Twentieth Century Socialism Part 34

In Nature we observe two systems of social existence: one compet.i.tive, one cooperative. Both are attended by evils; both by advantages. Man can frame his social and economic conditions so as to eliminate the evils and secure the advantages of both. This is Socialism.

Socialism leaves the church free to proceed along the lines of its faith; but it furnishes the church with the inestimable advantage of creating economic conditions that make the practice of religion for the first time possible. To-day economic conditions by ignoring the soul of Man and appealing only to his appet.i.tes make the practice of the Golden Rule impossible.

Economic conditions can be so changed that they appeal to the soul of man without ignoring his appet.i.tes. It may be that the earth is a place of preparation for another life. But it is not for that reason necessarily a place of misery and injustice. Socialism by eliminating misery and injustice will make this preparation easier. The environment of Socialism will tend to improve not only the individual, but also the type. It may be that the grace of G.o.d will help man to be n.o.ble and just. Let the church continue to teach this.

But let science be heard also in the positive proof it furnishes that man will and must be what the environment makes him; that if we continue to tolerate economic conditions that appeal to his selfishness, he will and must remain selfish; whereas if wiser economic conditions appeal to his unselfishness he will and must tend to be unselfish.

And so in Socialism and in Socialism alone, do we find reconciled the ethics of the church, the needs of economics, and the demands of science.

The new church will continue to teach social service; the new economics will permit of social service; and the new science will make of social service an environment out of which the new type of man will be evolved that will justify the words of Christ: "Hath it not been said in your law 'Ye are G.o.ds'?"

FOOTNOTES:

[207] "Evolution and Ethics," by T.H. Huxley, p. 80.

[208] "Evolution and Ethics," p. 13.

[209] "Evolution and Ethics," p. 20.

[210] Ibid., p. 81.

[211] "Evolution and Ethics," p. 81.

[212] Ibid., p. 83.

[213] Ibid., p. 85.

[214] Ibid., p. 116.

[215] "Evolution and Ethics," p. 20.

[216] Book II, Chapter I.

[217] "Government or Human Evolution," Vol. I, p. 16.

[218] "Evolution and Ethics," p. 85.

[219] Ibid., p. 86.

[220] "Modern Socialism," by R.C.K. Ensor.

[221] Of course, I must not be understood to mean that nothing beautiful or useful grows in Nature outside of the art of the gardener. On the contrary, we know that in the Tropics Nature furnishes not only beautiful things, but enough of useful things to make the art of the gardener unnecessary. The lesson to be drawn from the garden patch is that, if the best result in the shape of beautiful and useful things is to be obtained from a limited surface, Art must be applied to that surface; Nature cannot be depended upon.

[222] Book III, Chapter II.

CHAPTER VI

SOLIDARITY

I think it was Miss Martineau who said that if her generation was better than that which preceded her, the betterment was due to the teachings of Carlyle; and much though we may differ with John Ruskin in matters of detail, no one will dispute the apostolic fervor with which he endeavored to push on the work of Thomas Carlyle. It is a significant fact, therefore, that both Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin had nothing but abuse to give to political economy. Nevertheless, I think we all must agree that this hostile att.i.tude was due to a misconception of the scope of political economy, a misconception due in great part to its name; for the words "political economy" seem to indicate that it deals with the economy of the state, and that it becomes the duty of its teachers to show us not only what the rules regarding the production and distribution of goods are, but what they ought to be.

In fact, however, although economists do discuss how--if at all--the system of production and distribution of goods can be improved, they have always regarded it as their princ.i.p.al function to describe accurately what the rules that govern production and distribution really are, rather than what they ought to be. And as existing industrial conditions are extremely complicated, those who have thrown light upon them are highly to be honored. And although they have contributed nothing to the solution of such problems as unemployment, pauperism, and the conflict of labor and capital, it may be as unreasonable to complain of this as to quarrel with the "crossing-sweeper of Piccadilly" because he is unable "to tell you the road to Highgate."

Again, political economy has encountered a great deal of unmerited abuse because critics have confounded authors with their subject, and have held economists responsible for the industrial conditions they describe; whereas, these economists have earned our sincerest thanks for demonstrating that the compet.i.tive system offers no solution for the conflict between capital and labor, or the problem of unemployment and all the other problems as those of pauperism, prost.i.tution, and economic crime which result therefrom.

Mr. Ruskin is certainly wrong when he denounces political economy as the "science of getting rich," and when he adds that "persons who follow its precepts" do actually become rich; "all persons who disobey them become poor"; for our ablest political economists have always been and still are relatively poor men, and our richest millionaire is a past master of the rules in the game which it is his particular business to play; but he is not concerned with a science which does no more than study wealth under the compet.i.tive system and demonstrate how inevitably a few grow rich and the rest grow poor under it.

Let us then abandon hostility to a science without which to-day we could not see clearly the workings of the existing system, and on the contrary, avail ourselves of all its teachings, recognizing that a study of what industrial conditions to-day are must precede the study of what they could and should be.

The study of political economy is necessary to a study of "social economy." Political economy admittedly deals with the average sensual man, and having determined the rules that determine the actions of the average sensual man, it becomes now the problem of social economy to deal with the average moral man. And the moral man must not be regarded as opposed to the sensual. The moral man includes the sensual, but adds affection, sympathy, and all that makes happiness to the sensual man who may, through absence of affection and sympathy, fail to attain the happiness of which he is in search. Under this definition, while political economy deals with the attainment of wealth, social economy deals with the attainment of happiness; and as man must eat before he can pursue happiness, social economy must concern itself with the acquisition of wealth to satisfy physical needs before it concerns itself with the attainment of justice to satisfy moral needs. An attempt has been made in this book to present the social and economic structure which would best attain happiness.

Would such a system at the same time attain justice?[223]

To arrive at a correct notion of justice, we have to refer once more to the difference between what Huxley calls the "cosmic process"--that is to say, the process of the environment of Nature before the advent of Man--and the ethical process, or the process of the artificial environment created by Man. For there is one difference, and a most essential difference, between them to which attention has not yet been directed: namely, that in communities such as those of the bee and ant, the individual is sacrificed to the community; whereas the effort of Man is or should be to so organize his community that it will serve the happiness of the individual. For example, we would not tolerate a community upon the plan we see practised by the bees, under which only one male out of a whole hive is permitted to propagate and all the rest of the males on attaining maturity are caused to die; only one female of the whole hive is allowed to be fertile and to propagate, all the rest being subject to the dreary round of keeping the fertile bee a prisoner, of feeding her, of rearing, feeding and caring for the young in the hive, and incidentally destroying any males who may return to the hive from the nuptial flight. We have to recognize that the great obstacle to happiness in community life is s.e.xual instinct, of which Socialists of the type of Edward Bellamy have for the most part failed to take account.

Reference has been made to the various devices adopted by different races of animals and by Man at different periods and at different places to solve the problem of s.e.xual instinct,[224] and it has been, I think, demonstrated by Professor Giddings, that of all the systems proposed none can compare with our present inst.i.tution of marriage.[225] The mere fact that the marriage system has survived in the conflict with races that have adopted other systems ought to furnish an argument in favor of its superiority. In the struggle between races of Man, those races the inst.i.tutions of which require most self-restraint have invariably overwhelmed those races whose inst.i.tutions require less self-restraint. For example, the tribes that lived without any regulation of s.e.xual instinct and in which children took the name of their mother because the name of their father was not and could not be known, disappeared in the conflict with tribes which insisted upon some restraint to s.e.xual appet.i.te, such as the patriarchal system. Again, the patriarchal system which tolerated polygamy has everywhere been destroyed when it came into conflict with monogamous races, such as our own, which involve still further restraint in the s.e.xual relation.

It would seem, therefore, as though the monogamous marriage were the keystone of our present civilization, for upon it has been built the family, and the education and self-restraint which family life involves.[226] There is too no function of the family more important than that it serves as a model of what the state ought to be as distinguished from what the state actually is; that is to say, a government which should have equal concern for every member of the community, and not one which as at present surfeits some and starves others.

It is the growing idea that a properly const.i.tuted state must do this for the protection not only of the many, but of the few that probably give the most continuous aid to Socialism. As Mr. Edwin Bjorkman expressed it: "We are beginning to grasp the futility of planning the welfare of any one human being apart from the rest of his kind. We are coming to think of ourselves, at last, as links in a chain so firmly bound together that when the devil grabs the hindmost the wrench is felt by the top-most--felt in the very marrow of his bones."[227]

And so while the inst.i.tution of marriage has removed an obstacle to solidarity in community life, public health has proved its ally. Mr.

Bjorkman has made an estimate of the enormous cost of unnecessary sickness. But the protection of public health is furnis.h.i.+ng us a far better argument in favor of solidarity and Socialism than the mere cost of neglecting it. In Cuba our sanitary engineers have practically got rid of yellow fever, not only for that community, but for our own.

Recent discoveries tracing malaria to the mosquito are leading to the destruction of this insect. Smallpox and cholera have practically been stamped out, and efforts are now being made to do the same with typhoid and tuberculosis.

Now one feature characterizes all these efforts. They cannot be made by one man for himself; they have to be made by whole communities for whole communities and they will eventually have to be made by the whole world for the whole world. The same thing is true of vagrancy, pauperism, and crime. No individual or group of individuals can handle this problem; it must be handled by every community, and through the further extension of extradition treaties by all countries for the whole world.

Again, reference has been often made in this book to the necessity under which governments, openly professing the policy of _laissez faire_, have found themselves to enact laws totally inconsistent with this doctrine. Such, laws ought to be sufficient evidence that the days of _laissez faire_ are gone forever; and that this theory, universally proclaimed a century ago as the only sound theory of government, has to-day given way before the recognition that no wealth can compensate a man for the misery of his neighbors; and that even if, abandoning all ideals and all ethics, we confine ourselves to the problem how to make men materially happy, we can only do so by adjusting our inst.i.tutions so that no man will be allowed to become or to remain a pauper or criminal.

I am not discussing here matters of theory, but matters of fact.

Theoretically, the development of man might have taken a totally different direction. The master minds of the period (such as that, for example, of Mr. W.H. Mallock) might have so organized the able as to const.i.tute an aristocracy strong enough to keep the rest of the community in a state of ignorant servitude, so that while Mr. Mallock was enjoying the necessary leisure to discuss the "New Republic" amid the luxury of his English country home, all the work of the world would be accomplished by human automata with no desires beyond that of the immediate gratification of their appet.i.tes. Unfortunately, however, Mr. Mallock has come too late upon the scene. Some years before he was born, the die was cast. Workingmen were given a voice in public affairs and have been educated, so that they const.i.tute a power with which government has to reckon. Here is a fact against which it is useless for millionaires to break their heads. No one can ignore the power exercised by such men as Bebel in Germany, Jaures and Guesde in France, Vandervelde in Belgium, Keir Hardie and MacDonald in England, Gompers and John Mitch.e.l.l in America. These men are all engaged in organizing the workingmen's vote with extraordinary efficacy in Europe, and with extraordinary inefficacy in the United States. But the days of Gompers and Mitch.e.l.l are drawing to a close, and in this country as well as in Europe, Organized Labor will grow to understand the inevitable truth that it is only by political action and with the Socialist program that it can defeat the power of capital. So that whether Mr. Mallock be right or not, the day of aristocracy is over and the day of solidarity has dawned. The question for us to decide is whether we should recognize this fact and modify our inst.i.tutions to conform to the new era, or whether we should continue to ignore the fact until we break our heads against it.

The point which Mr. Mallock and his school have failed to understand is that the very greed which creates aristocracy unfits the aristocrat for the cooperation indispensable to its survival. This condemns him, as it does all the highest types of carnivora, created by the compet.i.tive system to isolation. For it is out of the jealousy and struggles of the aristocrats with one another that the people are at last getting to their own. It was because the king, the n.o.ble, and the church could not agree in the division of spoils that their perpetual altercations left room for the organization of the Communes in France at the end of the eleventh century. It was because the church, the n.o.ble and the king would not give a fair share of the honors and spoils of the state to the wealthy bourgeoisie, that the bourgeois was obliged to a.s.sociate himself with the people in 1789; it was because of the conflict between the Whigs and the Tories that the franchise was gradually extended to the workingmen in England; and it is because the Republicans can put no limit to their greed that workingmen in America will find themselves eventually compelled to organize politically their at present disunited mult.i.tudes. It is, therefore, extremely improbable that, even if Mr. Mallock had lived in an earlier age, he could have prevented the inevitable progress of the great principle of solidarity which has determined the direction of human development ever since it began to differ from that of other animals.

If now we run through all the differences between the natural environment and the environment created by Man, we shall see that they practically all proceed upon the theory that men must develop no longer as individuals but as a unit. All our customs and laws proceed upon the theory of liberty and justice; and upon that theory is based the original principle of property that a.s.sures to all men the product of their toil. Now if all men are to be a.s.sured the product of their toil, there must be an end to the system which puts a few millionaires at one end of the social scale and millions of paupers at the other.

Again, for centuries the so-called struggle for life has ceased to be a struggle for life, but has become a struggle for wealth, power, and consideration. It is no longer only the fit that survive; the unfit also survive; and if the unfit are to survive, we all have a common interest in taking the necessary steps to prevent the unfit from proving too heavy a burden upon the community.

Again, all isolating vices such as l.u.s.t, ferocity, craft, fear, and selfishness--vices which characterize the carnivora and condemn them to lives of isolation--are being tempered by the necessities of common life--by the fundamental fact of the solidarity of Man. Thus, l.u.s.t is tempered and in part replaced by love and mercy; ferocity is tempered and in part replaced by courage and patience; fear is tempered and in part replaced by respect and reverence; selfishness is tempered and in part replaced by unselfishness.

And all this advantage which humanity has attained over the lower animals is due to its ability to mould its own environment, and deliberately undertake the task of justice; namely, to "eliminate from our social conditions the effects of the inequalities of Nature upon the happiness and advancement of Man, and particularly to create an artificial environment which shall serve the individual as well as the race, and tend to perpetuate n.o.ble types rather than those which are base."

It is true that so far our efforts to attain justice have lamentably failed; but they have failed mainly because we have not yet sufficiently limited the scope of compet.i.tion. The day we limit compet.i.tion as suggested in the chapter on the Economic Structure of Socialism,[228] that day we shall have removed the lion from our path.

And as stated in the Preface, the development of Man will then proceed upon the theory that all are perfectible and that it is through the improvement of all that every individual will attain his best freedom, his best happiness, and the fullest opportunities for promoting the happiness of all around him.

This is the ideal to attain which the environment described in the Chapter on the Economic Construction of the Cooperative Commonwealth has been conceived. It is the ideal which furnishes the most economical method of production and distribution and, therefore, the most leisure and liberty; that creates the environment fitted to perpetuate the n.o.ble rather than the base type; to promote virtue and discourage vice and, in a word, creates conditions under which we can practise the morality preached by every religion, whether it be that of Moses, of Mohammed, or of Christ.