Twentieth Century Socialism Part 33

The moment that Huxley recognizes that it is by the "elimination of compet.i.tion," or shall we say the "limitation of compet.i.tion," by subst.i.tuting human selection for natural selection, and directing selection towards an ideal that man is to progress and develop, he has recognized the scientific basis of Socialism; and when he points out that Science teaches self-restraint, human responsibility, human effort, not so much the "survival of the fittest" as fitting as many as possible to survive, he has reconciled Science and Religion.

It is probable that one of the reasons why Huxley took a pessimistic view of the future was that he despaired of finding a solution to the economic struggle. I cannot forget the melancholy with which he said one day: "I am informed that England keeps its control of the market of cotton goods by a difference in cost of production of a farthing per yard. How long can this last?" But Huxley only gave a part of the scientific argument for Socialism. For the other part we have to turn from the pages of Huxley to those of Karl Marx.

One of the most important services Karl Marx rendered humanity was the demonstration of the predominating influence of economics in the development of man, in the determining of our custom, character, and conduct.

The economic conception of history is described by F. Engels as follows:

"The materialist conception of history starts from the principle that production, and next to production the exchange of its products, is the basis of every social system; that in every society arising in history the allotment of products, and with it the division of society into cla.s.ses or ranks, depends upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how when produced it is exchanged. Accordingly the ultimate causes of all social changes and political revolutions are not to be looked for in the heads of men, in their growing insight into eternal truth and justice, but in changes of the methods of production and exchange; they are to be looked for not in the philosophy, but in the economy of the epoch in question."[220]

Before elaborating this conception of history, it may be well to point out one or two elements of confusion in the terms in which it is stated. It is described as the "materialist conception of history,"

and for this reason many people imagine that the admission of this theory means the exclusion of the ideal. This is a profound error due to a misunderstanding of the use of the word "materialist." This word does not necessarily imply that the only proper conception of history is a materialistic one in the sense that it excludes the operation of ideals; but only that material conditions have played a predominating role in determining ideas.

The admission, however, must be made that this explanation is by no means admitted by all Socialist writers. Indeed the very language used by Engels is inconsistent with it. He says "they are not to be looked for in the philosophy, but in the economy of the epoch in question."

If, however, Mr. Engels were alive to-day and were challenged as to whether in fact he meant by this phrase to exclude philosophy altogether, I think he would answer in the negative. What he meant to say, I think, was that the ultimate causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be looked for in the economy of the epoch rather than in its philosophy. And this, I think, with some limitation is true, for the philosophy of every period is to a large extent determined by its economic conditions.

To this general statement there are, however, notable exceptions. Some men either by the adequacy of their means or the smallness of their needs, are lifted entirely above economic conditions, so that they can reason abstractly without regard to economic conditions. This probably is true of almost every philosopher that has made his mark. It is impossible to read the words of Christ, of Plato, Aristotle, St.

Thomas Aquinas, Carlyle, Emerson, and Tolstoi without being impressed by the fact that they soared far above all economic considerations.

On the other hand, economic conditions had a controlling influence on the whole philosophy of Ruskin. His first contact with life was while travelling with his father, who sold sherry to wealthy county families, and approached their mansions by way of the butler's pantry.

This impregnated Ruskin with a cult for aristocracy. It made it impossible for him to consider popular government without impatience.

Economic conditions too had put their mark so ineffaceably on the mind of Huxley that although in his criticism of Herbert Spencer he destroyed the princ.i.p.al philosophic bulwark of capitalism, he could not talk on Socialism without irritation.

Thus although men as great as Ruskin and Huxley were unable to rise above the slavery of the economic conditions in which their minds had been formed, others are so const.i.tuted as to be able to discuss ethics without any regard to economic conditions whatever. There is, however, no doubt as to the dominating influence of economic conditions in determining the average mental att.i.tude.

Man had two dominating appet.i.tes--for food and for perpetuation; and of these, because that for perpetuation is fitful whereas that for food is continuous, the latter is the more determining of the two.

There is hardly an act in a man's life which is not determined by the needs of food in the first place and the search for food in the second. This is admitted by all sociologists.

A right understanding of economics is therefore of the utmost importance to the conscious development of man. Unfortunately economists themselves have been until very lately just as narrow in their disregard of science and religion as science and religion have been narrow in their disregard of economics. Let us consider as briefly as the subject permits the inconsistencies which result from this narrowness in regard to religion and economics.

-- 2. CONFLICT BETWEEN ECONOMICS AND RELIGION

It is said that by the side of every poison in Nature there grows its antidote; that for every bean of St. Ignatius there is a bean of Calabar; and that a man poisoned by the one has only to stretch his hand out to the other.

So also in our social system may the two influences be at work, at odds with each other; whereas, did we but know enough, they might not only serve to counteract one another, but even become a priceless boon to humanity, as indeed the beans of St. Ignatius and Calabar have been made to yield up drugs as useful as nux vomica and eserine.

Religion and economics start by a.s.sumptions that are glaringly inconsistent.

Religion proceeds upon the a.s.sumption that man has morality in him and will, sometimes, act morally even contrary to his material interests.

Economics proceed upon the a.s.sumption that man has no morality in him and will never act morally if morality be contrary to his material interests.

Modern economists have somewhat modified this last view, but I am not criticising modern Political Economy, which is already lowering its flag to new doctrine; I am criticising the doctrine of _laissez faire_, which still const.i.tutes the backbone of our existing economics and will continue to deform our economic ideas until that backbone is relegated to museums by the side of the Ichthyosaurus and the Iguanodon.

Is the a.s.sumption that economic science is uninfluenced by morality true or false? Undoubtedly an economic science can be and has been constructed which does ignore morality and, dealing with man not as he really is but stripped of his morality, or as he is termed by some economic writers, "economic man," and still more navely by others the "average sensual man," has laid down the laws which _for such a man_ govern the production, distribution, and acc.u.mulation of wealth. In the development of this science it has been found necessary to define wealth, and here we come upon the first hard substance against which economists have broken their heads. For obviously wealth is to the "economic" or "average sensual" man a totally different thing to what it is to a Diogenes, a Cato, or to a Sister of Charity. To the latter wealth or well-being as opposed to illth or ill-being, consists mainly in the opportunity to be helpful to our fellow-creatures, whereas to the average sensual man wealth means money or the things that represent money, produce, bonds, and shares of stock. Now all economists are not "average sensual" men; it is doubtful whether to those who know the Dean of Modern Economists, Mr. Alfred Marshall, he can be described as a sensual man at all; and so there are few subjects upon which economists have differed so much as upon the definition of wealth. The extremists confine wealth to material things that have an exchange value; but the absurdity of such a definition is slowly making itself recognized; thus it has been forced upon some that skill is wealth; and upon others that honesty too is wealth; for the money value of honesty is now put into dollars and cents by surety companies. And so very slowly but surely economists are beginning to recognize that man is a moral as well as a sensual animal, and that his morality cannot be disregarded even by economics.

Then, too, what is wealth in one country is not wealth in another; thus we are told that the food of John the Baptist was "locusts and wild honey," and in certain parts of Africa locusts are still a marketable article of food; so snails are wealth in France though not in England; and human flesh which is not wealth in Europe is still wealth in some parts of Africa. Wealth then depends upon two factors: intrinsic and extrinsic; the first including qualities of the thing itself, the second depending upon human demand; so that a painting by Tintoretto is wealth to a community that loves art, but an enc.u.mbrance to one that does not love it; and absinthe, that is regarded as a valuable a.s.set in France, is excluded by Belgium as poison.

Here again we come up against the morality of man; will he continue to poison himself with absinthe or will he abstain? Upon this ethical decision will depend the question whether the immense stock of absinthe now on the French market is wealth or not. And so we are led insensibly to a question of still wider importance: Is wealth money or is it happiness? If it is money then economists are right; if it is happiness then they are wrong. And yet it is as clear as the sun on a cloudless day that what man wants is happiness, and that if he has been set all these centuries on seeking money it is because money is believed by him to be practically the only medium through which he can attain happiness. Here is repeated the old story of the captive beaver in the attic gathering sticks to make a dam when the water pitcher was upset. The object for making dams had disappeared, but the dam-building instinct survived. We have grown so accustomed to labor for money that we have lost sight of the real object of our efforts; and we have to think a long time before we recognize that money in itself is of no importance to us whatever; and that the only thing of real importance is that for which money is sought--happiness. Now what happiness consists of depends upon the mentality of any given community. The tree-dwelling savage's idea of happiness is plenty of nuts and fine weather; the Englishman's idea is plenty of land and a seat in Parliament; the American's idea is millions of money; and the tree-dwelling savage is probably as near the truth as either of the other two.

Obviously there is an ideal of happiness quite different from this; an ideal that recognizes the solidarity of the race and recognizes that no one man can be securely happy unless his neighbors are happy also; an ideal built on the plan of mutual helpfulness--of cooperation instead of compet.i.tion. But here the lip of the economist will curl and he will, if he deigns to express himself at all, denounce such a proposition as "impractical." But why does he do this? Because he has been educated to believe that economics deal only with the "average sensual man," and that wealth consists exclusively of "material things that have an exchange value." If, then, it turns out that both these a.s.sumptions are false, is it not time for him to revise his philosophy?

It is not unnatural that starting with false definitions of man and of wealth, economists should arrive at a false conclusion regarding the so-called beauties of our industrial system, and of such time-honored though immoral maxims as "compet.i.tion is the soul of trade" and "_caveat emptor_."

And now after this rapid glance at economic philosophy and the "average sensual man," let us turn to Religion and see how Religion regards man.

It seems inconceivable that the same civilization should include two bodies of men living in apparent harmony and yet holding such opposite and inconsistent views on man as economists on the one hand and theologians on the other. To these last, man has no economic needs; this world does not count; it is merely a place of probation, mitigated sometimes, it is true, by ecclesiastical pomp and episcopal palaces; but serving for the most part as a mere preparation for a future existence which will satisfy the aspirations of the human soul--the only thing that does count, in this world or the next. So while to the economist man is all hog, to the theologian he is all soul; and between the two the Devil secures the vast majority.

One-fifth of the population in London is admittedly foredoomed to die in a penitentiary, an almshouse, or a lunatic asylum; and the vast mult.i.tude of wage earners are kept out on the ragged edge of the strike on one hand and unemployment on the other, with no better prospect before them than a dest.i.tute old age.

Were there no churches in the land, were there no charity in man, no pity, the economists would be comprehensible; but with our churches still crowded; with charitable societies as thick as universities; with pity in their own hearts giving every day the lie to the economic enormities they profess and teach, what are we going to say of these men? And were there no economists in the chair, no stock exchange, no factory, no strikes, no unemployed; did our theologians' stomachs never themselves clamor for food, or their bodies cry out for shelter and heat, they too would be excusable. But with our tenements steeped in misery; with misery pitilessly leading to crime, vice, disease; with the demands of the body brought home to every one of them a thousand times a day, is it not time for theologians at last to remember that men have bodies as well as souls?

Consider then these two sets of teachers, one professing a philosophy built on the a.s.sumption that man is all body and no soul, the other built on the contrary a.s.sumption that man is all soul, meeting daily at dinner parties and discussing the agony of the workingman with complacency and "philosophic calm"!

Yet if we look at the world as it is, so full of evil and yet so easily set right, we will not delve at the roots of plants and say: "Life is all mud;" nor point to their leaves and say: "Life is all flower and fruit." Life is made up of root and flower; man is made up of body and soul. The economy and the religion that heed this will alone be true. Let economics be enlightened by religion and let religion be enlightened by economics; let the economist learn that the soul of man is more than raiment and the priest that the needs of the body come in order of time before the needs of the soul; let the economist learn the laws of mutual helpfulness and the priest the laws of the production and the distribution of well-being; and there will spring into existence a new religion and a new political economy that will preach the same thing--the solidarity of man--that what man wants in this world is not money, but happiness--and that he can prepare himself best for the next world of which he knows nothing by making his neighbor as well as himself wholesome as well as happy, in this world of which he to-day alas, knows too much of its misery and too little of its play.

-- 3. SOCIALISM RECONCILES RELIGION, ECONOMICS, AND SCIENCE

Let us now consider the Scientific and Ethical aspects of Socialism from a slightly different angle than that which closed the preceding chapter.

In what Huxley calls the "cosmic process"--the process of evolution prior to the advent of Man--the development or degeneration of animal or vegetable life is determined by the environment. If the environment is favorable to development, there is development; if it is unfavorable, there is degeneration. The question, therefore, whether animal or vegetable life is to develop or degenerate is left to the caprice of environment. The process through which this caprice is exercised is the survival of the fittest, and this includes two processes: the utmost propagation on the one hand, and the utmost compet.i.tion on the other. With all the cruelty that this system involves, it would be idle to call such a process moral; nor would it be reasonable to call it immoral. The cosmic process is non-moral. It ignores justice because justice is a conception of either G.o.d or Man, and is not found in Nature outside of G.o.d or Man at all.

If now we turn from the cosmic process to that employed by the gardener in converting wild land into a garden for the purpose of producing things beautiful or useful to man, we find that the gardener reverses the cosmic process. He does not tolerate utmost propagation or even propagation at all except to the extent necessary to furnish him beautiful or useful things. He limits propagation; and as to utmost compet.i.tion, he eliminates compet.i.tion altogether. And it is only by limiting propagation and eliminating compet.i.tion that the gardener keeps his garden beautiful and useful. The moment he stops applying to his garden patch the art which limits propagation and eliminates compet.i.tion, that moment the garden tends to return to a state of Nature; to

"an unweeded garden, That grows to seed; things rank, and gross in nature, Possess in merely."[221]

It must also be observed that in the garden patch selection is not exercised by the environment, though it is limited by the environment; selection is exercised by the gardener who, within the limits permitted by the environment, replaces Nature. It is no longer Nature that selects, but Man.

Let us now turn from the civilized garden to the civilized community.

Here, too, we find the cosmic process in some respects reversed; in other respects, allowed to run riot. It is reversed in the sense of the word that prudence created by the ownership of property limits the propagation of the educated; but it remains unreversed by the fact that despair created by absence of property leaves propagation unchecked in the uneducated. So that if it be admitted that it would be better for type that the educated should propagate than the uneducated, the human type is tending to degenerate owing to the fact that there is unlimited propagation of the least desirable types; whereas there is limited propagation of the more desirable.

When we turn to compet.i.tion, we find it almost unrestrained. Indeed, it was the deliberate policy of the government and of political economists a century ago to let it proceed absolutely without restraint. Such was the doctrine of _laissez faire_ and such is the doctrine which to-day is expressed by business men in the request to be "let alone." But the experience of the past one hundred years has demonstrated that humanity cannot afford to let compet.i.tion go unrestrained; that it leads to such fatal consequences that all--even the most educated and carefully nurtured--are exposed to the contagion of disease engendered by unrestrained compet.i.tion; witness the cholera scare and the hygienic laws to which this cholera scare gave rise.[222] Compet.i.tion has been controlled in various manners: by laws such as factory acts, child labor acts, women labor acts; second, by trade unions which the community and the law have had to protect in order to keep workingmen from the danger of having to work for less than starvation wages; and last of all, by trusts, which discovered that compet.i.tion involves a waste which, could it be saved, would roll up enormous dividends to stockholders. But trusts have occasioned evils against which to-day the whole nation is crying out. So that the cry now abroad is to control monopolies, trusts, and corporations; and if the efforts to control corporations have not already sufficiently demonstrated that such laws are bound to result in more blackmail than control, no reasonable man can doubt that they must in the end so result in view of the fact that the prizes offered by business attract first-cla.s.s talent to business whereas the smaller prizes offered by politics or the government can only draw to it second-or third-rate ability.

I trust it has been shown that the confusion that results from the compet.i.tive system is due to false notions of property; that property as an inst.i.tution is, and must always be, essential to the economic structure of the state in the sense that the original and beneficial purpose of property is to secure to men as nearly as possible the full product of their toil. This is the ideal distinctly expressed by Mr.

Roosevelt, and is the ideal of every mind that has distinct notions about property at all.

Our social structure, therefore, should be so organized as to a.s.sure to men the full product of their toil by the adoption of some such system as has been described in the chapter on the Economic Construction of the Cooperative Commonwealth.

In such a social structure, compet.i.tion would be limited so that we should reserve its stimulus and eliminate its sting, and propagation would be limited not only by prudence, but by the economic independence of women, who ought to have most to say on the subject.

In such a social structure, we should for the first time have an environment that would discourage vice and encourage virtue. And here comes, as I have already said, the crowning glory of Socialism that reconciles religion, economics, and science.

For the Church teaches: "Man is born in sin; his pa.s.sions are sinful; unaided by G.o.d he is their slave. If, however, he chooses to make the effort necessary to secure the aid of G.o.d, he can master his pa.s.sions and earn salvation. But although the Grace of G.o.d will secure to him some happiness in this world, this world is a place of unhappiness and purgation; the reward of the faithful is not in this world, but in the world to come."

The Economist teaches: "Man is born in sin; his pa.s.sions are sinful; in matters so practical as bread and b.u.t.ter we must not allow ourselves to be deluded by the promises of the Church, as to the fulfilment of which no evidence has ever been furnished. A practical system of economics then must be built on the undoubted fact that the 'average man' is 'sensual' and will always act in accordance with what he believes to be his material interest. It must be founded on human selfishness; let every man be driven by selfishness to make wealth primarily for himself and incidentally for the community at large.

This is the only practical system for the acc.u.mulation of wealth."

Science says: "Man is born with pa.s.sions, but are these pa.s.sions sinful? They are sinful when uncontrolled, because they may then act injuriously to the neighbor. When controlled they act beneficially to the neighbor. The problem is not how to suppress pa.s.sion, but how to control it. Man must indeed obey his greater inclination; but Man has the power to mould his own environment; to make his own habits; to make his own inclination; Man therefore is master--not slave. There is too in evolution a power which from the creation to this day has persistently worked toward progress, justice, and happiness; but we are still ignorant as to what this power is except in so far as we see it working in Man. In Man we can see and study the working of this power. And we find it in Man's capacity to mould his own environment by resisting Nature instead of yielding to it. And so science teaches to-day--not the gospel of evolution alone--but also the gospel of effort and Art."