Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/453

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R.W.WS 431 manual could carry you more agreeably over the ground, for Professor Graham is a lucid and attractive expositor, thoughtful, judicious, and very fair-minded and impartial, with a constant play of generous sym- pathy which no doubt contributes to juster conceptions of alien modes of thought, although, I cannot help thinking, it has sometimes inter- fered with due exactitude and firmness of discrimination. The best portion of the book seems to me to be the chapters entitled ' In the Socialist State,' in which Mr. Graham sets himself to see how Collec- tivism would work if it were once practically established. No other writer, I think, has gone so effectively into this part of the subject. In considering the system of things in the Socialist State, he receives, of course, no help from Marx, who never proposed any constructive schemes, and would probably say, as Liebknecht said at the recent Socialist Congress at Halle to a young follower who wanted a descrip- tion of the Socialist State to be published for propagandist purposes, that no man can tell what to-morrow will bring in the German State that exists now, and how is any man to forecast how tlkings will shape in the Socialist State of the future ? It will evolve as it will evolve. Professor Graham bases his criticisms accordingly, partly on Mr. Gron- lund's 'Co-operative Commonwealth,' and partly on necessary deduc- tions from Collectivist principles;and his general conclusion is that ' unless the industrial chiefs are remunerated liberally, unless there be a gradation of salaries, and unless there be free choice of products, or a production suited for a well-to-do if not a rich class--that is, unless the departure from the present system is not great Socialism would not work.' The weak point in a Socialist view of things, to his mind, seems to be the want of provision for any luxurious expenditure on the part of the chiefs; the general would not think it worth while fighting if he had no better fare than his soldiers, and the industrial manager would grow weary of managing well if his sole reward was the exercise of his power. But would that be necessarily so ? One of the deductions he makes which will probably surprise Socialists most is that there will be an enormous increase in the Socialist kingdom of speculation and gambling, and giving of high usury for money advanced in the hour of need. ' There could be no legal or open money market or general market, no recognised function of banker, and all would be done in evasion of the law. But there would certainly be speculation, and there would soon be evolved an individual type to facilitate speculation to speculative buyers not a few, just as surely as the bookmaker has been evolved to facilitate betting.' He says ' this we can scientifically predict'; it is the necessary want of the gambling spirit denied its usual outlet in private undertakings. Mr. Graham shows very well that there are other occupations than that of the bookmaker that must, under any system of State production, be still left to depend on private enterprise. Journalism is the most im- portant of these. If the State were to print everything gratis, it would undertake a function which would swallow up all its time and means, and so freedom and equality' both enjoin that the party organ be sup- ported by its subscribers. Socialism must also, for like reasons, dis-