Twentieth Century Socialism Part 31

When from this point of view we compare man with the lower animals, so immense is his progress that we are tempted to believe perfection within the reach of his attainment.

Two things, however, suffice to keep alive evil in man:

While at almost every point he has so moulded his own environment as to eliminate the vices that characterize the rest of the animal kingdom, in two respects the predatory system still prevails:

The international conflict keeps nations in perpetual compet.i.tion with one another, and this periodically forces them to war; and the intranational conflict keeps individuals in perpetual conflict with one another, and stimulates all the vices which most interfere with human happiness.

The international conflict seems doomed to continue so long as man remains separated by racial antipathies and commercial interests.

Efforts are being made to diminish occasions for war to the utmost possible, by bringing all races to recognize and aim at the same social ideal. But there would still remain ample occasion for war so long as men are kept in compet.i.tion by conflicting commercial interests. The task first in importance and time, therefore, seems to be to eliminate as much as is advisable the commercial and industrial conflict, which has been already pointed out to be the great intranational obstacle to human perfection and happiness.

Now the intranational conflict has been seen to result from our industrial system. This, as at present organized, is an artificial creation of man; indispensable though it may have been to the gradual evolution of the race, it has always acted, and must always act to keep alive in man the very quality--selfishness--the elimination of which is most essential to the happiness of a community, and the absence of which particularly characterizes natural communities such as those ants and bees.

While, then, man has resisted and in great part subdued Nature in the physical world by science, and in a world which he has himself created--the moral world--by self-restraint, he has added to this artificial environment two inst.i.tutions which tend to counterbalance the advantages already secured. These are national governments that create international conflict, and an industrial system that creates intranational conflict; and we are confronted with the problem whether these two hothouses of crime, hatred, selfishness and vice, can be dispensed with.

Science affords us the encouraging hope that they can. It points out that man has already suppressed many of the most merciless effects of the natural environment; that by virtue of the power through which he can in great part create and certainly modify his own environment, he may still further push on the work of civilization if he will but recognize that the real enemy to human happiness is hatred and the real friend to it solidarity; and if he will return to the Gospel of Christ, which economic conditions have so far compelled him to disregard.

Before closing the study of evolution it is proper to point out that we are now in a position to dispose of the contention that, because natural evolution proceeds upon the principle of the survival of the fittest, therefore human evolution must proceed upon the same lines.

This is the argument that millionaires and individualists set up against those who believe in the possibility of diminishing human misery by reducing the occasions for human conflict.

It is totally false.

Man has demonstrated his ability to resist Nature and to progress along lines that are diametrically opposed to those of natural evolution. The whole fabric of human civilization is an answer to the millionaire's argument. The natural principle of the survival of the fittest is no longer at work. Man has put an end to it. The lion and the tiger no longer reign in the jungle nor the white ant in the Pampas. Man, alone, determines which animals shall live and which shall disappear. The weak in our own race no longer perish; mercy comes to their rescue. The strong are no longer the only ones to perpetuate the type; marriage protects the weak husband in his marital rights as well as the strong. Climate no longer determines survival; man has made himself master of climate, and indeed works most effectually to-day in lat.i.tudes which at an earlier stage were peopled only by savages.

At every point where man touches Nature he has reversed the natural process.

The unfit no longer perish, the fit no longer alone survive. Man is no longer the necessary result of the natural environment: _he makes his own environment_; and if he be wise enough he can so modify it as to modify himself with it. When, if ever, he so modifies it as to eliminate those elements in it which stimulate vice, then he will have realized the word of the Gospel, "Ye are G.o.ds."

-- 5. CAN HUMAN NATURE BE CHANGED BY LAW?

It is currently urged and has become a sort of maxim that human nature cannot be changed by law. Not only is this quoted by the bourgeois in his argument against the Socialist, but even Henry George has fallen into this error. Indeed, it is this error that prevented Henry George from adopting Socialism and left him the distinguished founder of an inadequate philosophy. For the most superficial knowledge of history will suffice to demonstrate its untruth. Human nature has already been profoundly changed by law; by the inst.i.tution of marriage, by education, by property. This has already been sufficiently discussed to make it unnecessary further to comment on it.[205] It does not, however, seem sufficient to point out the profound modification of human nature by law in the past in order to persuade the bourgeois that humanity can still further be modified by law in the future; for a thousand instances can be quoted of efforts to change human nature by law that have failed, and it is argued very illogically that because in many instances they have failed, they must always fail.

Then, too, there remains in the minds of all influenced by Herbert Spencer, the profound error that society is an organism and must be allowed to grow; whereas on the contrary, a very little study demonstrates that society differs from an organism in essential points.[206]

No society can exist without some law of a.s.sociation. The law may be a natural one, as in the case of myxomycetes; or it may be an artificial one, as in the case of the United States const.i.tution; or it may be both, as indeed is the case in every human society.

This law of a.s.sociation is called "government." Strictly speaking, in a political sense government means only that law of a.s.sociation which is promulgated and enforced by the supreme power of the state; but human society is controlled by a double system of laws--one written, whether in judicial decisions or in express statute, and the other not written, because it resides in the ma.s.s of the citizens under conditions which baffle description. This last is imperfectly rendered in the English word "custom," is more definitely expressed in the French word _moeurs_, and is admirably conveyed by Horace in the words

Quid leges sine moribus Vanae proficiunt?

The essential characteristic of custom is that, however controlling it may be in fact, it does not enjoy the sanction of legislative enactment or executive decree; indeed, it often arises out of opposition to law; as where in the Western states game laws remain unenforced, because public opinion supports the ranchman's defence of necessity; and sometimes again where, though a law be in itself proper, a community declines to avail itself of the law, as in the custom that discredited divorce in the early Roman Republic.

Now, the importance of this moral or sometimes immoral sense that makes custom independently of law, must not be underestimated--for it is in many respects superior to law for evil or for good; and it differs from law in the essential fact that it grows almost imperceptibly, whereas law, in the strict sense of the word, is the result of judicial decision or legislative enactment--both acts of deliberation--or so purporting to be. The question naturally arises then whether, in so far as society develops along the line of custom, it does not follow the process of growth rather than that of construction.

It is impossible to deny that custom and public opinion are in a continual state of change; the varying fortunes of political parties sufficiently testify to this; but how far these variations are in civilized communities due to unconscious growth and how far to conscious effort it is not easy to determine. Suffice it to point out that, while opposing forces such as egotism and philanthropy, do continually tend to mould opinion under conditions that baffle inquiry, there are conscious forces at work which are quite as powerful and could be made more so. Chief amongst these is education; and in the word "education" are included not our schools and universities alone, but all the educating influences of the day--the press, the stage, music, literature, and art. That all these are engaged in moulding public opinion--some in bringing popular government into contempt, some in relaxing public morals, some in holding up low ideals, some in indulging luxurious tastes, while they could be doing just the opposite of all these things--there is no doubt.

The existence of these things is mentioned here because failure to mention them would have left the discussion incomplete. Enough has been said to indicate that there are great forces at work in society which to-day escape the control of government, and that it is not easy to say how far they operate after the haphazard fashion of Nature and how far subject to the deliberate purpose of man. Whatever be the conclusion, it is certain that so far as they are left to Nature's guidance they will result in Nature's handiwork; whereas so far as they are controlled by human wisdom they will bear the fruits of that wisdom.

In conclusion, therefore, a.s.sociations of individuals are characterized in primitive forms of life by unconsciousness; but as the individuals develop, these a.s.sociations seem to become deliberate rather than unconscious, until in man they not only seem deliberate but are so.

The history of human society shows that when it has been allowed to grow unconsciously the development has been in the same direction as under the predatory system of Nature; that is to say, inst.i.tutions have been moulded to benefit individuals presenting the combination of strength and craft best fitted to survive in the artificial environment which the strong and crafty created to that end. When conditions produced by this system of growth under the spur of egotism were replaced by one of construction under the guidance of wisdom, there was progress.

Society is controlled by two forces: one which it consciously set up for itself, called "government"; one which is unconsciously operating through the silent struggle of natural and non-natural motives in the individual lives of every one of us. The latter to a great extent escapes the control of government; but in so far as society does consciously create its own inst.i.tutions, it ought to be engaged in the process of construction and in the conscious effort towards self-improvement. To this extent society is not an organism, and _a fortiori_ government is not an organism either.

Society, then, is not an organism.

It differs from an organism in the following essential particulars:

The units of an organism have no individual existence; they are parts essential to the whole and exist for the sake of the whole.

The units of a society have an individual existence; and, in the case of human society, do not exist for the sake of the society, but society for the sake of the individual.

Not only have the units of a society each an individual existence, but they have each an individual will, an independent consciousness, and, all except Materialists will add, an individual soul. The units of an organism are conspicuously without any of these essential attributes.

But society, though not itself an organism, is an a.s.sociation of organisms. And although human society seems to resemble a machine more than an organism, the legislator cannot for a moment afford to forget that the parts of his machine are not inanimate inorganic matter, but organic living beings, endowed with the faculties of consciousness and will--and above all alive to pleasure and sensitive to pain. Nor can he afford to forget that the efficacy of all laws depends ultimately upon the consent of those upon whom they are to operate; and that therefore no law can be effectual that is not supported by public opinion. Now, public opinion is the result of all the forces acting in the social field, unconscious as well as conscious; so that while the aim of the legislator should be to replace unconscious growth so far as is possible by conscious construction, he commits a fatal error if he fails to recognize that men and women are to-day actuated as to nine-tenths of their thoughts and deeds by habit, and many--perhaps the majority of them--incapable of conscious deliberate self-restraint at all. Legislation therefore that seeks suddenly to exact of the public a greater capacity for self-restraint than it is capable of, cannot but prove ineffectual; and ineffectual legislation is bad, because it tends to bring legislation into contempt. Prohibition furnishes a good ill.u.s.tration of this principle: in those States in which Prohibition is supported by public opinion it operates advantageously; where it is not so supported it operates only as an instrument of blackmail. Obviously Prohibition has diminished crime and improved social conditions in some States, whereas every attempt to force it or anything approaching to it upon the city of New York has resulted in the corruption of the police engaged in enforcing it, or in prompt punishment for the political party responsible for its enactment. The helplessness of mere laws to eradicate defects of temperament is one of the facts which tend to support the theory of _laissez faire_; but the argument that because under certain conditions legislation is inadequate, therefore legislation is always inadequate, is too obviously illogical to need refutation. It could hardly have received a moment's consideration had it not been bolstered by pseudo-scientific conclusions drawn from an alleged ident.i.ty between society and organisms. But even if society were an organism, this argument would still be incorrect; just as incorrect as though it were contended that because under certain conditions medicine is inadequate, medicines must always be avoided. Were society as subtle and difficult to treat as the human bodies of which it is composed, it would still be the duty of the legislator to study the one, just as the physician studies the other, with a view to determining the limits as well as the extent of his resources.

But society is not an organism; on the contrary, the more human and civilized it is, the less it conforms to unconscious growth and the more it yields to intelligent purpose. That it is composed of organisms, however, sets a limit to the wisdom of interference which it is of paramount importance that we should carefully define.

These limits seem roughly to be marked out by two essential factors: one is the purpose of legislation--or justice, the other is the obstacles to legislation--or national character. Government in aiming at justice has to recognize defects of character. The justice which can be attained in one community could not be attempted in another; that which could be attained in one community in one stage of its development, it would have been folly to attempt at an earlier one.

The approach to perfection in social conditions depends essentially upon the approach to perfection attained by the individuals of which the society is composed.

How nearly a government can attain perfection depends, then, upon the individual character of those subject to it; and how nearly the individual character can attain perfection depends to a great extent upon the government to which it is subjected. These two factors cannot be treated apart; one is a function of the other. Just as a physician has in treating a patient to consider the hygienic conditions which surround him, and the peculiarities of const.i.tution which may make a sudden change of these conditions injurious, so a legislator in framing laws for a community and thus changing the conditions of its environment, has to consider the temperament of the community and its fitness to undergo the proposed change. This is one of the limits that Nature puts to legislation, and it is upon a just apprehension of it that the wisdom of legislation depends.

Although the extent to which legislation can modify nature depends largely upon the individuals who compose the community, there are, nevertheless, certain rules that can be laid down applicable by and large, to the whole community.

When a trainer desires to subdue a wild beast, the first thing he does is to diminish his rations. So long as the carnivorous pa.s.sions of the lion are kept whetted all attempt to control him fails. Or to use a more homely ill.u.s.tration, when we want to break a high-spirited colt, his supply of oats is lowered. To give such an animal an unlimited amount of oats and then to seek to control him with a powerful harness would be a mistake. If the harness left him free to move at all, he would kick the harness to pieces. Every trainer knows that if a horse is refractory, the first thing to be done to give him habits of docility is to reduce his rations of grain and to feed him on a less stimulating diet.

This simple and universally admitted principle is, however, singularly neglected in our social and political inst.i.tutions. These proceed upon the opposite plan; that is to say, they whet the appet.i.te of man to the utmost by offering the largest rewards to the most crafty, the most greedy, the most dishonest, and the most merciless of men, and then legislatures, for the most part elected by these very men, are expected to control their craft, greed, dishonesty, and mercilessness.

Thus while the compet.i.tive system, by making money the main object of human existence, drives men to gambling and crime, we maintain an elaborate system of police courts, penitentiaries, and prisons for suppressing these things, although the experience of all recorded history demonstrates that these methods are totally ineffectual. By overworking our wage-earners, we give them an insatiable thirst for drink; we entrust the sale of liquor to private individuals; we give these last the keenest motive for forcing the sale of liquor on a community alas, too eager to buy it, and then we attempt by the license system to control drunkenness. We leave our currency, which is the lifeblood of our industrial system, in the hands of men ent.i.tled under our law to consider this currency a mere method of increasing their private wealth; we offer to these men monopolies of transportation, of water, of gas, from which they can make gigantic fortunes and through which they can control our politics, and then we expect the very legislatures they control, the very legislators they elect, and the very officers they appoint, to control them. Obviously, if we begin by putting our legislature into the hands of the men whose interest it is to use that legislature to exploit us, we ought not to be surprised if the laws enacted by these legislatures fail to "change human nature."

If, however, these appet.i.tes were never awakened, or if they were only sufficiently tolerated to produce healthy activity; if the "brotherhood of man" ceased to be a formula and became a fact; if men were educated from the cradle to believe that cooperation resulted in more economy, liberty, and happiness than compet.i.tion; if cooperative habits were created so that men instinctively cooperated with one another instead of fighting with one another, can it be doubted that the laws enacted to produce this change in our human conditions would have a profound effect upon human nature?

The natural environment has produced the lion, the tiger, and the ape.

The artificial or human environment has produced man. But man is still a compet.i.tive animal. The next step that we have to take is still further so to modify our artificial environment as to make him a cooperative animal; to suppress the excessive compet.i.tion that to-day promotes hatred, leaving enough to spur activity; to introduce enough cooperation to create habits of mutual helpfulness, yet not so much as to suppress individual initiative.

This effort does not involve any sudden revolution in our development; it is only an intelligent continuation of the process already begun.

We have diminished the ferocity of the carnivora in men; we have still further to diminish it without impairing courage. If we keep in mind that the object of political effort should be to diminish unhappiness and increase happiness, we shall conclude that this can best be done by continuing to develop along this line; by eliminating the eagerness created by the compet.i.tive system that makes success indispensable, not only to luxury and comfort, but to health and life; and that by modifying our inst.i.tutions in the direction indicated in the foregoing pages, we shall not only secure a larger measure of happiness, but we shall so modify type as to change habits and change ideals.

In a word, Science teaches us that we are and must be creatures of our own environment. History teaches us that we have moulded and can mould our own environment. By this inestimable power, man can determine the development of the human type. By maintaining existing conditions, we shall continue to produce the type of grasping millionaires that the community at large in its heart abhors. Whereas, by modifying the environment by the subst.i.tution of cooperation for compet.i.tion in the measure above described, we shall create a type that humanity has set up in all its poetry, music, and art, as the type to be desired, respected, and loved.

-- 6. SUMMARY

In conclusion let us briefly summarize the scientific argument for Socialism free from the explanations with which in a first presentation of this subject it was necessary to enc.u.mber the text.

Evolution prior to the advent of man was an unconscious and therefore indeliberate adaptation of function to environment through the survival of the fittest and the corresponding destruction of the less fit. Herbert Spencer and his school have been misled by this fact into a glorification of the compet.i.tive system which seemed to them the most conspicuous factor in the improvement of type. This school altogether fails to take account of two facts of the utmost importance:

Development under purely natural conditions--prior to the advent of man--by no means proceeded alone along compet.i.tive lines. It also proceeded along cooperative lines, so that while the lion, the tiger, and the ape are the prevailing types in certain regions, in others the prevailing type is the white ant.