The Socialist Movement/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V
SUMMARY
We are now in a position to summarise the criticism which Socialism passes on the existing order of things.
Commercialism is a phase in the evolution of industrial organisation, and is not its final form. It arose when nations were sufficiently established to make national and international markets possible, and it created classes and interests which separated themselves from the rest of the community and which proceeded to buttress themselves behind economic monopolies, social privileges, political power. The new industrial régime supplanted feudalism when the historical work of feudalism was done and it had ceased to be useful, and proceeded to build up a method of wealth production and distribution regulated by nothing but the desire for individual success and private gain. The new power lost sight of social responsibilities and social coherence. The interests of the individual capitalist, of the class of capitalists, of the property owners, were put first, and those of the community as a whole were subordinated. It was hoped, but for no well-considered reason, that by the individual capitalist pursuing his own interest national well-being would be served. The error soon reaped its harvest of misery, when women and children were dragged into the factories late in the eighteenth and early in the nineteenth centuries, when people were gathered into foul industrial towns, and when only human endurance limited the length of the working day. So separate had become the interests of the nation from those of the propertied classes that the latter found profit from the degradation and deterioration of the population. It mattered not to the cotton owner of Lancashire a hundred years ago what became of the children who were working in his factories, or later on, what became of the women who took their places. When one "hand" died another "hand" was ready to step into his place, and whether his life was long or short, sad or merry, the machines which he tended spun out their enormous profits, and the owner saw no reason to believe that the day of his prosperity was short.
The system certainly solved the problem of production. Under its whips and in search of its prizes, mechanical invention proceeded apace, labour was organised and its efficiency multiplied ten, twenty, an hundred fold. Statistics in proof of this live with the wonder that is in them. That twenty men in Lancashire to-day can make as much cotton as the whole of the old cotton-producing Lancashire put together; that 1,000 shoe operatives in Leicester can supply a quarter of a million people with four pairs of boots a year; that 120 men in a mill can grind enough flour to keep 200,000 people's wants fully supplied, seem to come from the pages of romance rather than from the sober history of industry. Commercialism has written those pages, and they are its permanent contribution to human well-being.
As time went on, however, it was seen that this wonderful system of production was quite unable to devise any mechanism of distribution which could relate rewards to deserts. Distribution was left to the stress and uncertainty of competition and the struggle of economic advantages. The law of the survival of the fittest was allowed to have absolute sway, under circumstances which deprived it of moral value. The result was that national wealth was heaped up at one end over a comparatively small number of people and lay thinned out at the other end over great masses of the population. At one end people had too much and could not spend it profitably, at the other end they had too little and never gained that mastery of things which is preliminary to well-ordered life. Moreover, even many of those who possessed held their property on such precarious tenure that possession gave them little security and peace of mind. Prosperity was intermittent both for capital and labour.
Then conscious effort to rectify the chaos began to show itself. The national will protected the national interests through factory and labour legislation, and at the same time the chaos within the system was being modified by the life of the system itself. Competition worked itself out in certain directions, and co-operation in the form of trusts came to take its place, as nature turns to hide up the traces of war in a country that has been fought over. This new organisation is more economical and may steady to some extent the demand for labour; but it means that economic power is being placed in the hands of a few. That is too dangerous in the eyes of the Socialist. Its operation is too uncertain. From his very nature the monopolist is an exploiter.[1] He grasps the sceptre of state, as well as the sceptre of industry. He sits in Parliament as well as in the counting-house. He becomes a powerful citizen as well as a masterful captain of industry. He raises in a most acute form the problem of how the community can protect itself against interests being created round its exploitation and enslavement. Competition solves its own problems and leaves those of monopoly in their place.
Surveying the same field with an eye on the moral fruits which it has borne, the Socialist once more discovers weeds in plenty. The familiar methods of adulteration and of all forms of sharp dealing, both with work-people and with customers, pass before his eyes in disquieting masses. Honesty on this field is not the best policy. Materialist motives predominate. Birth and honour bow to wealth. Wealth can do anything in "good" society to-day—even to the purchase of wives as in a slave market. A person may be vulgar, may be uncultured, may be coarse and altogether unpleasing in mind and manner but, if he has money, the doors of honour are thrown open to him, the places of honour are reserved for his occupation. The struggle for life carried on under the conditions of commercialism means the survival of sharp wits and acquisitive qualities. The pushful energy which brings ledger successes survives as the "fittest" under commercialism. Capitalism has created a rough and ill-working mechanism of industry and a low standard of value based upon nothing but industrial considerations, and it has done its best to hand over both public and private values to be measured by this standard and to to be produced by this mechanism.
But the controlling influences which have been brought to bear upon it—both those of a political character from without and those of an industrial character from within—are the foreshadowings of a new system of organisation. Commercialism lays its own cuckoo egg in its nest. Every epoch produces the thought and the ideals which end itself. Like a dissolving view on a screen, commercialism fades away and the image of Socialism comes out in clearer outline.
- ↑ Here and elsewhere in this book the word "exploit" is used to indicate the taking for oneself something to which one is not justly entitled, and must not be read in the colourless sense of turning latent resources to good account.