Theosophy - Industry Under Socialism - by Annie Besant - Adyar Pamphlet No. 146
Adyar
Pamphlet No.146
Industry
Under Socialism
by Annie Besant
Reprinted from Fabian Essays in Socialism, edited by G. Bernard Shaw
(1889)
Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, Madras, India
February 1931
[Page
1] THERE are two ways in which
a scheme for a future organization of industry may be constructed. Of these,
by far the easier and less useful is the sketching of Utopia, an intellectual
gymnastic in which a power of coherent and vivid imagination is the one
desideratum. The Utopist needs no knowledge of facts: indeed such a knowledge
is a hindrance: for him the laws of social evolution do not exist. He
is a law unto himself; and his men and women are not the wayward spasmodic
irregular organisms of daily life, but automata, obeying the strings he
pulls. In a word, he creates, he does not construct: he makes alike his
materials and the laws within which they work, adapting them all to an
ideal end. In describing a new Jerusalem, the only limits to its perfection
are the limits of the writer's imagination.
The
second way is less attractive, less easy, but more useful. Starting from
the present state of society, it seeks to discover the tendencies underlying
it; to trace those tendencies to their natural[Page
2] outworking
in institutions; and so to forecast, not the far-off future, but the next
social stage. It fixes its gaze on the vast changes wrought by evolution,
not the petty variations made by catastrophes, on the Revolutions which transform
society, not the transient riots which merely upset thrones and behead kings.
This second way I elect to follow; and this paper on Industry under Socialism
therefore starts from William Clarke's exposition of the industrial evolution
which has been in progress during the last hundred and fifty years. In thus
building forward — in thus forecasting the transitions through which
society will probably pass — I shall scarcely touch on the ideal Social
State that will one day exist; and my sketch must lay itself open to all
the criticisms which may be leveled against a society not ideally perfect.
It is therefore necessary to, bear in mind that I am only trying to work
out changes practicable among men and women as we know them; always seeking
to lay down, not what is ideally best, but what is possible always choosing
among the possible changes that which is on the line towards the ideal, and
will render further approach easier. In fact this paper is an attempt to
answer the “How?” so
often heard when Socialism is discussed. Large numbers of people accept,
wholly or in part, the Socialist theory: they are intellectually convinced
of its soundness or emotionally attracted by its beauty; but they hesitate
to join in[Page
3] its
propaganda, because they “don't see where you are going to
begin”, or “don't see where you are going to stop”. Both difficulties
are disposed of by the fact that we are not “going to begin”. There will
never be a point at which a society crosses from Individualism to Socialism.
The change is ever going forward; and our society is well on the way to
Socialism. All we can do is to consciously co-operate with the forces at
work, and thus render the transition more rapid than it would otherwise
be.
The
third Fabian essay shows us the success of capitalism bringing about a
position which is at once intolerable to the majority, and easy of capture
by them. At this point the destruction of the small industries has broken
down most of the gradations which used to exist between the large employer
and the hired laborer, and has left in their place a gulf across which
a few capitalists and a huge and hungry proletariat face each other. The
denial of human sympathy by the employer in his business relations with
his hands has taught the hands to
regard the employer as outside the pale of their sympathy. The “respect
of the public conscience for the right of property”, which was at bottom
the private interest of each in his own little property, has diminished since
the many lost their individual possessions, and saw property accumulate in
the hands of the few: it is now[Page
4] little more than a tradition
inherited from a former social state. The public conscience will
soon condone, nay, it will first approve, and then demand, the expropriation
of capital which is used anti-socially instead of socially, and which belongs
to that impersonal abstraction, a company, instead of to our next door neighbor.
To the average person it is one thing for the State to seize the little shop
of James Smith who married our sister, or the thriving business of our Sam
who works early and late for his living; and quite another when James and
Sam, ruined by a big Company made up of shareholders of whom nobody knows
anything but that they pay low wages and take high dividends, have been obliged
to become hired servants of the Company, instead of owning their own shops
and machinery. Whose interest will it be to protest against the
State taking over the capital, and transforming James and Sam from wage-slaves
at the mercy of a foreman, into shareholders and public functionaries, with
a voice in the management of the business in which they are employed ?
Let us suppose, then, that the evolution of the capitalist system has
proceeded but a little further along the present lines, concentrating the
control of industry, and increasingly substituting labor-saving machinery for
human beings. It is being accompanied, and must continue to be
accompanied, by a growth of the numbers of the unemployed. These
numbers may ebb and flow, as some of the waves of[Page 5] a rising tide run
forward some feet and then a few touch a lower level; but as the tide rises
despite the fluctuations of the ripples, so the numbers ofthe unemployed
will increase despite transient mountings and fallings. With these, probably,
will begin the tentative organization of industry by the State; but this
organization will soon be followed by the taking over by the community of
some of the great Trusts.
The
division of the country into clearly defined areas, each with its elected
authority, is essential to any effective scheme of organization. It is one
of the symptoms of the coming change, that, in perfect unconsciousness
of the nature of his act, Mr. Ritchie has established the Commune. He has
divided England into districts ruled by County Councils, and has thus
created the machinery without which Socialism was impracticable. True, he
has only made an outline which needs to be filled in; but Socialists can fill
in, whereas they had no power to outline. It remains to give every adult a
vote in the election of Councillors; to shorten their term of office to a
year; to pay the Councillors, so that the public may have a right to the
whole of their working time; to give the Councils power to take and hold
land — a
reform already asked for by the Liberal and Radical Union, a body not
consciously Socialist; and to remove alllegal
restrictions, so as to leave them as free to act corporately as an individual
is to act individually.[Page 6]
These measures accomplished,
the rapidity with which our institutions are socialized depends on the
growth of Socialism among the people. It is essential to the stability
of the changed forms of industry that they shall be made by the people,
not imposed upon them: hence the value of Mr. Ritchie's gift of Local Government,
enabling each locality to move swiftly or slowly, to experiment on a comparatively
small scale, even to blunder without widespread disaster. The mot d'ordre for
Socialists now is, “Convert the electors; and capture the County
Councils”.
These Councils, administering local affairs, with the national Executive,
administering national affairs, are all destined to be turned into effective
industrial organizers; and the unit of administration must depend on the
nature of the industry. The post, the telegraph, the railways, the canals,
and the great industries capable of being organized into Trusts, will, so far
as we can see now, be best administered each from a single center for the
whole kingdom, Tramways, gas-works, waterworks, and many of the
smaller productive industries, will be best managed locally. In marking the
lines of division, convenience, and experience must be our guides. The
demarcations are of expediency, not of principle.
The first great problem
that will press on the County Council for solution will be that of the unemployed.
Wisely or unwisely, it will have to[Page
7] deal
with them: wisely, if it organizes them for productive industry; unwisely
if it opens relief works, and tries like an enlarged Bumble, to shirk
the difficulty by enforcing barren and oppressive toil upon outlawed wretches
at the expense of the rest of the community. Many of the unemployed unskilled
laborers: a minority are skilled. They must first be registered as skilled
and unskilled, and the former enrolled under their several trades. Then can
begin the rural organization of labor on County Farms, held by the County
Councils. The Council will have its agricultural committee, charged with
the administrative details; and this committee will choose well-trained,
practical agriculturists, as directors of the farm business. To the County
Farm will be drafted from the unemployed in the towns the agricultural
laborers who have wandered townwards in search of work, and many of
the unskilled laborers. On these farms every advantage of machinery, and
every discovery in agricultural science, should be utilized to the utmost.
The crops should be carefully chosen with reference to soil and
aspect — cereals, fruit, vegetables — and the culture adapted
to the crop, the one aim being to obtain the largest amount of produce with
the least expenditure of human labor. Whether land is most profitably cultivated
in large or small parcels depends on the crop; and in the great area of
the County Farm, la grande et la petiteculture might each have its[Page
8]
place. Economy would
also gain by the largenumber
of laborers under the direction of the head farmer, since they could
be concentrated when required at any given spot, as in harvest time,
and dispersed to work at the more continuous kinds of tillage when the
seasonal task was over.
To these farms must
also be sent some skilled laborers from among the unemployed, shoemakers,
tailors, smiths, carpenters, etc so that the County Farm may be self-supporting
as far as it can be without waste of productive power. All the small industries
necessary in daily life should be carried on in it, and an industrial commune
thus built up. The democracy might be trusted to ordain that an eight hours
day, and a comfortable home, should be part of the life-conditions on the
County Farm. Probably each large farm would soon have its central store,
with its adjacent railway station, in addition to the ordinary farm buildings;
its public hall in the center of the farm village to be used for lectures,
concerts, and entertainments of all sorts; its public schools, elementary
and technical; and soon, possibly from the outset, its public meal-room,
saving time and trouble to housewives, and, while economizing fuel and food,
giving a far greater choice and variety of dishes. Large dwellings,
with suites of rooms, might perhaps replace old-fashioned cottages; for
it is worth noting, as showing the tendency already existing among
ourselves to turn from isolated self-dependence to[Page
9] the advantages of
associated living, that many modern flats are being built without servants'
rooms, the house-cleaning, etc., being done by persons engaged for the
whole block, and the important meals being taken at restaurants, so as to
avoid the trouble and expense of private cooking. It will surely be well
in initiating new organizations of industry to start on the most advanced lines,
and take advantage of every modern tendency towards less isolated
modes of living. Socialists must work hard to make municipal dealings with
the unemployed avenues to the higher life, not grudging utilization of
pauper labor. And as they know their aim, and the other political parties
live but from hand to mouth, they ought to be able to exercise a steady and
uniform pressure, which, just because it is steady and uniform, will impress
its direction on the general movement.
The note of urban industrial
organization, as of all other, must be that each person shall be employed
to do what he can do best, not what he does worst. It may be desirable for
a man to have two trades; but watch-making and stone-breaking are not convenient
alternative occupations. Where the skilled unemployed belong to trades carried
on everywhere, such as baking, shoemaking, tailoring, etc., they should be
employed at their own trades in municipal workshops, and their products garnered
in municipal stores. These workshops will be under the direction of foremen,
thoroughly [Page
10] skilled
workmen, able to superintend and direct as though in private employment.
The working-day must be of eight hours, and the wages, for the present,
the Trades Union minimum. Then, instead of tailors and shoemakers tramping
the streets ragged and barefoot, the tailors will be making clothes and
the shoemakers boots and shoes; and the shoemaker with the wages he earns
will buy the tailor's products, and the tailor the shoemaker's. Then, instead
of supporting the unemployed by rates levied on the employed, they will
be set to work to supply their own necessities, and be producers of the
wealth they consume instead of consuming, in enforced idleness or barren
penal exercises in the stoneyard, the wealth produced by others. Masons,
bricklayers, plumbers, carpenters, etc., might be set to work in building
decent and pleasant dwellings — in the style of
the blocks of flats, not of the barracks called model dwellings — for
the housing of the municipal industrial army. I lay stress on the pleasantness
of the dwellings. These places are to be dwellings for citizens, not prisons
for paupers; and there is no possible reason why they should not be made
attractive. Under Socialism the workers are to be the nation, and all that
is best is for their service; for, be it remembered, our faces are set towards
Socialism, and our organization of labor is to be on Socialist lines.
It is very likely
that among the unemployed some will be found, whose trade can only be carried[Page
11] on by large numbers, and
is not one of the industries of the town into which their unlucky fate has
drifted them. These should be sent into municipal service in the towns where
their trade is the staple industry, there to be employed in the municipal
factory.
Concurrently
with this rural and urban organization of non-centralized industries will
proceed the taking over of the great centralized industries, centralized
for us by capitalists, who thus unconsciously pave the way for their own
supercession. Everything which has been organized into a Trust, and has
been worked for a time in the Trust fashion, is ripe for appropriation
by the community. All minerals would be most properly worked in this centralized
way; and it will probably be found most convenient to work all the big
productive industries — such as
the textile — in similar fashion. It is idle to say that it cannot be
done by the State when it is being done by a ring of capitalists; a Local Board,
an Iron Board, a Tin Board, can be as easily responsible to the nation as to
a casual crowd of shareholders. There need be no dislocation of production
in making the transference: the active organizers and directors of a
Trust do not necessarily, or even usually, own the capital invested in it.
If the State finds it convenient to hire these organizers and directors, there
is nothing to prevent its doing so for as long or as short a period as it chooses.
The temporary arrangements made[Page
12] with them during
the transition period must be governed by expediency.
Let
us pause for a moment to estimate the position so far. The unemployed have
been transformed into communal workers — in the country on great
farms, improvements of the Bonanza farms in America — in the towns
in various trades. Public stores for agricultural and industrial products
are open in all convenient places, and filled with the goods thus communally
produced. The great industries, worked as Trusts, are controlled by the
State instead of by capitalist rings. The private capitalist, however,
will still be in business, producing and distributing on his own account
in competition with the communal organizations, which at present will have
occupied only part of the industrial field. But apart from a pressure which
will be recognized when we come to deal with the remuneration of labor,
these private enterprises will be carried on under circumstances of ever-increasing
difficulty. In the face of the orderly
communal arrays, playing into each
other's hands, with the credit of the country behind them, the ventures
of the private capitalist will be at as great a disadvantage as the cottage
industries of the last century in face of the factory industries of our
own period. The Trusts have taught us how to drive competing capitals out
of the market by associated capitals. The Central Boards or County Councils
will be able to utilize this power of association further than any private[Page
13] capitalists. Thus the
economic forces which replaced the workshop by the factory, will
replace the private shop by the municipal store and the private factory
by the municipal one. And the advantages of greater concentration of
capital and of association of labor will not be the only ones enjoyed
by the communal workers. All waste will be checked, every labor-saving
appliance utilized to the utmost, where the object is the production
of general wealth and not the production of profit to be appropriated
by a class for in the one case it is the interest of the producers
to produce — inasmuch as their enjoyment depends on the productivity
of their labor — whereas in the other it is their interest to
sterilize their labor as far as they dare in order to render more of
it necessary and so keep up its price. As the organization of the public
industry extends, and supplants more and more the individualist producer,
the probable demand will be more easily estimated, and the supply
regulated to meet it. The Municipalities and Central Boards will
take the place of the competing small capitalists and the rings of
large ones; and production will become ordered and rational instead
of anarchical and reckless as it is today. After a while the private
producers will disappear, not because there will be any law against
individualist production, but because it will not pay. No one will
care to face the worries, the harassments, the anxieties, of individual
struggling for livelihood, when ease,[Page
14] freedom, and
security can be enjoyed in the communal service.
The
best form of management during the transition period, and possibly for
a long time to come, will be through the Communal Councils, which will
appoint committees to superintend the various branches of industry. These
committees will engage the necessary manager and foreman for each
shop, factory, etc., and will hold the power of dismissal as of appointment.
I do not believe that the direct election of the manager and foreman by
the employees would be found to work well in practice, or to be consistent
with the discipline necessary in carrying on any large business undertaking.
It seems to me better that the Commune should elect its Council — thus
keeping under its own control the general authority — but should empower
the Council to select the officials, so that the power of selection and
dismissal within the various sub-divisions should lie with the nominees of
the whole Commune instead of with the particular group immediately
concerned.
There
is no practical difficulty in the way of the management of the ordinary
productive industries large or small. The Trusts and Co-operation have,
between them, solved, or put us in the way of solving, all problems connected
with these. But there are difficulties in connection with the industries
concerned in the production of such[Page
15] commodities as
books and newspapers. During the transitional stage these difficulties will
not arise; but when all industries are carried on by the Commune or the
Nation, how will books and newspapers be produced ? I only throw out the
following suggestions. Printing, like baking,tailoring,
shoemaking, is a communal rather than a national industry. Suppose we had
printing offices controlled by the Communal Council. The printing committee
might be left free to accept any publication it thought valuable, as a private
firm today may take the risk of publication, the arrangement with the author
being purchased outright, or royalty on copies sold, in each case so much
to be put to his credit at the Communal Bank. But there are many authors
whose goods are desired by no one: it would be absurd to force the community
to publish all minor poetry. Why not accept the principle that in every case
where the printing committee declines to print at the communal risk, the
author may have his work printed by transferring from his credit at the
Communal Bank to the account of the printing committee sufficient to cover
the cost of printing. The committee should have no power to refuse to print,
where the cost was covered. Thus liberty of expression would be guarded
as a constitutional right, while the community would not be charged with
the cost of printing every stupid effusion that its fond composer might
deem worthy of publicity.[Page
16]
Newspapers might be issued
on similar terms; and it would always be open to individuals, or to groups
of individuals, to publish anything they pleased on covering the cost of
publication. With the comparative affluence which would be enjoyed by each
member of the community, anyone who really cared to reach the public ear
would be able to do so by diminishing his expenditure in other directions.
Another
difficulty which will meet us, although not immediately, is the competition
for employment in certain pleasanter branches of industry. At present an
unemployed person would catch eagerly at the chance of any well-paid work
he was able to perform. If he were able both to set type and to stitch
coats, he would not dream of grumbling if he were by chance offered the
job he liked the less of the two: he would be only too glad to get either.
But it is quite possible that as the vast amelioration of life-conditions
proceeds, Jeshurun will wax fat and kick if, when he prefers to make
microscope lenses, he is desired to make mirrors. Under these
circumstance, Jeshurun will, I fear, have to accommodate himself to the
demand. If the number of people engaged in making lenses suffices to
meet the demand for lenses, Jeshurun must consent to turn his talents for
the time to mirror-making. After all, his state will not be very pitiable,
though Socialism will have failed, it is true, to make 2+2=5. [Page
17]
This, however, hardly solves
the general question as to the apportioning of laborers to the various
forms of labor. But a solution has been found by the ingenious author of Looking
Backward, from A.D. 2000. Leaving
young men and women free to choose their employments, he would equalise the
rates of volunteering by equalising the attractions of the trades. In many
cases natural bent, left free to develop itself during a lengthened educational
term, will determine the choice of avocation. Human beings are fortunately
very varied in their capacities and tastes: that which attracts one repels
another. But there are unpleasant and indispensable forms of labor which, one
would imagine, can attract none — mining, sewer-cleaning, etc. These
might be rendered attractive by making the hours of labor in them much shorter
than the normal working day of pleasanter occupations. Many a strong, vigorous
man would greatly prefer a short spell of disagreeable work to a long one at
a desk. As it is well to leave the greatest possible freedom to the individual,
this equalising of advantages in all trades would be far better than any attempt
to perform the impossible task of choosing an employment for each. A person
would be sure to hate any work into which he was directly forced, even though
it were the very one he would have chosen had he been left to himself.
Further, much of
the most disagreeable and laborious work might be done by machinery, as it[Page
18] would be now if it were not
cheaper to exploit a helot class. When it became illegal to send small boys
up chimneys, chimneys did not cease to be swept: a machine was invented
for sweeping them. Coal-cutting might now be done by machinery, instead
of by a man lying on his back, picking away over his head at the imminent
risk of his own life: but the machine is much dearer than men, so the
miners continue to have their chests crushed in by the falling coal. Under
Socialism, men's lives and limbs will be more valuable than machinery;
and science will be tasked to substitute the one for the other.
In truth the extension
of machinery is very likely to solve many of the problems connected with
differential advantages in employment; and it seems certain that, in the
very near future, the skilled worker will not be the man who is able to perform
a particular set of operations, but the man who has been trained in the use
of machinery. The difference of trade will be in the machine rather than
in the man: whether the produce is nails or screws, boots or coats, cloth
or silk, paper-folding or type-setting, will depend on the internal arrangements
of the mechanism and not on the method of applying the force. What we shall
probably do will be to instruct all our youth in the principles of mechanics
and in the handling of the machines; the machines will be constructed so
as to turn the force into the various channels required to[Page
19] produce the various articles;
and the skilled workman will be the skilled mechanic, not the skilled
printer or bootmaker. At the present time a few hours', or a few days', study
will make the trained mechanician master of any machine you can place before
him. The line of progress is to substitute machines for men in every department
of production: let the brain plan, guide, control; but let iron and steel,
steam and electricity, that do not tire and cannot be brutalized, do the
whole of the heavy toil that exhausts human frames of today. There
is not the slightest reason to suppose that we are at the end of an inventive
era. Rather are we only just beginning to grope after the uses of electricity;
and machinery has before it possibilities almost undreamed of now, the men
produced by our system being too rough-handed for the manipulation of delicate
and complicated contrivances. I suggest this only as a probable simplification
of balancing the supply and demand in various forms of labor in the future:
our immediate method of regulation must be the equalizing of advantages in
them.
One may guess that
in each nation all the Boards and communal authorities will ultimately be
represented in some central Executive, or Industrial Ministry; that the Minister
of Agriculture, of Mineral Industries, of Textile Industries, and so on,
will have relations with similar officers in other lands; and that thus
internationally as well aa [Page
20] nationally, co-operation
will replace competition. But that end is not yet.
We
now approach a yet more thorny subject than the organization of the workers.
What should be the remuneration of labor — what the share of the
product taken respectively by the individual, the municipality, and the State
The answer depends
on the answer to a previous question. Is the organization of the unemployed
to be undertaken in order to transform them into self-supporting, self-respecting
citizens; or is it to be carried on as a form of exploitation, utilizing
pauper labor for the production of profit for non-paupers ? The whole matter
turns on this point; and unless we know our own minds, and fight for the
right method and against the wrong from the very beginning, the organization
of the unemployed will be a buttress for the present system instead of a
step towards a better. Already there is talk of establishing labor colonies
in connection with workhouses; and there is no time to be lost if we are
to take advantage of the good in the proposal and exclude the bad. The County
Councils also will lead to an increase of municipal employment; and the method
of that employment is vital.
The ordinary vestryman,
driven by the force of circumstances into organizing the unemployed, will
try to extract a profit to the ratepayers from pauper farms by paying the
lowest rates of wages. He would find this way of proceeding very congenial,[Page
21] and would soon, if permitted,
simply municipalise slave-driving. In this way the municipal and rural organization
of labor, even when its necessity and its advantages are realized, can do
nothing but change the form of exploitation of labor if the workers in public
employ are to be paid a wage fixed by the competition of the market, and
the profits of their labor used only for the relief of the rates. Under such
circumstances we should have the whole of the rates paid by the
communal workers, while the private employers would go free. This would
not be a transition to Socialism, but only a new way of creating a class
of municipal serfs, which would make our towns burlesques of the ancient
Greek slaveholding democracies. We shall find surer ground by recalling
and applying the principle of Socialism that the laborers shall enjoy the
full product of their toil. It seems to me that this might be worked out
somewhat in the following way:
Out of the value of
the communal produce must come rent of land payable to the local authority,
rent of plant needed for working the industries, wages advanced and fixed
in the usual way, taxes, reserve fund, accumulation fund, and the other charges
necessary for the carrying on of the communal business. All these deducted,
the remaining value should be divided among the communal workers as a bonus.
It would be obviously inconvenient, if not impossible, for the[Page
22] district
authority to sub-divide this value and allot so much to each of its separate
undertakings — so much left over from gas works for the men employed
there, so much from the tramways for the men employed on them,
and so on. It would be far simpler and easier for the municipal
employees to be regarded as a single body, in the service of a single
employer, the local authority; and that the surplus from the whole of the
businesses carried on by the communal council should be divided without
distinction among the whole of the communal employees. Controversy
will probably arise as to the division: shall all the shares be equal;
or shall the workers receive in proportion to the supposed dignity
or indignity of their work ? Inequality, however, would be odious; and
I have already suggested (p. 17) a means of adjusting different kinds
of labor to a system of equal division of net product. This meets
the difficulty of the varying degrees of irksomeness without invidiously
setting up any kind of socially useful labor as more honorable than any other—a
distinction essentially unsocial and pernicious. But since in public affairs
ethics are apt to go to the wall, and appeals to social justice too often
fall on deaf ears, it is lucky that in this case ethics and convenience coincide.
The impossibility of estimating the separate value of each man's labor with
any really valid result, the friction which would arise, the jealousies which
would-be provoked, the inevitable[Page
23] discontent,
favoritism and jobbery that would prevail: all these things will drive
the Communal Council into the right path, equal remuneration of all workers.
That path once entered on, the principle of simplification will spread;
and presently it will probably be found convenient that all the Communal
Councils shall send in their reports to a Central Board, stating the number
of their employees, the amount of the values produced, the deductions for
rent and other charges, and their available surplus. All these surpluses
added together would then be divided by the total number of communal
employees, and the sum thus reached would be the share of each worker.
The national trusts would at first be worked separately on lines analogous
to those sketched for the Communes; but later these would be lumped in
with the rest, and still further equalize the reward of labor. As private
enterprises dwindle, more and more of the workers will pass into communal
employ, until at last the Socialist ideal is touched of a nation in which
all adults are workers, and all share the national product. But be it noted
that all this grows out of the first organization of industry by Municipalities
and County Councils, and will evolve just as fast or just as slowly as the
community and its sections choose. The values dealt with, and the
numbers, employed at first, would not imply as much complexity of detail
as is involved, in many of the great businesses now[Page
24] carried on by
individuals and by companies. The same brains will be available for the
work as are now hired by individuals; and it is rather the novelty of
the idea than the difficulty of its realization which will stand in the
way of its acceptance.
It
is probable, however, that for some time to come, the captains of industry
will be more highly paid than the rank and file of the industrial army, not
because it is just that they should receive higher remuneration, but
because they, having still the alternative of private enterprise, will be able
to demand their ordinary terms, at which it will pay the community better to
engage them than to do without them — which would be indeed impossible.But their remuneration
will fall as education spreads; their present value is a scarcity value,
largely dependent on their monopoly of the higher education; and as the wider
training is thrown open to all, an ever-increasing number will become qualified
to act as organizers and directors.
The form in which the
worker's share is paid to him is not a matter of primary importance. It would
probably be convenient to have Communal Banks, issuing cheques like those
of the Cheque Bank; and these banks could open credits to the workers to
the amount of their remuneration. The way in which each worker expended his
wealth would of course be his own business.[Page
25]
The above method of dealing
with the surplus remaining from communal labor after rent and other charges
had been paid to the Municipality would prove the most potent factor in
the supercession of private enterprises. The amounts produced by the communal
organizations would exceed those produced under individualist control;
but even if this were not so, yet the shares of the communal workers, as
they would include the produce now consumed by idlers, would be higher
than any wage which could be paid by the private employer. Hence competition
to enter the communal service, and a constant pressure on the Communal
Councils to enlarge their undertakings.
It should be added
that children and workers incapacitated by age or sickness should receive
an equal share with the communal employees. As all have been children, are
at times sick, and hope to live to old age, all in turn would share the advantage;
and, it is only just that those who have labored honestly in health and through
maturity should enjoy the reward of labor in sickness and through old age.
The
share of individuals and of Municipalities being thus apportioned, there
remains only a word to say as to the Central National Council — the Statepar excellence. This would derive the revenues necessary for the
discharge of its functions, from contributions levied on the Communal
Councils. It is evident that in the adjustment of these[Page
26] contributions
could be effected the nationalization of any special natural resources,
such as mines, harbors, etc., enjoyed by exceptionally well
situated Communes. The levy would be, in fact, of the nature of an income
tax.
Such
a plan of Distribution — especially that part of it which equalizes
the shares in the product—is likely to provoke the question: ''What will
be the stimulus to labor under the proposed system ? Will not the idle evade
their fair share of labor, and live in clover on the industry of their neighbors
?”
The
general stimulus to labor will be, in the first place, then as now, the
starvation which would follow the cessation of labor. Until we discover
the country in which jam-rolls grow on bushes, and roasted sucking-pigs
run about crying “Come eat me! ” we are under an
imperious necessity to produce. We shall work because, on the whole, we
prefer work to starvation. In the transition to Socialism, when the
organization of labor by the Communal Councils begins, the performance
of work will be the condition of employment; and as non-employment will
mean starvation — for when work is offered, no relief of any kind need
be given to the healthy adult who refuses to perform it — the strongest
possible stimulus will force men to work. In fact “work or starve” will
be the alternative set before each communal employee; and as men now prefer
long-continued and ill-paid work to starvation, they will certainly, unless
human nature be entirely[Page
27] changed, prefer short and well-paid
work to starvation. The individual shirker will be dealt with much as he is
today: he will be warned, and, if he prove incorrigibly idle, discharged from
the communal employ. The vast majority of men now seek to retain their
employment by a reasonable discharge of their duty: why should they not
do the same when the employment is on easier conditions ? At first,
discharge would mean being flung back into the whirlpool of competition,
a fate not lightly to be challenged. Later, as the private enterprises
succumbed to the competition of the Commune, it would mean almost
hopelessness of obtaining a livelihood. When social reorganization is
complete, it would mean absolute starvation. And as the starvation would
be deliberately incurred and voluntarily undergone, it would meet with no
sympathy and no relief.
The next stimulus would
be the appetite of the worker for the result of the communal toil, and the
determination of his fellow-workers to make him take his fair share of the
work of producing it. It is found at the present time that a very small share
of the profits arising from associated labor acts as a tremendous stimulus
to each individual producer. Firms which allot a part of their profits for
division among their employees find the plan profitable to themselves. The
men work eagerly to increase the common product knowing that each will have
a[Page
28] larger bonus as the common
product is larger: they become vigilant as to waste in production; they
take care of the machinery; they save gas, etc. In a word, they lessen the
cost as much as they can, because each saving means gain to them. We see
from the experiments of Leclaire and Godin that inventiveness also is stimulated
by a share in the common produce. The workers in these businesses are ever
trying to discover better methods, to improve their machinery, in a word
to progress, since each step forward brings improvement of their lot.
Inventions come from a desire to save trouble, as well as from the impulse
of inventive genius, the joy in accomplishing an intellectual triumph, and
the delight of serving the race. Small inventions are continually being made
by clever workmen to facilitate their operations, even when they are not
themselves personally gainers by them; and there is no reason to fear that
this spontaneous exercise of inventiveness will cease when the added
productivity of labor lightens the task or increases the harvest of the
laborer. Is it to be argued that men will be industrious, careful, and
inventive when they get only a fraction of the result of their associated
labor, but will plunge into sloth, recklessness, and stagnation when they
get the whole ? that a little gain stimulates, but any gain short of complete
satisfaction would paralyze ? If there is one vice more certain than another
to be unpopular in a Socialist community, it is laziness.[Page
29] The man
who shirked would find his mates making his position intolerable, even
before he suffered the doom of expulsion.
But
while these compelling motives will be potent in their action on man as
he now is, there are others, already acting on some men, which will one
day act on all men. Human beings are not the simple and one-sided organisms
they appear to the superficial glance of the Individualist — moved only
by a single motive, the desire for pecuniary gain — by one longing, the
longing for wealth. Under our present social system, the struggle for riches
assumes an abnormal and artificial development: riches mean nearly all that
makes life worth having — security
against starvation, gratification of taste, enjoyment of pleasant and
cultured society, superiority to many temptations, self-respect,
consideration, comfort, knowledge, freedom, as far as these things are
attainable under existing conditions. In a society where poverty means
social discredit, where misfortune is treated as a crime, where the prison
of the workhouse is the guerdon of failure, and the bitter carking
harassment of daily wants unmet by daily supply is ever hanging over the
head of each worker, what wonder that money seems the one thing
needful, and that every other thought is lost in the frenzied rush to escape
all that is summed up in the one word Poverty ?
But this abnormal
development of the gold-hunger would disappear upon the certainty for[Page
30] each
of the means of subsistence. Let each individual feel absolutely secure of
subsistence — let every anxiety as to the
material wants of his future be swept away; and the longing for wealth will
lose its leverage. The daily bread being certain, the tyranny of pecuniary
gain will be broken; and life will begin to be used in living and not in
struggling for the chance to live. Then will come to the front all those
multifarious motives which are at work in the complex human organism
even now, and which will assume their proper importance when the basis
of physical life is assured. The desire to excel, the joy in creative work,
the longing to improve, the eagerness to win social approval, the instinct
of benevolence; all these will start into full life, and will serve at once
as the stimulus to labor and the reward of excellence. It is instructive
to notice that these very forces may already be seen at work in every case
in which subsistence is secured, and they alone supply the stimulus to action.
The soldier's subsistence is certain, and does not depend on his exertions.
At once he becomes susceptible to appeals to his patriotism, to his esprit
decorps, to the honor of his flag: he will dare anything for glory,
and value a bit of bronze, which is the “reward of valor”, far more than
a hundred times its weight in gold. Yet many of the private soldiers come
from the worst of the population; and military glory and success in murder
are but poor objects to aim at. If so much can be done[Page
31] under
circumstances so unpromising, what may we not hope from nobler aspirations
? Or take the eagerness, self-denial, and strenuous effort, thrown by young
men into their mere games! The desire to be captain of the Oxford eleven,
stroke of the Cambridge boat, victor in the foot-race or the leaping — in
a word, the desire to excel — is strong enough to impel to exertions
which often ruin physical health. Everywhere we see the multiform desires
of humanity assert themselves when once livelihood is secure. It is on
the devotion of these to the service of Society, as the development of
the social instincts teaches men to identify their interests with those
of the community, that Socialism mustf ultimately rely for progress; but
in saying this we are only saying that Socialism relies for progress on
human nature as a whole, instead of on that mere fragment of it known as
the desire for gain. If human nature should break down, then Socialismwill
break down; but at least we have a hundred strings to our Socialist bow,
while the Individualist has only one.
But Humanity will not
break down. The faith which is built on it is faith founded on a rock. Under
healthier and happier conditions, Humanity will rise to heights undreamed
of now; and the most exquisite Utopias, as sung by the poet and idealist,
shall, to our children, seem but dim and broken lights compared with their
perfect day. All that we need are courage, prudence, and faith.[Page
32] Faith, above all, which dares
to believe that justice and love are not impossible; and that more than
the best that man can dream of shall one day be realized by men.