British Socialism Part 4

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

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

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

Let us look into these grievances.

According to the Socialist leaders, the workers--

Helots in hunger nursed Slaves of their reign accursed[96]--

keep the rich in affluence. Nevertheless they themselves are kept in poverty, degradation, and slavery by the capitalists whom they nourish by their labour. "The landlord owns the raw material and can live in idleness. The capitalist owns the machinery and can live in idleness.

The worker has nothing, except his ability to work, and he cannot work without the consent of the landlord and the capitalist.

Therefore, he is virtually a slave. He cannot control his own life."[97]

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

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

Although co-operation has made millions of workers in Germany, France, Belgium, and other countries prosperous and independent, independence is, according to the Socialists, for some unspecified reason, un.o.btainable for the workers of Great Britain, and co-operation is a failure. "The chance of the great bulk of the labourers ever coming to work upon their own land and capital in a.s.sociations for co-operative production, has become even less hopeful than it ever was."[102]

"Everywhere the workman is coming to understand that it is practically hopeless for him, either individually or co-operatively, to own the constantly growing ma.s.s of capital by the use of which he lives."[103]

The advent of the great industry has not benefited but harmed him.

"The supersession of the small by the great industry has given the main fruits of invention and the new power over Nature to a comparatively small proprietary cla.s.s, upon whom the ma.s.s of the people are dependent for leave to earn their living."[104] "The worker is now a mere item in a vast industrial army over the organisation and direction of which he has no control. He is free, but free only to choose to which master he will sell his labour--free only to decide from which proprietor he will beg that access to the new instruments of production without which he cannot exist."[105]

As the capitalist cla.s.s owns the factories, workshops, &c., the worker has become to that cla.s.s a slave in the full and generally accepted meaning of the word. "The effect of private property in land and capital is in all essential respects the same as was the effect of private property in human beings. In each case slavery is the result.

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

To those working men who might object that it is a gross exaggeration to say that the British worker is a slave, and that he is penniless, the Socialist agitator answers: "What? You are a free man and not a slave? There are no slaves in this country? What is a slave? One who works at the bidding of another, and only by permission of another, and for the profit of that other. Does not that fit your case exactly?

Do you work when you like and idle when you like? Not you! You work when the capitalist requires your labour, when your services will be useful in making a profit for him. When that is not the case you can starve in the gutter, although there may be all the necessaries of life in profusion around you. These things do not belong to you, although you and your cla.s.s have made them; they are so much wealth which your masters have acquired from your unpaid labour, things which you have produced, but for which you have never been paid, out of which you have been swindled by the natural operation of the system of wage-slavery of which you are the unconscious victim. From this condition of things there is no escape while the whole of the people do not own the means of production. Nothing but the abolition of the cla.s.s owners.h.i.+p of the means of life, and the subst.i.tution of owners.h.i.+p of the whole people, will abolish this form of slavery."[110]

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

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

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

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

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

There are ninety-and-nine who live and die In want and hunger and cold, That one may revel in luxury, And be wrapped in its silken fold; The ninety-and-nine in their hovels bare, The one in a palace with riches rare.[120]

Ye poor of wealthy England, Who starve and sweat and freeze By labour sore to fill the store Of those who live at ease; 'Tis time to know your real friends, To face your real foe, And to fight for your right Till ye lay your masters low; Small hope for you of better days Till ye lay your masters low.[121]

The working men are, according to the Socialist agitators, "excluded"

from property by the capitalist cla.s.s which owns all the land, factories, machinery, &c. The capitalist cla.s.s has thus reserved for itself a monopoly of all the instruments of production. Consequently, "the only means by which the excluded cla.s.s can live is by working for the capitalist cla.s.s--by getting some one or other of the capitalist cla.s.s to allow them access to the tools and materials in his possession, and pay them wages in return for their labour."[122]

However, the capitalists do not grant to the workers access to the instruments of production free of charge. They exact a toll from them, and employ them only if, by so doing, they can secure a profit for themselves. In the fact that an employer will engage workmen only if he can make a profit by their labour, the Socialists see a cruel injustice. "Your capitalist cla.s.s draw upon this excluded horde of landless, toolless, foodless lack-alls, and do actually find work for as many as they can employ at a profit to themselves. This excluded cla.s.s have no rights--not even the elementary right to exist. What G.o.d meant by creating them when He knew, or might have known, that everything belonged to the capitalists, n.o.body can understand."[123]

"The whole of our industrial system is founded on a principle existing nowhere else in Nature, the principle of production and distribution for profit. If no employer can make a profit out of the worker's labour he is cast into the unemployed army."[124] "Seven out of every eight persons in your community, 37,500,000 of the men, and women, and children who form your nation, can lay no claim to any right to exist--exist only on sufferance. If one or other of the irresponsible persons who own the country can be induced to allow them to earn their bread, well and good; if not, they must die. At the present moment there are 700,000 persons shut out in this manner from any chance of obtaining food to eat. You call it being 'out of work,' and can see the spectral army, 700,000 strong, hungry and in want. They are not kept idle and hungry because there is no 'work.' The earth is there with all its boundless store that their 'work' would turn into wealth if they could but get at it. They are kept idle because those who own the country cannot find them employment at a profit to themselves, because the blind, fatuous insanity of your 'system of trade' makes no provision even for keeping its slaves in work."[125]

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

Not only are "rent" and "profit" illegitimate abstractions, but they are downright theft. Every landowner, every banker, every manufacturer, every shopkeeper is a thief. All business for profit is swindling. "Land-rent and capital-rent are thefts from the produce of labour."[128] "The manufacturer aims primarily at producing, by means of the labour he has stolen from others, not goods, but profits."[129]

"What is successful business but cheating? What is the whole basis of capitalist industry but the use of the means of production, not for the legitimate end of producing wealth for use, but for the purpose of making profit for the few by despoiling, sweating, pillaging, and murdering the many?"[130]

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

The grievance that the manufacturers manufacture "not for use but for profit" is ridiculous. The manufacturers manufacture things which the public will buy and use. There is consequently no distinction between manufacturing for use and manufacturing for profit, except this, that no manufacturer will give his time and trouble, and run considerable risks, without adequate compensation. The complaint must therefore be limited to the fact that the employer of labour makes a profit. The question now arises: "What does the manufacturer do with his earnings?" In the vast majority of cases he will use by far the larger part of his profits for renewing machinery and enlarging his works, and thus increase the national capital and the national power of production, spending privately only a director's salary which he would also receive as a director-employee of the Socialist commonwealth.

"The employer who works without a profit breaks himself,"[133] and in breaking himself he breaks up the factory. Universal production regardless of profit would lead to universal bankruptcy, whilst the curtailing of profits may lead to a proportionate curtailment in the expansion of industry and in the production of articles for use, and to general poverty. It has the same effect whether the workers destroy the capitalist's capital or whether they break the machinery and devastate the corn-fields.

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

The figures relating to the yearly income of the "capitalist cla.s.s"

and the "working cla.s.s" which are given in innumerable Socialistic writings, and which are brought forward at almost every Socialist meeting and lecture, are usually taken from a pamphlet ent.i.tled "Facts for Socialists from the Political Economists and Statisticians," published by the Fabian Society. The copy lying before me bears the notice, "Tenth Edition (Revised), 111th thousand, 1906."

That pamphlet furnishes the statistical basis of fact to the Socialist agitation. Its effect may be measured by its enormous circulation. It contains a vast number of quotations from Blue-books, political economists, and statisticians; and a certain show of learning, of thoroughness, and of conscientiousness gives it at first sight the appearance of being a reliable and honest production. However, appearances are proverbially deceptive.

According to "Facts for Socialists," the whole national income amounts to _1,800,000,000l._ per year (page 3), and is derived from the following sources:

"I.--RENT

"The total profits from the owners.h.i.+p of lands, houses, t.i.thes, &c., the rents of mines, quarries, ironworks, gasworks, waterworks, ca.n.a.ls, fis.h.i.+ngs, shootings, markets, tolls, &c., must amount to at least _290,000,000l._[135]

"II.--INTEREST ON CAPITAL

"The profits of public companies, foreign investments, railways, &c., a.s.sessed to income tax in the United Kingdom, the interest payable from British public funds and from Indian, Colonial, and Foreign Governments' funds, and the interest on capital employed in private undertakings of manufacture or trade cannot be less than _360,000,000l._ Adding hereto the rent (_290,000,000l._), we have a total of _650,000,000l._ for rent and interest together. This represents the proportion of the nation's income claimed from the workers, _not in return for any service rendered to the community, but merely as the payment for permission to use the land and the already acc.u.mulated capital of the country_.[136]

"III.--PROFITS AND SALARIES

"The numbers and total income of this large cla.s.s cannot be exactly ascertained. It includes workers of all grades, from the exceptionally skilled artisan to the Prime Minister, and from the city clerk to the President of the Royal Academy. It is convenient for statistical purposes to include in it all those who do not belong to the 'manual labour cla.s.s.' If we take the 'rent of ability' to have increased in the same proportion as the a.s.sessments to income tax, this prosperous body may be estimated to receive for its work as profits and salaries about _460,000,000l._ annually.[137]"

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

"THE CLa.s.sES

"The total drawn by the legal disposers of what are sometimes called the 'three rents' of land, capital, and ability amounts at present to about _1,110,000,000l._ yearly, or just under two-thirds of the total produce.

"AND THE Ma.s.sES

"Allowing for the increase since these estimates were made, we may safely say that the manual labour cla.s.s receives for all its millions of workers only some _690,000,000l._"[138]

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

Rent 290,000,000 Interest 360,000,000 Profits and Salaries 460,000,000 -------------

Total (that is, the income of the legal proprietors of the three natural monopolies of land, capital, and ability) 1,110,000,000 Income of manual labour cla.s.s 690,000,000 ------------- Total produce 1,800,000,000[139]