SOCIALISM

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 24, 18 June 1908, Page 10

SOCIALISM

11. DIFFICULTIES OF SOCIALISM: ORQANISATION; SUPPLYING WANTS; ASSIGNING EMPLOYMENTS; REMUNERATION; MO. TIVE. a » (Continued,) TRADE UNIONS TO BE WELCOMED. Further, let me repeat a "phrase in it as affpotinoour present circumstances in Great Brita n : ' If Union? TW w ° r , 6d> S ° cialism will thrive in its stid ' These words seem to me very wise, and a warning to to ? TraTu S n iZ Wh °T» Willl - untlmel y timi^ty are hostile ?» £ <■ • .? us - lluis m America Monsignor Sualding, the friend of the Unions, has sorrowfully to ilcol?o Z n wi eVil that . Socialists into them, anSk WcSLizST/i CaUSm , g diSOrder ' P^mising Utopias? and victimizing the workmen by deception. But this is no 7nrr d f'f b - CaUse , America > « you know, is where foices of organized capital have sought to break the Yhe nL y f VaSt^ Cc lab ° r asencieS ' h^ blacklisting, by the use of armed mercenaries, by the misuse- of the j57 B +hlm?? BplraCy^ wbi S the cm P l °yers.in combination tSinn«Tf cS r e 7 ade ' Moreover ' to America, the constitn2S aW ,° **£ contract has been so interpreted as " to hamper alike the Factory Acts and Trade Unions • a sympathetic strike has been held to be illega* and statutes have been declared unconstitutional if they forbade the ■ discharge of a workman, for. belonging' to a Trade Union ; similarly laws forbidding the truck system or commanding weekly payment of wages have been set aside as - unconstitutional. (1)" The cry 'Down with Unionism I ' awakens as its echo' the cry * Uri with Socialism ! ' The same tiling happens in Ger- " many There the liberty of workmen's associations-is limited and precarious; they lack co-operative rights 1 -" they require a license from the local authorities, are'tLt the mercy of local officials, and are strictly bound ' to keep to- specific questions of work and wages, " else afeliable to the penal law.. And in Germany a vast- pro^' .portion of the working classes are avowed Socialists"-' and form the great Social • Democratic Party- against" which Count Buelow, the head of the Emperor's Government, urges all the other parties to join ■in alliance, as against public enemies. • . ' And here in Great Britain the friendliness towards Trade Unions in the early seventies that I remember has given way to the old suspicion and. dislike,' and 1 instead of welcoming these great organized bodies, oV linking them up with the law and the State (so well done in New Zealand and Australia), or of using .them as an invaluable ally in the campaign against unemployment, the hostility to them culminated in .the Taff Vale i See the small volume, Our Benevolent Feudalism, by the Socialist, W. J. Ghent New Yonf, 1902. . ' ' .

decision, virtually though not nominally the repeal of an Act of Parliament that had been passed in their favor. No wonder they have been driven into the arms of the Socialists ; no wonder, that many of their members have become Socialists in reality, and many more,* blinded by the dust, have become Socialists in name. * ' SO-CALLED MUNICIPAL SOCIALISM AS AT GLASGOW. The confusion has been made worse, the mystification of the working classes on the one fside and of the rich ratepayers on the other side has been made completer by the current use of the term ' Municipal Socialism.' No doubt in recent years in Great Britain we can trace a vast increase of the economic functions of town councils, and a great many services have been undertaken having the public benefit as their aim, where~ these services, if left in private hands, would necessarily either result in great waste or in a great monopoly, or where, from the difficulties of exacting payment, private enterprise would have left them unsupplied. Such, for example, as the service of water, or gas, electricity tramways, markets, docks, public baths, public gardens,' public libraries, lodging-houses, and .workmen's dwelings. This increase of function is partly due to the fact that British municipalities in mid-nineteenth century had lost much of their ancient powers, and left much either undone or done by private individuals that was habitually done by the municipalities on the European continent. The change was also partly due to the fact that the growth of towns and population rendered common action more and more needful for public health and convenience. But to call this movement Socialism is to play with words. It has been carried out not by any Socialist majority, sometimes not with any Socialist help, in no place as a step towards Collectivism ; but simply because it seemed in each particular case Tor the general good. (1) In fact, the question of public control and ownership is eminently a practical question varying with times and circumstances, sometimes more, sometimes less—less, for example, where, as in the United States, there is a lack of well trained and incorruptible officials ; more, for example, in Prussia, where such officials can. be found and people are accustomed to the obedience of military and bureaucratic discipline. t Or to come nearer home, the city of GlasgW is an example of a locality where there was a wide field for the action of the civic authorities, and where the field had been occupied with wonderful energy and success ; so that when in 1901 the British Association held its meeting at Glasgow, strangers to the city could enjoy the best water supply in the kingdom, the cheap municipal gas and municipal trams, the parks, public halls and art gallery ; could examine the famous model lodging-houses, public baths, municipal laundries and markets ; could read of the immense improvement in the sanitary conditions of the city, with a great diminution of the death-rate, the diminution being the happy result of the new water supply, the better drainage, the clearance of slum areas, and the provision of healthy dwellings. So great an extension of municipal activity caused Glasgow to be styled in the South the Mecca of Municipal Socialism ; (2) though I must remark, by way of protest against this term, that the difference is hardly greater between the climate of the city on the Clyde and the climate of Mecca, than the difference between the municipal activity of Glasgow and real Socialism. EXAMPLES FROM MEDIAEVAL SIENA, MODERN VIENNA, AND MEDIAEVAL ENGLAND. And lest you should think there is anything either new or revolutionary, or, again, anti-Catholic in this kind of public ownership, and control, which is miscalled Municipal Socialism, listen to three examples. One is from Italy in the 13th century, in what was then the great industrial town of Siena. The statutes of the town administration can be 'read to-day ; elaborate rules on street cleanliness, market cleanliness, drainage and paving, for .the problem of the water supply, for the planting of waste places around the town with trees, for forestry on the communal property ; care for the supply of the city with flour and grain, and provisions in, general, and building materials, lest the supply be disturbed by any extortionate middlemen. There was power to make street improvements, and assessment was based on the principle of betterment (that, you see, is no new discovery). ~ Finally, besides care for the roads and bridges, this S'ienese republic took in hand the medicinal baths in its territory and fixed a tariff not merely for the baths, but for the lodging of those who frequented them. (3),

i P. Verhaegen, Socialists Anglais, eh. xl. a The Times, August 23, 1901. 3 See E, Armstrong, English Historical Rcvi«xv,.\ol xv., 1900

Take another Catholic city, this time contemporary/ the city of Vienna, under its" admirable, burgomaster, Dr. Lueger. The city and its suburbs lay under the yoke of a ring of monopolists (chiefly Jews) ; the peasant cultivators around had to sell the produce of" their farms, gardens, and vineyards to-these monopolists at a very low price and the consumers had to> buy them from these monopolists at a very high price. Dr, Lueger worked a transformation. , He -undertook a communal restaurant in the vast. basement of the town hall, where wholesome and cheap provisions and light wine were sold to immense crowds of all classes, to the great gain both of consumer and producer, by getting rid of the monopolist middlemen, and bringing besides some £16,000 a year into the municipal treasury Moreover, water has been municipalized and supplied at very low prices, I believe below cost price • an excellent tram service is supplied just at cost price while gas and electricity have also been made municipal, and though supplied very cheaply yield an annual revenue to the city of about £80,000 sterling. These are great results* .and no wonder the great man who has brought .them about has been assailed with vitu-' peration. As . a Catholic- and- the friend of Leo XIII. and Pius X., Dr. Lueger is called ultramontane-, fanatical, and retrograde. We are accustomed to such epithets and take off the discount from such charges ; where I want you to deduct the discount is when you hear him called an Anti-Semite or Jew-hater, because it happened that the monopolists he overthrew were mostly Jews, and when you hear him called a Socialist because he established municipal industry in a field where it was fit. (1) As a third example let us come back to our own country and hear what was the condition of the tenants of the great monastery of Durham in the 15th century,a condition that if seen in working .order to-day might be miscalled 4 Village Socialism.' The villagers, though nominally tenants, ' were practically small property owners paying a rent-charge to the monastery. In the village, to quote the words of Abbot Gasq,uet, ' Manyof the things that in these days advanced politicians v would desire to see introduced into the village com- 7 munity of modern England, to relieve the deadly dulness of country life, were seen in Durham and Cumberland in full working order in pre-Reformatian days. Cocal provisions for public health and general convenience are evinced by the watchful vigilance of the village s officials over the water supplies, the care taken to prevent the fouling of useful streams, and stringent byelaws as to the common place for washing clothes and the times for emptying and cleansing ponds and milldams. Labor was lightened and the burdens of life eased by co-operation on an extensive scale. A common mill ground the corn, and the flour was baked into bread at a common oven. A common smith worked at a common forge, and convmon shepherds and herdsmen watched the sheep and cattle of various tenants, when pastured on the fields common to the whole village community.' (2) IMPRACTICABILITY OF SOCIALISM. If I have given these details at such length it is to emphasize my contention that reform is not Socialism, and that to mix them up is to confuse, confound, bewilder, and blind with dust or fog, and justifies me in applying to Socialism the epithet insidious, because masquerading under false colors as if it were the sole remedy for social ills, when out of many proposed remedies it is merely one. And now I have as a second point/to say that it i& a very "bad remedy, and thus that -it is not merely insidious but impracticable. The collective ownership and"collective management of all the means of production implies that every factory and workshop in a whole country, every warehouse, every retail shop, every office, and every house of business, all ships from a liner to a fishing " smack, every mine and quarry belong to the Government, and must be managed by those who are working not on their own account, ibut as Government servants. Again and" again, the difficulties (seemingly insuper-% able) have been pointed out, and some explanation or answer demanded from the Socialists -how they could be overcome. Already on other occasions I have pointed out that these difficulties, for the purpose of remembering them better,, can be reduced to .five: first, the difficultyof organizing work ; secondly, the difficulty of supplying different wants ; thirdly, the difficulty of assigning different employments ; fourthly, the difficulty of assigning remuneration ; and lastly, the difficulty of supplying a stimulating motive to work.

1 See Rivisla luttrnazionale, November, 1903, pp. 490, 491. 2 Preface to his edition of Cobbetl's History o/ihe Reformation, pVxir,, 1896.

DIFFICULTIES OF ORGANIZATION. First; regarding the difficulty of "organizing work, take Scotland alone, with something less than live million inhabitants, 'llnnlc of all the nouses of business in Edinburgh and other great towns and in every village and hamlet, worked from one centre. You may say- it as done now by the Post Olhce. Precisely, because the Post Office performs a simple service where the prime matter is delivery, and the prime economy is to avoid cross delivery ; it is a simple, almost mechanical, work; the main work, the letters themselves, are - produced by the individual thousands of the public. It would ble a more apt comparison if an agent of State were himself, after he'a.ring the- individual circumstamces, to write every letter and to post them at- the proper time,- just as he now transmits and delivers them. And in the Socialist Commonwealth the many busy hands that are now conducting- tens of. thousands of businesses, lesser or 'greater, throughout the land, and in most cases occupy their position precisely because they are capable, would at best remain as mere agents of ■ a central organizing power. Nor are we helped by the analogy of great trusts or combinations, especially conspicuous in America, where vast industries are controlled by a few men. For apart from the difficulty that it is one thing for some industries to be controlled, and quite another thing for all industries to be controlled, there remains this difficulty, that as far as great combinations and trusts have been successful they have been successful because great power and great wealth have been permanently concentrated in few hands, and a new baronial or feudal system has been reconstituted ; only instead of lordly 1/arons in their castles we have great financial magnates in their counting-houses, sitting enthroned there, not for a- few weeks or few months, but permanently. Hence if there is to be any successful business organisation on the scale supptosed, the democratic principles of starting fair, of popular control, and of rotation of office, all must be thrown overboard. Not even the world-famous Scottish capacity for business could carry on any concern with success if with every new moon there was to be a new manager. Rather we must hand ourselves over to the tender mercies of rulers and organizers who must be few, who must be permanent, who must be autocratic. I have said Scotland— but why Scotland ? Why not the forty-five millions of Ihe United Kingdom or the four' hundred millions of the British Empire ? Mr. Mac Donald speaks of ' the community ' and of the ' nation-making epoch ' as if it was closed, (1) and like other Socialists assumes complete, cut-and-dncd and distinct units, that can each form a Socialist Commonwealth. For most truly no Socialist organization is possible with shifting • frontiers and shifting populations. But the facts are wholly contrary to the assumption that is required by Socialism. Take the last sixty years only : compare the political map and the statistics of population in 1846, and then at each successive ten years look at the changes in both. It would take me several hours to give you a mere catalogue of these changes. - Only think, for example, of the extraordinary changes of the political areas ruled from London, from Paris, and from Berlin. Or again, think of the millions of men and women in a twofold vast migration, one from Europe to America, the other from the open country to the towns. And there is no sign that these changes are coming to an end. Frontiers and population are in a state/ of flux, now no less than sixty years ago, and their uncertainty "makes the proposed 'Socialistic organization of national ' industry an impossibility. Society would have to be crystallized, frontiers stereotyped, international, nay, -even inter-urbah, migration stopped all men confined each to his ,own district, like serfs in the old time or indentured coolies in the new time. DIFFICULTY OF SUPPLYING WANTS. , Much more could be said on this first difficulty of' orgamzation, but I must pass on to the second, the difficulty of supplying different' wants. A man's individuality, and let me say still more a woman's individuality, must be sacrificed : there is no room for peculiarities, idiosyncrasies," individual requirements No doubt the ordinary food, the ordinary clothing ordinary furniture, ordinary houses, ordinary amusements, you could get by presenting a labor ticket at the Government stores, or in. whatever way distribution was mana/ged ; but all production would be wholesale on a large scale, after an official pattern ; instead of facing a body of producers and sellers -eager to cater for every separate want, you would face an official body to whom any fresh want would mean more trouble and more brain work, with no prospect of private profit as an incentive ; and thus you would seek in vain to proI Socialism and Society, pp. 133, 153,

cure what would be out of the routine of Government production ; the' piactical consequence would be that grown men and women would be assimilated to boys 1 or girls at a bfcarding-schooJ.and we must all be as soldiers with barrack-room uniformity. There could be no genuine liberty of consumption. DIFFICULTY OF THE ASSIGNMENT OF EMPLOYMENTS.. The third difficulty is the assignment of different employments, and we |isk j n vain, How can it be done ? For every one to take turn and turn about at eyery trade is so appalling a waste of power, so great a violation of division of labor, as to be out of the question ; to choose what you like best is to leave undone necessary employments that are liked the least; to give a greater reward to the rough, unpleasant tasks is to depreciate the higher and' more delicate tasks : the chimney-sweep or scavenger would get more than the physician or the schoolmaster. A courageous effort to meet these difficulties was indeed made by Edward Bellamy, in his famous novel, ' Looking Backwards ' ; but I need not dwell on his work, as it has long been repudiated by Bebel, who called him l a Utopian and no Socialist.' (1) Indeed, the Socialist leadqrs shrink from publishing any practical details of the future Socialist State, and evade practical criticisms by keeping to generalities. (2) DIFFICULTY OF REMUNERATING WORK. And the same may be said of the fourth difficulty, the assignment of remuneration. It is often done very badly now. Social reformers know the evil, and are striving as far as possible to remedy it. But remuneration even now is often done very well. Take, for example, the elaborate rates for piece work in the Lancashire cotton trade, fixed by representatives of masters and men, and arrived at by technically trained experts; (3) or, take, the joint agreement that has worked so satisfactorily for five years or more in the coalmining industry of the four great States of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. (4) How could Socialism deal with cases like these ? For a little while, indeed, they might simply continue the previous work of conciliatory experts ; but any change of production and any invention would make the old standards inapplicable, and no criterion would be at hand for the new, no . outside current rates or Trade Union rates, and all would have to be left to oflicial good pleasure. But no body of men, least of all a body .of officials, are to be trusted with arbitrary power in their hands. DIFFICULTY OF SUPPLYING A MOTIVE. Lastly, but not not least, comes the difficulty of supplying a motive. It has been pointed out, again and again, how unlikely is the order and punctuality, the incessant and strenuous labor, the keen eye for technical improvement, the watch for markets, tha/t is stimulated by the fear of dismissal on the part of the employed, or bankruptcy on the part of the employers, and by the hope of advancement and enrichment on the part of both. But in the Socialist State there could be neither dismissal nor bankruptcy to fear, and the honors and rewards that might be held out to the industrious and inventive would be a shadowy reward compared with the substantial gains that our present social arrange-" ments do not indeed always give (alas ! far from it), but at least hold out as an allurement. Hence the universal self-interest of indolent mankind in the Socialist State would condone, not indeed absolute idleness, but habitual slack work, easy-going .habits, general negligence, that it would be everybody's business, and therefore nobody's business, to correct; (To be concluded next week.)