LIMITS TO COMMUNISM

WOULD you ever have supposed from reading the newspapers that Communism, instead of being a wicked invention of Russian revolutionaries and British and American desperadoes, is a highly respectable way of sharing our wealth, sanctioned and practised by the apostles, and an indispensable part of our own daily life and civilization? The more Communism, the more civilization. We could not get on without it, and are continually extending it. We could give up some of it if we liked. We could put turnpike gates on the roads and make everybody pay for passing along them: indeed we may still see the little toll houses where the old turnpike gates used to be. We could abolish the street lamps, and hire men with torches to light us through the streets at night: are not the extinguishers formerly used by hired linkmen still to be seen on old-fashioned railings? We could even hire policemen and soldiers by the job to protect us, and then disband the police force and the army. But we take good care to do nothing of the sort. In spite of the way people grumble about their rates and taxes they get better value for them than for all the other money they spend. To find a bridge built for us to cross the river without having to think about it or pay anyone for it is such a matter of course to us that some of us come to think, like the children, that bridges are provided by nature, and cost nothing. But if the bridges were allowed to fall down, and we had to find out for ourselves how to cross the river by fording it or swimming it or hiring a boat, we should soon realize what a blessed thing Communism is, and not grudge the few shillings that each of us has to pay the rate collector for the upkeep of the bridge. In fact we might come to think Communism such a splendid thing that everything ought to be communized.

But this would not work. The reason a bridge can be communized is that everyone either uses the bridge or benefits by it. It may be taken as a rule that whatever is used by everybody or benefits everybody can be communized. Roads, bridges, street lighting, and water supply are communized as a matter of course in cities, though in villages and country places people have to buy and carry lanterns on dark nights and get their water from their own wells. There is no reason why bread should not be communized: it would be an inestimable benefit to everybody if there were no such thing in the country as a hungry child, and no housekeeper had to think of the cost of providing bread for the household. Railways could be communized. You can amuse yourself by thinking of lots of other services that would benefit everyone, and therefore could and should be communized.

Only, you will be stopped when you come to services that are not useful to everyone. We communize water as a matter of course; but what about beer? What would a teetotaller say if he were asked to pay rates or taxes to enable his neighbors to have as much beer as they want for the asking? He would have a double objection: first, that he would be paying for something he does not use; and second, that in his opinion beer, far from being a good thing, causes ill-health, crime, drunkenness, and so forth. He would go to prison rather than pay rates for such a purpose.

The most striking example of this difficulty is the Church. The Church of England is a great communistic institution: its property is held in trust for God; its temples and services are open to everybody; and its bishops sit in Parliament as peers of the realm. Yet, because we are not all agreed as to the doctrines of the Church of England, and many of us think that a communion table with candles on it is too like a Roman Catholic altar, we have been forced to make the Church rate a voluntary one: that is, you may pay it or not as you please. And when the Education Act of 1902 gave some public money to Church schools, many people refused to pay their rates, and allowed their furniture to be sold year after year, sooner than allow a penny of theirs to go to the Church. Thus you see that if you propose to communize something that is not used or at least approved of by everybody, you will be asking for trouble. We all use roads and bridges, and agree that they are useful and necessary things; but we differ about religion and temperance and playgoing, and quarrel fiercely over our differences. That is why we communize roads and bridges without any complaint or refusal to pay rates, but have masses of voters against us at once when we attempt to communize any particular form of public worship, or to deal with beer or spirits as we deal with water, and as we should deal with milk if we had sense enough to value the nation’s health.

This difficulty can be got round to some extent by give-and-take between the people who want different things. For instance, there are some people who care for flowers and do not care for music, and others who care for games and boating and care neither for flowers nor music. But these differently minded people do not object to paying rates for the upkeep of a public park with flower-beds, cricket pitches, a lake for boating and swimming, and a band. Laura will not object to pay for what Beatrice wants if Beatrice does not object to pay for what Laura wants.

Also there are many things that only a few people understand or use which nevertheless everybody pays for because without them we should have no learning, no books, no pictures, no high civilization. We have public galleries of the best pictures and statues, public libraries of the best books, public observatories in which astronomers watch the stars and mathematicians make abstruse calculations, public laboratories in which scientific men are supposed to add to our knowledge of the universe. These institutions cost a great deal of money to which we all have to contribute. Many of us never enter a gallery or a museum or a library even when we live within easy reach of them; and not one person in ten is interested in astronomy or mathematics or physical science; but we all have a general notion that these things are necessary; and so we do not object to pay for them.

Besides, many of us do not know that we pay for them: we think we get them as kind presents from somebody. In this way a good deal of Communism has been established without our knowing anything about it. This is shewn by our way of speaking about communized things as free. Because we can enter the National Gallery or the British Museum or the cathedrals without paying at the doors, some of us seem to think that they grew by the roadside like wildflowers. But they cost us a great deal of money from week to week. The British Museum has to be swept and dusted and scrubbed more than any private house, because so many more people tramp through it with mud on their boots. The salaries of the learned gentlemen who are in charge of it are a trifle compared with the cost of keeping it tidy. In the same way a public park needs more gardeners than a private one, and has to be weeded and mown and watered and sown and so forth at a great cost in wages and seeds and garden implements. We get nothing for nothing; and if we do not pay every time we go into these places, we pay in rates and taxes. The poorest tramp, though he may escape rent and rates by sleeping out, pays whenever he buys tobacco, because he pays about eight times as much for the tobacco as it costs to grow and put on the market; and the Government gets the difference to spend on public purposes: that is, to maintain Communism. And the poorest woman pays in the same way, without knowing it, whenever she buys an article of food that is taxed. If she knew that she was stinting herself to pay the salary of the Astronomer Royal, or to buy another picture for the National Gallery, she might vote against the Government at the next election for making her do it; but as she does not know, she only grumbles about the high prices of food, and thinks they are all due to bad harvests or hard times or strikes or anything else that must be put up with. She might not grudge what she has to pay for the King and Queen; but if she knew that she was paying the wages of the thousands of charwomen who scrub the stone staircases in the Houses of Parliament and other great public buildings, she would not get much satisfaction out of helping to support them better than she can afford to support herself.

We see then that some of the Communism we practise is imposed on us without our consent: we pay for it without knowing what we are doing. But, in the main, Communism deals with things that are either used by all of us or necessary to all of us, whether we are educated enough to understand the necessity or not.

Now let us get back to the things as to which tastes differ. We have already seen that Church of England services and beer and wine and spirits and intoxicants of all sorts are considered necessary to life by some people, and pernicious and poisonous by others. We are not agreed even about tea and meat. But there are many things that no one sees any harm in; yet everybody does not want them. Ask a woman what little present she would like; and one woman will choose a pet dog, another a gramophone. A studious girl will ask for a microscope when an active girl will ask for a motor bicycle. Indoor people want books and pictures and pianos: outdoor people want guns and fishing-rods and horses and motor cars. To communize these things in the way that we communize roads and bridges would be ridiculously wasteful. If you made enough gramophones and bred enough pet dogs to supply every woman with both, or enough microscopes and motor bicycles to provide one each for every girl, you would have heaps of them left on your hands by the women and girls who did not want them and would not find house room for them. They could not even sell them, because everybody who wanted one would have one already. They would go into the dustbin.

There is only one way out of this difficulty. Instead of giving people things you must give them money and let them buy what they like with it. Instead of giving Mrs Smith, who wants a gramophone, a gramophone and a pet dog as well, costing, say, five pounds apiece, and giving Mrs Jones, who wants a pet dog, a pet dog and a gramophone as well, with the certainty that Mrs Smith will drive her pet dog out of her house and Mrs Jones will throw her gramophone into the dustbin, so that the ten pounds they cost will be wasted, you can simply give Mrs Smith and Mrs Jones five pounds apiece. Then Mrs Smith buys a gramophone; Mrs Jones buys a pet dog; and both live happily ever after. And, of course, you will take care not to manufacture more gramophones or breed more dogs than are needed to satisfy them.

That is the use of money: it enables us to get what we want instead of what other people think we want. When a young lady is married, her friends give her wedding presents instead of giving her money; and the consequence is that she finds herself loaded up with six fish-slices, seven or eight travelling clocks, and not a single pair of silk stockings. If her friends had the sense to give her money (I always do), and she had the sense to take it (she always does), she would have one fish-slice, one travelling clock (if she wanted such a thing), and plenty of stockings. Money is the most convenient thing in the world: we could not possibly do without it. We are told that the love of money is the root of all evil; but money itself is one of the most useful contrivances ever invented: it is not its fault that some people are foolish or miserly enough to be fonder of it than of their own souls.

You now see that the great dividing-up of things that has to take place year by year, quarter by quarter, month by month, week by week, day by day, hour by hour, and even minute by minute, though some of it can be done by the ancient simple family communism of the apostles, or by the modern ratepayers’ communism of the roads and bridges and street lamps and so forth, must in the main take the form of a dividing-up of money. And as this throws you back again on the old questions: how much is each of us to have? what is my fair share? what is your fair share? and why? Communism has only partly solved the problem for you; so we must have another shot at it.