Part 12 (1/2)
The old boy's eyes twinkled. ”I grant you that our methods have that drawback. But what is to be done? We can't get _anyone_ amongst us to complain of his not always having his own way in the teeth of the community, when it is clear that _everybody_ cannot have that indulgence.
What is to be done?”
”Well,” said I, ”I don't know.”
Said he: ”The only alternatives to our method that I can conceive of are these. First, that we should choose out, or breed, a cla.s.s of superior persons capable of judging on all matters without consulting the neighbours; that, in short, we should get for ourselves what used to be called an aristocracy of intellect; or, secondly, that for the purpose of safe-guarding the freedom of the individual will, we should revert to a system of private property again, and have slaves and slave-holders once more. What do you think of those two expedients?”
”Well,” said I, ”there is a third possibility--to wit, that every man should be quite independent of every other, and that thus the tyranny of society should be abolished.”
He looked hard at me for a second or two, and then burst out laughing very heartily; and I confess that I joined him. When he recovered himself he nodded at me, and said: ”Yes, yes, I quite agree with you--and so we all do.”
”Yes,” I said, ”and besides, it does not press hardly on the minority: for, take this matter of the bridge, no man is obliged to work on it if he doesn't agree to its building. At least, I suppose not.”
He smiled, and said: ”Shrewdly put; and yet from the point of view of the native of another planet. If the man of the minority does find his feelings hurt, doubtless he may relieve them by refusing to help in building the bridge. But, dear neighbour, that is not a very effective salve for the wound caused by the 'tyranny of a majority' in our society; because all work that is done is either beneficial or hurtful to every member of society. The man is benefited by the bridge-building if it turns out a good thing, and hurt by it if it turns out a bad one, whether he puts a hand to it or not; and meanwhile he is benefiting the bridge- builders by his work, whatever that may be. In fact, I see no help for him except the pleasure of saying 'I told you so' if the bridge-building turns out to be a mistake and hurts him; if it benefits him he must suffer in silence. A terrible tyranny our Communism, is it not? Folk used often to be warned against this very unhappiness in times past, when for every well-fed, contented person you saw a thousand miserable starvelings. Whereas for us, we grow fat and well-liking on the tyranny; a tyranny, to say the truth, not to be made visible by any microscope I know. Don't be afraid, my friend; we are not going to seek for troubles by calling our peace and plenty and happiness by ill names whose very meaning we have forgotten!”
He sat musing for a little, and then started and said: ”Are there any more questions, dear guest? The morning is waning fast amidst my garrulity?”
CHAPTER XV: ON THE LACK OF INCENTIVE TO LABOUR IN A COMMUNIST SOCIETY
”Yes,” said I. ”I was expecting d.i.c.k and Clara to make their appearance any moment: but is there time to ask just one or two questions before they come?”
”Try it, dear neighbour--try it,” said old Hammond. ”For the more you ask me the better I am pleased; and at any rate if they do come and find me in the middle of an answer, they must sit quiet and pretend to listen till I come to an end. It won't hurt them; they will find it quite amusing enough to sit side by side, conscious of their proximity to each other.”
I smiled, as I was bound to, and said: ”Good; I will go on talking without noticing them when they come in. Now, this is what I want to ask you about--to wit, how you get people to work when there is no reward of labour, and especially how you get them to work strenuously?”
”No reward of labour?” said Hammond, gravely. ”The reward of labour is _life_. Is that not enough?”
”But no reward for especially good work,” quoth I.
”Plenty of reward,” said he--”the reward of creation. The wages which G.o.d gets, as people might have said time agone. If you are going to ask to be paid for the pleasure of creation, which is what excellence in work means, the next thing we shall hear of will be a bill sent in for the begetting of children.”
”Well, but,” said I, ”the man of the nineteenth century would say there is a natural desire towards the procreation of children, and a natural desire not to work.”
”Yes, yes,” said he, ”I know the ancient plat.i.tude,--wholly untrue; indeed, to us quite meaningless. Fourier, whom all men laughed at, understood the matter better.”
”Why is it meaningless to you?” said I.
He said: ”Because it implies that all work is suffering, and we are so far from thinking that, that, as you may have noticed, whereas we are not short of wealth, there is a kind of fear growing up amongst us that we shall one day be short of work. It is a pleasure which we are afraid of losing, not a pain.”
”Yes,” said I, ”I have noticed that, and I was going to ask you about that also. But in the meantime, what do you positively mean to a.s.sert about the pleasurableness of work amongst you?”
”This, that _all_ work is now pleasurable; either because of the hope of gain in honour and wealth with which the work is done, which causes pleasurable excitement, even when the actual work is not pleasant; or else because it has grown into a pleasurable _habit_, as in the case with what you may call mechanical work; and lastly (and most of our work is of this kind) because there is conscious sensuous pleasure in the work itself; it is done, that is, by artists.”
”I see,” said I. ”Can you now tell me how you have come to this happy condition? For, to speak plainly, this change from the conditions of the older world seems to me far greater and more important than all the other changes you have told me about as to crime, politics, property, marriage.”
”You are right there,” said he. ”Indeed, you may say rather that it is this change which makes all the others possible. What is the object of Revolution? Surely to make people happy. Revolution having brought its foredoomed change about, how can you prevent the counter-revolution from setting in except by making people happy? What! shall we expect peace and stability from unhappiness? The gathering of grapes from thorns and figs from thistles is a reasonable expectation compared with that! And happiness without happy daily work is impossible.”
”Most obviously true,” said I: for I thought the old boy was preaching a little. ”But answer my question, as to how you gained this happiness.”
”Briefly,” said he, ”by the absence of artificial coercion, and the freedom for every man to do what he can do best, joined to the knowledge of what productions of labour we really wanted. I must admit that this knowledge we reached slowly and painfully.”