SOCIALISM
It remains to deal with a certain remedy which some people have imagined would get rid of all the disadvantages of Capitalism once and for all. This remedy is called Socialism, and Socialism, as we shall see in a moment, must mean ultimately Communism.
No one has ever succeeded in putting this remedy for the evils of Capitalism into practice, and (though the matter is still very much disputed) it looks more and more as though no one would ever be able to put it into practice.
We have seen what the evils of Capitalism were and how they have exasperated nearly everyone who has become subject to a capitalist state of society. There is the increasing insecurity which everybody feels—all the Proletariat and many of the Capitalists as well—whilst there is the necessary tendency of Capitalism to leave a larger and larger proportion of people unproductive, not making the wealth which is necessary for their support, and therefore either kept in idleness by Doles out of the wealth which is still produced (a process which cannot go on for ever) or starving. Pretty well everyone wants to get rid of these evils and to get out of the Capitalist system, and this idea of Socialism which we are going to examine seemed, when it was first put forward, an easy and obvious shortcut out of the Capitalist muddle. When we have looked into it, we shall see how and why Socialism does not, in practice, turn out to be a shortcut at all, but a blind alley.
Ever since men began to live in societies and to leave records, you will find the poorer people, when their poverty became intolerable, clamouring for a division of the wealth which the more fortunate enjoy.
That is the main, obvious remedy to inequality of wealth; to divide it up again. But such a scheme has nothing to do with Socialism, and must not be mistaken for Socialism.
The Socialist theory was invented, or at any rate was first put clearly, by a man of genius, Louis Blanc, who was Scotch on his father’s side and French on his mother’s. He lived rather less than a hundred years ago and the scheme which he and those around him started was this:—
The Officers of the State were to own all the Means of Production—machinery and land and stores of food, etc.—and they alone should be allowed to own it. Individuals and families and corporations might consume that portion of produced wealth allotted them by the State after it had been produced, but they might not use it for making future wealth. Any wealth used for the making of future wealth, that is, Capital in any form, was to be handed over to the officers of the state; and all land and natural forces were to be owned for ever by the State. That scheme is Socialism, and from that principle all Socialist ideas flow.
In this way, it was claimed, there would be no division of society into Capitalists and Proletarians, no chaos of competition with its alternating riches and ruin; insecurity would be done away with, and insufficiency as well. Everyone in the country would be a worker, the State itself would be the Universal Capitalist. So there would be no struggle of capitalists going up and down one against the other, and no unemployment or lack of necessaries for anyone.
Among the energetic and keen set of men who surrounded Blanc in Paris was a certain Mordecai, who wrote under the name his father had assumed, that of “Marx.” He wrote (in German) a very long and detailed book describing the whole scheme, as well as describing the evils of Capitalism, and showing how this scheme would remedy those evils. His book was pushed forward by the people who were converted to the idea, and that is why the theory of Socialism is now often called “Marxism.”
For instance: the coal-mines and all the machinery of the coal-mines and the houses in which the miners live and the stores of food and the clothing, etc., which keep the miners alive while the coal is being mined, that is during the process of production—all these, which now belong to capitalists who make a profit out of the miners’ labour, would then belong to the State, which would allot the coal produced to all who needed it. So it would be with all farms, farming implements, and cattle and horses and the stores of food and clothing and houses necessary to the labourers on the land during the process of production. So it would be with all stone-quarrying and timber-felling, and carpentry and brick-making for the continued production of the houses necessary to the producers during production. So it would be with all corresponding material for making cloth for clothing. So it would be with everything which was made in the whole country. The officers of the State would share out the wealth produced, so that it would be consumed by all the citizens, and there would be an end to the exploitation of one man by another and to the uncertainty of living.
Communism is simply that form of Socialism in which all that is thus shared out by the State would be shared equally, the State giving every family an equal share in proportion to the numbers of people which had to be supported in the family, from one upwards.
The reason I have called Communism the logical and only possible ultimate form of Socialism is that there could be under Socialism no reason for any other form of distribution.
Some time ago certain Socialists used to try to get out of this necessity for Communism, so as not to frighten rich people with their proposals for reform. They would say to a man who was making, say, £5,000 a year because he owned a lot of capital and land and had rents and profits coming to him from the work of his labourers: “You will have just as much under Socialism, for we recognise what a superior kind of person you are, and when the State shares out its wealth among its citizens it will give you as much as you have now, leaving the same difference between rich and poor, only seeing to it that the poor always at least have enough to live on. Where we give one ticket to the labourer to claim out of the common stores what he wants for a week we will give you fifty tickets, so that you will get fifty times as much if you like.” But of course this was nonsense, and was soon discovered to be nonsense. With everybody working for the State under orders all would naturally claim equality, and there would be no way of preventing their getting an equal share except force. In justice, supposing a Socialist state to arise, there could be only the Communist form of it.
This scheme has never been put into practice, and when we look closely at it we shall discover, I think, why it never will be put into practice.
The reason it cannot be put into practice is this: Although we use the words “the State” this mere idea means in practice real men who act as officials to represent the State. Actual men with their varying characters, good and bad, lazy and industrious, just and unjust, have got to undertake the enormous business first of running production in the interest of all, next of distributing the resultant wealth equally to all.
Now there are two qualities in man which make action of this sort break down. The first is that men love independence—they like to feel themselves their own masters. They like therefore to own, so that they may do what they like with material things. The next is that men like to get as much as possible of good things. Both these feelings are universally true of the human race. You will find exceptional people, of course, who are just as contented with a little as with a great deal, and you will find exceptional people who do not care about independence or about owning, and who are quite willing to be run by other people, or to give up all possession for the sake of some special way of living: that is, there is a comparatively small number of men and women who, in order to live free from responsibility, or in order to devote themselves to religion or to some form of study and contemplation, will give up all property and have the material side of their lives administered for them. But men and women in general will both want to get all they can of good things with the least possible exertion in the getting of them, and they will also desire freedom to exercise their own wills and deal with material objects as they choose.
Now the Socialist scheme requires both these very strong emotions, common to all mankind, to be suppressed. The people who run the State—that is the politicians—are to be absolutely just (although there is no one to force them to be just), they are to forget all personal wishes and to think of nothing but the good of those whose labour they direct and among whom they share out the wealth that is produced. We know by experience that politicians are not angels of this sort. It is absurd to imagine that men coveting public office (and living the life of intrigue necessary to get it) would suddenly turn into unselfish and devoted beings of this ideal kind. You cannot give this enormous power to men without their abusing it.
The second force making against the establishment of Socialism is still stronger. You will never get the run of men and women contented to live their whole lives entirely under orders. In exceptional moments a large part of individual freedom will be given up to the necessity of the State—as during the Great War; for if the State did not survive the individual’s life and that of his children would not be worth living. The individual in abnormal crises goes through a great deal of suffering for a moment in order that he and his should have less pain in the long run. But even in such crises a large part of liberty remains to him. Under Socialism he would have none. He would have to do what he was told by his task-masters, much more than even the poorest labourers now have to do what they are told by task-masters. And there would also be this difference: that everyone would be in that situation and there would be no way out. Not a part of life, nor so many hours a day, but the whole of life, would be subject to orders given by others. This, humanity would certainly find intolerable.
That is why, I think, Socialism has never been put into practice and never can be put into practice. There have been attempts at it, but even when they are sincere and not the mere product of alien despotism they break down. As in Russia to-day, where, whether the Jew adventurers who seized power were sincere or mere tyrants, they have, in spite of their attempt at seizing all the soil and keeping the peasants dependent on them, been compelled at last to let nearly all the nation live as owners tilling their own land.
It is no reply to this to say that the State always has owned, and actually can and does own, some part of the means of Production (such as the Post Office and certain forests and lands here in England, and, abroad, most mountain land, all mines and much else) and direct them with success. The point of Socialism—the one condition necessary to its existence—is that the State should own all the means of Production that really count. Between the normal exercise of a partial function and the abnormal exercise of a universal function is all the difference between plus and minus. A partial State ownership working in a society the determining character of which is private ownership is an utterly different thing, even an opposite thing to general State ownership determining the character of Society and allowing only exceptional private ownership. Socialism can only be (a) good (b) possible when men desire, and are at ease in, the latter kind of state; that is, desire and are at ease in complete forgetfulness of self coupled with justice as men ruling, and complete surrender of personal honour and freedom and appetite as men ruled.