Part 9 (2/2)

Allan (of the Allan Line), as Mr. George Bernard Shaw and Mrs. Shaw, Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb and Sir Sidney Olivier (the present Governor of Jamaica)--all of them fairly comfortable and independent people, practically acquainted with the business of investment and affairs generally and quite alive to the present relations of property to the civilized life--the suggestion that it is a raid of the ignorant ”Have-nots” on the possessions of the wise and good ”Haves” cannot be a very intelligent one nor addressed to very intelligent people. Essentially Socialism is the scientifically-organized State as distinguished from the haphazard, wasteful, blundering, child-sweating State of the eighteenth century. It is the systematization of present tendency. Necessarily its methods of transition will be progressively scientific and humane.

”'So far as your specific questions go, I do not think there could possibly be anything in the nature of ”compulsory profit-sharing” if a Socialist Government came into office. There is at present a compulsory profit-sharing in the form of an income-tax, but that tax does not appeal to the Socialist as a particularly scientific one. The advent of a strongly-Socialist Government would mean no immediate revolutionary changes at all. There would be, no doubt, a vigorous acceleration of the educational movement to increase the economic value and productivity of the average citizen of the next generation, and legislation upon the lines laid down by the principle of the ”minimum wage” to check the waste of our national resources by destructive employment. Also a systematic s.h.i.+fting of the burthen of taxation from enterprise to rent would begin. But nothing convulsive would occur.'”

”'The means of transit and communication of the country (both internal and external), and especially the railways and ca.n.a.ls (which are now rapidly falling into inefficiency through the exhaustion of their capital upon excessive dividends in the past), would probably be transferred from compet.i.tive private to organized public control--a transfer that would certainly be enormously stimulating to business generally. There would be no ”robbery,” the former shareholders would become stock or annuity holders. Nor would there be any financial convulsion due to the raising of the ”enormous sum”

necessary to effect this purchase. The country would simply create stock, while at the same time taking over a.s.sets to balance the new liability.

”'A Socialist Government would certainly also acquire the coal mines and the coal trade, and relieve industry from the inconveniences due to the manipulation of the supply of this vitally important factor, and it would accelerate the obvious tendency of the present time to bring the milk trade, the drink trade, slaughtering, local traffic, lighting and power supply into public hands. But none of this is the destruction of property, but only its organization and standardization. Such a State organization of public services is, I submit, enough to keep a Socialist Government busy for some few years, and makes not only for social progress, but social stability.

”'And does an honest and capable business man stand to lose or gain by the coming of such a Socialist Government? I submit that, on the whole, he stands to gain. Let me put down the essential points in his outlook as I conceive them.

”'Under a Socialist Government such as is quite possible in England at the present time:--

”'He will be restricted from methods of production and sale that are socially mischievous.

”'He will pay higher wages.

”'He will pay a larger proportion of his rate-rent outgoings to the State and Munic.i.p.ality, and less to the landlord. Ultimately he will pay it all to the State or Munic.i.p.ality, and as a voter help to determine how it shall be spent, and the landlord will become a Government stock-holder. Practically he will get his rent returned to him in public services.

”'He will speedily begin to get better-educated, better-fed and better-trained workers, so that he will get money value for the higher wages he pays.

”'He will get a regular, safe, cheap supply of power and material. He will get cheaper and more efficient internal and external transit.

”'He will be under an organized scientific State, which will naturally pursue a vigorous scientific collective policy in support of the national trade.

”'He will be less of an adventurer and more of a citizen....'”

So I wrote to the _Magazine of Commerce_, and that for the energetic man who is conducting a real and socially useful business is the outlook. Socialism is not the coming of chaos and repudiation, it is the coming of order and justice. For confusion and accident and waste, the Socialist seeks to subst.i.tute design and collective economy. That too is the individual aim of every good business man who is not a mere advertising cheat or financial adventurer. To the sound-minded, clear-headed man of affairs, Socialism appeals just as it appeals to the scientific man, to the engineer, to the artist, because it is the same reality, the large scale aspect of the same constructive motive, that stirs in himself.

-- 3.

Let me finally quote the chairman of one of the most enterprising and enlightened business organizations of our time to show that in claiming the better type of business man for modern Socialism I am making no vain boast. Sir John Brunner may not call himself a Socialist, but this is very probably due to the fact that he gets his ideas of Socialism from the misquotations of its interested adversaries. This that follows from the _Manchester Guardian_ is pure Socialism.

Speaking at the annual meeting of Brunner, Mond and Co., Ltd., in Liverpool (1907), the chairman, Sir John Brunner, M.P., made a remarkable p.r.o.nouncement on the subject of the collective owners.h.i.+p of ca.n.a.ls. He said:--

”I have been one of a Royal Commission visiting the North of France, Belgium, and Northern Germany, and our duty has been to examine what those three countries have done in the improvement of their ca.n.a.ls and their waterways. We have been very deeply impressed by what we have seen, and I can tell you to-day, speaking as a man of business to men of business, that the fact that in these three countries there is communal effort--that is to say, that the State in money and in credit for the benefit of the national trade--has brought to those three countries enormous, almost incalculable, benefits; and I think that any man, any intelligent man, who studies this matter as I have studied it for a great many years, will come the conclusion, as I have come very clearly and decidedly, that the old policy which we have adopted for generations of leaving all public works to private enterprise--the old policy, so called, of _laissez faire_--is played out completely, and I am of opinion, very firmly, that, if we mean to hold our own in matters of trade, we must learn to follow the example that has been set us not only by France, Belgium, and Germany, but by the United States and by every one of the Colonies of our Empire. Everywhere do you find that trade is helped by the effort of the community, by the force of the State, and I shall be very heartily pleased if those who hear me will think the matter over and decide for themselves whether or not we as business people--preeminently the business people of the world--are to maintain the old policy of leaving everything to private enterprise, or whether we are to act together for the good of all in this important matter of the national trade.”

CHAPTER IX

SOME COMMON OBJECTIONS TO SOCIALISM

-- 1.

In the preceding eight chapters I have sought to give as plain and full an account of the great generalizations of Socialism as I can, and to make it clear exactly what these generalizations convey, and how far they go in this direction and that. Before we go on to a brief historical and antic.i.p.atory account of the actual Socialist movement, it may be worth while to take up and consider compactly the chief objections that are urged against the general propositions of Socialism in popular discussion.

Now a very large proportion of these arise out of the commonest vice of the human mind, its disposition to see everything as ”yes” or ”no,”

as ”black” or ”white,” its impatience, its incapacity for a fine discrimination of intermediate shades.[14] The queer old scholastic logic still prevails remarkably in our modern world; you find Mr.

Mallock, for example, going about arranging his syllogisms, extracting his opponent's ”self-contradictions,” and disposing of Socialism with stupendous self-satisfaction in all the magazines. He disposes of Socialism quite in the spirit of the young mediaeval scholar returning home to prove beyond dispute that ”my cat has ten tails” and, given a yard's start, that a tortoise can always keep ahead of a running man.

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