PERSONAL RIGHTEOUSNESS

AND now that you know what Socialism is, let me give you a warning, with an apology in advance if the warning is unnecessary. English people, especially English ladies, are so individualistically brought up that the moment they are convinced that anything is right they are apt to announce that they are going to begin practising it at once, and to order their children and servants to do the same. I have known women of exceptional natural intelligence and energy who believed firmly that the world can be made good by independent displays of coercive personal righteousness. When they became convinced of the righteousness of equality, they proceeded to do ridiculous things like commanding their servants to take their meals with the family (forgetting that the servants had not bargained for their intimacy and might strongly object to it), with Heaven knows what other foolishness, until the servants gave notice, and their husbands threatened to run away, and sometimes even did.

It is perhaps natural that ignorant poor women should imagine that inequality is the fault of the rich women. What is more surprising is that many rich women, though they ought to know better than anybody that a woman can no more help being born rich than born poor, feel guilty and ashamed of their wealth, and plunge into almsgiving to relieve their sickly consciences. They often conceive Socialism as a charitable enterprise for the benefit of the poor. Nothing could be further from the truth. Socialism abhors poverty, and would abolish the poor. A hearty dislike and disapproval of poor people as such is the first qualification of a good Equalizer. Under Socialism people would be prosecuted for being poor as they are now for being naked. Socialism loathes almsgiving, not only sentimentally because it fills the paupers with humiliation, the patrons with evil pride, and both with hatred, but because in a country justly and providently managed there could be neither excuse for it on the pauper’s part nor occasion for it on the patron’s. Those who like playing the good Samaritan should remember that you cannot have good Samaritans without thieves. Saviors and rescuers may be splendid figures in hagiography and romance; but as they could not exist without sinners and victims they are bad symptoms.

The virtues that feed on suffering are very questionable virtues. There are people who positively wallow in hospitals and charitable societies and Relief Funds and the like, yet who, if the need for their charitable exercises were removed, could spend their energy to great advantage in improving their own manners and learning to mind their own business. There will always be plenty of need in the world for kindness; but it should not be wasted on preventible starvation and disease. Keeping such horrors in existence for the sake of exercising our sympathies is like setting our houses on fire to exercise the vigor and daring of our fire brigades. It is the people who hate poverty, not those who sympathize with it, who will put an end to it. Almsgiving, though it cannot be stopped at present, as without it we should have hunger riots, and possibly revolution, is an evil. At present we give the unemployed a dole to support them, not for love of them, but because if we left them to starve they would begin by breaking our windows and end by looting our shops and burning our houses.

It is true that a third of the money has come directly out of their own pockets; but the way in which it is repaid to them is none the less demoralizing. They find out that whether they contribute or not, the rich will pay ransom all the same. In ancient Rome the unemployed demanded not only bread to feed them but gladiator shows to keep them amused (panem et circenses); and the result was that Rome became crowded with playboys who would not work at all, and were fed and amused with money taken from the provinces. That was the beginning of the end of ancient Rome. We may come to bread and football (or prize-fights) yet: indeed the dole has brought us to the bread already. There is not even the blessing of kindness on it; for we all grudge the dole (it comes out of all our pockets) and would stop it tomorrow if we dared.

Equalization of Income will be brought about, not by every woman making it her private business, but by every woman making it her public business: that is, by law. And it will not be by a single law, but a long series of laws. These laws will not be commandments saying thou shalt or thou shalt not. The Ten Commandments gave the Israelites a set of precepts which none of their laws were to violate; but the commandments were politically useless until an elaborate set of laws and institutions had been provided to give effect to them. The first and last commandment of Socialism is “Thou shalt not have a greater or less income than thy neighbor”; but before such a commandment can be even approximately obeyed we shall have not only to pass hundreds of new Acts of Parliament and repeal hundreds of old ones, but to invent and organize new Government departments; train and employ no end of women and men as public servants; educate children to look at their country’s affairs in a new way; and struggle at every step with the opposition of ignorance, stupidity, custom, prejudice, and the vested interests of the rich.

Imagine a Socialist Government elected by an overwhelming majority of people who have read the preceding chapters of this book and been convinced by them, but not otherwise prepared for any change. Imagine it confronted with a starving woman. The woman says “I want work, not charity”. The Government, not having any work for her, replies “Read Shaw; and you will understand all about it”. The woman will say “I am too hungry to read Shaw, even if I considered him an edifying author. Will you please give me some food, and a job to enable me to pay for it honestly?” What could the Government do but confess that it had no job to give her, and offer her a dole, just as at present.

Until the Government has acquired all the powers of employment that the private employers now possess, it can give nothing to starving women, but outdoor relief with money taken by taxation from the employers and their landlords and financiers, which is just what any unsocialist government does. To acquire those powers it must itself become the national landlord, the national financier, and the national employer. In other words, it cannot distribute the national income equally until it, instead of the private owners, has the national income to distribute. Until it has done so you cannot practise Socialism even if you want to: you may even be severely punished for trying. You may agitate and vote for all the steps by which equalization of income will be reached; but in your private life you cannot do otherwise than you have to do at present: that is, keep your social rank (know your place, as it is called), paying or receiving the usual wages, investing your money to the best advantage, and so forth.

You see, it is one thing to understand the aim of Socialism, and quite another to carry it into practice, or even to see how it can or ever could be carried into practice. Jesus tells you to take no thought for the morrow’s dinner or dress. Matthew Arnold tells you to choose equality. But these are commandments without laws. How can you possibly obey them at present? To take no thought for the morrow as we now are is to become a tramp; and nobody can persuade a really intelligent woman that the problems of civilization can be solved by tramps. As to choosing equality, let us choose it by all means; but how? A woman cannot go into the streets to rifle the pockets of those who have more money than she has, and give money away to those who have less: the police would soon stop that, and pass her on from the prison cell to the lunatic asylum. She knows that there are things that the Government may do by law that no private person could be allowed to do. The Government may say to Mrs Jobson “If you murder Mrs Dobson (or anyone else) you will be hanged”. But if Mrs Dobson’s husband said to Mrs Jobson “If you murder my wife I will strangle you” he would be threatening to commit a crime, and could be severely punished for it, no matter how odious and dangerous Mrs Jobson might be. In America, crowds sometimes take criminals out of the hands of the law and lynch them. If they attempted to do that in England they would be dispersed by the police, or shot down by the soldiers, no matter how wicked the criminal and how natural their indignation at the crime.

The first thing civilized people have to learn politically is that they must not take the law into their own hands. Socialism is from beginning to end a matter of law. It will have to make idlers work; but it must not allow private persons to take this obligation on themselves. For instance, an Intelligent Woman, having to deal with a lazy slut, might feel strongly tempted to take up the nearest broomstick and say “If you dont get on with your work and do your fair share of it I will lambaste you with this stick until you are black and blue”. That occasionally happens at present. But such a threat, and much more its execution, is a worse crime than idleness, however richly the slattern may deserve the thrashing. The remedy must be a legal remedy. If the slattern is to be whacked it must be done by order of a court of law, by an officer of the law, after a fair trial by law. Otherwise life would be unbearable; for if we were all allowed to take the law into our own hands as we pleased, no woman could walk down the street without risk of having her hat torn off and stamped on by some æsthete who happened to think it unbecoming, or her silk stockings tarred by some fanatic who considers women’s legs indecent, not to mention mobs of such people.

Besides, the Intelligent Woman might not be stronger than the lazy one; and in that case the lazy one might take the broomstick and whack the intelligent one for working too hard and thereby causing more to be expected from the lazy ones. That, also, has often been done by too zealous Trade Unionists.

I need not labor this point any more. Should you become a convert to Socialism you will not be committed to any change in your private life, nor indeed will you find yourself able to make any change that would be of the smallest use in that direction. The discussions in the papers as to whether a Socialist Prime Minister should keep a motor car, or a Socialist playwright receive fees for allowing his plays to be performed, or Socialist landlords and capitalists charge rent for their land or interest on their capital, or a Socialist of any sort refrain from selling all that she has and giving it to the poor (quite the most mischievous thing she could possibly do with it), are all disgraceful displays of ignorance not only of Socialism, but of common civilization.