THE CONSTRUCTIVE PROBLEM SOLVED

YOU may now stop for breath, as you are at last in possession not only of the object of Socialism, which is simply equality of income, but of the methods by which it can be attained. You know why coal mining and banking should be nationalized, and how the expropriation of the coalowners and bankers can be compensated so as to avoid injustice to individuals or any shock to the sense of security which is necessary to prevent the continued investment of spare money as capital. Now when you have the formula for these two nationalizations, one of a material industry involving much heavy manual work, and the other a service conducted by sedentary brain work, you have a formula for all nationalizations. And when you have the formula for the constitutional compensated expropriation of the coalowners and bankers by taxation you have the formula for the expropriation of all proprietors. Knowing how to nationalize industry you know how to place the Government in control of the distribution of the income produced by industry. We have not only found these formulas, but seen them tested in practice in our existing institutions sufficiently to have no more doubt that they would work than we have that next year’s budget will work. Therefore we need no longer be worried by demands for what people call a constructive program. There it is for them; and what will surprise them most about it is that it does not contain a single novelty. The difficulties and the novelty are not, as they imagine, in the practical part of the business, which turns out to be quite plain sailing, but in the metaphysical part: that is, in the will to equality. We know how to take the distribution of the national income out of the hands of the private owners of property and place it under the control of the Government. But the Government can distribute it unequally if it decides to do so. Instead of destroying the existing inequality it can intensify it. It can maintain a privileged class of idlers with huge incomes, and give them State security for the continuance of those incomes.

It is this possibility that may enlist and to a certain extent has already enlisted the most determined opponents of Socialism on the side of nationalization, expropriative taxation, and all the constructive political machinery of Socialism, as a means of redistributing income, the catch in it being that the redistribution at which they aim is not an equal distribution, but a State-guaranteed unequal one. John Bunyan, with his queer but deep insight, pointed out long ago that there is a way to hell even from the gates of heaven; that the way to heaven is therefore also the way to hell; and that the name of the gentleman who goes to hell by that road is Ignorance. The way to Socialism, ignorantly pursued, may land us in State Capitalism. Both must travel the same road; and this is what Lenin, less inspired than Bunyan, failed to see when he denounced the Fabian methods as State Capitalism. What is more, State Capitalism, plus Capitalist Dictatorship (Fascism), will compete for approval by cleaning up some of the dirtiest of our present conditions: raising wages; reducing death rates; opening the career to the talents; and ruthlessly cashiering inefficiency, before in the long run succumbing to the bane of inequality, against which no civilization can finally stand out.

This is why, though you are now equipped with a complete answer to those who very properly demand from Socialists constructive plans, practical programs, a constitutional parliamentary routine, and so forth, you are still not within eight score pages of the end of this book. We have still to discuss not only the pseudo-Socialism against which I have just warned you, but other things which I cannot omit without leaving you more or less defenceless against the alarmist who, instead of being sensibly anxious about constructive methods, is quite convinced that the world can be turned upside down in a day by an unwashed Russian in a red tie and an uncombed woman with a can of petrol if only they are wicked enough. These poor scared things will ask you what about revolution? what about marriage? what about children? what about sex? when, as they assume, Socialism will have upset all our institutions and substituted for our present population of sheep a raving pack of mad dogs. No doubt you can tell them to go away, or to talk about such matters as they are capable of understanding; but you will find that they are only the extreme instances of a state of mind that is very common. Not only will plenty of your most sensible friends want to discuss these subjects in connection with Socialism, but you yourself will be as keen about them as they. So now that we know exactly what Socialism aims at and how it can be done, let us leave all that as settled, and equip ourselves for general conversation on or around the subject.