An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation Part 14

So it is also with the menial servants and the middle-cla.s.s people of "independent means," who are, however, in a position to see more clearly their dependence on the owners of predominant wealth. And such, with a further accentuation of the anomaly, may reasonably be expected to be the further run of these relations under the promised regime of peace and security. The cla.s.s of well-kept gentlefolk will scarcely be called on to stand alone, in case of a division between those who live by investment and those who live by work; inasmuch as, for the calculable future, it should seem a reasonable expectation that this very considerable fringe of dependents and pseudo-independents will abide by their time-tried principles of right and honest living, through good days and evil, and cast in their lot unreservedly with that reputable body to whom the control of trade and industry by investment a.s.signs the usufruct of the community's productive powers.

Something has already been said of the prospective breeding of pedigreed gentlefolk under the projected regime of peace. Pedigree, for the purpose in hand, is a pecuniary attribute and is, of course, a product of funded wealth, more or less ancient. Virtually ancient pedigree can be procured by well-advised expenditure on the conspicuous amenities; that is to say pedigree effectually competent as a background of current gentility. Gentlefolk of such syncopated pedigree may have to walk circ.u.mspectly, of course; but their being in this manner put on their good behavior should tend to heighten their effectual serviceability as gentlefolk, by inducing a single-mindedness of gentility beyond what can fairly be expected of those who are already secure in their tenure.

Except conventionally, there is no hereditary difference between the standard gentlefolk and, say, their "menial servants," or the general population of the farms and the industrial towns. This is a well-established commonplace among ethnological students; which has, of course, nothing to say with respect to the conventionally distinct lines of descent of the "Best Families." These Best Families are nowise distinguishable from the common run in point of hereditary traits; the difference that makes the gentleman and the gentlewoman being wholly a matter of habituation during the individual's life-time. It is something of a distasteful necessity to call attention to this total absence of native difference between the well-born and the common, but it is a necessity of the argument in hand, and the recalling of it may, therefore, be overlooked for once in a way. There is no harm and no annoyance intended. The point of it all is that, on the premises which this state of the case affords, the body of gentlefolk created by such an acc.u.mulation of invested wealth will have no less of an effectual cultural value than they would have had if their virtually ancient pedigree had been actual.

At this point, again, the experience of the Victorian peace and the functioning of its gentlefolk come in to indicate what may fairly be hoped for in this way under this prospective regime of peace at large.

But with the difference that the scale of things is to be larger, the pace swifter, and the volume and dispersion of this prospective leisure cla.s.s somewhat wider. The work of this leisure cla.s.s--and there is neither paradox nor inconsistency in the phrase--should be patterned on the lines worked out by their prototypes of the Victorian time, but with some appreciable accentuation in the direction of what chiefly characterised the leisure cla.s.s of that era of tranquility. The characteristic feature to which attention naturally turns at this suggestion is the tranquility that has marked that body of gentlefolk and their code of clean and honest living. Another word than "tranquility" might be hit upon to designate this characteristic animus, but any other word that should at all adequately serve the turn would carry a less felicitous suggestion of those upper-cla.s.s virtues that have const.i.tuted the substantial worth of the Victorian gentleman. The conscious worth of these gentlefolk has been a beautifully complete achievement. It has been an achievement of "faith without works," of course; but, needless to say, that is as it should be, also of course.

The place of gentlefolk in the economy of Nature is tracelessly to consume the community's net product, and in doing so to set a standard of decent expenditure for the others emulatively to work up to as near as may be. It is scarcely conceivable that this could have been done in a more un.o.btrusively efficient manner, or with a more austerely virtuous conviction of well-doing, than by the gentlefolk bred of the Victorian peace. So also, in turn, it is not to be believed that the prospective breed of gentlefolk derivable from the net product of the pacific nations under the promised regime of peace at large will prove in any degree less effective for the like ends. More will be required of them in the way of a traceless consumption of superfluities and an unexampled expensive standard of living. But this situation that so faces them may be construed as a larger opportunity, quite as well as a more difficult task.

A theoretical exposition of the place and cultural value of a leisure cla.s.s in modern life would scarcely be in place here; and it has also been set out in some detail elsewhere.[10] For the purpose in hand it may be sufficient to recall that the canons of taste and the standards of valuation worked out and inculcated by leisure-cla.s.s life have in all ages run, with unbroken consistency, to pecuniary waste and personal futility. In its economic bearing, and particularly in its immediate bearing on the material well-being of the community at large, the leaders.h.i.+p of the leisure cla.s.s can scarcely be called by a less derogatory epithet than "untoward." But that is not the whole of the case, and the other side should be heard. The leisure-cla.s.s life of tranquility, running detached as it does above the turmoil out of which the material of their sustenance is derived, enables a growth of all those virtues that mark, or make, the gentleman; and that affect the life of the underlying community throughout, pervasively, by imitation; leading to a standardisation of the everyday proprieties on a presumably, higher level of urbanity and integrity than might be expected to result in the absence of this prescriptive model.

[Footnote 10: Cf. _The Theory of the Leisure Cla.s.s_, especially ch.

v.-ix. and xiv.]

_Integer vitae scelerisque purus_, the gentleman of a.s.sured station turns a placid countenance to all those petty vexations of breadwinning that touch him not. Serenely and with an impa.s.sive fort.i.tude he faces those common vicissitudes of life that are impotent to make or mar his material fortunes and that can neither impair his creature comforts nor put a slur on his good repute. So that without afterthought he deals fairly in all everyday conjunctures of give and take; for they are at the most inconsequential episodes to him, although the like might spell irremediable disaster to his impecunious counterfoil among the common men who have the community's work to do. In short, he is a gentleman, in the best acceptation of the word,--unavoidably, by force of circ.u.mstance. As such his example is of invaluable consequence to the underlying community of common folk, in that it keeps before their eyes an object lesson in habitual fort.i.tude and visible integrity such as could scarcely have been created except under such shelter from those disturbances that would go to mar habitual fort.i.tude and integrity.

There can be little doubt but the high example of the Victorian gentlefolk has had much to do with stabilising the animus of the British common man on lines of integrity and fair play. What else and more in the way of habitual preconceptions he may, by compet.i.tive imitation, owe to the same high source is not immediately in question here.

Recalling once more that the canon of life whereby folk are gentlefolk sums itself up in the requirements of pecuniary waste and personal futility, and that these requirements are indefinitely extensible, at the same time that the management of the community's industry by investment for a profit enables the owners of invested wealth to divert to their own use the community's net product, wherewith to meet these requirements, it follows that the community at large which provides this output of product will be allowed so much as is required by their necessary standard of living,--with an unstable margin of error in the adjustment. This margin of error should tend continually to grow narrower as the businesslike management of industry grows more efficient with experience; but it will also continually be disturbed in the contrary sense by innovations of a technological nature that require continual readjustment. This margin is probably not to be got rid of, though it may be expected to become less considerable under more settled conditions.

It should also not be overlooked that the standard of living here spoken of as necessarily to be allowed the working population by no means coincides with the "physical subsistence minimum," from which in fact it always departs by something appreciable. The necessary standard of living of the working community is in fact made up of two distinguishable factors: the subsistence minimum, and the requirements of decorously wasteful consumption--the "decencies of life." These decencies are no less requisite than the physical necessaries, in point of workday urgency, and their amount is a matter of use and wont. This composite standard of living is a practical minimum, below which consumption will not fall, except by a fluctuating margin of error; the effect being the same, in point of necessary consumption, as if it were all of the nature of a physical subsistence minimum.

Loosely speaking, the arrangement should leave nothing appreciable over, after the requirements of genteel waste and of the workday standard of consumption have been met. From which in turn it should follow that the rest of what is comprised under the general caption of "culture" will find a place only in the interstices of leisure-cla.s.s expenditure and only at the hands of aberrant members of the cla.s.s of the gently-bred.

The working population should have no effectual margin of time, energy or means for other pursuits than the day's work in the service of the price-system; so that aberrant individuals in this cla.s.s, who might by native propensity incline, e.g., to pursue the sciences or the fine arts, should have (virtually) no chance to make good. It would be a virtual suppression of such native gifts among the common folk, not a definitive and all-inclusive suppression. The state of the case under the Victorian peace may, again, be taken in ill.u.s.tration of the point; although under the presumably more effectual control to be looked for in the pacific future the margin might reasonably be expected to run somewhat narrower, so that this virtual suppression of cultural talent among the common men should come nearer a complete suppression.

The working of that free initiative that makes the advance of civilisation, and also the greater part of its conservation, would in effect be allowed only in the erratic members of the kept cla.s.ses; where at the same time it would have to work against the side-draught of conventional usage, which discountenances any pursuit that is not visibly futile according to some accepted manner of futility. Now under the prospective perfect working of the price-system, bearers of the banners of civilisation could effectually be drawn only from the kept cla.s.ses, the gentlefolk who alone would have the disposal of such free income as is required for work that has no pecuniary value. And numerically the gentlefolk are an inconsiderable fraction of the population. The supply of competently gifted bearers of the community's culture would accordingly be limited to such as could be drawn by self-selection from among this inconsiderable proportion of the community at large.

It may be recalled that in point of heredity, and therefore in point of native fitness for the maintenance and advance of civilisation, there is no difference between the gentlefolk and the populace at large; or at least there is no difference of such a nature as to count in abatement of the proposition set down above. Some slight, but after all inconsequential, difference there may be, but such difference as there is, if any, rather counts against the gentlefolk as keepers of the cultural advance. The gentlefolk are derived from business; the gentleman represents a filial generation of the businessman; and if the cla.s.s typically is gifted with any peculiar hereditary traits, therefore, they should presumably be such as typically mark the successful businessman--astute, prehensile, unscrupulous. For a generation or two, perhaps to the scriptural third and fourth generation, it is possible that a diluted rapacity and cunning may continue to mark the businessman's well-born descendants; but these are not serviceable traits for the conservation and advancement of the community's cultural heritage. So that no consideration of special hereditary fitness in the well-born need be entertained in this connection.

As to the limitation imposed by the price-system on the supply of candidates suited by native gift for the human work of civilisation; it would no doubt, be putting the figure extravagantly high to say that the gentlefolk, properly speaking, comprise as much as ten percent of the total population; perhaps something less than one-half of that percentage would still seem a gross overstatement. But, to cover loose ends and vagrant cases, the gentlefolk may for the purpose be credited with so high a percentage of the total population. If ten percent be allowed, as an outside figure, it follows that the community's scientists, artists, scholars, and the like individuals given over to the workday pursuits of the human spirit, are by conventional restriction to be drawn from one-tenth of the current supply of persons suited by native gift for these pursuits. Or as it may also be expressed, in so far as the projected scheme takes effect it should result in the suppression of nine (or more) out of every ten persons available for the constructive work of civilisation. The cultural consequences to be looked for, therefore, should be quite markedly of the conservative order.

Of course, in actual effect, the r.e.t.a.r.dation or repression of civilisation by this means, as calculated on these premises, should reasonably be expected to count up to something appreciably more than nine-tenths of the gains that might presumably be achieved in the conceivable absence of the price-system and the regime of investment.

All work of this kind has much of the character of teamwork; so that the efforts of isolated individuals count for little, and a few working in more or less of concert and understanding will count for proportionally much less than many working in concert. The endeavours of the individuals engaged count c.u.mulatively, to such effect that doubling their forces will more than double the aggregate efficiency; and conversely, reducing the number will reduce the effectiveness of their work by something more than the simple numerical proportion. Indeed, an undue reduction of numbers in such a case may lead to the total defeat of the few that are left, and the best endeavours of a dwindling remnant may be wholly nugatory. There is needed a sense of community and solidarity, without which the a.s.surance necessary to the work is bound to falter and dwindle out; and there is also needed a degree of popular countenance, not to be had by isolated individuals engaged in an unconventional pursuit of things that are neither to be cla.s.sed as spendthrift decorum nor as merchantable goods. In this connection an isolated one does not count for one, and more than the critical minimum will count for several per capita. It is a case where the "minimal dose"

is wholly inoperative.

There is not a little reason to believe that consequent upon the installation of the projected regime of peace at large and secure investment the critical point in the repression of talent will very shortly be reached and pa.s.sed, so that the principle of the "minimal dose" will come to apply. The point may readily be ill.u.s.trated by the case of many British and American towns and neighbourhoods during the past few decades; where the dominant price-system and its commercial standards of truth and beauty have over-ruled all inclination to cultural sanity and put it definitively in abeyance. The cultural, or perhaps the conventional, residue left over in these cases where civilisation has gone stale through inefficiency of the minimal dose is not properly to be found fault with; it is of a blameless character, conventionally; nor is there any intention here to cast aspersion on the desolate. The like effects of the like causes are to be seen in the American colleges and universities, where business principles have supplanted the pursuit of learning, and where the commercialisation of aims, ideals, tastes, occupations and personnel is following much the same lines that have led so many of the country towns effectually outside the cultural pale. The American university or college is coming to be an outlier of the price-system, in point of aims, standards and personnel; hitherto the tradition of learning as a trait of civilisation, as distinct from business, has not been fully displaced, although it is now coming to face the pa.s.sage of the minimal dose. The like, in a degree, is apparently true latterly for many English, and still more evidently for many German schools.

In these various instances of what may be called dry-rot or local blight on the civilised world's culture the decline appears to be due not to a positive infection of a malignant sort, so much as to a failure of the active cultural ferment, which has fallen below the critical point of efficacy; perhaps through an unintended refusal of a livelihood to persons given over to cultivating the elements of civilisation; perhaps through the conventional disallowance of the pursuit of any other ends than compet.i.tive gain and compet.i.tive spending. Evidently it is something much more comprehensive in this nature that is reasonably to be looked for under the prospective regime of peace, in case the price-system gains that farther impetus and warrant which it should come in for if the rights of owners.h.i.+p and investment stand over intact, and so come to enjoy the benefit of a further improved state of the industrial arts and a further enlarged scale of operation and enhanced rate of turnover.

To turn back to the point from which this excursion branched off. It has been presumed all the while that the technological equipment, or the state of the industrial arts, must continue to advance under the conditions offered by this regime of peace at large. But the last few paragraphs will doubtless suggest that such a single-minded addiction to compet.i.tive gain and compet.i.tive spending as the stabilised and amplified price-system would enjoin, must lead to an effectual r.e.t.a.r.dation, perhaps to a decline, of those material sciences on which modern technology draws; and that the state of the industrial arts should therefore cease to advance, if only the scheme of investment and businesslike sabotage can be made sufficiently secure. That such may be the outcome is a contingency which the argument will have to meet and to allow for; but it is after all a contingency that need not be expected to derange the sequence of events, except in the way of r.e.t.a.r.dation.

Even without further advance in technological expedients or in the relevant material sciences, there will still necessarily ensue an effectual advance in the industrial arts, in the sense that further organisation and enlargement of the material equipment and industrial processes on lines already securely known and not to be forgotten must bring an effectually enhanced efficiency of the industrial process as a whole.

In ill.u.s.tration, it is scarcely to be a.s.sumed even as a tentative hypothesis that the system of transport and communication will not undergo extension and improvement on the lines already familiar, even in the absence of new technological contrivances. At the same time a continued increase of population is to be counted on; which has, for the purpose in hand, much the same effect as an advance in the industrial arts. Human contact and mutual understanding will necessarily grow wider and closer, and will have its effect on the habits of thought prevalent in the communities that are to live under the promised regime of peace.

The system of transport and communication having to handle a more voluminous and exacting traffic, in the service of a larger and more compact population, will have to be organised and administered on mechanically drawn schedules of time, place, volume, velocity, and price, of a still more exacting accuracy than hitherto. The like will necessarily apply throughout the industrial occupations that employ extensive plant or processes, or that articulate with industrial processes of that nature; which will necessarily comprise a larger proportion of the industrial process at large than hitherto.

As has already been remarked more than once in the course of the argument, a population that lives and does its work, and such play as is allowed it, in and by an exactingly articulate mechanical system of this kind will necessarily be an "intelligent" people, in the colloquial sense of the word; that is to say it will necessarily be a people that uses printed matter freely and that has some familiarity with the elements of those material sciences that underlie this mechanically organised system of appliances and processes. Such a population lives by and within the framework of the mechanistic logic, and is in a fair way to lose faith in any proposition that can not be stated convincingly in terms of this mechanistic logic. Superst.i.tions are liable to lapse by neglect or disuse in such a community; that is to say propositions of a non-mechanistic complexion are liable to insensible disestablishment in such a case; "superst.i.tion" in these premises coming to signify whatever is not of this mechanistic, or "materialistic" character. An exception to this broad characterisation of non-mechanistic propositions as "superst.i.tion" would be matters that are of the nature of an immediate deliverance of the senses or of the aesthetic sensibilities.

By a simile it might be said that what so falls under the caption of "superst.i.tion" in such a case is subject to decay by inanition. It should not be difficult to conceive the general course of such a decay of superst.i.tions under this unremitting discipline of mechanistic habits of life. The recent past offers an ill.u.s.tration, in the unemotional progress of decay that has overtaken religious beliefs in the more civilised countries, and more particularly among the intellectually trained workmen of the mechanical industries. The elimination of such non-mechanistic propositions of the faith has been visibly going on, but it has not worked out on any uniform plan, nor has it overtaken any large or compact body of people consistently or abruptly, being of the nature of obsolescence rather than of set repudiation. But in a slack and unreflecting fas.h.i.+on the divestment has gone on until the aggregate effect is unmistakable.

A similar divestment of superst.i.tions is reasonably to be looked for also in that domain of preconceptions that lies between the supernatural and the mechanistic. Chief among these time-warped preconceptions--or superst.i.tions--that so stand over out of the alien past among these democratic peoples is the inst.i.tution of property. As is true of preconceptions touching the supernatural verities, so here too the article of use and wont in question will not bear formulation in mechanistic terms and is not congruous with that mechanistic logic that is incontinently bending the habits of thought of the common man more and more consistently to its own bent. There is, of course, the difference that while no cla.s.s--apart from the servants of the church--have a material interest in the continued integrity of the articles of the supernatural faith, there is a strong and stubborn material interest bound up with the maintenance of this article of the pecuniary faith; and the cla.s.s in whom this material interest vests are also, in effect, invested with the coercive powers of the law.

The law, and the popular preconceptions that give the law its binding force, go to uphold the established usage and the established prerogatives on this head; and the disestablishment of the rights of property and investment therefore is not a simple matter of obsolescence through neglect. It may confidently be counted on that all the apparatus of the law and all the coercive agencies of law and order, will be brought in requisition to uphold the ancient rights of owners.h.i.+p, whenever any move is made toward their disallowance or restriction. But then, on the other hand, the movement to disallow or diminish the prerogatives of owners.h.i.+p is also not to take the innocuous shape of unstudied neglect. So soon, or rather so far, as the common man comes to realise that these rights of owners.h.i.+p and investment uniformly work to his material detriment, at the same time that he has lost the "will to believe" in any argument that does not run in terms of the mechanistic logic, it is reasonable to expect that he will take a stand on this matter; and it is more than likely that the stand taken will be of an uncompromising kind,--presumably something in the nature of the stand once taken by recalcitrant Englishmen in protest against the irresponsible rule of the Stuart sovereign. It is also not likely that the beneficiaries under these proprietary rights will yield their ground at all amicably; all the more since they are patently within their authentic rights in insisting on full discretion in the disposal of their own possessions; very much as Charles I or James II once were within their prescriptive right,--which had little to say in the outcome.

Even apart from "time immemorial" and the patent authenticity of the inst.i.tution, there were and are many cogent arguments to be alleged in favor of the position for which the Stuart sovereigns and their spokesmen contended. So there are and will be many, perhaps more, cogent reasons to be alleged for the maintenance of the established law and order in respect of the rights of owners.h.i.+p and investment. Not least urgent, nor least real, among these arguments is the puzzling question of what to put in the place of these rights and of the methods of control based on them, very much as the a.n.a.logous question puzzled the public-spirited men of the Stuart times. All of which goes to argue that there may be expected to arise a conjuncture of perplexities and complications, as well as a division of interests and claims. To which should be added that the division is likely to come to a head so soon as the balance of forces between the two parties in interest becomes doubtful, so that either party comes to surmise that the success of its own aims may depend on its own efforts. And as happens where two antagonistic parties are each convinced of the justice of its cause, and in the absence of an umpire, the logical recourse is the wager of battle.

Granting the premises, there should be no reasonable doubt as to this eventual cleavage between those who own and those who do not; and of the premises the only item that is not already an accomplished fact is the installation of peace at large. The rest of what goes into the argument is the well-known modern state of the industrial arts, and the equally well-known price-system; which, in combination, give its character to the modern state of business enterprise. It is only an unusually broad instance of an inst.i.tutional arrangement which has in the course of time and changing conditions come to work at cross purposes with that underlying ground of inst.i.tutional arrangements that takes form in the commonplace aphorism, Live and let live. With change setting in the direction familiar to all men today, it is only a question of limited time when the discrepancy will reach a critical pa.s.s, and the installation of peace may be counted on to hasten this course of things.

That a decision will be sought by recourse to forcible measures, is also scarcely open to question; since the established law and order provides for a resort to coercion in the enforcement of these prescriptive rights, and since both parties in interest, in this as in other cases, are persuaded of the justice of their claims. A decision either way is an intolerable iniquity in the eyes of the losing side. History teaches that in such a quarrel the recourse has always been to force.

History teaches also, but with an inflection of doubt, that the outworn inst.i.tution in such a conjuncture faces disestablishment. At least, so men like to believe. What the experience of history does not leave in doubt is the grave damage, discomfort and shame incident to the displacement of such an inst.i.tutional discrepancy by such recourse to force. What further appears to be clear in the premises, at least to the point of a strong presumption, is that in the present case the decision, or the choice, lies between two alternatives: either the price-system and its attendant business enterprise will yield and pa.s.s out; or the pacific nations will conserve their pecuniary scheme of law and order at the cost of returning to a war footing and letting their owners preserve the rights of owners.h.i.+p by force of arms.

The reflection obviously suggests itself that this prospect of consequences to follow from the installation of peace at large might well be taken into account beforehand by those who are aiming to work out an enduring peace. It has appeared in the course of the argument that the preservation of the present pecuniary law and order, with all its incidents of owners.h.i.+p and investment, is incompatible with an unwarlike state of peace and security. This current scheme of investment, business, and sabotage, should have an appreciably better chance of survival in the long run if the present conditions of warlike preparation and national insecurity were maintained, or if the projected peace were left in a somewhat problematical state, sufficiently precarious to keep national animosities alert, and thereby to the neglect of domestic interests, particularly of such interests as touch the popular well-being. On the other hand, it has also appeared that the cause of peace and its perpetuation might be materially advanced if precautions were taken beforehand to put out of the way as much as may be of those discrepancies of interest and sentiment between nations and between cla.s.ses which make for dissension and eventual hostilities.

So, if the projectors of this peace at large are in any degree inclined to seek concessive terms on which the peace might hopefully be made enduring, it should evidently be part of their endeavours from the outset to put events in train for the present abatement and eventual abrogation of the rights of owners.h.i.+p and of the price-system in which these rights take effect. A hopeful beginning along this line would manifestly be the neutralisation of all pecuniary rights of citizens.h.i.+p, as has been indicated in an earlier pa.s.sage. On the other hand, if peace is not desired at the cost of relinquis.h.i.+ng the scheme of compet.i.tive gain and compet.i.tive spending, the promoters of peace should logically observe due precaution and move only so far in the direction of a peaceable settlement as would result in a sufficiently unstable equilibrium of mutual jealousies; such as might expeditiously be upset whenever discontent with pecuniary affairs should come to threaten this established scheme of pecuniary prerogatives.

BOOKS BY THORSTEIN VEBLEN

THE THEORY OF THE LEISURE CLa.s.s

THE THEORY OF BUSINESS ENTERPRISE

THE INSTINCT OF WORKMANs.h.i.+P

IMPERIAL GERMANY AND THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

THE NATURE OF PEACE AND THE TERMS OF ITS PERPETUATION

THE HIGHER LEARNING IN AMERICA