when occasion offers, an alliance should be entered into for common purposes. In America a large section of trade unionists have already recognised that the class war is inevitable under the present system of exploitation, and they have entered into an active alliance with the Socialist party. It is to be hoped that the trade unions of Great Britain will ere long see their way to follow the example set by their American brethren in the United States."[404]

Another writer urged: "Is it not time that we combined and strove for something higher, wider, and more far-reaching? Let the trade unionists unite, combine, federate; not for constantly squabbling with the capitalist over the spoil which the workers alone create, but to secure for the latter, organised, the control of their own tools and raw materials—of the mines, the railways, the factories, the shipping, the land—of all those things [140]which only have value through their labour. Let the co-operators co-operate with each other, with trade unionists, and Social Democrats for the same object. Let us all agitate, educate, and organise to form the workers of the world into a gigantic Trade Union, an International Co-operation, a Social-Democratic Commonwealth."[405]

Since the time when these words were written attempts have constantly been made by the Socialists to co-operate with the unionists, and, at least outwardly, their relations have become intimate. Many Socialists have high hopes for a united Socialist Labour party. At a recent conference of the Social-Democratic Federation the chairman declared, in his opening address: "There can be but one Independent Labour Party, and there ought to be a united Socialist party. Not many years will pass before the new Labour party will join the Socialist movement, but in the meantime everything seems ripening for a united Socialist party, consolidating both forces and funds, preventing overlapping and removing friction. Never were the times so favourable to Socialism. In spite of the boycott, the misrepresentation, the influence of the temporal powers against us, the word Socialism is no longer unknown or feared. In the workshop, the mine, the train, or the tram, men are eagerly discussing Socialism. The workers need grumble of their chains no longer; they can fling them off at will; for they, and they alone, hold the keys of freedom. This poor blind Samson is waking up and groping his way; Socialists must be ready to lead him."[406]

Socialism has of late years strongly permeated the unions. Will it succeed in capturing them? The Socialists are very optimistic on that point. "The [141]outlook is full of promise for the political Labour movement. It only requires the adoption of a candidate by the united local societies to turn every trade union institute or office, miners' lodge and branch meeting-room into a committee-room, and when the call is made by the Parliamentary group there will be plenty of voluntary workers. The great fact stands out prominently: Labour is moving; and that fact points to stirring times and a new phase in the history of the nation."[407]

The character of the trade unions has undoubtedly been greatly changed through Socialist agitation. The trade unionist has almost ceased to be an individualist. "The modern trade unionist is out for a political revolution. He has dismissed, as an obsolete absurdity, the idea of paying for his benefits, pensions, sick-pay, unemployed relief, out of his union subscriptions. He intends to combine with his fellows of all trades in a demand for Parliamentary legislation which will provide these benefits out of national funds, mainly by way of a graduated income-tax. So he demands old-age pensions and an Unemployed Act. He has given up the tedious task of bargaining with his master for higher wages and shorter hours; he intends to compel him by the more drastic method of an eight-hour day and a minimum wage and State Arbitration Act."[408] There is much truth in this description. As the real nature of the relations between the trades unions and the Socialists is known to only a few, the following documents should be of great interest:—

The foregoing three letters are most interesting and most important, and they should be carefully read because they prove that the forces of trade unionism and Socialism are commingling, and that the trade unionists may reckon upon the support of the Socialists whenever they come into conflict with capitalists. Although in constructive policy Socialism and trade unionism are as yet things apart, they possess a common working basis as soon as trouble occurs between capital and labour.

[144]To increase the intimacy between them and the representatives of labour pure and simple, and to accustom them to co-operation, the Socialist cannot do anything better than to cause conflicts to arise between capital and labour. Therefore it is only natural that the Socialists will urge the trade unionists to make great, and ever greater, demands upon capital; that every concession will only be considered as a stepping-stone to a further concession. Every conflict between capital and labour, everything that will increase the dissatisfaction of the workers, will serve the Socialists, because it will cause the workers to believe in the doctrine of the Iron Law of Wages, in the Law of Increasing Misery, and in the promised Socialist paradise. Therefore the Socialists will do all they can to embitter the relations between capital and labour, and to bring about strikes. For instance, at the time when, in the autumn of 1907, the differences between the British railway companies and the men were acute, practically the whole Socialist press urged the railway servants to declare a strike, and the settlement of the difficulty by Mr. Lloyd George was greeted with derision and regret. Mr. Bell, who had accepted the settlement, was treated with contempt, and the result of the Railway Conference was declared to be the Sedan of the British trade union movement.[410]

Owing to the persistent agitation of the Socialists, the trade unions are becoming permeated with Socialism. Of late years there have been few great strikes in Great Britain, but, unless the relations between Socialists and trade unionists alter, it seems likely that great and violent industrial disputes will occur in the near future.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER VIIIToC

SOCIALIST VIEWS AND PROPOSALS REGARDING LAND AND THE LANDLORDS

British Socialists, as we have learned in Chapter IV.,[411] adopting the celebrated formula of Proudhon, have proclaimed "Property is theft," and they are of opinion that property in land is a particularly heinous form of theft. Therefore they demand the restitution of the land to the people, not as a matter of expediency but as a matter of right. "Man has a right only to what his labour makes. No man 'makes' the land."[412] "Land is the gift of Nature. It is not made by man. Now, if a man has a right to nothing but that which he has himself made, no man can have a right to the land, for no man made it."[413] "The land belongs by inalienable right not to any body of individuals but to all."[414]

Appealing to the passions, hatred, and greed of their followers, and relying on their credulity, Socialist leaders proclaim not only that the landlords are useless, but also that the people will have the land rent free as soon as the present owners have been expropriated. "The landlord, qua landlord, performs no function in the economy of industry or of food production. He is a rent-receiver; that, and nothing more. Were the landlord to be abolished, the soil and the people who till it would still remain, and the disappearance of the landowner would pass almost unnoticed."[416] "Rent is brigandage reduced to a system. So long as the English people are content to be tenants-at-will on their own soil, and to pay for the privilege, they will remain virtually slaves."[417] "The tenant earns the rent. The landlord spends it. If the tenant had not to pay the rent he could spend it himself, and so it would get spent, and get spent by the man who earns it and has the best right to spend it."[418]

Whilst some Socialist agitators are unscrupulous enough to make their followers believe that in the Socialist State they may have land for the asking, others are so unkind as to destroy that pleasing illusion. For instance, we learn from a Fabian pamphlet, "A Socialist State or municipality will charge the full economic rent for the use of its land and dwellings, and apply that rent to the common purposes of the community."[419] Another Socialist authority very pertinently remarks: "It is of [147]not the least consequence to the person who rents the land whether he pays the rent for it to an individual or whether he Pays it to the State,"[420] and therefore it is clear that statements such as "If the tenant had not to pay the rent he could spend it himself," are merely meant to deceive the simple. Tenants, instead of paying their rent to a human landlord, would have to pay it to an impersonal State or municipality, and the latter might prove as grasping and as heartless as rating committees are now.

Others base their demand for the spoliation of landlords upon the Bible and upon the ideal of a "Divine brotherhood," forgetting that the Bible contains a commandment "Thou shalt not steal," as well as many warnings against lying, deceit, cant, and covetousness. One of the champion Bible-Socialists, for instance, writes: "If all men are brothers, as Christ undoubtedly taught, then the land, the source of wealth, the means by which men can earn their livelihood, should not be the property of any set of individuals, but should belong to the whole community. The fact of a man being born into the world gives him the divine right to the opportunity of earning his living, and that right cannot be enjoyed so long as there is a single man on earth deprived of access to the land from which to earn his bread. When the spirit of brotherhood prevails, it will be a simple and a natural thing to arrange that these things shall be used not in the interests of the few, but for the common good. There are innumerable signs that the hearts and minds of men are now turning in this direction, and that they are coming to see that the only just and permanent arrangement is the divine solution of working on the basis of universal brotherhood."[421] There is a fraternity among Sicilian bandits. The "Divine [148]brotherhood" of the writer would be based on robbery, and have robbery as its object.

Others demand the confiscation of all land by relying upon misrepresentation: "If the injustice of the land monopoly is great in the country, by robbing the grower of his improvements or scaring him from making any, by robbing the nation of its own legitimate independent food supply, and by laying waste vast tracts of the surface, the injustice is even greater in the towns, if only by reason of the greater numbers whose interests are now involved: (1) by flooding the town labour markets with surplus labourers, and so—by their competition between each other for jobs of any sort at any terms, rather than starve—keeping wages down at the privation point; (2) by robbing the town workers of that proper and legitimate home market which a flourishing and proportionately numerous agricultural population would afford; (3) by the bloated rentals in cities, only made possible by driving and crowding the people into our unnaturally swollen centres; and (4) by the continuous re-investment of those enormous rent extortions in all those secondary monopolies of transit, finance, and business generally, which can only arise from the primary monopoly of the soil, and which complete this devil's chain of the subjection of labour and the dependence of the community."[422]

The complaints that land is going out of cultivation, that the British home market has been spoiled, and that towns are overgrown and overcrowded are unfortunately only too well justified, but these phenomena are not due to private property in land. Private property in land is universal, but the desertion of the country and overcrowding in towns are not universal. These evils are to be found chiefly in Great Britain, because British economic policy, whilst fostering trade and the manufacturing industries, has deliberately sacrificed to them the rural industries. That [149]fact is acknowledged by many Socialists, as will be seen in Chapter XXL., "Some Socialist's Views on Free Trade and Protection."

The question now arises: How do the Socialists propose to deal with the land and the owners of land? Mr. Blatchford informs us: "The titled robbers of England have always done their robberies in a legal manner. We propose to enforce their cessation in a legal manner. We respect the law, and mean to use it. We are not mere brigands. We are the new police; our duty is to 'arrest the rogues and dastards'; our motto is, 'The law giveth and the law taketh away, blessed be the name of the law.'"[423] A leading Christian-Socialist clergyman tells us "As for compensation, from the point of view of the highest Christian morality, it is the landlords who should compensate the people, not the people the landlords. But practically if you carry out this reform by taxation, no compensation would be necessary or even possible."[424] Mines and mine-owners are to be treated in the same way as land and land-owners. "The minerals should be at once taken over without compensation; the present owners should think themselves well off if they escape paying compensation for previous robbery of the people."[425] Views such as those expressed in the foregoing are held not only by some unscrupulous agitators. At the last Annual Conference of the Independent Labour Party the following resolution was carried: "This Conference, being of opinion that the high price of coal is a serious menace to the nation, and bears extremely hard upon householders and especially upon the working classes of the country, declares in favour of the nationalisation of the mines and municipalisation of the coal-supply."[426] At the last Annual Conference of the Miners' Federation of [150]Great Britain, various resolutions urging the nationalisation of all mines were proposed and carried. Mr. W.E. Harvey, M.P., for instance, moved "That the members of Parliament supported by this federation be instructed to direct the attention of the Government to bring in a Bill for the nationalisation of land, mines, and mining royalties, as we believe that it is only by such reforms that the workers can obtain full value for their labours."[427] It will be observed that nothing is said about compensation in this resolution, which was passed unanimously.

How is the nationalisation of the land to be effected? "The land of every country belongs of natural and inalienable right to the whole body of the people in each generation. We say therefore, 'You need not kick the landlords out; you must not buy them out; you had better tax them out.'"[428] "If the people rose in revolt, took up arms, confiscated the lands of the nobles, and handed them over to the control of a Parliament, that would not be brigandage; it would be revolution. But if the people by the exercise of constitutional means, passed an Act through Parliament making the estates of the nobles the property of the nation, with or without compensation, that would be neither brigandage nor revolution; it would be a legal, righteous, and constitutional reform. We propose to be neither revolutionaries nor brigands, but legal, righteous, and constitutional reformers."[429] Legality implies and presupposes justice, but Socialist law and justice are different from that conception of law and justice which has been held hitherto. Chapter XXIV. will make that point clear.

The foregoing should suffice to show that the Socialists intend to abolish private property in land by "taxing landowners out of existence."

[151]They apparently forget that not all the owners of land are rich; that many small farmers, shopkeepers, artisans, &c., own freehold land and freehold houses; and that the insurance companies have a very large proportion of their funds invested in land and on the security of land. A confiscation of land would therefore ruin a vast number of hard-working people. It would cripple some insurance companies and ruin others. Hence the savings of thrifty workers would be confiscated or destroyed by the State together with those of the larger capitalists.

The Socialists are not entirely agreed as to the way by which the abolition of private ownership in land should be effected, but some interesting proposals will be found in Chapter X., "Socialist Views and Proposals regarding Taxation and the National Budget." The purely agricultural aspect of the land question is treated in Chapter XVIII., "Socialism and Agriculture," and in Chapter XXI., "Some Socialist Views on Free Trade and Protection."

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER IXToC

SOCIALIST VIEWS AND PROPOSALS REGARDING CAPITAL AND THE CAPITALISTS

We have seen in Chapter VIII. that Socialists claim that "Man has a right to nothing but that which he has himself made," that therefore, "No man can have a right to the land, for no man made it." May, then, owners of property keep at least that part of their property which is not invested in land?

The reply is, of course, in the negative. "As land must in future be a national possession, so must the other means of producing and distributing wealth."[430] "Supposing we assume it true that land is not the product of labour and that capital is; it is not by any means true that the rent of land is not the product of labour and that the interest on capital is. Since private ownership, whether of land or capital, simply means the right to draw and dispose of a revenue from the property, why should the landowner be forbidden to do that which is allowed to the capitalist, in a society in which land and capital are commercially equivalent? Yet land nationalisers seem to be prepared to treat as sacred the landlords' claim to private property in capital acquired by thefts of this kind, although they will not hear of their claim to property in land. Capital serves as an instrument for robbing in a precisely identical manner. In England industrial capital is mainly created by wage workers—who get nothing for it but permission to create in addition enough subsistence [153]to keep each other alive in a poor way. Its immediate appropriation by idle proprietors and shareholders, whose economic relation to the workers is exactly the same in principle as that of the landlords, goes on every day under our eyes. The landlord compels the worker to convert his land into a railway, his fen into a drained level, his barren seaside waste into a fashionable watering-place, his mountain into a tunnel, his manor park into a suburb full of houses let on repairing leases; and lo! he has escaped the land nationalisers; his land is now become capital and is sacred. The position is so glaringly absurd and the proposed attempt to discriminate between the capital value and the land value of estates is so futile, that it seems almost certain that the land nationalisers will go as far as the Socialists. Whatever the origin of land and capital, the source of the revenues drawn from them is contemporary labour."[431]

Most Socialists think it wiser to tax capital gradually out of existence than to confiscate it at one stroke. "The direct confiscation of capital affects all, the small and the great, those unable to work and the able-bodied, everybody in an equal way. It is difficult by this method, often quite impossible, to separate the large property from the small invested in the same undertakings. The direct confiscation would also proceed too quickly, often at one stroke, while confiscation through taxation would permit the abolition of capitalist property being made a long-drawn process, working itself out further and further in the measure as the new order gets consolidated and makes its beneficent influence felt."[432]

The argument that excessive taxation would drive capital out of the country is laughed at by Socialists. A Socialist pamphlet says: "It is true that the land-sweaters and labour-skinners whom the people keep on [154]electing to rule and rob them can still frighten noodles by threatening that they will run away from the country and take their capital with them; that

"We calmly reply that there is not one single service that all the landlords, financiers, and their lesser parasites pretend to perform for society that could not be performed far more efficiently and infinitely more cheaply without them."

The despoiled capitalists might leave the country, but they would have to leave in the country all their property except perhaps a few valuables which they might remove.

Property being theft, capitalists as well as landowners are thieves who possess no claim whatever to consideration or even to mercy. "To talk about 'the respective claims of capital and labour' is as inaccurate as to talk about the 'respective claims' of coals and colliers, or of ploughs and ploughmen. Capital has no claims. This is not a quibble. The distinction between capital and the capitalists is one of vital importance. Capital is a necessary thing. The capitalist is as unnecessary as any other kind of thief or interloper. The capitalist, though as loud as greedy in his 'claims,' has no rights at all."[434]

[155]"Do you mean to say, then, that the capitalist does not perform a useful function in running a risk for the profit he receives?—No. In so far as he exercises the function of management and receives remuneration for this, his remuneration is not profit at all, but wages of superintendence, and the functions of management would be undertaken by the organised society of the future through its appointed representatives. As to any necessary risks, all individuals would be relieved from this under Socialism, as it would be borne by the whole of society."[435] "If capitalists attempt to justify their way of making profit by saying that they have to run risks sometimes, that a part of their property might occasionally be lost, we answer that labour has nothing to do with that."[436]

Capital large and small is the result of thrift. If capital is theft, then thrift also is theft. The thrifty investor, being an immoral person, has no right to protest against the confiscation of his property. "By capitalist I mean the investor who puts his money into a concern and draws profits therefrom without participating in the organisation or management of the business. Were all these to disappear in the night, leaving no trace behind, nothing would be changed."[437] Nothing would be changed for the Socialist agitator, the loafer, and the tramp. On the contrary, they would profit from the ruin of the industrious and the thrifty. The fact that honest and hardworking men who do their duty to their family and who wish to leave their children provided for should have the result of the economy of a lifetime confiscated matters little to the Socialist leaders. According to the Socialist doctrines the industrious and the thrifty are thieves and exploiters of those workers who have never saved a penny. On the other hand, those men who live [156]from hand to mouth, who work only a few days each week and loaf on the remaining days, who waste all their earnings in drink, gambling, and music-halls, and who possess nothing they can call their own, are honest and excellent citizens. They are entitled to the savings of the thrifty.

In accordance with the Socialist principles stated in the foregoing, all shareholders, being merely exploiters of labour, would be expropriated. "Are shareholders in companies useful in organising labour?—As a rule they employ others to organise labour, and the work done by the company would go on just as well if the shareholders disappeared."[438] Besides, "Stocks when analysed, in nine cases out of ten simply mean the right to squeeze tribute out of workers who are nominally free. By far the greatest part of what is set down as national 'capital' is merely slave flesh-and-blood."[439]

Holders of Government stocks would be treated no better than landowners and shareholders. Foremost among the "immediate reforms" demanded in the programme of the Social-Democratic Federation[440] ranges the "Repudiation of the National Debt." The repudiation of the National Debt has during many years been demanded, and is still demanded, by the Social-Democratic Federation, as may be seen from a recent issue of "Justice," its weekly publication, in which we find the following statement: "The National Debt is simply a means of extracting unearned incomes from the people of this country. It is idle to nationalise or municipalise industries by means of loans on which interest is paid. Such interest would be only another form of rent and profit. When capitalism is abolished, every one of its many forms will necessarily have to go."[441]

[157]The repudiation of the National Debt is demanded by many Socialist leaders and leading writers. "The National Debt (falsely so-called) has already been paid thrice over in usury. All future interest-payments should be held as part of the principal."[442] "The few thousand persons who own the National Debt, saddled upon the community by a landlord Parliament, exact 28,000,000l. yearly from the labour of their countrymen for nothing."[443] "Outside the land monopoly, the most infamous source of usury is unquestionably the so-called 'National Debt.' There the whole of the capital is absolutely spurious. The real capital consisted of the gunpowder and the lead which Sovereigns and statesmen expended so liberally about a century ago in attempting to murder liberty on the Continents of Europe and America. Our war debt is the most stupendous monument of human crime and folly in existence; and worst of all, the 'butcher's bill' has already been paid by the unhappy toilers thrice over in usury."[444] "The entire national liability has been discharged to the moneylenders by the people once during the last thirty-seven years. We repay public debts once every thirty-seven years without wiping out a penny of the said debts. We pay away in blank usury 20,000,000l. per year on this one head, or enough to provide old-age pensions for three-fourths of our aged poor in the United Kingdom on the basis of 7s. 6d. per head per week."[445] "236,514 blackmailers suck the udder of industry through the convenient teat of what, with audacious cynicism, is called the 'National Debt.'"[446]

The largest part of the National Debt was not created [158]by "murdering liberty" but by fighting the armies of the French Revolution and of Napoleon I. Besides, the defence against the French Revolution and Napoleon was not a "crime," but a necessary duty. Furthermore, the holders of the National Debt are not "blackmailers" but industrious, useful, and thrifty citizens, or the children and descendants of industrious, useful, and thrifty citizens.

About one-half of the National Debt is held by thrifty wage-earners, as all the money deposited in the savings banks, and most of the savings deposited with friendly societies, &c., is invested in Consols, and as a very large part of the assets of the industrial and other insurance societies consists of Government Stocks. Property being theft, and thrift being akin to it, the thrifty workman whose savings are invested in Consols has apparently no right to complain of being robbed of his savings by the Socialists.

Some Socialist agitators have the audacity to tell the thrifty worker that he will not suffer, but benefit, by the confiscation of his savings. "Opponents try to scare this man against Socialism by the fear of losing his interest. Granting for a moment he would do so, would he not gain by the general abolition of interest, &c., which would double his wage in common with that of all workers?"[447]—The worker is to be indemnified for his positive and certain loss in property through the confiscation of his savings, or at the least of the interest paid on them, by a problematical rise in general wages which would benefit the unthrifty quite as much as the thrifty. But if the promised doubling of wages should not take place, what will happen? The Socialist agitators will explain that they are sorry to have made a mistake, whilst the thriftless are squandering the property of the thrifty.

[159]According to the Socialist teachings, the capitalist is a perfectly useless being in the national household. "Does he himself want to work: to do something useful? Far from it. His money works for him; his money makes money, as the saying is."[448] Most capitalists—and I think the large majority of wage-earners are capitalists to some extent—are engaged in useful productive work of hand or brain. However, the capitalist of the Socialist imagination, the wealthy man who lives without any work, who studies the money market and Stock Exchange quotations, and who is occupied solely in investing and reinvesting his money to the best advantage, is an extremely useful member of society. It is of the utmost consequence to all workers, and to the whole nation, that the national capital should grow, that mines, railways, ships, machinery, houses, &c., should multiply and be constantly improved. Now the thrifty, not the wasteful, preserve and increase the national capital. Wise and cautious capitalists in enriching themselves will enrich the nation. Careless ones will lose their money and impoverish the nation. The wealth of France has, to a very large extent, been created by cautious and far-seeing rentiers, and thus France has become the banker among nations.

Socialists teach that the wealth of the few causes the poverty of the many; that therefore the private capitalist should be destroyed. Why, then, are the workers most prosperous in those countries which possess the wealthiest capitalists, such as France and the United States, and why are they poorest in countries, such as Turkey and Servia, where wealthy capitalists do not exist? And may not the destruction of the capitalists reduce Great Britain to the level of Turkey and Servia?

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER XToC

SOCIALIST VIEWS AND PROPOSALS REGARDING TAXATION AND THE NATIONAL BUDGET

To Socialists taxation is chiefly a means for impoverishing the rich and the well-to-do. It is their object to transfer by taxation the wealth from the few to the many, as they believe that the impoverishment of the rich will mean the enrichment of the poor. Therefore they do not aim at economy in national and local expenditure. On the contrary, they wish to spend as much as possible. As money is to be obtained solely from the rich, "An increase in national taxation has no terrors for Socialists."[449] Every increase in expenditure is greeted by them with joy, and wastefulness in national and local undertakings is rather encouraged than condemned. "Socialists look to the Budget as a means not only of raising revenue to meet unavoidable expenditure, but as an instrument for redressing inequalities in the distribution of wealth."[450] Let us first look into the financial views of the Socialists, and then into their positive proposals.

"The purpose of Socialism is to transfer land and industrial capital to the people. There are two ways in which, simultaneously, this object may be carried out. The one way is by the municipal and national appropriation—with such compensation to the existing owners as the community may think fit to give—of the land and industrial concerns. The second method is by taxation. [161]Taxation has its special sphere of usefulness in helping the community to secure some part of its own by diverting into the national purse portions of the rent, interest, and profit which now go to keep an idle class in luxury at the expense of the industrious poor."[451]

"The existence of a rich class, whose riches are the cause of the poverty of the masses, is the justification for the Socialist demand that the cost of bettering the condition of the people must be met by the taxation of the rich. The Socialist's ideas of taxation may be briefly summarised as follows: (1) Both local and national taxation should aim primarily at securing for the communal benefit all 'unearned' or 'social' increment of wealth. (2) Taxation should aim deliberately at preventing the retention of large incomes and great fortunes in private hands, recognising that the few cannot be rich without making the many poor. (3) Taxation should be in proportion to ability to pay and to protection and benefit conferred by the State. (4) No taxation should be imposed which encroaches upon the individual's means to satisfy his physical needs."[452]

"To the Socialist taxation is the chief means by which he may recover from the propertied classes some portion of the plunder which their economic strength and social position have enabled them to extract from the workers; to him, national and municipal expenditure is the spending for common purposes of an ever-increasing proportion of the national income. The degree of civilisation which a State has reached may almost be measured by the proportion of the national income which is spent collectively instead of individually. To the Socialist the best of Governments is that which spends the most. The only possible policy is deliberately to tax the rich, especially those who live on wealth which [162]they do not earn; for thus, and thus only, can we reduce the burthen upon the poor."[453]

The Fabian Society suggests the following reform of national taxation: "In English politics successful ends must have moderate beginnings. Such a beginning might be an income-tax of 2s. 6d. in the pound. Unearned incomes above 5,000l. a year would pay 2s. 6d. in the pound, below 5,000l. a year 1s. 8d. in the pound. The estate duty might be handled upon similar principles. Estates between 500,000l. and 1,000,000l. would be charged twelve and a half per cent, instead of seven and a half, and estates exceeding 1,000,000l. fifteen per cent, instead of eight."[454] The Fabian Society does not disguise its aim in proposing the foregoing: "These suggestions are doubtless confiscatory, and that is why they should recommend themselves to a Labour party. But even so, the confiscation is of a timorous and a slow-footed sort. The average British millionaire dies worth about 2,770,000l., on which the death duty would be 415,500l., leaving the agreeable nest-egg of 2,254,500l. to the heirs. Even if we assume that the inheritance passes to one person only, so as to be subject to the highest rate of duty, it would not be until five more lives had passed that it would be reduced to a pitiful million. The most patient Labour party might not unreasonably demand something a trifle more revolutionary than this."[455]

According to the above proposals the income-tax would return 47,600,000l. per annum. This sum seems far too moderate to most Socialist writers. Councillor Glyde, for instance, gives in a widely read pamphlet elaborate tables in which the produce of a graduated income-tax is carefully calculated. The Fabian Society would make "a moderate beginning" by taxing large incomes 2s. 6d. in the pound. Councillor Glyde would begin [163]by levying a 3s. income-tax on them. Taxation of incomes in accordance with his proposals would bring in 70,281,839l. per annum.[456]

Mr. Smart, of the Independent Labour Party, gives lengthy details of a taxation reform scheme in which figure a foundation-tax, a special property-tax, and a super-tax. Large incomes would have to pay 17-1/2 per cent., or 3s. 6d. in the pound, and his property and income tax would bring in 78,000,000l. per annum.[457]

Mr. Philip Snowden, M.P., submits a different scheme of taxation. There is to be an income-tax of 1s. in the pound and a graduated super-tax up to 6s. in the pound. Whilst the three authorities mentioned so far propose to take from the large incomes 2s. 6d., 3s., and 3s. 6d. in the pound as a "moderate beginning," Mr. Snowden would, presumably also as a "moderate beginning," take 7s. in the pound from them. He is quite touched with his own generosity and magnanimity, for might he not demand at once 17s. or 20s. in the pound? "To console the possessors of incomes in the higher grade, say 50,000l. a year, to the payment of an income-tax of 1s. in the pound, we may remind them that they still retain 33,500l. a year, which is a very generous payment by labour to them for the privilege of seeing them exist in gorgeous splendour and sumptuous idleness."[458]

The proposals regarding the estate duty to be charged also vary. The Fabian Society proposes a maximum of 15 per cent. Mr. Smart would be satisfied with a graduated estate duty with a maximum of 25 per cent, instead of the present maximum of 8 per cent.[459] [164]Mr. Snowden proposes a scale of duties which ranges from 1 per cent, up to 50 per cent.[460]

Besides the very greatly increased income-tax and estate duty, there would be, according to Mr. Snowden, a land value tax of a penny in the pound of its capital value, which is equal to 10 per cent. annual value. It is to be the small beginning of the policy of taxing landowners out of existence, to be speedily followed by confiscation. "The annual value of land being 250,000,000l., the produce of the land value tax would be 25,000,000l. a year."[461] The author justifies the creation of that tax as follows: "Liverpool, London, Glasgow owe their existence and their prosperity to their respective situations, which are natural advantages and which ought not in justice to be enjoyed solely by those who live upon the sites. Every town and village in the country contributes to the prosperity of every other part. The nation is a unit; its resources and its obligations should be mutually shared."

"Land values are so obviously not created by individual effort that the justice of taking the increment for the use of the community appeals to those who may have some difficulty in grasping the working of the 'unearned increment' in commercial concerns, where, however, it operates just as truly though not so obviously. The imposition of an Imperial tax of one penny in the pound on the capital value of the site would be a beginning, but by no means the end, of the process of diverting socially-created rent of land into the public exchequer. Taxation will do something towards that end; but taxation would be a long, irritating, and untrustworthy way of trying to secure the whole annual value of the land for the community."[462] "The taxation of land values is not a land reform. To get the full [165]usefulness and the full value of the land for the community there is no way but for the State to own the land."[463]

The contemplated reform of taxation will not be limited to taxing the rich and the well-to-do out of existence. Relief will be afforded to the masses by the repeal of all duties on food, and, indeed, of all indirect taxation. "The reforms which the Labour party will endeavour to obtain from the Government, in which it believes it will be expressing the democratic sentiment of the country, are:

1. Repeal of the duties on foods.

2. A minimum wage of 30s. to all workers in Government employ or working under a contractor for the Government.

3. Old-age pensions of 7s. a week for persons over sixty."[464]

Practically all Socialists agree that all indirect taxation should be abolished. "Indirect taxation has nothing whatever to recommend it to an intelligent people, however advantageous it may be to the well-to-do. Indirect taxation violates every principle of sound economy."[465] "Its maintenance is excused on the ground that indirect taxation is the only means by which the working class can be made to contribute to the cost of national government at ah. The poorer working classes should not be taxed by the Government at all."[466] "Under a just system of taxation all indirect taxation for revenue purposes would be abolished."[467] "With 43 per cent, of the working classes living in poverty, with an average wage over the whole working class not sufficient to provide themselves with the standard of workhouse comfort, it becomes a crime to tax them for the protection of their property and the enjoyment of their [166]privileges"[468]—Is it true that, as Mr. Snowden, M.P., writes, the whole working class of Great Britain is so badly paid that it cannot provide for itself the standard of workhouse comfort? How then can he reconcile with that assertion the following statement which he gives in the same book a few pages further on: "Experts assign the proportion of the total annual drink bill of the United Kingdom contributed by the wage-earning classes at 100,000,000l. A committee of the British Association, reporting on the 'appropriation of wages,' in 1882 said that 75 per cent, of the total consumption of beer and spirits, and 10 per cent. of the wine bill, might be assigned as the shares of the working class."[469]

As a matter of fact experts estimate that the British working men spend even more than 100,000,000l. per year on drink, and that they spend about 50,000,000l. on betting. It is really very inartistic for a professional agitator to tell us that the British workers are too poor to pay any taxes, that it is a "crime" to tax them at all, and then to remind us that the same starving ill-used workers can afford to spend more than the amount of the whole nation's Budget in drink and betting, that about one-sixth of the workman's wages are spent at the public-house, that many workmen spend the larger half of their income in drink, and that the British nation is the most drunken in the world, although drink is far more expensive in Great Britain than in any other country.

With part of the money taken by means of extortionate taxation from the rich, whole sections of the population are to be bribed into supporting Socialism. "Two objectionable heads of revenue would find no place in a Socialist national balance-sheet—the profit from the Post Office and the stamp duties. Improvements in the wages and conditions of labour in the lower grades of the postal service would absorb a considerable [167]part of the present annual profit of 5,000,000l. and the rest might, with benefit, be utilised for cheapening the cost to the public of postal rates and services."[470]

Mr. Snowden, in promising in one phrase the repeal of stamp duties and cheapening of postage, very likely thought that that step would relieve the poor. He apparently imagined that duty stamps were identical with postage stamps. If he had known that stamp duties are largely derived from Stock Exchange transactions and the sale of every kind of property on a large scale, from legal documents, &c., he would probably have proposed that they should be increased tenfold in order to strike another blow at private property, not that they should be abolished. Even the policy of confiscation requires an elementary knowledge of facts.

Furthermore, "The Socialist Budget would provide for a very considerable increase of the grants-in-aid, retaining for the central Government just sufficient control or inspection over the expenditure as would not interfere with the reasonable freedom of the local authority."[471] "Control which would not interfere" is at present illogical and impossible, because the one excludes the other. It may be possible in the Socialist State of the future, because logic will have to be abolished in it. At all events it seems clear that Mr. Snowden wishes to secure the support of the local authorities by the same curious means by which he strives to secure the support of the Post Office servants.

The foregoing extracts should suffice to show that the Socialists mean to ruin the owners of property of every kind by indirect confiscation in the form of extortionate taxation, which is to be constantly increased and which may be followed by direct confiscation, and that they rely upon force for achieving their aim. Capitalists may leave the country, but they must leave their capital [168]behind, and their disappearance, Socialists assert, will be no loss. "The vast majority of our employers are routineers, who could no more contribute an intelligent statement of their industrial function to this paper than a bee could write the works of Lord Avebury. Routineers can always be replaced, and replaced with profit, by educated functionaries. Consequently when the employers threaten us with emigration, our only regret as to the majority of them is that it is too good to be true."[472] "Supposing those who have the money were to threaten to leave the country and to take their money with them, would not that upset your plans? Money is not wealth. You would have cause to rejoice. So would the country which was fortunate enough to see its capitalists emigrate."[473]

According to the Socialist teaching, the workers maintain the capitalists. The brain is mightier than the hand, though the brain requires the hand. In reality it rather seems that the capitalists maintain the workers. It cannot too often be pointed out that those countries which have many wealthy capitalists are highly civilised and prosperous, and their workers are well off. On the other hand, those countries which have few or no wealthy capitalists are little civilised and poor, and their workers are exceedingly badly off. The masses may conceivably rob the capitalists of their property, and try to manage the national capital themselves, but whether they will benefit by spoliation remains to be seen. Lacking direction, foresight, unity, organisation, discipline, and thrift, the masses will probably quickly waste the national capital, and national ruin and distress and starvation will be the consequences of wholesale robbery.

The confiscation experiment has often been tried in the past, and it has always failed. The last time it has [169]been tried was at the time of the French Revolution. The money secured by robbery was recklessly squandered. Production was neglected, and the people became poorer than ever. In the country agriculture came to a standstill, weeds grew where corn had been growing, gardens became a natural wilderness, and wolves roamed in thousands.[474] The great manufacturing towns were dead, manufacturers in Paris who had employed sixty or eighty men employed but ten.[475] The people in town and country were starving. Many lived on roots and bark. Many of the poor in Paris waited outside the slaughter-houses and lapped the blood from the gutters like dogs.

Private capital has existed in all countries and at all times, because it is a plant of natural growth. One can destroy it, but it will ever grow again.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER XIToC

SOCIALISM AND THE EMPIRE

Most British Socialists object to the Empire on various grounds, and desire its downfall and dissolution. According to their views Great Britain should, in the first place, give up her non-self-governing colonies. Let us take note of some Socialistic pronouncements to that effect:

"Governments have no right to exist except with the consent of the governed, and the British have no more right to dominate other peoples than other peoples have to dominate us. What we can only hold by maintaining an alien garrison had better be given up. The people of these islands would not be losers, but the gainers by such a course."[476] "Is it possible for a self-governing people to rule a subject race, and yet keep its own love for liberty? Neither the Greeks nor the Romans could do it, and we are not doing it very well ourselves. The reason is obvious. No nation can play the part of the despot (even the benevolent despot) abroad and that of the democrat at home."[477] "Socialists should oppose the creation of empires on this simple ground—that empire-building is accompanied by terrible misery and suffering for those subject races, as they are called, which are the chosen victims sacrificed on the altar of cupidity and pride."[478] "A people gain power and influence in the world in proportion as they solve for themselves the great [171]problems of democratic self-government. We shall do more to civilise Africa by civilising the East End of London than by governing from Cape to Cairo."[479] "It is not only impossible for one nation to civilise another by governing it; it is wrong that it should attempt to do so. Conquest may have opened up one civilisation to another in times long antecedent to the steam engine and a world commerce, but to-day its only effect is to crush out and level down all national life to the dead uniformity of an alien political routine."[480]

"What is the attitude of Socialism towards backward races, savage and barbaric peoples who are to-day outside the civilised world? The position of Socialism towards these races is one of absolute non-interference. We hold that they should be left entirely alone to develop themselves in the natural order of things; which they must inevitably do or die out. It is the duty of Socialists to support the barbaric races in their resistance to aggression."[481] "It is the duty of International Socialists, the only international non-capitalist party, to denounce, and wherever possible to prevent, the extension of colonisation and conquest, leaving to each race and creed and colour the full opportunity to develop itself until complete economic and social emancipation is secured by all."[482] "Duty, like charity, begins at home, and if the civilisation of the blacks is to be purchased only by the destruction of our own democratic spirit, the balance to the world is of evil, not of good. There is another view of Imperialism expressed with brutal candour by Mr. Rhodes when he said that the flag was our best commercial asset, that trade follows the flag. Trade does no such thing. Trade follows business enterprise. Imperialism is, indeed, a policy of industrial deterioration, and by impoverishing [172]the skill of the country and encouraging the worst forms of financial capitalism, must crush out every budding hope that labour has of becoming economically and politically free."[483]

The foregoing extracts should suffice to show that there is among British Socialists a strong desire to abandon the non-self-governing colonies.

The attitude of the British Socialists towards the great self-governing dominions is not much more favourable than it is towards tropical colonies. Their attitude is one of hardly disguised hostility, which appears to spring partly from jealousy of the colonists, partly from hatred of the British capitalists who have invested money in the colonies. The loss of British capital invested in the colonies would probably be greeted with jubilation by the Socialists. "The well-to-do sections of society in Great Britain have found a secure and profitable outlet for their capital in loans and advances to the colonists alike as organised communities and as individual property-owners. But the drain for interest and dividends to England on this account is heavy, and is severely felt at times of depression, such as that which Australia as a whole has been suffering from during the recent seven years of almost continuous drought. It seems tolerably certain, therefore, that this comparative handful of colonists, eleven millions in all, of which only four millions in Australia, will in time to come, and as the Labour party and Socialists gain strength, repudiate, or at any rate reduce, these onerous obligations. It is also probable that with regard to Australia, as the white population does not increase and England's day as a colonising power proper is practically over (having no longer any agricultural population to send out as emigrants), this huge territory will not be permanently left at the sole dog-in-the-manger control of its present [173]handful of inhabitants. We may expect, at least, that Australia will not be permanently able to retain its position without an infusion of entirely fresh blood, and should other peoples require an outlet in that direction, the present preposterous policy will have to be abandoned."[484]

Socialists seem, on the whole, to be opposed to the federation of the British Empire. "The Labour party approaches Imperial problems with the politics of the industrious classes as guide on the one hand, and the internationalism of its nature as guide on the other."[485] Its "internationalism" apparently prevents it from approving of any practical scheme of Imperial Federation. Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, M.P., of the Labour party, has not expressed actual hostility to the Empire. In fact, he has even declared: "Socialism did not intend to re-write history. It accepted the facts of life, and one of these facts was that we were responsible for the Empire, and, whether we liked it or not, we had to rule that Empire. He was overjoyed the other day to find that at Stuttgart their Dutch and German and French friends were fully aware of the fact that, if Socialism was to play the proper part that belonged to it, it must devise a colonial policy."[486] Nevertheless, Mr. Macdonald's views do not appear to be very practical, as will be seen in the following pages.

"These free colonies, though of enormous extent, count for little in the matter of population. Their wealth is out of all proportion to their numbers, as their pretensions are out of all proportion to their power. That they will play any very great part in the future of the world, either federated to the mother country or in any other way, seems exceedingly improbable."[487] [174]"Imperialism is crudely ineffective. Imperial Federation would give the colonies a fuller sense of independence and liberty, and thus far would benefit them. But Imperial Federation is not approved on this account, but because it is supposed to be a way of uniting the Empire. That, it will not do: it will very likely do the opposite. In whatever form it comes, it will give to the independent interests of the colonies new importance. We shall then hear less of the Empire and more of Canada, or New Zealand, or South Africa, and a great danger will arise that a purely sectional view of Imperial interests may secure the support of the might and the arrogance of the whole Empire."[488] "Canada has almost claimed that it is a right of self-governing States to be allowed to make treaties for themselves. When that happens, the colonies might as well sever themselves from the mother country altogether. For under present circumstances the authority which makes treaties is the authority which ultimately controls armies. To give any of our colonies the power to embroil us in war, or to determine our relations with European Powers, is to give the first shattering blow to Imperial solidarity."[489]

Nearly all British Socialists passionately oppose the retention of India. They never tire of condemning British rule in India, and of endeavouring to incite the native races to rebellion. According to the assertions of Socialists, the British Government has "manufactured" famine and plague in India, and its rule is the worst, the most cruel, and the most pernicious form of despotism which the world has seen.

Mr. Hyndman says: "India is the greatest and most awful instance of the cruelty, greed, and short-sightedness of the capitalist class of which history gives any record. Even the horrors of Spanish rule in South America are [175]dwarfed into insignificance in comparison with the cold, calculating, economic infamy which has starved, and is still deliberately starving, millions of people to death in British India."[490] "I charge it against the British Government, at this moment, that the economic condition of India is much more horrible than ever it was. I declare that the despotism of Russia is more apparently cruel, but the actual economic effect of the British Government's rule in India is more desperate than anything in the situation in Russia."[491]

Mr. Hare also speaks of "famine made by Government"[492]—India suffers from two great evils: famine and the plague. India is very densely populated. The natives live chiefly upon rice, and rice requires an enormous quantity of moisture. If rain fails, there is famine, and no Government can prevent it, though it may alleviate it. Therefore all rice countries—China, India, Japan—are periodically stricken by famine. It is difficult enough, and taxes the resources of a country to the utmost, to feed in a barren country an army of 500,000 men who are closely assembled. It is impossible to feed a population of 60,000,000, even if funds and stores of food are unlimited. With the most perfect system of harbours, canals, railways, &c., the distribution of food for 60,000,000 people offers insurmountable obstacles. Plague is caused by infection, and may be stamped out by the observance of those sanitary rules which Indians refuse to observe. Cases of plague are not reported to the authorities, but are hidden from them, so that the sanctity of the home may not be defiled by the entrance of a medical man. Nevertheless, Socialists never tire of preaching: "If there is one disease which is more directly the outcome of poverty than any other, [176]it is the plague."[493] "Just think of 250,000 people dying of manufactured black plague in one month. It is not the people of England who benefit by our murderous despotism in India. It is not the working classes who would suffer if India were relieved from its present frightful oppression. If the present trade is beneficial, it is beneficial to the wealthy rather than to the workers."[494] "If ever there was a population in the history of the world possessed of a remarkable climate, with a fruitful soil, with all the opportunities for making wealth, and having been the source of wealth to the peoples who have traded with them for centuries, the population of India is that people and Hindostan is that country which ought to be supremely wealthy."[495]

Socialists have done all in their power to arouse the hostility of Europe and America against Great Britain by denouncing British misrule, cruelty, and tyranny in India. "I rejoice, as an Englishman, that I have done my share for nearly thirty years to expose in Europe, America, and Asia the systematic rascality of my aristocratic and plutocratic countrymen."[496] "I appeal to this International Socialist Congress to denounce the statesmen and the nation guilty of this infamy before the entire civilised world, and to convey to the natives of India the heartfelt wish of the delegates of the workers of all nations here assembled that they may shortly, no matter in what manner, free themselves finally from the horrors of the most criminal misrule that has ever afflicted humanity."[497]

Socialists unceasingly work for the overthrow of British rule in India. Theirs is a larger humanity. They wish to bring about a rising of the Indian population, and they seem to care little if the 250,000 British people residing in that country are incidentally [177]exterminated. Their hatred of the "capitalist" Empire is apparently greater than their sense of humanity and duty towards their own countrymen.

At a recent Socialist meeting in connection with the unrest in India, Mr. Hyndman submitted the following motion: "This meeting of the citizens of London expresses its deepest sympathy and admiration for Lajpat Kai, Adjit Singh, and the Sikh leaders at Rawal Pindi, Amritsar, and Lahore, now undergoing imprisonment without trial, at the command of Mr. John Morley and the Liberal Government, and sends its cordial greetings to the agitators all over India who are doing their utmost to awaken their countrymen of every race and creed to the ruinous effect of our rule, which, by draining away 35,000,000l. worth of produce yearly from India without return, has manufactured poverty upon a scale unprecedented in history and is converting the greatest Empire the world has ever seen into a vast pauper warren and human plague farm. This meeting further records its fervent hope that this infamous British system which crushes all economic, social, and political life out of 230 millions of people will ere long be peaceably or forcibly swept away for ever."[498] Proceeding, Mr. Hyndman said: "I may mention I have just finished a pamphlet on India I have written for the International Socialist Congress at Stuttgart, which is going to be translated by the International Socialist Bureau into German and French, and I will take care it is translated into some other languages—Eastern languages—including the Japanese language."[499]

Attempts to incite the native Indians to rise in rebellion and to massacre the British garrison and the British people residing in India are not restricted to Mr. Hyndman. We read in the leading Socialist monthly: "The maintenance of British rule in India means that [178]the working people of Great Britain are engaged in helping their masters—the class which robs them—to plunder the unfortunate people of India of over thirty millions sterling every year. We desire to see the people of India, as of every other country, not only possessed of national independence and political rights, but of social and economical liberty and equality. We assert the right of the Indian people to manage their own affairs, and ardently desire the destruction of British rule there."[500] From the official organ of the Independent Labour Party we learn that that party also "has declared itself wholly in favour of constitutional government in India and the social emancipation of the poverty-stricken Indian people. We believe that Mr. Hardie has had that purpose solely in view, and the party will stand solidly with him in conveying to the Indian people the strongest expression of the sympathy and support of British Socialists in their struggle against social and political oppression."[501] If British subjects are murdered in India by the ten thousand, we may thank our revolutionary Socialists.

Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, M.P., of the Labour party very sensibly recommends with regard to India: "The Government should win the confidence and assent of the people."[502] He then continues: "The immediate reforms necessary are a lightening of India's financial load by relieving it of the Imperial burdens which it now unjustly bears, and a readjustment of taxes; the extension of local and State self-government and further opportunities for natives to be employed in public offices; the freeing of the press."[503] It is easy to formulate a policy by expressing generous abstract sentiments. Is Mr. Macdonald aware that "the lightening of India's financial load" would mean its transference to English shoulders, [179]that the granting of self-government and the freeing of the press might lead to a position which would put before this country the alternative of a war of repression in India or of its abandonment, and that the abandonment of India would ruin Lancashire?

We have taken note of the destructive part of the policy which Socialists wish to pursue towards the Empire. Now let us take note of their constructive proposals, though these are not nearly as numerous as their destructive ones.

Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, M.P., of the Labour party, is dissatisfied with Imperial administration in its present form. He would democratise it and replace the present Imperial Governors by labour men and Socialist agitators and orators. "The Crown cannot be the custodian of an Imperial policy, though it may be an Imperial link—and even in this respect its influence is greatly exaggerated at home."[504] "The real difficulty lies in securing the confidence of the Imperial States for whatever authority is to be custodian of the Imperial standard. Downing Street is ignorant of colonial opinion and needs. Above all, Downing Street is the surviving symbol of the era of the British 'dominions' and the real 'colonies.' The Imperial States will not repose confidence in Downing Street, therefore Downing Street cannot remain the custodian of Imperial standards. What is to take its place?"[505]

"The failure of our Empire, except to produce mechanical results, such as keeping warring tribes at peace, is largely owing to the fact that the Empire is governed by the most narrow-visioned of our social classes. National pride may be a valuable possession, but when it becomes a consciousness of racial superiority it ceases to be an Imperial virtue. Thus it is not only in its origin, but also in its present administration, that the [180]Empire in a special sense is a perquisite of the rich classes, and the influence of the Labour party on Imperial politics must be to democratise the personnel of the Imperial machine. A trade union secretary could govern a province prima facie better than the son of an ancient county family or someone who was a friend of the Colonial Secretary when he was passing time at Balliol. We honestly think that the colonies appreciate our aristocracy, but the colonies laugh at our amiable illusions."[506]

Is Mr. Macdonald sure that the dominions and colonies would welcome a change, and that "trade union secretaries" in their very narrow circle of activity might not become even more "narrow-visioned" than our present pro-consuls? At the same time it cannot be doubted that all labour leaders and Socialist agitators will highly approve of his proposals to make all vice-royalties and governorships their "perquisites." Apart from a few not very practical proposals, Socialists follow not a constructive, but a purely destructive, policy with regard to the Empire, which in their eyes is merely a capitalist institution. Pursuing consciously or unconsciously a policy of revolutionary anarchism, they would break up the Empire and even Great Britain herself. Therefore many Socialists advocate the legislative independence of both Ireland and Scotland, although some preach, "'Home Rule' per se will not rid Ireland of Lord Deliverus and the gang he represents; the remedy for Ireland's distress, as the early leaders of Irish discontent perceived, is release from the grip of the brigands who stole the nation's heritage. In other words, the real object of the Irish movement is Socialism; their cause is ours, and our paths lie side by side. But they too have been tricked and led astray by the old political will-o'-the-wisp, the seeming angel of 'Liberty' translated in their case to 'Home Rule.' For many years now they [181]have pursued this shifty light through the arid desert of politics, and unless they can come to a clear understanding of their own original purpose again, and join with their English Socialist comrades to find a way out of our common difficulties, they are like to abide in that dreary desert for ever."[507]

Whilst the vast majority of British Socialists are unpatriotic, anti-national, and anti-Imperial, and would act as traitors to their country, the powerful Socialist party of Germany is strongly, one might almost say passionately, national and Imperial. Many German Socialists are enthusiastic supporters of the German Navy League, and they would not hesitate in depriving, if possible, and if need be by force, Great Britain of those colonies which her Socialists desire to get rid of.

The attitude of German Socialists towards their Fatherland, Empire, colonial possessions, and native races, may be gauged from the words of Herr Bernstein, one of her most prominent Socialist leaders: "The national quality is developing more and more. Socialism can and must be national. Even when we sing Ubi bene, ibi patria we still acknowledge a patria, and therefore, in accordance with the motto 'No rights without duties,' also duties towards her. To-day the Social-Democratic party is, and that unanimously, the most decided Imperial party that Germany knows. No other party is so keen to make over more and more legislative authority to the Empire and to widen its competence as the Social-Democratic party. The idea that in a country there exists a powerful party which is only waiting for war in order to make difficulties for its own Government, to set on foot a military strike and such-like, this idea may become the greatest menace to peace by being a spur to adventurous politicians to work towards a war with that country. But the home Government knows very well that the [182]declaration that the Social-Democrats would, in case of need, give their lives for the independence of Germany against a foreign Power is by no means a free pass for them to take war easily."[508]

In another periodical Herr Bernstein wrote: "The advantages of colonial possessions are always conditional. At a given period a nation can only sustain a certain quantity of such possessions. As long as she was ahead of all other nations in productive power, England could support a much larger amount than any other modern nation. But the time of her industrial supremacy has passed away, or at least is nearing its end. Protectionism on the Continent and in the United States may protract the advent of the inevitable in some degree. But its hour will strike one day, and when the advantages which free trade secures her to-day disappear, she would either have, I believe, to free herself of part of her colonial burdens or lose more and more of her trade, and with it her regenerative force. So much for England. With Germany the question is quite different. Although her rural population is now decreasing, she could, with a yearly increase of about 800,000, well stand more colonial possessions than she actually holds, nor would the costs and outlays for her colonies press very hard on her finances. Where two civilisations clash, the lower must give way to the higher. This law of evolution we cannot overthrow, we can only humanise its action. To counteract it would mean to postpone social progress."[509]

It is sad to compare the sane, manly, national, and patriotic attitude of German Socialists with the foolish, anti-national cosmopolitanism of British Socialists, who, parading beautiful motives of the largest humanity, would not hesitate to sacrifice their country and their countrymen, their Empire and their colonies.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER XIIToC

SOCIALIST VIEWS ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND FOREIGN POLICY

"Socialism," Mr. Ramsay Macdonald writes, "has a great part to play immediately in international politics. It alone can banish national jealousies from the Foreign Offices; it alone offers the guarantees of peace which are a necessary preliminary to disarmament. Socialism has a world policy as well as a national one—a corollary to its belief in the brotherhood of man."[510] These words contain assurances, not a plan, and therefore we must inquire, What is the foreign policy of Socialism?

As regards foreign policy one may divide the Socialists into two classes: revolutionaries and visionaries. It will be seen in the following pages that the aims of both are similar.

The foreign policy of the revolutionary Socialists of Great Britain is based on the celebrated "Communist Manifesto" of Marx and Engels, which contains the following programme regarding foreign policy: "The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: in the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality."[511] "The Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things. In all these movements they bring to the front, as the leading question of each, the property [184]question, no matter what its degree of development at the time. Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries. The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries, unite!"[512]

In accordance with the foregoing proclamation of Marx and Engels, the philosopher of British Socialism teaches: "For the Socialist the word 'frontier' does not exist; for him love of country, as such, is no nobler sentiment than love of class. Race pride and class pride are, from the standpoint of Socialism, involved in the same condemnation. The establishment of Socialism, therefore, on any national or race basis is out of the question. The foreign policy of the great international Socialist party must be to break up these hideous race monopolies called empires, beginning in each case at home. Hence everything which makes for the disruption and disintegration of the empire to which he belongs must be welcomed by the Socialist as an ally. It is his duty to urge on any movement tending in any way to dislocate the commercial relations of the world, knowing that every shock the modern complex commercial system suffers weakens it and brings its destruction nearer. This is the negative side of the foreign policy of Socialism. The positive is embraced in a single sentence; to consolidate the union of the several national sections on the basis of firm and equal friendship, steadfast adherence to definite principles, and determination to present a solid front to the enemy."[513]

[185]The head of the Social-Democratic Federation informs us: "We have never failed to hold up before the people the high ideal of a complete social revolution, which shall replace the capitalist sweating system and its terrible class war by the happiness, contentment, and glory of a great co-operative commonwealth for all mankind."[514]

Faithful to the teaching of Karl Marx, Mr. Tom Mann proclaims: "We do not want any walls built round cities or nations for fear of invasion; what we do now stand in urgent need of is an international working alliance among the workers of the whole world. The only position of safety will be found in international action among the organised workers of the world."[515]

These being the doctrines of revolutionary Socialism, it is only natural that many British Socialists take the enemy's part in case of war.[516]

The foreign policy of the visionary Socialists is based on the idea of human brotherhood and the equality of men of all races, creeds, and colours. "Socialism is brotherhood; and brotherhood is as wide as the heavens and as broad as humanity. The growth of international Socialism is the promise of the realisation of the angels' natal song: On earth, peace; Good will toward men. Socialism will remove the causes of international antagonism and make the interests of all nations the same."[517] "Socialism implies the inherent equality of all human beings. It does not assume that all are alike, but only that all are equal. Holding this to be true of individuals, the Socialist applies it also to races. Only by a full and unqualified recognition of this claim can peace be restored to the world. Socialism implies [186]brotherhood, brotherhood implies a living recognition of the fact that the duty of the strong is not to hold the weak in subjection but to assist them to rise higher and ever higher in the scale of humanity, and that this cannot be done by trampling upon and exploiting their weakness, but by caring for them and showing them the better way."[518] Thus Socialism will bring to the world eternal peace. In the words of the poet:

The ideas expressed in the above are very noble, but they seem to be hardly in accordance with historical experience or with human nature as we know it. The race war on the Pacific coast, and the murderous attacks by strikers on free labourers who have taken their place which are of frequent occurrence in all countries, show that even Socialists are apt to rely rather on threats, violence, and superior force than on brotherliness and reason, although the Chinaman and the Japanese have, according to the Socialist doctrines given in the foregoing, as much right to earn a living as any white man.

"Socialism is essentially international. It recognises no distinction between the various nations comprising the modern civilised world. 'My country, right or wrong,' the expression of modern patriotism, is the very antithesis of Socialism.... This internationalism means liberty and equality between nations as between [187]individuals, and amalgamation as soon as feasible, and as close as possible, under the red flag of Social Democracy, which does not recognise national distinctions or the division of progressive humanity into nations and races."[520] "The new community will be built up on an international basis. The nations will fraternise together, will shake hands over old quarrels, and unite in gradually extending the new State over all peoples of the earth."[521]

"Nationalisation is only the beginning of Socialism. Once let any nation be thoroughly imbued with the Socialist spirit, it will become a missionary nation. It will preach the glad tidings of salvation to people of other tongues, and that which was national shall become universal: East and West, North and South, all shall realise, all shall rejoice in, the glorious brotherhood of man."[522]

The "brotherhood of man" reminds one of the French Revolution. Like the French Revolution, Socialism has imposed upon itself the mission to convert the world to its doctrine, and people may again be placed before the alternative "La Fraternité ou la Mort."

Being anxious to "socialise the world," Socialists eagerly note every progress of Socialism in foreign countries from Paris to Pekin. For instance, we read in the "Reformers' Year Book": "The belief that the quick-witted Japanese would, at the beginning of their new civilisation, avoid the evils of European capitalism [188]by accepting a scheme of Socialism is not being fulfilled. The dividend-hunter, who has been to Europe and received a business training, is fastening the chains of monopoly upon the people. To meet this growing danger there is already a thriving Socialist-Labour party, which has a daily newspaper, the 'Hikari' ('Light')."[524] To facilitate the "socialisation of the world" and the introduction of "the brotherhood of man" by making Socialism truly international, Socialists are urged to study Esperanto, which apparently is to be the international Socialist language of the future. The "Clarion" and other Socialist papers regularly contain articles written in Esperanto, and the anti-patriotic writings of Hervé and Gohier—an extract from the writings of the former will be found in Chapter XIII.—have been translated into Esperanto, apparently in the hope that these incendiary pamphlets may help in bringing about the great Socialist revolution.

Among the 'immediate reforms' demanded in the programme of the Social-Democratic Federation (see Appendix) are to be found the demands: "The people to decide on peace and war. The establishment of international courts of arbitration." In view of these demands, which are made by most Socialist organisations, it is quite natural that Socialists condemn the secret action of diplomacy. For instance, a Socialist writer remarks on the Anglo-French agreements: "Are we the masters of our destinies, when a Delcassé may at any moment immerse us in international troubles of the first magnitude? Lord Lansdowne, as the accomplice of Delcassé, was equally guilty, and Sir Edward Grey, by now securing this triple alliance without the consent or the knowledge of the 150 millions of people whom it most vitally concerns, completes a trio of international plotters and murderers."[525]

[189]Many Socialists believe that wars may soon be abolished by international agreement, either among the nations or among the working masses, who will force their views upon the governments. According to a very prolific Socialist writer, "There are many signs and portents to-day that the evil of war, which is not more deeply rooted than was slavery a hundred years ago, will, ere long, meet a similar fate."[526] And what are the "signs and portents" upon which the belief is based that war will be abolished? "It is a significant fact that whenever the working classes meet to discuss this question of war, they invariably express themselves in favour of its speedy end. A few days ago, when the Trades Union Congress met at Liverpool, when delegates were present representing some two millions of the organised workers of the country, the representative of the Navvies' Union declared, amid the resounding cheers of the Congress, that it was impossible for a man to be a Christian and in favour of war at the same time."[527] The Navvies' Union will no doubt play a great part in the foreign policy of the Socialist commonwealth, but is the importance of their declaration not exaggerated? Wars begin, as a rule, by an act of aggression. What would the Navvies' Union and the Trades Union Congress have said if the secretary had read a telegram stating that British ships had been fired upon and sunk by an enemy, or that British territory had been invaded and British blood had been spilt? I fear that eternal peace is not yet in sight, notwithstanding the "sign and portent" of the statement made by the representative of the Navvies' Union. Indeed, clear-headed foreign Socialists are aware of the very limited usefulness of Peace Conferences, and they deride disarmament proposals, such as that submitted to the last Hague Conference by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman.

[190]An exceedingly able article in the foremost Socialist organ of Germany gave, early in the spring of 1907, the following views on the probable result of The Hague Conference and on the British proposals regarding the limitation of armaments, views which are particularly interesting because they show the sound good sense of the German Socialists and the difference between the political views of German and British Socialists. The article stated:

"Just as the first Hague Conference of 1898 in reality achieved nothing more than a few secondary amendments to the law of nations, conformity with which was left completely to the fancy of the individual Powers, so the second Hague Conference will, it is highly probable, result in nothing further than a few general peace assertions and international arrangements which, when it comes to a war, will not outlive the first interchange of shots. Certainly the English Premier is right. There does exist among the thoughtful persons in all European States an intellectual tendency towards the peaceful settlement of differences between the nations and the diminution of the gigantic military and naval armaments. But this body of thoughtful people is—as the last elections in Germany have again proved—on the whole rather small; and above all, these thoughtful people do not belong to the economically powerful class who determine the policy of Governments.

"The old ideologic conception of the English free trade doctrine, that the free exchange of goods between the nations leads to the abolition of war, to the brotherhood of humanity, that conception which found its most original expression in Dr. Bowring's exclamation 'Free trade is Jesus Christ,' still haunts some people's minds. With the greatest number of the liberal advocates of disarmament, their point of view originates simply in the consideration that the strong naval and military [191]armaments demand more and more, not only from England's purse, but from her human material, while, on the other hand, England possesses all that she can expect, and has, on that account, not much more to gain. All over the earth's surface she has the most valuable colonies, and is, since the alliances with Japan and France, in a perfectly secure position, which awakens in her the wish to consolidate her position and to economise her finances for the upholding of her supremacy. It is that satisfied state of mind which makes the fortunate winner of the game say, 'Let us leave off; I am tired of playing now.' English capitalists feel themselves in a safe position. Nothing can easily go wrong at present. The thing is, therefore, to secure what they have got and to diminish the heavy burdens. This desire is comprehensible—only the other Powers will probably not respect it.

"The working-class party is very much in sympathy with the disarmament idea in itself. For this party is the most consistent opponent of militarism, and demands in its programme not only the formation of a citizen army in place of the standing army, but also that questions of peace and war should be determined by the people themselves, and that all international differences should be settled by arbitration. But no amount of sympathy can get over the fact that in the present capitalist world there is very little chance of a general disarmament of the Powers. The conception that war is only a product of human unreason is on the same level as the idea that revolutions are only mental aberrations of the masses. War is rooted in the opposing interests of the nations, as are revolutions in the opposing interests of the classes."[528]

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER XIIIToC

SOCIALISM AND THE ARMY

Most Socialists, British and foreign, are opposed to the existing armies, for two reasons:

(1) Because they wish to overturn practically all existing institutions from the Monarchy downwards, and they fear that the military may defend the status quo;

(2) Because they aim at the abolition of States and of nationality and at the disappearance of frontiers, as the ideal Socialist State of the future would, for economic and political reasons, have to embrace the world.

The Socialist State of the future, embracing the whole universe, can be created only after the existing States have been overturned. Therefore the more immediate aim of Socialists is to seize upon the political power in accordance with the advice given by Karl Marx in his celebrated "Manifesto."[529]

Most Socialists apparently believe that not by Parliamentary means but only by violence will they succeed in making themselves supreme, for we are told: "The ballot-box is no doubt a safer weapon than the rifle; but even when there will be a sufficient number of people in these islands convinced of the necessity and possibility of the co-operative commonwealth, the end will not yet be certain. There are the classes in possession to be considered. Are they going to allow themselves to be voted out? Will they respect a franchise and ballot-box which will vote that they shall get off the backs of the workers? Franchise 'Reform' [193]Bills—and it is astonishing to what use 'reform' can now be put—can be rushed through Parliament, like Crimes Acts, in twenty-four hours; and there is the 'voluntary' professional army, under military law, to overawe the recalcitrants who may resent the suffrage and the ballot-box being jerrymandered against the popular interest. But none are so likely to be overawed by threatened displays of armed force—whether voluntary or conscript—as those who have a difficulty in distinguishing the butt end of a rifle from its muzzle."[530]

Under the heading "Will it come to barricades?" we read: "The barricade is to-day, all will agree, in this country at any rate, an impossible weapon. Armed insurrection on the part of the workers in this country would to-day be the height of folly, and will continue to be so, so long as our standing army of hired mercenaries exists. Standing armies are the instruments of capitalist oppression at home and aggression abroad. But so long as even one great Power maintains the present form of military organisation, so long as war is possible, so long will it be necessary that some form of military organisation exist in all countries. We dare not preach peace when we know there can be no peace. This is why the Socialists of all countries are to-day in favour of an educational policy which will make every citizen fit for military service within the ranks of a citizen army, organised and maintained for purposes of defence only. The advantages of such a force, from the Socialist standpoint, are so obvious that they need hardly be stated. And it would at least put the working class in a position to understand what a barricade means, and how, if need be, to act in their own defence. There are, I am well aware, a handful of individual Socialists with us who are against universal military training, but they are a diminishing quantity, and will in due season find their [194]natural vocation within the ranks of the Liberty and Property Defence League."[531]

Mr. Quelch, the editor of "Justice," shares the foregoing opinion, for he tells us: "Revolutions, it is said, can no longer be accomplished by force, but only by peaceful means—the vote, Parliamentary action, and legislation. It may be so, but it will be unprecedented if the present ruling class surrender without a struggle. And if they had the armed force of the nation at their command, they would struggle successfully no matter what the Legislature may have done. The ruling class will not be made to submit to law and order which is not their law and order, except by overwhelmingly superior force. Nobody supposes that in such a contest the people could win against the ruling class unless they had been able first to win over the army. With a professional 'voluntary' army, well paid and well affected to its paymasters, such winning over would be practically impossible. But with the armed nation there would be no winning over required. An armed nation—whatever it may do or submit to—is essentially a free nation, and whatever such a nation determines upon, that it can do and have, in spite of any ruling class."[532]

Similar opinions have frequently been expressed by leading Continental Socialists. Herr Kautsky, for instance, wrote under the heading "Expropriation of the Expropriators," as follows: "The arming of the people is a political measure. It can, under certain circumstances, cost just as much as a standing army, but it is needed for the safety of the democracy in order to deprive the Government of its most important weapon against the people."[533]

[195]Those who are of opinion that only the extreme section of British Socialists, the revolutionary wing, is hostile to the army, are mistaken. This may be seen from the following resolution of the Fabian Society, which is the most moderate exponent of British Socialism: "Armies act as a standing menace not to neighbouring States, but to the working populations of their own countries. A study of the strategical disposition of many of the great railway stations and barracks of the Continent will prove that the most important function of the modern army is to suppress the resistance of labour to capital in the war of classes."[534]

Among the "immediate reforms" demanded in the programme of the Social-Democratic Federation[535] we find a demand for "the abolition of standing armies and the establishment of national citizen forces." Army and police are to most Socialists very objectionable because it is their function to protect the national order and national property against predatory, anarchistic, and revolutionary attempts. Therefore it is only natural that "No Social Democrat regards the present police system as a satisfactory one, or a professional police as other than a dubious expedient."[536] According to the opinion held by many Socialists, "The soldier's primary function is to come to the rescue of the policeman when the latter is overpowered."[537]

Voluntary armies of the British type are quite as objectionable to Socialists as are the national armies of the compulsory type raised on the Continent of Europe. "We are told that the advantage of our present military system is that it is not compulsory, that people are free to join the service or not as they please. The freedom of the average recruit to join the army is about on a par with [196]the freedom of an unemployed workman to work for lower wages than the recognised rate of wages, or the freedom of the prostitute."[538] "Your soldier, ostensibly a heroic and patriotic defender of his country, is really an unfortunate man driven by destitution to offer himself as food for powder for the sake of regular rations, shelter, and clothing."[539] "A standing army of professional soldiers is the most effective instrument in the hands of the dominant class, the greatest menace to democracy and popular liberty, and the most effective barrier to revolutionary change that could possibly be devised. And surely, too, the antithesis to that is the Armed Nation—every citizen a soldier and every soldier a citizen."[540]

The ideal army from the Socialist point of view is the armed nation. It is, as we shall see in the following, an army composed of Socialist workmen and commanded by Socialist leaders. It is not an army for national defence, but one for attack on the existing order; it is a revolutionary army, an army of plunder. The very natural desire of Socialists to create such a force is, as a rule, disguised under the demand for a democratic army and universal military training. "We Socialists advocate the military training of all citizens and the abolition of professional armies, as ensuring the maximum of military efficiency and the minimum of menace to democratic principles and popular rights. We propose that every man should undergo a thorough military training so as to be equal to any other man. A professional army is maintained in the main for the defence and maintenance of the master class. A professional army is a specialised class or caste, divorced from civil life, hostile to the general body of the community, and maintained as an instrument to serve the purpose of the master class. That [197]purpose is as often the suppression of popular movements at home as aggression abroad. If it were possible to abolish all military organisations, the remedy would be simple. But we have seen that that is, under present conditions, impossible. Therefore we urge that all citizens should be armed and trained to the use of arms, so that all reasonable military requirements may be met and professional soldiering be entirely dispensed with."[541] The fact that the abolition of the professional army would involve the loss of India and of other possessions to Great Britain is a matter of no importance to the Socialists. In fact the Socialists wish Great Britain to lose not only India but all her colonies, as will be seen by reference to Chapter XI., "Socialism and the Empire."[542]

Every attempt at improving the voluntary army of Great Britain is considered a blow at Socialism, and is therefore vigorously resisted by the Socialists. Hence the scheme of army reform of Mr. Haldane, Secretary of State for War, has been loudly condemned by them as reactionary and likely to strengthen the capitalists, and they entreat the workers not to oppose universal military training. "The capitalist class would be perfectly delighted that all the rest of the people outside themselves and their mercenaries should be peaceful unarmed non-resisters. Nothing could suit them better. We have Mr. Haldane's territorial army—on paper; and a more reactionary, militarist (in the worst sense), and anti-democratic system than that to which the present War Minister has had the effrontery to apply our term of the 'Armed Nation' could scarcely be devised."[543]

Whether Mr. Haldane's proposals give Great Britain a better army for national and Imperial defence, is apparently immaterial to the Socialists, for they criticise it merely from the point of view of intending rioters and [198]revolutionaries. They complain: "The position of the Volunteers now is this, that they are not under military law, and cannot be called out as soldiers to shoot down workmen at the bidding of the capitalists. Mr. Haldane's scheme, however, destroys the civilian character of the Volunteers, and converts them into professional soldiers."[544]

Although most Socialists are in favour of a national militia, a considerable number oppose even a national militia of the Swiss type, fearing that it would refuse to aid the Socialists in overturning society as at present constituted. "We have been told of the readiness with which the Swiss militia have donned their uniforms and seized their rifles when called upon to act against strikers."[545] The Socialist delegates who accompanied the committee of inquiry which the National Service League sent to Switzerland in the autumn of 1907 were apparently less interested in the efficiency of the Swiss army for national defence than in its attitude during conflicts between labour and capital.[546]

Fearing that a national militia might not be willing to lend itself to revolutionary purposes, that it might become a patriotic force as is the Swiss militia, many Socialists condemn every kind of military service, and are quite ready to disarm the nation in the name of humanity and civil freedom. For instance, at the annual conference of the Socialist Independent Labour Party of 1907 the following was moved by a well-known revolutionary Socialist, Mr. Bruce Glasier:

"That this Conference believes that the time has come when militarism in every form should be denounced and resisted as alien to civil freedom and social progress, and expresses itself emphatically against compulsory military service, and the attempts which are being made [199]to introduce military training in public schools or other public institutions, and views with alarm the purposes of Mr. Haldane's Army Territorial Bill, which, if passed, will make military service practically compulsory under officers drawn wholly from, the upper classes, will make industrial employment dependent upon military service, and, instead of promoting international unity, will foster and increase the spirit of militarism and aggression."[547]

In moving this resolution Mr. Glasier said that "he denounced militarism root and branch," and Mr. Keir Hardie, a Communist Socialist, in seconding, said: "The resolution was not only a declaration against militarism, but a special and specific condemnation of the Territorial Army Scheme now before the House of Commons. The Socialist party was bound to protest against a system of that kind. The particular feature which emphasised the danger was that there were to be county associations formed to have charge of the new territorial forces, and to have a majority of military men upon them with landlords and possibly employers of labour. A citizen army was as great a menace to an industrial population as a professional army. The new army would be recruited from the people, and officered by the enemies of the people, just as the professional army was. Children were to be taught that the flag was the great thing to value in life. They would find that a citizen army, officered by the rich and recruited from their own ranks, would be taught to regard the flag as something holy, while they shot down strikers and Socialists just as freely as the most exclusive professional army in the world could do. Patriotism was one of the weapons used by the enemies of the people to blind them to facts."[548]

The Trade Union Congress of 1907, disregarding the security of the country and the Empire from foreign [200]aggression, also condemned military training of every kind. Commenting hereon, the "Social-Democrat," the organ of the Social-Democratic Federation, which favours a national democratic army, wrote: "The Trades Union Congress declares against conscription and also condemns military training, which is a totally different matter. To condemn conscription is purely negative. It would be very much more to the point if the representatives of the organised working class would formulate an expression of opinion on the actual military problem. Conscription, at the worst, is in the air; but the present-day military problem is not in the air; it is on the earth, practical and urgent. What have the trade unionists to say to it? Do they approve of the present system of a nominally voluntary professional soldiery, maintained as an instrument at the service of the capitalist class for suppression at home and aggression abroad?"[549] The trade unionists were urged to abolish the voluntary army and to create a national citizen army, which will assist the Socialist in overturning society.

A national citizen army, composed of Socialists and commanded by Socialists, is the ideal, and until such an army be created it is in the interest of Socialists to weaken the existing army and to undermine its discipline to such an extent that, in the event of a rising or a revolution, it will side with the revolutionaries. With this object in view, Socialists are trying to create dissatisfaction in the army by means of emissaries and literature. For instance, in a leaflet entitled "An Appeal to Soldiers," the Social-Democratic Federation says: "If you are to fight for patriotism and country, then let it be a national duty for all, wealthy as well as poor, to bear arms. Let not those who are called upon to fight remain a pariah class apart, bereft of the rights of [201]citizenship—regarded by the upper classes as something to be avoided."[550]

In its official programme the Social-Democratic Federation demands, under the heading "Immediate Reforms," "the abolition of courts-martial: all offences against discipline to be transferred to the jurisdiction of civil courts."[551] Why do the Socialists demand the abolition of military law? Because, in their own words, "With the abolition of military law, upon which we have always laid the greatest possible stress, militarism falls to the ground."[552] Therefore the "Appeal to Soldiers" admonishes the military: "You are and will remain a class apart from the rest of the nation so long as you are compelled to serve under a barbarous military code called 'military law.' The system of trial by court-martial is a mere farce and a mockery. We of the Social-Democratic Federation intend to do our utmost to abolish it root and branch. Give us your support. Remember that the late War Minister, Mr. St. John Brodrick, compared the soldier to the Chinese coolie in South Africa. This is how you are looked upon by the very people who use you as food for powder in the interest of their class. Now is the time for all who wish you well to demand the abolition of military law, the civilising of military service, and the establishment of a national citizen force."[553]

In the autumn of 1907 a letter to the editor was published by the "Daily Telegraph" which contained the following statement:

Socialism is carrying on a vigorous propaganda for destroying discipline in the army and also in the navy. Hervéism has been imported into Great Britain, and is making rapid progress. "The Socialist," the organ of the Socialist Labour party, a party which at present is small in number, but which is most violent in attitude, in an article entitled "The Socialist Labour Party and the Citizen Army," quotes with approval Hervé's saying: "The present countries are cruel step-mothers to the proletariat. There is at present no country so superior to any other that its working class should get themselves killed in its defence. In case of mobilisation the proletariat should respond to the call to arms by an insurrection against their rulers to establish the Socialist or Communist régime. Rebellion sooner than war! In case of an order to mobilise, we would seize the moment to attempt the revolution, to place our hands on the social wealth to-day usurped by a minority." The foregoing is printed in very large type. The article then continues, commenting upon Hervé's advice as follows: "The soldier has been fed and clothed by the working [203]class. His continued efficiency as a military automaton depends upon regular supply of food, clothing, and the necessaries of life from the same source. He has been transported to the field of conflict by the labour of a whole army of railwaymen. Let us suppose that the day of the final struggle has been reached. Suppose the capitalist attempts to stifle the revolution in blood; suppose he calls upon the army to crush the revolutionary working class by brute force. Let us suppose, too, that the revolutionary agitation has not penetrated the Chinese walls of military discipline (a most improbable hypothesis) and that the soldiers, instead of turning their guns against the capitalist murderers, cheerfully and willingly serve their masters in the attempt to crush the people—what then? We shall put the army in quarantine. We shall isolate it from the rest of the community. We shall cut off supplies of food, clothing, and fuel. The railway and telegraph service will no longer be at its disposal—and in this respect we are in a more advantageous position than our French and German fellow-workers, inasmuch as the Government ownership of the railways in these countries is used to deny the workers connected with them the right of organisation. The army would be in a state of siege, surrounded on all sides by implacable foes. That, coupled with whatever may be possible and necessary in the way of armed insurrection within and outside of the army, is the policy proposed by the Socialist Labour party and Industrial Unionism. Circumstances may, and probably will, modify it in many important details, but there is the main outline. Is it not more logical, more coherent, more likely to succeed than any 'citizen army scheme'?"[554]

Love of country has apparently no room in the Socialist's ethics. Its defence does not trouble him, since [204]he is taught that his worst enemies are those Englishmen who happen to be better off.

In their desire to abolish the army, some Socialists argue that "The whole of your military system is entirely unnecessary."[556] Others falsify history and boldly assert that British wars, "in nearly every case have been waged for the suppression of liberty abroad, or from the irritating desire on the part of British statesmen to interfere with the internal affairs of other nations."[557] On the other hand, Mr. Quelch very sensibly argues: "Militarism is an evil against which we have to fight with all the means in our power, but to talk of universal disarmament at the present stage is mere Utopianism, a crying of peace where there is no peace, and where existing antagonisms make peace impossible. We have at first to eradicate the causes of conflict. To-day the unarmed nation offers itself as a temptation and a prey to some mighty brigand [205]Power. War is the last argument of kings, and all Governments rest on force. So long as that is the case, it is only the people which is armed that can maintain its freedom, or can indeed lay claim to be a free people. An unarmed nation cannot be free. An armed nation, on the contrary, is a guarantee of individual liberty, of social freedom, and of national independence."[558] Mr. Quelch would have the same ideals as the National Service League, did not later utterances of his contradict sensible statements such as the above.

It is a curious and most interesting phenomenon that in France and Great Britain, two eminently non-aggressive countries, the Socialists do all in their power to disarm the nation, whilst in Germany, which can hardly be described as non-aggressive, the Socialists are patriotic and are ready to go to war, not only for the defence but also for the aggrandisement of their country. Numerous declarations to that effect made by the leading German Socialists are on record, and the following extract is characteristic of their attitude:

"That Germany be armed to the teeth, possessing a strong fleet, is of the utmost importance to the working men. What damages our exports damages them also, and working men have the most pressing interest in securing prosperity for our export trade, be it even by force of arms. Owing to her development, Germany may perhaps be obliged to maintain her position sword in hand. Only he who is under the protection of his guns can dominate the markets, and in the fight for markets German working men may come before the alternative either of perishing or of forcing their entrance into markets sword in hand."[559]

In the spring of 1907 the leading German Socialist paper wrote in a weighty article on the Peace Conference [206]at The Hague: "The conception that war is only a product of human unreason is on the same level as the idea that revolutions are only mental aberrations of the masses. War is rooted in the opposing interests of the nations, as are revolutions in the opposing interests of the classes."[560]

A comparison of German Socialism with English Socialism shows that English Socialism is more violent and far less patriotic than German Socialism. German Socialists love their country. Most British Socialists apparently love only themselves.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER XIVToC

SOCIALISM AND THE MONARCHY

The first of the "Immediate Reforms" demanded in the official programme of the Social-Democratic Federation[561] is the "Abolition of the Monarchy." That that demand has been made so crudely and that it has been given so prominent a position cannot surprise anybody who is acquainted with British Socialism. "Socialists are essentially thorough-going Republicans. Socialism, which aims at political and economic equality, is radically inconsistent with any other political form whatever than that of Republicanism, Monarchy and Socialism, or Empire and Socialism, are incompatible and inconceivable. Socialism involves political and economic equality, while Monarchy or Empire essentially imply domination and inequality."[562]

"As in the political history of the race the logical development of progress was found in the abolition of the institution of monarchy and not in its mere restriction, so in industrial history the culminating point to which all efforts must at last converge lies in the abolition of the capitalist class, and not in the mere restriction of its powers. The Socialist Labour Party, recognising these two phases of human development, unites them in its programme, and seeks to give them a concrete embodiment by its demand for a Socialist Republic."[563]

[208]Most Socialists describe all monarchs as the drones of society, and habitually refer to crowned heads either as "loafers" or as "Royal paupers, able-bodied and outdoor."[564] "If the people were of my mind they would not tolerate for twelve months that the Royal paupers should wear robes and have every luxury, and the honest, industrious aged poor should wear rags and eat a crust or be imprisoned for being hungry."[565] (Has ever anybody in Great Britain, or in any other country, been imprisoned "for being hungry"?)

"Is it possible that this degrading monarchical superstition can survive in England much longer? Has the schoolmaster now been abroad so long in vain? Will the English people never take their destinies into their own hands and close the long era of monarchical and aristocratic robbery? Are we never to have a Government that can hear the bitter cry of the outcast, and, hearing, act? We know the goal. The goal is the Democratic Republic."[566]

Many further extracts regarding English and foreign monarchs might be given, but they are so indescribably coarse and so offensive—even the late Queen is most shamelessly slandered, abused, and calumniated—that they are hardly fit for publication, and their authors shall be nameless.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER XVToC

SOCIALIST VIEWS ON PARLIAMENT AND THE NATIONAL ADMINISTRATION

The opinion of most Socialists with regard to the British Parliament is well summed up in the phrase "Parliament a way to the Democracy? Why, 'tis not a road at all, but only a barricade across our road."[567] It will be seen in this and the following Chapter that Socialism means either to capture and hold that barricade or to pull it down.

Let us take note of some representative Socialist opinions on the British Parliament. "The House of Commons is a machine elaborately contrived by the exploiting classes to serve their own ends. In the race for Parliamentary seats the wisest and the best are nowhere. They are rarely even permitted to start. The prizes are for the richest, the most unscrupulous, cunning, and pushing. And without a complete revolution in our ideas regarding the objects as well as the methods of legislation, it must always remain so."[568] "Parliament is appointed, we are told, to fulfil the will of the nation. Then why doesn't it do it? If it has a job to do, why does it stand day after day, week after week, year after year, cackling, cackling, cackling about it? Can the mind of man conceive anything more intensely ridiculous than this [210]spectacle solemnly presented for our admiration by the champions of the system, of six hundred garrulous old gentlemen making a set and formal business of cackling—cackling, cackling, cackling, with infinite pride in their own preposterous squeaking and nagging, and then filing out one by one at intervals, like a stately Lord Mayor's procession in the kingdom of the black and white penguins? What is to be done with such a museum?"[569] "Government by Parliament is a preposterous pretence—a delusion and a snare to the people. It is a gag imposed by the classes on the aspirations of the masses. Our Parliamentary representation is a fraud. If we could appeal directly to the whole people as to whether willing workers should starve, or little children suffer hunger, then something might be done. But how can the electors express their desires on this vital matter under our present electoral system?"[570]

Socialists complain that Parliament is run by a class. "It is colossal impudence for a party paper to talk against 'class representation.' Every class is over-represented—except the great working class. The mines, the railways, the drink trade, the land, finance, the army (officers), the navy (officers), the Church, the law, and most of the big industries (employers) are represented largely in the House of Commons. And nearly thirty millions of the working classes are represented by about a dozen men, most of whom are palsied by their allegiance to the Liberal party."[571] "The rich man's club at St. Stephen's is merely a committee of plutocrats—rentmongers, interestmongers, and profitmongers—assembled for the purpose of safeguarding the spoils which the 'classes' have theftuously contrived to heap up."[572] "The inequality of representation of [211]classes in Parliament at present is somewhat startling. It stands as follows:

"That is, we have 640 members representing the interests of, say, 6,000,000 of persons, and 30 members representing the interests of 37,000,000."[573] "As recipients of rents, royalties, interests, and dividends, some 600 of the representatives of the people in the House of Commons are parasites upon the people's backs. The railway shareholders have 78 representatives; the railway workers, nearly 400,000 strong, have one. One hundred and eighty thousand landed proprietors have 155 members; 1,000,000 agricultural labourers have one. Coal-mine owners have 21; and 655,000 miners have seven members. The shipowners and builders have 22 representatives; the 200,000 sailors have none."[574]

"The social composition of the House of Commons is as follows: 124 lawyers, 108 manufacturers (including brewers, colliery-owners, &c.), 85 landowners, 64 merchants and shopkeepers, 37 army and navy men, 33 journalists and authors, 28 financiers, 23 professors, teachers, &c., 18 Civil servants, 18 newspaper proprietors and publishers, 16 heirs to the peerage, 67 of miscellaneous [212]occupations and professions, and 50 working men. Thus the bulk of the present House of Commons consists of rent, profit, and interest mongers and their hirelings and hangers-on. The exploited masses of the people are only represented by fifty men."[575]

"On the top of all this political chicanery and impudent pretence of popular representation, there sits an autocratic, irresponsible, hereditary legislative body, consisting exclusively of idlers and parasites who reserve to themselves the right of rejecting all laws which do not clearly further their own exactions and monopolies! Then ask yourselves: Of what use is Parliament? Of what use can it ever be to the mass of the common people?"[577]

Parliament is not only useless to the worker, but is also, according to the Socialists, utterly corrupt and callous to the sufferings of the people. "Whenever an American is met abroad with the assertion that government in the Republic is corrupt, he can safely say that for one ounce of corruption in America there is a full pound avoirdupois in Britain."[578] "It is extremely doubtful, indeed, whether either slavery or the slave-trade would be abandoned in the British Empire if they still existed to-day, and their abrogation and suppression depended upon the English House of Commons. The hideous corruption in that assembly and the utter indifference of the majority of its plutocratic members and their retainers to the welfare of any people, at home or abroad, where money is to be [213]made by neglecting the commonest rules of ethics, have never been so clearly manifested as they are to-day."[579]

"The suffrage in Great Britain is very unsatisfactory, as the following table shows:

As to England, she occupies a very low place in the scale. But then the people here have not even got universal suffrage! And this is a 'democratic,' 'self-governing' community."[580]

Furthermore, "The time has come when members of Parliament will have to receive payment for their services in the House of Commons, because the people have realised that they cannot be adequately represented only by men of wealth and position who are able to pay their own expenses."[581]

The national Administration is quite as unsatisfactory to Socialists as is the national Parliament. "To-day honesty wears rags, and rascality and idleness wear robes. Every pint of beer, and every drop of wine or spirits the [214]workers drink, every pipe of tobacco or cigar they smoke, every cup of tea, coffee, or cocoa they drink, every patent medicine they purchase, every dog they keep, every pound of sugar they use, even their playing cards and their insurance policies, are taxed to help to pay big salaries and pensions to the younger sons of the aristocracy, &c. The eldest sons live on the family estate; the younger live on the State. One becomes a lawyer, and will lie for anyone who will pay him well; another becomes an officer in the army or navy, and he will cut the throat of anyone in return for a good salary; another becomes a parson, and in return for a good stipend he will pray for anyone; the others are quartered on the consular or the diplomatic service, or are placed as clerks at 1,000l. per year in the Colonial, Foreign, or Home Office, &c."[582] The official Parliamentary Report of the Independent Labour Party for 1907 states: "Our short experience has been sufficient to teach us that it is as important to democratise our administrative departments as it is to democratise our Statute Book. We have found that the doors to the higher offices in Whitehall are closed to everyone who has not had a middle-class or aristocratic education, and recent changes have placed our Civil service more completely in the hands of the wealthy classes."[583]

In the foregoing statements we find some of the principal complaints of the Socialists regarding the national Parliament and Administration. Let us now take note of their wishes and proposals.

Among the "Immediate Reforms" demanded in the programme of the Social-Democratic Federation we find the following regarding Parliament and the Administration:

"Abolition of the Monarchy. Democratisation of the Government machinery, viz. Abolition of the House [215]of Lords, Payment of members of legislative and administrative bodies, Payment of official expenses of elections out of the public funds, Adult suffrage, Proportional representation, Triennial parliaments, Second ballot, initiative and referendum. Foreigners to be granted rights of citizenship after two years' residence in the country, on the recommendation of four British-born citizens, without any fees. Canvassing to be made illegal. Legislation by the people in such wise that no legislative proposal shall become law until ratified by the majority of the people. Legislative and administrative independence for all parts of the Empire."

As the above demands are somewhat vague, it is worth while to take note of another and clearer statement of the political demands made by the Social-Democratic Federation. "We of the Democratic Federation demand complete adult suffrage for every man and woman in these islands, because in this way alone can the whole people give free expression to their will; we are in favour of paid delegates and annual conventions, because by this means alone can the people control their representatives; we stand up for the direct references of all grave issues to the country at large and for the punishment as felony of every species of corruption, because thus only can tyranny be checked and bribery be uprooted; we call for the abolition of all hereditary authority, because such authority is necessarily independent of the mass of the people. But all these reforms, when secured, mean only that the men and women of these islands will at length be masters in their own house. Mere political machinery is worthless unless used to produce good social conditions."[584]

A widely read Socialist writer formulates the Socialistic demands regarding Parliamentary reform as follows: "(1) The suffrage should not be given to a man's house or his lodgings, but to the man himself. [216]I believe in adult suffrage, male and female. (2) Constituencies should be numerically equal, each having three members, one retiring annually by rotation. (3) Cabinets should be chosen annually by the members of the House of Commons, to whom alone they should be responsible. (4) Payment of members and election expenses. Members should receive reasonable 'wages' according to the ancient practice of the Constitution, while all election expenses (not strictly personal to the candidate) should be defrayed out of the rates. (5) The Monarchy. If we are to have more kings or queens, their cost ought not to exceed that of the President of the United States, viz. 10,000l. a year. 'The office of a king in this nation is useless, burdensome, and dangerous, and ought to be abolished' (Resolution of the Long Parliament, 1649). (6) The House of Lords. 'A House of Peers in Parliament is useless and dangerous and ought to be abolished.'"[585]

The Fabian Society proclaims: "To complete the foundation of the democratic State, we need manhood suffrage, abolition of all poverty disqualifications, abolition of the House of Lords, public payment of candidature expenses, public payment of representatives, and annual elections."[586]

"The problem how the Lords are to be abolished is of easy solution. They cannot present themselves at the Gilded Chamber without writs, and these a democratic Ministry could and would peremptorily stop. Should they come without writs, Inspector Denning could be instructed to take charge of them. Or the House of Commons could simply revive its resolution of January 6, 1649, decreeing their abolition."[587]

Many Socialists are opposed not only to the House [217]of Lords but to all second chambers. "When the hereditary House is abolished, the demand which will be made by reactionaries for a representative second chamber must be sternly resisted. True, most nations have second chambers in imitation of our pernicious example; but there is not one of them, however constituted, whose history is not a conclusive argument against such institutions. The second chambers of Europe and America are nothing more than standing monuments of the gregarious folly of mankind. Nations can no more have two wills than individuals. A second chamber at one with the first is superfluous, in opposition it is noxious."[588]

A large number of Socialists do not think that the democratisation of the House of Commons and the abolition of the House of Lords will suffice. They fear that party politics and party intrigues may become more pernicious in a Labour Parliament than they have proved to be in a middle-class Parliament. They fear that adult suffrage may not improve matters, and that impecunious professional politicians may prove worse than the class of politicians who up till now have sat in Parliament. "We stand in England at the parting of the ways. One leads to the payment of members and the creation of a class of professional political adventurers; the other leads to the referendum and initiative."[589]

"In the Republics of France and the United States the electors are virtually endowed with male adult suffrage, and Labour representation is facilitated by State payment of members and of their election expenses. Yet the French Chamber, with its Panama and Southern Railway scandals, in which the patriots have gorged their servile lusts, has stood for many years before the nations as a monument of infamy. The United States Congress [218]has not a single Labour representative within its walls, and the Government of the country is become a vile synonym for corruption."[590] "In America the compensation of each Senator and each Representative is fixed at five thousand dollars, or one thousand pounds per year. In addition to this the members have special fares on the railways, and many other perquisites. Yet the American 'Encyclopedia of Social Reform,' edited by W.D.P. Bliss, says, on page 325, 'Congressmen, notoriously, do not represent the people, but special interests and great moneyed corporations. The Congress is almost the only great national legislative body owned wholly by the well-to-do. In the British Parliament, even after the Conservative victories of the last election, there are thirteen Labour men. In Congress there is not one."[591] "Better the stupid British hereditary gentleman than the cunning politician-for-a-living. Better a Cabinet of Chamberlains and Gladstones than a circus of conflicting unscrupulous demagogues on the make."

"The Parliamentary system tends, not to the summoning of thoughtful patriots to their country's service, but to the exaltation and glorification of plausible windbags."[592] "The panacea of Labour representation will not remedy those defects. It is in the eternal nature of things that in the electoral competition of rival personalities the scum must rise to the top. So long as self-seeking is rewarded by the highest honours self-seeking will flourish."[593] "A Parliament of Labour members would develop just the same tendency as any other to division into parties commanded by rival ambitions, between which the democratic vote would, as always, annul itself."[594] "If there were five hundred delegates of Labour, if the whole of the Cardiff Trade Unions Congress could be suddenly [219]translated to Parliament and power, there might still be some envious, spiteful braggarts subterraneously scheming and gnawing to undermine and engulf a rival, though a people's cause were wrecked in the catastrophe. Leaders are always dangerous. The workmen have too many leaders. Their first political necessity is to get rid of the politicians. Therefore I would like to see abolished all Legislative Chambers, Senates, and Councils of State."[595]

Views identical with the foregoing are held by many Socialists, and therefore a Socialist writer has asked: "Why cannot the people, even of a populous and extensive country, vote upon all laws?"[596] "Instead of representation we shall have what is technically called the referendum, or submission of all proposed measures to the people, who must signify their approval by vote before the measures can pass into law. This has been practised already to some extent in Switzerland, both in national and cantonal affairs. It was first proposed by Robespierre when he advised the king of France to say: 'My people, here are the laws I have made for you. Will you accept them?'"[597]

Another Socialist says: "It is impossible that any delegate should completely represent the desires of ten or twenty thousand electors. No two human beings are agreed about everything; and, in every election, electors, in order to express approval of one cherished principle, are driven to adopt half-a-dozen others which they bitterly disapprove."[598] "The way to true democracy will never be found through delegacy. The only safe way is through direct legislation—through the referendum and initiative. The referendum and initiative does not mean more laws, but fewer, shorter, simpler, and more understandable ones."[599] "What is wanted is neither aristocracy, [220]plutocracy, nor demagoguecracy, but democracy—the one governing system which never has been tried. The people must learn that the game of politics is not an unfathomable science, but a struggle of rival interests in which no delegate can so well represent their needs as themselves."[600] "The referendum quite changes the character of the Federal Assembly. It ceases to be a Parliament, and becomes merely a drafting committee. In other countries the initiative comes from above; the Parliament and the King are together the legal sovereign. In Switzerland it comes from below, for the legal sovereign is the electorate."[601]

Other Socialists are strongly opposed to the referendum: "Democracy, as understood by the Fabian Society, means simply the control of the Administration by freely elected representatives of the people. The Fabian Society energetically repudiates all conceptions of democracy as a system by which the technical work of Government administration, and the appointment of public officials, shall be carried on by referendum or any other form of direct popular decision. Such arrangements may be practical in a village community, but not in the complicated industrial civilisations which are ripening for Social-Democracy."[602] "The people can only judge political measures by their effect when they have come into operation; they cannot plan measures themselves, or foresee what their effect will be, or give precise instructions to their representatives; nor can any honest representative tell, until he has heard a measure thoroughly discussed by representatives of all other sections of the working class, what form the measure should take so as to keep the interests of his constituents in due subordination to those of the community. It is to be considered, further, that intelligent reformers, [221]especially workmen who have grasped the principles of Socialism, are always in the minority; they may address themselves with success to the sympathies of the masses and gain their confidence; but the dry details of the legislative and administrative steps by which they, move towards their goal can never be made interesting or intelligible to the ordinary voter. For these reasons the referendum, in theory the most democratic of popular institutions, is in practice the most reactionary."[603]

Other Socialists are in favour of a reformed Parliament which is to be a glorified trade union congress. "Each industry would have adequate representation in the Parliament of Industry, and this Parliament would connect and harmonise the affairs of the whole. In the future society the descendant of the union of to-day will be the centre of social life and the administration of things. Let 'workers of all trades unite.'"[604] Others, again, call for a Parliament of a frankly revolutionary type which is characteristically called a "National Convention." "What is the use of the suffrage? It has but one use—to enable the workers, as a class, to take peaceful possession of the power of the State, so as to use that power for social purposes. But to do this you must have paid delegates from your own class, not timeserving unpaid representatives from the classes which rob you; you must put your servants, not your masters, at Westminster; you must have a National Convention of the People, not a House of the Confiscating Classes."[605] Readers will no doubt remember the French National Convention and its reign of terror and crime which culminated in the execution of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette.

Many Socialists, like most Anarchists, are utterly [222]opposed to Parliamentary government and majority rule, preferring rule by violence to rule by argument. "What has hitherto been called the will of the people, or the will of the majority as manifested in the modern constitutional State, does not express any act of will at all, but the absence of will. It is not the will but the apathy of the majority that is represented."[606] "The preaching of the cultus of the majority in the modern State is an absurdity which can only for a moment go down with the Parliamentary Radical who is wallowing in the superstitions of exploded Whiggery."[607] "The Socialist has a distinct aim in view. If he can carry the initial stages towards its realisation by means of the count-of-heads majority, by all means let him do so. If, on the other hand, he sees the possibility of carrying a salient portion of his programme by trampling on this majority, by all means let him do this also."[608]

The Women's Suffrage problem has lately come to the front, and it is characteristic and noteworthy that it has been taken up with the greatest energy, we might almost say with hysterical energy, by Socialist women. They tell us, "We desire the stain removed from our womanhood. Remove the hateful stigma from your mothers, your wives, and your daughters, which places the noblest and the best of them in a lower position than the most uncultured and immoral specimen of the male sex who pays his rates and taxes."[609] According to a woman Socialist, the Votes-for-Women problem is "the greatest moral and spiritual problem that has torn asunder the souls of men since the fall of Adam and the coming of Christ."[610] "Society has no brighter hope, humanity no larger promise than her coming, radiant with health and happiness, love and liberty shining from [223]her eyes, the beautiful, high-souled, sister-mother of the men that are going to be."[611] "The State cannot spare from its high councils the deep wisdom of its mothers and the comradeship of its wives."[612]

It is obvious why Socialist women demand the vote with almost frenzied fervour, and why the various Socialist societies and parties support their agitation. Socialists believe that their wives, and the women workers in general, will vote for Socialism, and that most other women will be indifferent and abstain from voting. Therefore we learn: "Socialism in the only true sense of that term, in the only wise conception of that state, can never be brought into the fulness of its being until women have been made equal with men as citizens."[613] "The benches of the National Chamber may yet be seen accommodating three hundred and thirty-five intelligent women."[614] In referring to the elections in Finland, Mrs. Snowden writes: "To Socialists, an interesting point is the fact that, in spite of the women voters, who are supposed to be retrograde in politics, by far the largest number of party votes recorded were for the Socialist party."[615]

The claims of women for the franchise have been supported by large majorities at important meetings of Socialists. The resolution of the Independent Labour Party, "That this Conference declares in favour of adult suffrage and the political equality of the sexes, and considers that the right of suffrage should immediately be extended to women on the same conditions as men," was carried by 236 votes to 24.[616] The Social-Democratic Federation resolved: "That this Conference declares that the time has arrived when equal rights of citizenship be extended to all women and men of full age; urges all [224]members to take advantage of the present suffrage agitation to focus public opinion upon the only logical solution of the question, viz. the abolition of existing franchise qualifications and the establishment of universal adult suffrage; and calls upon them actively to work for this practical measure of reform." This resolution was carried by 42 votes to 9.[617]

The recent clamour of "Votes for Women" emanated not so much from philosophic Radicals who had read John Stuart Mill as from Socialists, and many non-Socialist women have become their dupes. Socialist women hope that they will have the voting all to themselves. Therefore they, and most men Socialists also, would very likely resist to the utmost all proposals which would make voting compulsory for all women.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER XVIToC

THE ATTITUDE OF THE SOCIALISTS TOWARDS THE TWO PARLIAMENTARY PARTIES

From the Socialist point of view there is for all practical purposes no difference between the two great parties. Both are representative, not of the people, but of capitalism. Both are hostile to labour.

"The difference between Liberalism and Toryism is merely a question of phraseology; there is no fundamental clashing of principle. Both stand for the private ownership of the means of life. They both support a competitive state of society with its inevitable exploitation of the wealth-producers."[618] "Both the Conservative and Liberal parties are agreed in supporting private ownership in the instruments of production for the purposes of profit-making. Their differences are merely superficial and their programmes admittedly offer no solution of the problems of poverty. The Independent Labour Party regards them both as equally the enemies of labour, and in fact merely as two sections of the entrenched forces of plutocracy."[619] "There are not really two parties in the State. There is but one great party, that of privilege, divided into two factions, labelled Whig and Tory, or Liberal and Conservative. Both do much the same things in office. The mimic warfare which they wage with each other, no shrewd observer takes seriously. It is merely a pleasant game of which the stakes are the spoils [226]of office and patronage. An 'organised hypocrisy' is but a mild description of an English Government, whether Liberal or Conservative. The Liberal and the Conservative are the two thieves between whom the people are evermore crucified."[620] "Neither of the political parties is of any use to the workers, because both the political parties are paid, officered, and led by capitalists whose interests are opposed to the interests of the workers. The Socialist laughs at the pretended friendship of Liberal and Tory leaders for the workers."[621] "There's no difference whatever between Bannerman, the Scottish landowner, and Balfour, whose uncle made 200,000l. out of army contracts in India in four years. These people are entirely antagonistic to the worker."[622]

The assertions of the Liberals that they are the true friends of the people, that they have always fought for liberty and democracy, that they have given the vote to the people, and that they trust the people, are treated with derision and contempt. "Liberalism has historically opposed itself alike to Toryism, landed interest, and democracy, working-class interest whenever that interest appeared as a distinct political party."[623] "Since 1832 the Liberals had eight opportunities to give justice to the voteless multitude. In every election from 1832 to 1865 solemn pledges were made by the Liberals that a Reform Bill should be introduced as soon as they were elected, and each time these pledges were ignored after they had secured power and position."[624] As regards the giving of the franchise, the Conservatives have not been much better than the Liberals. "Neither party can claim much credit for its Reform Bills, extorted as they have been, not by belief in democracy, but by fear of the opposing [227]faction. Even now the citizen is tricked out of his vote by every possible legal and administrative technicality; so that more than one-third of our adult men are unenfranchised, together with the whole of the other sex. Neither the Conservative party nor the self-styled 'Party of the Masses,' gives proof of any real desire to give the vote to this not inconsiderable remnant; but both sides pay lip-homage to democracy."[625]

Socialists say that the claims of the Liberals to the gratitude of the masses are hypocritical. Their policy has not been based on philanthropy, but on a sordid selfishness. They attacked the landed interest not in order to benefit the people, but in order to make themselves supreme in the State and to fill their own purses. Liberalism, with talk of liberty of the individual and of freedom of trade on its lips, is in reality the representative of capitalism of the most heartless kind. "The political power of the landed classes was to be broken; the capitalists were to be allowed to do as they liked with their own; a state of individualism was to be established; it was to be a fair field for all and devil take the hindmost. So far as politics and the law are concerned, this ideal of Liberalism has been realised. Land is no longer supreme. Money ranks with it. Everyone has a chance of obtaining money. Ergo, we are a democratic nation."[626] "With the change in economic conditions, with the growth of manufacture, the rise of the bourgeoisie meant the downfall of feudalism. The plutocrat supplanted the baron, capitalism became king. The 'old nobility' of England to-day are successful brewers, bankers, and traders, and the Nonconformist Conscience dominates in the place of Holy Mother Church."[627] "The representatives of this class in Parliament repealed the Corn Laws, securing [228]cheap bread for their workers at the expense of the landlords and the farmers. The new masters opposed the Factory Acts, championed by Tories such as Lord Ashley, Thomas Sadler, and 'King Richard' Oastler, They fostered railway development, at the public expense, so that they might have quick and cheap transit for their manufactures."[628]

The Liberals have shown their selfishness, heartlessness, and greed by opposing the greatest boon to workers, the Factory Acts. "Was it the Liberal party which initiated the Factory Acts, which were certainly the greatest step towards the elevation of the working class that was ever taken in the course of the last century? Oh, no! So far from the Liberal party initiating the Factory Acts, we know perfectly well that the Liberal party—leading members of the Liberal party, like Mr. John Bright and Mr. Richard Cobden—fiercely and bitterly opposed the Factory Acts. We know that no one fought more strenuously against the ten-hour day than Mr. John Bright. We know that all these canting Liberal hypocrites—I can call them nothing else—said with regard to the ten-hour day, just what they say now about the proposal for an eight-hour day—one of the proposals we put forward in order to get rid of this hideous difficulty of the unemployed. The argument was put forward then, that the restriction of the hours of labour would ruin our industries. Precisely the same argument was put forward when it was proposed to put a stop to the terrible over-work of the children deep down in the bowels of the earth. Women and children were mercilessly driven by brutal overseers at their task, and this was maintained by your Liberal party in order that they might obtain large profits out of their white slaves. Only let the Liberal party appeal to history in its claim for working-class support, and then the working class will arrive at the conclusion to which many [229]of us have already come—that the Liberal party, so far from being entitled to our support, is entitled to our greatest loathing and hatred."[629] "As to the Factory Acts, it was not a question of Messrs. Bright and Cobden alone, but of the whole organised body of the Liberal party, which opposed the Factory Acts, and they were only carried by the hostility of the Tory party to the Liberals for having dared to interfere with the Corn Laws. The Factory Acts were passed in retaliation by the landlord party against the capitalist party."[630]

"Mr. Gladstone was the only member who endeavoured to delay the Bill which delivered women and children from mines and pits; and never did he say a word on behalf of the factory children until, when defending slavery in the West Indies, he taunted Buxton with indifference to the slavery in England."[631] "If I were to draw a comparison between the Liberal and the Tory parties, I should say that the Tory party has done more in that direction than the Liberal party has done."[632] Mr. Blatchford wrote in the "Clarion" that "the Liberal party has never helped the trade unions," and proved this assertion by giving a detailed statement of the trade union legislation, which showed that modern trade unionism was constantly opposed by the Liberals and was created by the Conservatives.[633]

In consequence of its record, Socialists see in Liberalism not a friend, but an enemy. "Liberalism stands for individualism, and the Liberal capitalist and trader are bitterly opposed to the trade union and co-operative society. They found that these bodies, however, were beginning to exercise an important, if indirect, influence upon their party. Liberal leaders, alive to the importance [230]of vote-catching, began to angle for the support of the working-class organisations."[634] "We have no reason for supporting the Liberal party any more than the Tory party. Men do not gather grapes from thorns, nor figs from thistles. The Liberal party is to-day what it has always been—an organisation of capitalists formed to serve the interests of the capitalist class."[635]

Liberalism, with its championship of exaggerated individualism, stands not for liberty, but for administrative anarchy. "The trouble with nineteenth century Liberalism is that, by instinct, by tradition, and by the positive precepts of its past exponents, it 'thinks in individuals.' It visualises the world as a world of independent Roundheads, with separate ends, and abstract rights to pursue those ends. Nineteenth century Liberalism is, in fact, axiomatically hostile to the State. It is not 'little Englandism' that is the matter with those who still cling to such views; it is, as Huxley and Matthew Arnold correctly diagnosed, administrative Nihilism. So far as political action is concerned, they tend to be inveterately negative. They have hung up temperance reform and educational reform for a quarter of a century, because, instead of seeking to enable the citizen to refresh himself without being poisoned or inebriated and to get the children thoroughly taught, they have wanted primarily to revenge their outraged temperance principles on the publican and their outraged Nonconformist principles on the Church. Of such Liberals it may be said that the destructive revolutionary tradition is in their bones; they will reform nothing unless it can be done at the expense of their enemies."[636]

"The question is frequently put: 'Why are Socialists so much opposed to Liberalism?' But a little serious [231]reflection will explain the circumstance. Liberalism is really more conservative than Toryism. This is not a paradox, it is a fact. Toryism stands for government, and it does not necessarily follow that it stands for bad government. Liberalism, on the other hand, admittedly seeks an unrestrained operation of the individual will. It is opposed to government. It does not consciously subscribe to the recognition of our social being. It regards individuals as self-contained units operating in separate spheres. The less government we have the better, is the keynote of Liberalism. This was Emerson's theory, and Emerson was an anarchist."[637] "The modern Conservative candidate is politically a man without prejudices. No abstract principle forbids him to listen sympathetically to any proposal for reform. Hence he seems on the platform less belated than the nineteenth century Liberal with his stock of shop-soiled principles at full price."[638] "In many people's minds the terms 'Liberalism' and 'insincerity' are held to be synonymous. Lacking a central idea of its own, and necessarily failing to nourish on borrowed ones, there is nothing before the Liberal party but decay. For progress in the future we must look to a party which has an ideal and is prepared to stand by it."[639]

Before the general election of 1906 Socialists wrote: "The political force of Liberalism is spent. During the last twenty years its aspirations and its watchwords, its ideas of daily life, and its conceptions of the universe, have become increasingly distasteful to the ordinary citizen as he renews his youth from generation to generation. Its worship of individual liberty evokes no enthusiasm. Its reliance on 'freedom of contract' and 'supply and demand,' with its corresponding [232]'voluntaryism' in religion and philanthropy, now seems to work out disastrously for the masses who are too poor to have what the economists call an 'effective demand' for even the minimum conditions of physical and mental health necessary to national well-being."[640] "For the last twenty years the Liberal party has been trying to fit itself with a new programme. It took up Home Rule for Ireland, but found that split the party; it took up temperance reform, quite a deviation from its old policy of individual liberty, and again found itself divided; it avowed friendliness to Labour, and frightened off still another batch of supporters. The Party of Progress finds itself now in the unhappy position that its basic idea is old-fashioned, and when it tries to assimilate a new one it becomes a case of putting new wine into old bottles. That is the sad plight of the Liberal party. The party is merely living from hand to mouth as an anti-Tory party, hoping to profit by the mistakes of its rival. The party has split up on temperance, on labour, on the war, on Imperialism, on education, simply because there is no central vivifying ideal to bind together and shape the policy. Can the party adopt a new ideal? is the great question. Can it drop its fundamental idea of individualism and take up the idea of co-operation? and the answer is emphatically 'No.'"[641]

The philosopher of British Socialism thinks that, owing to the principles and attitude of the Liberal party, Liberalism and Socialism are deadly enemies. "Liberalism, in so far as it aims at maintaining the liberty of private property, is reactionary and false to the principle which it has always implicitly or explicitly maintained, of the right of each and every individual to a full and free development. In so far as Liberalism does this, in so far as it assumes as axiomatic a state [233]of society based on unrestricted freedom of private property, and proceeds to adjust social arrangements solely or primarily in the interests of the owners of private property, in so far Liberalism and Socialism are death enemies."[642] The leading Fabian organ stated: "A party subsisting on illusions, concealments, and hypocrisies, could hardly survive in the atmosphere engendered by a real fight like that between plutocracy and Socialism. For some time it may contrive to subsist by telling the electorate that the only true way of resisting Socialism is by means of Liberal reforms, while at the same time (with doubtful consistency) asking for Socialist support on the ground that it goes 'part of the way.' But its best chance is probably to divert public attention from Socialism to other matters, and this the Prime Minister evidently feels. The existence of the Liberal party is incompatible with the existence of intellectual honesty in its leaders. And with all his faults Sir Henry is too fundamentally honest a man to lead it effectively at the present juncture. The reins had better be handed over to Mr. Winston Churchill, against whom no such objection can be urged."[643]

Before the Liberals set to work in 1906, Mr. Philip Snowden wrote: "It might be said that in the next Parliament the Liberal party is on its last trial."[644] That trial has had, as far as the Socialists and the Labour party are concerned, an unsatisfactory result. Before the general election Socialists asked themselves: "Will the Liberal party come into power with a clear mandate for reform which even the House of Lords will not dare entirely to obstruct, or will it shuffle into power on the misdoings of its predecessors and carry out a halfhearted policy in the hope of not estranging any of its moderate followers? If it takes the latter course, it will [234]win the undying contempt of all real reformers; it will be the last time that a Liberal Administration holds sway, and Labour will be left the only really progressive force in the country."[645] Twelve months later, in a review of the activity of the Liberal Government, "The Reformers' Year Book" stated: "The story of Chinese labour in the Transvaal during the year 1906 has been one of continuous perfidy on the part of the Liberal Government at home. Returned to power largely on account of the opposition of the people of this country to Chinese slavery in any shape or form, they have burked the main issue at every point, and only carried out a few minor changes which have been totally ineffective, retaining all the while a hypocritical devotion to the popular ideal."[646] "The Liberal Government has failed entirely to justify the confidence reposed in it by the electorate, not only upon the newer questions as they have arisen—such as the war in Natal—but on the very matters upon which it was returned to power, of which the chief was the continuance of Chinese labour in the Transvaal."[647]

Socialists think that the Liberal agitation against the House of Lords is insincere and hypocritical. "Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's brave talk about fighting the House of Lords sounds very much like blarney when we call to mind the fact that he has beaten all records in the creation of peers. He has not yet been two years in office, but he has managed to make no less than twenty new peers. They include a tobacco man, a whisky man, a newspaper man who sold his journal to the Tories, several usurers and company promoters."[648]

The assurance of the Liberals that they are the friends of Labour is doubted in view of the attitude of the party towards Labour candidates. "Liberals are continually saying that there is no quarrel between Liberalism and [235]Labour. Why, then, do we have the constantly recurring spectacle of a middle-class Liberal being run against a popular and capable man who can claim to directly represent the people who live by the work of their hands and heads as distinguished from those who live upon rent, dividends, or interest? Are there not even upon the Liberal side plenty of landlords, railway directors, bankers, stockbrokers, and employers of labour, that a seat cannot be spared to a workman till he wins it in despite of Liberal and Tory opposition alike?"[649]

An amalgamation of the Liberals and the Socialist-Labour members is impossible. "Liberal-Labourism" is a delusion. "Labour men and capitalist Liberals are beginning to see that individualism and co-operation will not mix. If Liberalism to-day swallows Labourism, it will have a severe attack of indigestion. Mr. Keir Hardie in the Liberal ranks would do more to disrupt and destroy the Liberal party than he can possibly do from the outside. Labour, it is true, might capture the Liberal party, and this is advocated by some, but if this took place the party would wither away. The capitalist element would drop out and Labour would be left alone. Labour might just as well build up a new party outside. It is no use capturing a weapon which crumbles to pieces as soon as you grasp it. Better make a new weapon."[650] "The Labour party in the House of Commons is as yet not disliked only because as yet it is not feared. Until it has made itself both disliked and feared, it will be far short of having fulfilled the objects of its very existence. It is not saying too much to say that in the very near future the measure of the Labour party's effectiveness will be its unpopularity in the House of Commons. Acrimonious as are the feelings often evoked by political controversies, they are urbanity itself as compared with the passions [236]aroused over economic issues. The limits of Liberal concession must needs soon be reached. The Liberal-Labour candidate is but a transient phenomenon of our time, and with his disappearance the storm will break."[651]

The great Liberal majority was created by accident and it is rapidly dissolving. "The Liberals succeeded to power through no merit of their own, but merely through the errors of their opponents. Liberalism is shedding its supporters at both ends, and is rapidly on the way to becoming a mere caput mortuum."[652] It is true that "at the general election many Socialists climbed into Parliament on the backs of the Liberals,"[653] but Liberal-Socialist co-operation is not possible.

Many Socialists believe that Liberalism and Socialism are fundamentally antagonistic, and that therefore Socialism must fight its battles unaided. "In Great Britain, as in France, Belgium, Germany, and Italy, the cleavage has now been definitely marked between capitalist Liberalism and Socialist Democracy."[654] "Political power, properly so-called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another."[655] "All political parties are but the expression of class interests, and as the interest of the working class is diametrically opposed to the interests of all sections of the master class, the party seeking working class emancipation must be hostile to every other party."[656] "We shall see Liberals and Tories working together in cordial agreement, as they do in Germany, to prevent the election of the only politicians who can really profess to go to the poll on the broad ground of citizenship—labour done by hand or [237]brain for the community, as apart from idleness and pleasure-seeking supported by rents, dividends, and interest taken from the community."[657]

"As the machinery of government, including the armed forces of the nation, exists only to conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken from the workers, the working class must organise consciously and politically for the conquest of the powers of government, national and local, in order that this machinery, including these forces, may be converted from an instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation and the overthrow of privilege, aristocratic and plutocratic."[658] "The property question is the issue which is creating a new political cleavage in the State. Somewhat dimly at present, but with growing clearness of vision, the worker begins to see that he will remain a menial, outcast and forlorn, until he has made himself master of the machine he tends, and the soil he tills."[659]

"The only true position for a genuine working-class party is that of open hostility to all who support capitalism in any shape or form. This is the safe, sure, and scientific position."[660] "Liberals will declare and do declare in most pathetic tones that they have done more, and will do more, for the workers than the Tories have done or will do. And Liberals will assure you that they are really more anxious to help the workers than we Socialists believe. But those are side issues. The main thing to remember is, that even if the Liberals are all they claim to be, they will never do as much for Labour as Labour could do for itself."[661]

On the other hand, there are Socialists who think that Socialism cannot succeed if it cuts itself adrift from the great national parties and pursues a purely Socialistic Labour policy. "A member of an Imperial Parliament is an Imperialist in spite of himself. A party which concerns itself with sectional interests only will soon cease to be a party; it will degenerate into a group, and as such it cannot hope to receive serious backing in the country."[664]

Many Socialists feel confident that they will conquer power by conquering Parliament. "Parliament has always governed the country in the interest of the class to which the majority of its members belonged. It governed in the interest of the country gentlemen in the old days when they were in a majority in the House of Commons; it has governed in the interests of the capitalists and employers since they won a majority by the Reform Bill of 1832; and it will govern in the interest of the people when the majority is selected from [239]the wage-earning class."[665] "No sooner shall two hundred Labour members be firmly seated upon the cross-benches of the House, than both parties will approach them with bended knee, bringing gold and frankincense and programmes."[666] "There is a fine impartiality about the policeman and the soldier, who are the cutting edge of the State power. They take their wages and obey their orders without asking questions. If those orders are to demolish the homestead of every peasant who refuses to take the bread out of his children's mouths in order that his landlord may have money to spend as an idle gentleman in London, the soldier obeys. But if his orders were to help the police to pitch his lordship into Holloway Gaol until he had paid an income-tax of twenty shillings on every pound of his unearned income, the soldier would do that with equal devotion to duty, and perhaps with a certain private zest that might be lacking in the other case. Now these orders come ultimately from the State, meaning in this country the House of Commons. A House of Commons consisting of 660 gentlemen and 10 workmen will order the soldier to take money from the people for the landlords. A House of Commons consisting of 660 workmen and 10 gentlemen will probably, unless the 660 are fools, order the soldier to take money from the landlords for the people."[667]

FOOTNOTES: