The Case for Capitalism/Chapter 1
It is easy in these times to put the case against any existing institution. Most of us are in a highly critical mood, because we feel that during the last few years things have happened which ought never to have happened, and that these earth-shaking events were not well met and handled, especially on their economic side. We have seen the whole fabric of civilization in danger and a desperate battle raging to save it, and we have felt that, if civilization had been better, and the governors of the nations had been more worthy of their charge, it could never have contained the seeds of such danger, or the seeds ought never to have been allowed to sprout and blossom. During the contest we have seen the best men in all the countries concerned—the best in strength of body, courage and devotion—suffering untold hardships, wounds and death, while the next best and the worst have stayed at home and have in many cases made large fortunes, or greatly increased their wealth. A world crisis which ends in enormous destruction of life and property, and at the same time in the enriching of many of those who were not good enough, in mind and body, to risk their lives to meet it, seems to be a piece of sheer stupidity and injustice. It is no wonder that many impatient minds are driven to the conclusion that every institution which existed at the time when these crimes and absurdities were perpetrated should be cut down, rooted out and cast upon the dust heap.
Is this state of mind a good one in which to set out on the task of mending the breaches that have been made in the walls of the building in which we have lived? Is it wise, because the building has been found not to be proof against the weather, to pull it down in disgust and start making a new one to a new plan and on a new system of mechanics which has never been tested and may turn out a home that will not even stand up? Might it not be better to improve the old one? The need for amendment is now admitted by the great majority. The only question to be decided is whether the changes made are to be on lines that have produced a working result; or to be based on imaginative dreams which tell us how much better everything might be if we worked under a new system, which has only been sketched in hazy outline, about which its advocates have shown much unanimity in disagreeing. They want to see a world in which every one will have a fair chance of a real life; so do most of us. They want to turn everything upside down in order to get it; and they may be right. But, if they are wrong, their experiment will work disaster. If we can get the same result along lines that have been tried, is it not safer to work along them and avoid this risk?
The present system under which we work and exchange our work for that of others is that commonly described as Capitalism. Under it each one, male or female, can choose what work he will try to do and what employer he will try to serve; if he does not like his job or his employer, he can leave it or him and try to get another. He cannot earn unless he can do work that somebody wants to buy, and so he competes with all other workers in producing goods or services that others want and will pay for. His reward depends on the success with which he can satisfy the wants of others. Whatever money he earns in return for his labour he can spend as he chooses on the purchase of goods and services for his own use or for that of his dependents, or he can invest it in opening up a business or industry on his own-account, or in shares and debts of public companies, and debts of Governments or public bodies; these securities will pay him a rate of profit or interest if the companies or debtors prosper and are solvent. Whatever money he earns by labour or by investment he can, after paying such taxes on it as the State demands, hand on to any heirs whom he may name.
The system is thus based on private property, competition, individual effort, individual responsibility and individual choice. Under it, all men and women are more or less often faced by problems which they have to decide, and, according as their decision is right or wrong, their welfare and that of their dependents will wax or wane. It is thus very stimulating and bracing, and might be expected to bring out the best effort of the individual to do good work that will be well paid so that he and his may prosper and multiply. If only every one had a fair start and began life with an equal chance of turning his industry and powers to good account, it would be difficult to devise a scheme of economic life more likely to produce great results from human nature as it now is; by stimulating its instincts for gain and rivalry to a great output of goods and services and by sharpening its faculties, not only for exercise in this purely material use, but also for solving the bigger problems of life and human intercourse that lie behind it.
In fact, however, this system of Capitalism is at present perhaps more widely criticized and abused than any other human institution. And with some reason, for many of its results have been bad, and there is room for great improvement which criticism can help. But criticism that is bad-tempered and unreasonable will do more harm than good. The people who are working on this great business of producing, distributing and consuming the world's wealth are, in the mass, ordinary human beings, with the good and bad qualities of ordinary folk. The ordinary man and woman is an honest, good-natured person who, though not too eager to work very hard, does not want to rob anybody else. If this were not so, society could not exist, and progress would have been impossible. If it be true—as some advocates of Socialism maintain—that Capitalists live by robbing workers of goods which they have produced, it is also true that the average Capitalist does not know that he is doing any such thing, and that if once this crime can be brought home to him, and he can be not only convicted but convinced, he will be quite ready to give up methods by which he has been preying on society.
The test of an economic system is its success in providing us with a good world to live in. In what sort of a world would it be really pleasant to live? To begin with, there would have to be plenty of good things and nice people. Upto a point, the good things come first, because we cannot live without them. But after our needs have been met in the matter of necessaries and comforts, up to a very moderate extent, the necessity of pleasant people in order to lead a pleasant life among them becomes overwhelming. And people are pleasant to live with who are kindly, generous, honest, unselfish, healthy, keen and fully developed in mind and body. To get such people we evidently need a great increase in the output of material goods, It is, of course, very easy to find many examples of bad-tempered people who are well off, and of others who, leading lives of straitened penury, set an example of saintly behaviour. But it is a safe working rule that if the average human being can have a better supply of commodities and comforts, he is more likely to be pleasant to live with and to help us to get the world that we are looking for than if he is living under conditions of scarcity and discomfort, and for real development we must have leisure and opportunity for education. Moreover, we want not only good things, but beautiful things. Beautiful things and beautiful houses and beautiful cities require more time and better materials in their making than the shoddy goods, sordid houses and dirty and insanitary towns which are so evil a blot on our so-called civilization. If we want a world in which every article we use is well and beautifully made, every house that we live in is well and beautifully built, and every town in which we gather is as beautiful as Oxford or Canterbury, and more so—because modern ugliness has put some foul blots upon these once beautiful centres—if we want all these things we must spare the time to make things well. We must not only be ready to maintain in comfort a large number of people who will give no thought to anything else but the production of beauty in some line or other of industry, we must also light in everybody's mind the fire of desire for beauty.
In old days a tyrant or a wealthy class or a church was able to produce buildings and works of art full of a beauty or a grandeur which still astonishes us, by means of slave labour or by the devotion of members of a church who built, for example, the mediaeval cathedrals to the glory of God and for the sheer pleasure of building Him a noble house. In these days, economic power is much more widely spread and will be spread still more widely as wealth is better distributed; and we cannot expect to have a really beautiful country unless the greater number of the people know what beauty is and try to arrive at it. It is an open question whether this desire for beauty is a thing that can be taught, but we may be quite sure that we are not likely to get it as long as most of us are concerned only with the narrow problems of making a living, and have no chance of full development of our minds and perceptions. In other words, we want education and facilities for travel on a scale that we have not yet dreamt of. We want everybody with whom we come in contact to be really well taught and really well informed, not necessarily in the way of schooling and book-learning. Many of the most interesting people whom we come across are very deficient in both, but they have been able to have had wide and varied experience, to have seen "many men and cities," and to have exchanged ideas with dwellers in many distant lands.
Here again it is easy to counter the argument with examples of homely folk who have never been ten miles from their native village and yet, owing to their powers of observation and sympathy, have made themselves masters of all that life means within a small compass. But these examples of genius working under circumstances of great difficulty do not make it any the less true that it is good for the average human being to roam about the world and submit to the process by which men knock sparks out of one another by personal impact. For all this—education in a much wider sense than has yet been attempted and improvements in human intercourse of which we can hardly yet dream—a great increase is needed in the output of good and services that mankind enjoys.
It will not be enough, of course, unless those to whom these advantages are given make the right use of them. Travel, as it is at present granted to a comparatively small class, often seems to fail lamentably in widening their outlook. The young English Philistine who goes to Switzerland only for skung and tobogganing, and regards the natural beauties of his own country chiefly from the point of view of their adaptability to the purposes of golf links, is not a good example of mental development stimulated by travel. All this has to be granted; but even those who, when travelling, confine themselves most carefully to the hotels and resorts in which they will meet no one but the most aggressively national spirits of their own nation, do get something from change of air and scene. Plenty of arguments can be brought forward against any attempt at trying to get at a better world in which everybody will be pleasanter and more sensible, but there is no need to despair. In spite of all that has happened in the last few years, there are most encouraging signs of an improvement in the outlook of mankind upon its duties to itself.
Little more than two hundred years ago a Te Deum was sung in St. Paul's, specially composed by Handel for the occasion, to celebrate the Peace of Utrecht which gave England a practical monopoly in the slave trade from West Africa to America. About a hundred years ago, at the end of a war which had shaken and strained England almost as much as the one which we have just gone through, the Income Tax, on the declaration of peace, was immediately abolished, and the whole burden of a heavy debt-charge was thrown on to indirect taxation of articles of consumption, which pressed most wickedly upon the poorer classes. Our ancestors who committed this economic crime were at least as good, according to their lights, as the statesmen of to-day, but they did not understand what they were doing. Probably there are many to-day who would like to repeat the proceeding now; but they could not even suggest it, because public opinion would not hear of it, quite apart from the fact that the widened suffrage would make it politically impossible. On all sides we see evidence of great improvement in what is thought about the manner in which one set of men should be treated by another. Great strides have been made under the Capitalistic era in the direction of making the world a pleasanter place to live in, and though some of them have involved the development of new forms of suffering and disgrace, we can still maintain that the movement has been forward on the whole.
It need hardly be said that this progress that we seek must not be confined to a small class. A really good world to live in implies, not only that we live there pleasantly among a set of pleasant people, but that there is no horrible suffering and destitution in the next street or anywhere else, which we have to forget before we can be happy. Wealth in the sense of ordinary welfare and comfort must be not only abundant but well distributed before the world can be a pleasant place to live in for those who have any sympathy with human suffering.
Thus we see that material output, though it is very far from being the end of all things, is of very great assistance in helping to produce the sort of world at which we want to arrive. A certain amaqunt of it is essential to existence, and a great increase in it will help very much, as human nature is at present, to make everybody pleasant to live with in the truest sense of the word, to make the world and all the conditions under which we live beautiful and noble, and to enable all to be educated in the truest and widest sense of the word. It follows, therefore, that in order to get at the world that we want, an increase in material output and a great improvement in its diffusion among all classes, are essential. When we consider the economic system under which we live and alternatives to it which are suggested by its critics, the first question that we have to ask is, How far it and these alternatives are likely to be efficient in this matter of material output. We cannot get a really good world, full of good and noble people, unless we can greatly increase man's power to produce.